The Wire China | Chris Horton
The Philippines and Japan are significantly deepening their defense cooperation, as evidenced by the Balikatan 2026 military exercises where Japanese troops for the first time sank a foreign naval vessel in Philippine waters. These exercises, held near northern Luzon and the Bashi Channel, involved 17,000 troops from seven nations, including the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, and New Zealand, with Japan's contingent swelling to 1,400. This enhanced interoperability and coordination among "First Island Chain" democracies—Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan (which sent observers)—aims to deter an increasingly belligerent China, especially concerning a potential Taiwan contingency. Key developments include the 2024 trilateral summit between the U.S., Japan, and the Philippines, and the subsequent Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) and Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) between Tokyo and Manila. These agreements establish a legal and logistical framework for mutual troop deployment and sustainment, transforming the northern Philippines and southwestern Japanese islands into a single, mutually supporting operational space. This "quasi-alliance structure" markedly shifts deterrence calculus by enabling coordinated action independent of immediate U.S. intervention, complicating PLA planning and widening the geographic scope of potential conflict.
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