MANILA — When America’s secretary of defense last traveled to meet with his Philippine counterparts, at a conference in early June, the two sides were enjoying a diplomatic honeymoon of sorts.
They had just finished a massive military exercise in May. Months before, the U.S. had sent a mid-range missile launcher there for the first time, hinting at how valuable the Philippines could be in a conflict with China in the South China Sea that abuts the island nation. And after years of hedging against Washington under a former president, Manila had a new, pro-American leader.
That honeymoon ended over the next two months.
The night before Lloyd Austin met with his counterpart from Manila in June, the Philippines’ President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. publicly drew a “red line” on what he would consider an act of war with China, arguing the U.S. would back him up. When asked later about that red line at a defense summit in Singapore, Austin demurred, repeating the bromide that America’s commitment to their mutual defense treaty is “ironclad.”
Then on June 17, Chinese Coast Guard vessels intercepted Filipino ships that were resupplying an outpost. The incident nearly crossed the line Marcos set weeks before, threatening a war that could entangle Washington.
This week, Austin returned to Manila to meet with top officials, and announced new progress in their military alliance while pledging $500 million in long-term security aid.
“There’s no greater example of our progress in the Indo-Pacific than the Philippines,” a senior American defense official said before the trip.
But while the Philippines may be America’s fastest growing partner in the region, it also may be the country facing the greatest threat in the region from China. Austin may have come with a message of reassurance, but he’s arriving at a moment of uncertainty.
A roadmap
The warming in America’s ties with the Philippines has been rapid.
The two have had a mutual defense treaty since 1951, signed in the aftermath of World War II. But their relationship has stumbled at times. Marcos’ predecessor, in office until the summer of 2022, remained cozy with China even when their two countries had brief spats.
That changed when Marcos came into office.
He’s pivoted away from Beijing and closer to Washington. The two nation’s militaries are now exercising more often, sharing more information and working more in the same areas — including four new military bases that America got access to last year.
The two have also started partnering with other friendly countries in the region, such as Japan and Australia.
When Austin and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with their counterparts in Manila this week, they came with more support.
They announced $500 million in long-term military aid — first reported by Defense News before the trip — to help the nation’s military bulk up for bigger challenges, like defending its territory.
They also signed a roadmap for that work, directing how the Philippines will improve its force over the next five to 10 years and what the U.S. will do to help.
The new aid follows American spending on bases the U.S. military will have access to in the country. In the Pentagon’s requested budget for fiscal year 2025, there is $128 million for infrastructure on those sites, more than double in one year what the Defense Department had spent there in the past decade. The money would go toward small-scale construction, such as firing ranges, warehouses or command sites, a second senior U.S. defense official told reporters ahead of this week’s trip.
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Lastly, Austin announced that an agreement on securely sharing information will be done by the end of this year. This step would be very helpful for Manila, which doesn’t have the ability to monitor much of its territory and could benefit from data provided by American sensors.
Speaking at a press conference this week after a day of meetings, the Philippines Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro said the aid would be “a tremendous boost in order for us to establish a credible deterrent to unlawful foreign aggression.”
‘Most dangerous phase’?
Hanging over the trip, though, was a question over what Manila needs to deter.
The last confrontation with China was the climax of a years-long standoff over a naval post in the South China Sea. Beijing says it should have control of the waters, despite a 2016 ruling by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea saying otherwise. When Filipino sailors go to resupply their personnel on the post each month, Chinese coast guard vessels harrass them.
China escalated things in June when it seized Filipino vessels, supplies and weapons, injuring several Filipino sailors in the process.
In the weeks after, the two countries began talking and eventually reached a private agreement on the resupply missions. Based on their statements afterward, it hasn’t been clear whether both sides would respect the same terms.
Days before Austin arrived in Manila, the Philippines resupplied the post for the first time since June. It didn’t end up in another confrontation.
“We were pleased to see that the first resupply mission subsequent to that understanding went forward without incident,” said Blinken at a press conference this week. “It’s very important that that be the standard, not the exception.”
Whether it will be the standard is still not certain, said Greg Poling, who studies Philippines security issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Manila had been sending construction materials to the post, a World War II-era ship run into a reef, to shore it against harsh weather. Poling said the government was confident that the external structure now wouldn’t collapse under a typhoon, as Beijing likely hoped.
But while that may now be the case the resupply missions will still need to continue, which leaves open the chance that further confrontations could follow.
“Either we’re already past the most dangerous phase and we’ve already started to de-escalate or we are in the most dangerous phase,” Poling said.
Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.
