Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong on Tuesday met in Hanoi to sign two memorandums of understanding on security cooperation in the South China Sea, establishing a comprehensive partnership between their countries’ coast guards.
The two countries are among claimants to disputed islands, reefs, banks and other features in the region, and both have had run-ins with the Chinese Coast Guard.
“We are firm in defending our sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction against any provocations,” Marcos said before the meeting. “At the same time, we are also seeking to address these issues with China through peaceful dialogue and consultations as two equal sovereign states.”
China claims most of the South China Sea, and it has attempted to exercise control over an area that overlaps the exclusive economic zones of Taiwan, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. To assert its claims, Beijing has increasingly harassed the navies of the Philippines, Vietnam, the US, Australia and other countries in the international waters.
It is exceedingly important for all countries with interests in the region to cooperate and combat Chinese aggression.
It is promising to see Vietnam and the Philippines cooperating despite their competing claims, and they should work with other countries in the region as well. In an opinion piece published by Foreign Policy on Sept. 6 last year, former US National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs Michael Green said that an “Asian NATO” could eventually emerge.
US allies in Asia “could very well move in the direction of collective security ... if concerns about deterring and stopping a destructive and dangerous regional war surpass concerns about trade, regional cohesion, or retaining strategic autonomy,” he wrote.
Beijing’s coercive behavior against its neighbors could encourage such an alliance “even without any overt Chinese use of force,” he wrote.
Taipei would be an important strategic partner in a regional security pact given its proximity to China, the importance of the Bashi Channel and the Taiwan Strait to shipping and naval strategy, and Taiwan’s experience in countering Chinese aggression.
Ideally, Taiwan would upgrade its maritime ports to accommodate larger vessels, allow regional partners to access its territory and engage in joint military training with neighbors. The US holds regular joint drills with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, India and Australia. Taiwan should be invited to those drills, and there should be efforts to hold drills on a larger scale to incorporate more countries into simultaneous exercises.
In the South China Sea in particular, countries that agree to cooperate could share access to the islands, reefs and features they control, allowing each other’s vessels and aircraft to dock and land. This would be helpful in improving the efficacy of coast guard operations and helping secure the safe passage of commercial vessels.
Asia-Pacific countries have shied away from taking actions that could be interpreted as antagonistic toward China. However, if there were a coordinated response, China would be powerless to use economic coercion against those cooperating, without risking its own economic interests. China’s biggest export partners last year were the US (US$43.8 billion), Japan (US$13.3 billion) and South Korea (US$12.5 billion), while its biggest import partners were Taiwan (US$18.4 billion), South Korea (US$15 billion) and Japan (US$14.1 billion).
China might voice threats, but it is time that regional partners show Beijing that it has more to lose than gain through antagonism, and Taiwan can play a key role in containing its aggression.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
After “Operation Absolute Resolve” to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the US joined Israel on Saturday last week in launching “Operation Epic Fury” to remove Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his theocratic regime leadership team. The two blitzes are widely believed to be a prelude to US President Donald Trump changing the geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China’s rise. In the National Security Strategic report released in December last year, the Trump administration made it clear that the US would focus on “restoring American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere,” and “competing with China economically and militarily
RSS