Bloodshed, occupation, war crimes, colonisation, and contentious military installations. The histories of the Philippines, Japan, and the United States are all entwined with these problems.However, one of the main topics of discussion when the leaders of the three nations get together at the White House on Thursday will be a much more pressing issue that unites them: a shared concern about China.
Ahead of this week’s summit between US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., James D.J. Brown, associate professor of political science at Temple University in Tokyo, stated, “The perceived threat of China has really driven these three together.”But it is a possible conflict over Taiwan – the democratically ruled island that China’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views as part of its territory, despite having never controlled it – that dominates strategic thinking.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has vowed to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control and has not renounced the use of force to do so.The Taiwan Relations Act obligates Washington to provide weaponry for the island’s defense, and Biden has repeatedly suggested he would use US military personnel to defend it in the event of a Chinese invasion (though White House officials have said the US policy to leave that question ambiguous has not changed).
Both the Philippines and Japan are US defense treaty allies, and the US military retains permanent bases in Japan and has base rights in the Philippines. That threat is manifested in three key areas – Taiwan, the South China Sea and the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, analysts say.Japanese officials have previously pointed out that 90% of their country’s energy needs are imported via the water around Taiwan, tying Japan’s economic stability to Taipei’s autonomy.
Those sea lanes extend into the South China Sea, which gives Japan a vested interest in keeping it part of a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” a term coined by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that has become a mantra for US military presence in the region. “Japan and other parts of the world actually are very much dependent on maritime traffic that passes through the South China Sea,” said Ricardo Jose, also a professor at the University of the Philippines. “In Japan’s case, it is very strategic. It’s a strategic necessity that they protect those sea lanes,” Jose said.
In an interview with CNN on Sunday ahead of the summit, Kishida called the Philippines “an important partner in maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region.”“I believe that this historic meeting will be a very valuable opportunity to demonstrate to the world how the three countries can work together for peace and stability in the region,” he said of the upcoming three-way summit in Washington.Japan and Philippines both have separate territorial disputes with China, in the former’s case the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and in the latter’s areas of the South China Sea.
Philippines-China tensions have focused on Second Thomas Shoal, which sits about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the coast of the Philippine island of Palawan. In the 1990s, the Philippines grounded an aging World War II-era navy transport ship on the shoal, to help enforce its claim to the area. The ship is now mostly a rusted wreckage and is manned by Philippine marines stationed on rotation.
Meanwhile, China claims the shoal, which is in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, as its sovereign territory, as it does much of the South China Sea, in defiance of an international arbitration ruling. Recent clashes have occurred when Philippine attempts to resupply the forces on the ship have been met by China Coast Guard ships firing water cannons at the Philippine resupply boats, resulting in injuries to Filipino sailors and damage to the vessels.
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