Philippines Becoming A Military Hub For Checking China

During last year's Kamandag drills, the Philippines hosted the first-ever quadrilateral Philippine-US-Japan-South Korea exercises. Back then, a whopping 2,550 US Marines personnel joined 630 Filipino counterparts from all branches of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

The two mutual defense treaty allies were joined by personnel from the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) and the Republic of Korea Armed Forces (ROKAF), which joined in disaster response drills and a host of exercises aimed at enhancing quadrilateral interoperability.

As for the UK, it stepped up its defense cooperation with Manila following its first-ever participation as an observer nation along with Japan and Australia in this year's Philippine-US Balikatan (Shoulder-to-Shoulder) exercises , which featured as many as 17,000 troops.

Like Kamandag, many of the Balikatan drills left little to the imagination, with allied nations drilling potential conflict scenarios with an adversary like China.

This year's Kamandag exercises were launched after the US Marine Corps wrapped up Resolute Dragon 23 exercises with the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, which saw the two sides enhancing relationships between the command posts of America's III Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) and Japan's Western Army branch of the JSDF.

As many as 8,300 troops took part in those exercises featuring 5,000 service members of Japan's SDF and 3,300 US service members. The Resolute Dragon joint drills were held across 19 facilities stretching from Hokkaido in the north and throughout Kyushu Island and the Ryukyu Arc in southwest Japan.

This year's Kamandag exercises aimed to instill confidence and unity in the participants and send a message to China amid multiple increasingly violent encounters with the Philippines this year in the South China Sea.

“Together, we send a powerful message to the world, especially to those who may seek to disrupt the peace: that our partnership is unbreakable, our resolve unyielding, and our commitment to defending our nations is always unwavering,” General Arturo Rojas, commandant of the Philippine Marines, said in an opening ceremony speech at the Naval Station Jose Francisco in Taguig City.

For his part, General Jimmy Larida, the director of the Exercise Directorate for the Philippine Navy, underscored how the exercises are crucial to enhancing his country's coast defense, special operations and emergency response capacities, including to potential chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapon attacks.

“Although most of our events will be subject matter exchanges, we believe that these activities are very important as we continue to optimize our systems and procedures in warfighting,” said Larida.

“We are situated in a very dynamic operating environment with vast and porous borders and we believe that engaging in exercises with our partners will help us achieve our goals not only for a safer and more secure Philippines but for the Southeast Asian region as a whole,” he added, underscoring the Philippines' pivotal geography.

The Filipino general shied from connecting the massive wargames with allied nations with the Philippines' rising tensions with China in the South China Sea. But it's increasingly clear that the Philippines' strategic posture has everything to do with constraining and pushing back on the Asian superpower's ambitions.

Both the US and Japan are expanding their military cooperation with and presence in the Philippines as part of a broader emerging trilateral Japan-Philippine-US alliance (JAPHUS), which will be vital to Pentagon-led“integrated deterrence” vis-a-vis China.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Manila earlier this month to launch the country's first-ever Overseas Security Assistance (OSA) initiative.

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Enhancing the Philippines' maritime security capabilities has been a cornerstone of Tokyo's revitalized foreign policy in the past decade. The two countries are also exploring a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) pact that allows for expanded joint drills and military exchanges – the first of its kind in Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile, the US made big headway in its efforts to expand its military footprint in the region after finalizing construction activities at the Philippines' Basa Air Base in the northwestern Philippine province of Pampanga under the two sides' Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

Philippine and South Korean fighters fly above the Basa Air Base in a 2022 photo. Image: Facebook

The vital facility has been upgraded to accommodate larger aircrafts and will“ensure safer conditions” for US-Filipino training exercises, the two mutual defense treaty allies said. Command and control infrastructure, fuel storage and aircraft parking facilities and the base's 2,800-meter runway were also improved at the military facility.

The US has allocated US$66 million to the Basa Air Base out of an initial $82 million earmarked for all EDCA-related projects, making it the largest investment by the US Pentagon under the defense pact to date.

US troops are now in a position to operate more effectively and store more military hardware at the strategic facility, which is situated close to the disputed Scarborough Shoal now occupied by China in the South China Sea.

Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on X, formerly Twitter, at @Richeydarian

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