Japan and the Philippines have signed a new defence agreement, the latest stage in an increasingly close security relationship between two United States’ allies who find themselves in tense territorial disputes with China.
The foreign ministers of the two countries signed a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA), a technical document that establishes rules about logistics and legal issues when troops of the two countries visit one another’s territory. Its effect will be to allow the two armed forces to train side by side more easily and conduct exercises with partners such as the US, at a time of increasing militarisation and confrontation in East Asia.
“As the security environment in the region becomes increasingly severe, the signing of this important security-related agreement with the Philippines, a strategic partner located at a strategic juncture on the sea lanes and sharing fundamental values and principles with Japan, will further promote security and defence co-operation,” the Japanese government said in a statement, after the signing of the document by its foreign minister, Yoko Kamikawa, and her Philippine counterpart, Gilberto Teodoro.
China routinely sends coastguard vessels into maritime territory around the uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are administered by Japan but claimed by Beijing. In the South China Sea, Philippines and Chinese vessels have been involved in increasingly violent confrontations over reefs and islets to which Beijing also makes claim.
Last week a Philippine sailor lost a thumb when Chinese coastguard vessels rammed Philippines boats carrying supplies to the remote island garrison on Second Thomas Shoal, and seized weapons.
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Chinese ships have also fired water cannons and dazzling lasers at Philippine vessels near the disputed islets. The US has warned that it will join in defending against any armed attack on the territories in accordance with the terms of its mutual defence treaty with Manila.
Tokyo also has a treaty with the US, which was originally devised as a means of defending Japan without the need for it to rearm after the Second World War. It was driven by the memory of Japanese wartime brutality in countries such as the Philippines, which were occupied by the imperial forces.
It is a measure of how much has changed that eight decades later the two countries are now security partners, brought together by a common threat — and that Japan is being encouraged by its partners to rearm to levels not seen since the war.
Fumio Kishida, the prime minister of Japan, has undertaken to double defence spending by 2027. Two years before that, Japan’s Self-Defence Forces will also acquire US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles.
“This is another milestone in our shared endeavour to ensure a rules-based international order,” said Teodoro after the signing of the agreement in the Malacanang palace in Manila, overseen by President Marcos of the Phillippines.
