A flurry of defense deals, including new agreements with New Zealand and Canada, signal the Philippines’ assertive push to bolster its military amidst regional threats. Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro outline on Monday that Philippines strategic shift, emphasizing the need for enhanced interoperability and capability building with key allies like the U.S., Australia, and Japan.
He mentioned the recent agreements with New Zealand and Canada, and the planned discussions with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as a crucial steps in amplifying the nation’s defense posture.
Teodoro said Japan led the way early this year when Defense Minister Nakatani Gen visited, where he “pledged continuing support for our interoperability and our capabilities in view of the fact that there are similarities and it makes sense to treat our common threats as one theater.”
“Same threat, same misnarrative or misinformation so it makes sense that they join us,” he said in his speech at the Western Command (WESCOM) during its 49th founding anniversary commemoration.
He also stated that he expects discussions on “ways to enhance our bilateral and trilateral and squad partnerships” to boost the country’s defense agenda in the upcoming visit of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Further, he added that the terms for a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with New Zealand will be signed in April, while negotiations for the same pact with Canada have also been concluded.
“(And) we also have received from the president, the authority to negotiate a VFA with France and other countries are coming and joining the bandwagon,” he said.
“We need to interact with our allies, our trading partners and other nations, not only in the Pacific, in the South China Sea, but in the Indian Ocean, in the Baltic Sea, because trade knows no bounds. And the Philippines has to take advantage of what international law provides in order to protect our resilience and the future generations,” he added.
The defense chief likewise noted that WESCOM will play an important role as the country’s “spearhead of a controlled laboratory of future developments of a multi-domain, multi-threat and inter-operable armed force. This is a laboratory of maritime domain, to include operations also on land domain.”
He explained that with Wescom being a platform for future AFP expansions in accordance with the Comprehensive Advanced Defense Concept, several introductions will be made, including: deterrence of malign influence and malign efforts; a strategic base, which is absolutely necessary and long overdue for us; sustainment of supply chains for each and every one of our operating units; command and control and ability to predict and to see threats; interdiction capabilities; and inter-usable heavy materials essential for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.
There is an urgent need to improve the AFP’s capability to strategically combat misinformation, malinformation, and disinformation, he stated, and secure information technology and cyber capabilities, as well as other asymmetric competence, which are being developed indigenously and in partnerships with allies.
He further explained that recent developments have been perpetrated not by China as a whole country but only by “a small cabal of men, known as the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party whose overreach, whose illegal activities have threatened the stability not only of the Republic of the Philippines but also of the international order in the desire for self agrandizement by one or a few men who have the ability to manipulate a whole country for their selfish ends.”
“And it is a pity because these people who head the CCP have destroyed whatever goodwill, the good reputation of the Chinese people for their selfish ends,” he said, noting that what is being combatted is not a country but a small dictatorship and autocracy which has brainwashed and controlled millions or billions of people.
He also stated that for internal security operations, the AFP is also facing a new form of threat on internal instability made by foreign influence.
He said such activities seek to appease the CCP and reduce the country’s integrity as a nation, taking away what was gained in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
“This is why we are fighting so hard in all domains,” he said.
