Up for grabs

July 10, 2024

MANILA – Between President Marcos at the White House being part of a tripartite summit signaling America’s anointing of Japan as its regional champion, and him at Malacañang witnessing Japan and the Philippines formalizing an agreement essentially on par with the country’s existing status of forces agreements with the United States and Australia, something happened. Japan’s currency hit its lowest point in nearly 40 years and because of this, the Japanese plan to ramp up military spending has lost steam: a former defense minister told The New York Times in real terms, the sinking Japanese yen means defense spending has been cut 30 percent.

This doesn’t mean Tokyo won’t work on firming up its ties with Manila, but it does suggest that just as Manila has more deeply engaged the West and regional powers concerned over China, many of these powers are simultaneously facing domestic pressures that could limit the resources they can allocate to their militaries and diplomacy. Two interesting cases in point are France, where the Right may have been kept out of power but with neither the New United Front of the Left nor the centrist alliance of President Emmanuel Macron being able to form a government; and Britain, with its new Labor government, also has to do more domestically within the confines of less fiscal space and even demographic challenges: two expensively refurbished Royal Navy frigates, for example, are reportedly due for premature retirement as there simply aren’t enough sailors to run them—hobbling the country’s ability to contribute to maintaining the openness of the seas.

Beijing is, of course, upset over the Manila-Tokyo agreement and while the Beijing boosters use their online space to insist that