The United Kingdom has proposed a Visiting Forces Agreement with the Philippines that would allow closer cooperation between the two countries’ militaries. The deal would resemble arrangements the Philippines already has in place with the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan,.
In response to China’s increasing aggression in the South China Sea and its refusal to offer any concessions to the Philippines on territorial disputes there, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s government has recalibrated its foreign policy away from Beijing and toward the West and Japan. However, it is also hedging against the risk of abandonment by the U.S. by expanding its security partnerships, avoiding “overdependence on Washington in order to preserve the Philippines’ strategic autonomy as well as to dispel accusations of acting as a U.S. puppet,” Richard Javad Heydarian wrote in WPR in August 2024.
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