Quickly broadening networks of defense with countries other than the United States indicates the Marcos administration appears to have a forward-looking deterrence strategy against China in place.
Testifying to that strategy was the signing of a visiting forces pact last Sunday with Canada, after a relatively short eight months of negotiations.
The Status of Visiting Forces Agreement (SoVFA) with Canada is that country’s first-ever such deal in the Indo-Pacific region.
With it, the pact takes to five the number of deals on troop exchanges the Philippines has concluded with other countries.
Besides the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the US, the country has SoVFAs with Australia and New Zealand, and a first-ever Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) with Japan.
The country is currently finalizing a SoVFA with France and is actively pursuing related troop pacts with Britain and Italy.
Britain and the Philippines are expected to begin visiting forces negotiations soon while talks on a similar pact with Italy are said to be “progressing positively.”
The visiting forces deal with Canada conclusively shows the administration’s pursuit of its defense network strategy has expanded considerably, with three other visiting forces agreements signed in the past two years.
The deal with Canada not only enhances the Philippines’ deterrence capability but shows that the administration is “beginning to move beyond just exposing China’s belligerent behavior,” strategy analyst Julio Amador told the South China Morning Post.
Analysts said the country’s earlier fruitful strategy of publicly exposing China’s harassment and bullying in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) was starting to lose its potency and needed another workable strategy.
And the administration appeared to prepare for that eventuality when Mr. Marcos Jr. issued policy directives to hasten the expansion of security partnerships to counter China’s growing aggressive military presence in the region.
“When it comes to the security threats the Philippines is facing, adding more defense partners is a critical component of, hopefully, a bigger strategy than what we are currently seeing right now,” Amador said.
Nonetheless, the exposure strategy seems to have prodded other countries to take stock of the region’s changing security environment and the threats to their own interests brought on by China’s growing assertiveness.
Analysts, for instance, said European countries are now responding to a fundamental shift in the regional power balance marked by a “changed China” and “the practical necessity for Europe to secure vital trade routes in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.”
On the trade routes issue, “as much as 40 percent of the EU’s (European Union) foreign trade passes through there, so there’s a vested interest in ensuring that those vital sea lanes remain free and open to all,” said one analyst.
But it’s the awareness of the Indo-Pacific region’s power imbalance that apparently convinces other nations of the Philippines’ “strategic location between the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait,” making the country crucial to the region’s interests.
And with other countries apparently concluding that the Philippines is a “crucial theater in the defense of the rules-based international order,” which our defense officials often emphasize, this makes for easier security partnership negotiations and pacts.
Having a security pact with the Philippines also poses less risk of a diplomatic blowback from China compared to having a security partnership with Taiwan, which China considers the reddest of red lines.