By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Part 18 An old order gives way to reshaping a  new one

Konnichiwa!

What started as taming murmurs in the Philippine military about ending the drought for augmentations for the Horizon 3 phase of the Armed Forces modernization  program, has now grown into a full-grown collusion with Japan aimed at containing China.

After a decade in process, the Philippines and Japan fast-tracked and signed A Reciprocal Access Agreement on July 8, 2024. This enabled Japanese combat troops to return to the Philippines after 81 years since World War II as part in this year’s Balikatan exercises including field training, command post drills, and cyber exercises.

This has  also led to discussions about the transfer of Japan’s Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 trainer aircraft to the Philippines. The 35-year old Abukumas are no longer in their prime but they still retain patrol, reconnaissance, and certain combat capabilities.

Dangerous pivot

President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos may not have realized it but he has enrolled into Japan’s neo-militarism for upgrading Philippine bilateral relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership with Japan.

Chen Yang, a visiting research fellow at Liaoning University’s Institute of Japan Studies, said that Japan’s drive to strengthen ties with the Philippines and expand arms exports serves a dual purpose: (1) normalizing weapons exports for economic gain, (2) colluding with Manila to stir up regional insecurity to jointly engage China in a so-called “external threats” narrative.

Subsequently, this creates the conditions needed to justify Sanae Takaichi cabinet’s military buildup and its relentless push to revise the pacifist Constitution.

Japan has been on a “small circle” diplomatic blitz lately, and hosting the Philippine president is just part of it. Takaichi herself has visited Vietnam, Australia, and South Korea in succession, while multiple Japanese cabinet members have fanned out to Southeast Asia, Europe, and Africa.

Japan’s Jiji Press, citing sources within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), reported that Takaichi’s repeated emphasis on promoting the “Indo-Pacific” concept put forward by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also reflects a political calculation to shore up support among domestic conservatives.

Now the cat is out of the bag.

Tokyo and Manila issued a joint statement last week , starting talks on the “delimitation” of an exclusive economic zone and continental shelf between Japan and the Philippines.

The area the two countries announced they will “delimit” is however east of China’s Taiwan island, where according to China’s domestic law and international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, China has an exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in this area.

The so-called “maritime delimitation talks” constitute a severe violation of China’s maritime rights and interests. Even the 2016 Arbitral Ruling on Philippine submissions state at the end of Paragraph 272:

“Nor does the Tribunal’s decision that a claim of historic rights to living and non-living resources is not compatible with the Convention, limit China’s ability to claim maritime zones in accordance with the Convention, on the basis of such islands.

In this light, the collusion between Japan and the Philippines is both legally groundless and politically provocative.

Against this backdrop, the China Coast Guard’s law enforcement patrols in the waters starting on Monday are legitimate and necessary measures to safeguard China’s sovereignty and core interests.

The “delimiting” scheme, announced during Marcos Jr’s visit to Japan — along with the two countries’ agreement to expand military cooperation to counter what they described as a “common threat” — only adds further uncertainty to the regional security landscape.

Physical vs political ocean

This shift in the geopolitical positioning in East Asia did not escape experts at a Xiamen forum who warned that  excessive securitization and politicization is now undermining global ocean governance and eroding international trust and cooperation. 

The 8th International Symposium on Scientific and Legal Aspects of the Continental Shelf and the Area was held last May 25 to 26  in East China’s Fujian Province.

Hundreds of representatives, including delegates from institutions established under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as well as scholars from multiple countries, attended the symposium.

Aldino Manuel dos Santos de Campos, chair of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), pointed to what he described as one of the central dilemmas in global ocean governance: the contradiction between the “physical ocean” and the “political ocean.”

Campos highlighted: ”While the ocean operates as a single interconnected system, human beings have divided it into political and jurisdictional zones that nature itself does not recognize.

Against this backdrop, concerns over unilateralism and geopolitical rivalry emerged as one of the central themes of the symposium.

Wu Shicun, chair of the Huayang Center for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance warned that international rules risk being “politicized, marginalized, instrumentalized and selectively applied.” 

As some countries are urging the CLCS to lower the threshold for reviewing disputed continental shelf submissions, which has further exacerbated maritime disputes, Wu, also a senior research fellow with China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said intensified competition over resources, including oil, gas and critical minerals, may further complicate the situation.

Wu stressed that Japan’s expanding security footprint in the South China Sea, particularly its growing participation in joint military exercises with the Philippines and the US, “deserves a high degree of vigilance”  because this may already be violating China’s sovereignty and relevant rights and interests.

One of the core reasons that the problems of the South China Sea remain difficult to resolve lies in overlapping maritime claims, exclusive economic zones (EEZs), continental shelf entitlements and historical rights asserted by different parties in the past.

Some countries, including Japan and the Philippines, have deliberately misinterpreted these claims and attempted to illegally seize features and seabed mineral resources in the East Sea Seas.

UNCLOS vs US rules-based order

Amid the growing prevalence of unilateralism, the implementation of multilateral maritime governance mechanisms for the high seas — such as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement and the long-delayed exploitation regulations under the International Seabed Authority — is facing mounting uncertainty, particularly as major powers increasingly bypass existing frameworks.

Similar concerns were echoed by Klaas Willaert, director of the Maritime Institute of Ghent University in Belgium, who warned that recent US moves on unilateral deep-sea mining beyond national jurisdiction could undermine not only the seabed mining regime itself, but UNCLOS as a whole.” 

If other countries follow the US approach, it could become a “system-breaking event” that weakens collective commitment to multilateral governance frameworks, Willaert said.

The United States is not a member of UNCLOS.

Willaert stressed that disagreements among states should still be resolved through multilateral negotiations rather than unilateral actions driven by strategic or economic interests.

He further noted that weakening compliance in seabed mining governance could gradually spill over into other areas governed by UNCLOS, including fisheries management, biodiversity protection and marine environmental governance.

Stressing that legal frameworks alone are insufficient, Rommel Banlaoi, president of the Philippine Society for International Security Studies, said countries need to balance sovereignty concerns with multilateral cooperation and cooperative enforcement mechanisms.

Banlaoi also identified marine environmental protection, scientific research, disaster response, international crime prevention and blue economy development as key areas for future maritime cooperation.

In 2019, China advocated building a “maritime community with a shared future.” In 2025, China and ASEAN countries agreed to upgrade the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), while consultation on a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC) has reached crunch time.

But the future of ocean governance will ultimately depend on whether countries are willing to uphold international agreements, coordinate governance frameworks and balance resource development with marine environmental protection.

Lessons from history

The Philippines suffered some of the worst atrocities of Japanese occupation during World War II. From the Bataan Death March to the destruction of Manila, the historical record is well-documented and beyond dispute.

Yet today, some Philippine politicians appear willing to overlook that painful history to embrace a Japan that has made clear it will ignore the country’s wartime legacy.

Defending “regional peace” under the banner of a “rules-based order”, Japanese right-wing forces continue to push for the removal of postwar constraints and remilitarization, challenging the postwar international order.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last week, Japan’s defense minister shamelessly denied the rise of neo-militarism in his country, with  Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr further, suggesting that Japan has been “unfairly vilified” through what he called the “improper use of history”.

What is particularly troubling is Manila’s readiness to turn a blind eye to the risk of being used as a strategic pawn in Japan’s geopolitical calculus.

Since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi strained China-Japan ties with her dangerous and erroneous remarks regarding the Taiwan Strait situation last November 7, 2025, her government has repeatedly added insult to injury by hosting secessionist-minded politicians from China’s Taiwan region, conducting provocative military activities near the island under various pretexts, and expanding security partnerships targeting China with other countries.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines may not have also realized it yet but their commander-in-chief has signed them up for a build-up to an eventual proxy war of Japan with China, as a surrogate to the United States.

This is not a one-time act, it is series of conspiracies that began in February 2023 when he allowed four more sites to the Enhanced Cooperation Agreement, as previously “legitimized merely as an extension of the Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States.”

Joe Biden, however, started meeting difficulties fulfilling financial obligations to build EDCA facilities and helping modernize the Armed Forces of the Philippines, primarily because of diverted US commitments to NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine.

Instead of coming to the plate, Donald Trump upped Biden’s $500 million one-time pledge to $500 million a year for five years or $2.5 billion, with $1.5 billion due this year. But the US joined Israel in starting a war in the Middle East with Iran.

This did not only bring the US into a near drought of war materials, but the possibility of an economic collapse as Trump’s transactional trade war has not been working.

Trump visited Beijing mid-May to secure a band-aid for the US economy, accompanied by a bevy of American industrialists , that he hopes will salvage political reversals to his popularity at home and to his administration’s leadership.

A major concession he made however is giving up a major slice of US ambiguity in the Taiwan issue which according to my previous two columns, effectively compromised the first-island chain.

Conclusion

As soon as Air Force One took off from Beijing, however, China welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin to Beijing to replace the US unipolarity with a new multipolar world.

This preempted Trump’s Plan B – the takeover of Japan as the US surrogate in the Asia-Pacific with Australia as senior partner, ushering in the Philippines and South Korea as its sitting ducks.

The Tokyo-Manila initiative represents a serious attempt to unilaterally alter the status quo of the waters in the Second Island Chain.

This brings the theatre tother gates of Guam, entering the Third Island Chain, including Alaska on the north and Hawaii eastward,  closer to the United States.

In its editorial, China News Daily called this approach as neither prudent nor strategic.

“By embracing Japan’s “maritime boundary delimitation” initiative, the Philippines risks placing itself in a position that primarily serves Tokyo’s political objectives rather than its own long-term national interests.

“The reality is that Manila understands Beijing is the party that truly seeks stability and peaceful development through cooperation and dialogue.

“Yet some Philippine politicians appear increasingly willing to exploit that restraint, portraying the creator of frictions as the victim.”

China has formally lodged serious protests against Japan and the Philippines over their planned maritime boundary delimitation talks, claiming the negotiations infringe on Beijing’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and continental shelf in the waters east of Taiwan. China maintains that the joint positioning between Tokyo and Manila carries “Cold War undertones” designed to align strategies against China’s red line on the Taiwan issue.

The delimitation area lies east of Taiwan. The claims overlap due to Japan’s administration of Okinotori and the Philippines’ extended seabed claims, bypassing Taiwan and putting both countries at odds with Beijing’s regional map.

Should such actions continue, they will inevitably invite a resolute response from China.

History repeatedly demonstrates that efforts to manufacture geopolitical confrontations rarely unfold as their architects intend.

Those who seek to create instability in pursuit of short-term gains may ultimately find themselves bearing the consequences of their own miscalculation.#

   

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