Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping’s expansive sovereignty claims in the South China Sea suggest that he believes in the “illusion of building an empire” through the Philippines and across the Indo-Pacific, a key U.S.-allied government fears.
“We can’t just sit by and say just, ‘Go ahead and take whatever you want,’ and before we know it, tomorrow, we may not even have the Luzon island,” a Philippine official told the Washington Examiner. “I mean, this is something — this is [the] realities that we face right now. And, right now, our interests are aligned with the United States.”
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For such a nightmarish prospect — the loss of the country’s largest island, home to the nation’s capital, Manila — to become imaginable, however unlikely it seems, reflects more than just frustration with Chinese Coast Guard aggression in the Philippines’s exclusive economic zone. It also points to a deeper anxiety sparked by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a conflict that has spurred U.S. allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific to reconsider their concept of what is possible in global affairs.
“When you have personalities that lead a country now that have that illusion of building an empire — now, we don’t know if President Xi [does], but it seems like he’s going in that direction,” the Philippine official said, pointing to the potential for Putin and Xi to reprise the roles of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan during the Second World War. “He’s saying he’s going after Taiwan, he wants the unification of China, but who knows? The Japanese don’t think so. We’re beginning to think that there’s a grander design to take over the entire Indo-Pacific region.”
Such a prospect would appear more likely if Russia emerges from the war in Ukraine as a perceived victor, senior European and Indo-Pacific officials argued in separate interviews.
“For all those that are doubting whether the U.S. is a trusted ally, this would be a strong sign for them that they are right,” Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski told the Washington Examiner. “If this will be some form of demonstrating that the U.S. is not strong enough to achieve the goals of defeating Russia and bringing permanent peace to Europe, not just a ceasefire for several months, this would further encourage such voices.”
Those assessments illuminate the diplomatic context for growing ties between the Indo-Pacific and European wings of the U.S. alliance network. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has described “a strong sense of urgency that Ukraine today, maybe East Asia tomorrow.” He was one of four Indo-Pacific heads-of-state to attend the NATO summit in Madrid last year, along with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and the leaders of Australia and New Zealand.
“What is at stake in Ukraine is really much more significant than any other war that has taken place in the recent past because this is clearly a test of where countries have their boundaries,” the Philippine official said. “And once they start moving into the direction of taking over or occupying a country by force, that will definitely signal a new era where you have any country that has the power to do so, like Russia and China, will just go ahead and do it.”
Some American analysts and elected officials doubt that the United States has the resources to arm Ukraine against Putin while simultaneously preparing to deter or defeat China, but the overlap in the way U.S. allies perceive the threats to their security could alleviate that burden. Poland, for instance, has contracted to buy dozens of fighter jets, hundreds of howitzers, and about 1,000 main battle tanks from South Korean defense companies.
“New players are emerging in defense industries of allied countries, which previously didn’t play a major role in supply chains for the defense industries,” said Marcin Jerzewski, who leads the Taiwan office of the Czech-based European Values Center for Security Policy. “So I think that while investments are necessary to ensure sufficient capacity in traditional centers of manufacturing, and also within the U.S., I think it is quite encouraging to see that players like South Korea can increasingly fill in some of those gaps.”
More recently, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos has deepened defense ties with the United States over his first year in office, a break with his predecessor’s approach to Beijing that was dramatized by a public protest of a Chinese Coast Guard vessel using a military-grade laser to harass a Philippine vessel. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin unvalued an agreement to expand U.S. access to four bases in the Philippines, which the Philippine official said will host “equipment that obviously can be used for disaster resilience,” as well as national security.
“The United States sees our relationship … as an opportunity for them to start being able to be ready for any — hopefully, it’ll never happen — if there’s any conflict that may arise out of the Taiwan issue; we’re not stupid, we’re clear-eyed about that,” the Philippine official said. “In our case, it is also in our interest that we have that kind of an agreement with the U.S. because it will help us in the event of any eventuality that may happen. But, more importantly, it’ll now be clear that we are prepared to do what we need to do to defend our territorial waters.”
Such cooperation might be difficult to replicate if Putin proves successful in Ukraine, according to the U.S. allied official.
“I can imagine that many people in Asia could [conclude] that if the U.S. were not able to act effectively in Europe, with all the allies around,” said Jablonski, the Polish deputy foreign minister. “If this wasn’t enough, then certainly it will not be easier for the U.S. to defend Taiwan, let’s say, or any other places in Asia or globally, where some other stakeholders would like to challenge America’s position.”
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The reverse may also be true. “Russia will be very weak, and I think that this weakening of Russia in the contingency is also a part of effective deterrence vis a vis China,” said Jerzewski, the Czech analyst in Taipei. “Because China would not want to see a similar level of decline.”
The Philippine official concurred. “If Russia wins, then we all lose. If Russia loses, then we’ve got one good point, and China would be more careful because they can lose, too,” the official said. “And that’s to our advantage because they’re the aggressor in our part of the world.”
