From Japan to Nato, the administration of US president Joe Biden is rallying allies against security challenges from China. But Washington’s most vital struggle right now is happening outside the limelight of summits: it is trying to keep the military alliance with the Philippines, its oldest in Asia, from being gutted.
The Visiting Forces Agreement, the framework governing the deployment of US soldiers in the south-east Asian country, has been running on borrowed time since Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine president, terminated it in February last year. On Monday, he extended the suspension of that termination once more, but again for just another six months.
Letting the agreement expire “would mean the alliance is kneecapped”, said Gregory Poling, a south-east Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US think-tank. Without the VFA, the mere fact of sending a US soldier to the Philippines would require an exchange of diplomatic notes, procedures that would force drastic cuts to the exercises the two militaries conduct together — at present about 300 a year.