The Philippines Signs New Defense Agreements with Regional Partners: Strengthening Deterrence in the South China Sea?

On October 7, 2025, Naval News reported that Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. confirmed the Philippines and France were in the final stage of negotiations to sign a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). The accord will establish the legal and operational framework for the armed forces of both countries to conduct joint activities on each other’s territory. France is the fifth partner with whom Manila has initiated or concluded negotiations for a VFA since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office in 2022—following Japan (which signed a Reciprocal Access Agreement, RAA, on July 8, 2024), New Zealand (signed on April 30, 2025), Canada (negotiations completed in March 2025, scheduled for signing on November 2, 2025), and the United Kingdom (talks launched in September 2025).

 

This move underscores several strategic trends in the Philippines’ defense and foreign policy orientation:

 

- The Philippines is actively expanding its network of security partnerships to enhance deterrence capabilities in the South China Sea. Under President Marcos Jr., Manila has repositioned itself as a pivotal node in the evolving regional security architecture, increasing the number of its VFA partners from two to seven (previously limited to the United States, signed in 1998, and Australia, in 2007). This expansion serves several strategic purposes, inlcuding:

 

(i) It enhances maritime presence and interoperability between the Philippines and its new partners through Maritime Cooperative Activities (MCA). From 2022 to 2025, the Philippines conducted 25 MCAs, including joint operations with Japan (9), Australia (8), Canada (5), New Zealand, France, and India (one each), in addition to ongoing exercises with the United States.

 

(ii) It supports maritime modernization and force enhancement. Between now and 2027, the Philippines plans to acquire 49 new vessels from France and Japan—tripling the fleet size of its Coast Guard.

 

(ii) It helps diversify Manila’s defense dependencies, reducing excessive reliance on Washington amid the uncertainty surrounding the Trump 2.0 administration and the unpredictable trajectory of U.S.–China strategic competition.

 

- The growing trend of strengthened linkages among U.S. allies and partners in the region: Several scholars have observed that, amid an apparent shortfall in the United States’ capacity to fully meet its extensive security commitments across the Indo-Pacific, Washington’s regional allies are increasingly restructuring the architecture of regional security cooperation. This shift moves away from the traditional “hub-and-spoke” framework—wherein the U.S. serves as the central hub for bilateral alliances—toward a “latticework of cooperation” model characterized by denser, multi-directional connections among allies and partners themselves.

 

Countries such as the Philippines (PLP), Japan, and Australia are maintaining close security cooperation with the United States while simultaneously pursuing greater strategic autonomy through several complementary measures, including:

 

(i) They are actively developing and modernizing their own naval and defense capabilities, enhancing both deterrence and interoperability.

 

(ii) They are deepening bilateral security ties among themselves: for instance, Japan signed a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) with Australia in 2022, while the Philippines concluded a series of Visiting Forces Agreements (VFA) with multiple partners and, in May 2025, procured two guided-missile frigates and twelve FA-50 fighter aircraft from South Korea.

 

(iii) They are strengthening issue-specific and geographically focused “minilateral” frameworks, such as AUKUS (Australia–United Kingdom–United States), which centers on equipping Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, and Squad (United States–Japan–Australia–Philippines), which focuses primarily on security cooperation in the South China Sea. These initiatives represent a more pragmatic and flexible form of coordination compared with the broader and more diffuse QUAD mechanism, which spans the entire Indo-Pacific and addresses a wide range of issues.

 

|This evolving pattern of regional alignment also aligns with Washington’s own adaptive strategic approach toward the Indo-Pacific under both the Biden and Trump 2.0 administrations—emphasizing distributed resilience, shared responsibility, and flexible coalition-building over rigid alliance structures.