Washington and the Philippines’ Defense Department officer, Carlito Galvez, and US Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, established the bilateral defense guidelines on Wednesday to modernize their alliance cooperation for a “free and open Indo-Pacific region.” The guidelines seek to build interoperability in all domains of conventional and non-conventional warfare to combat ongoing and emerging threats and maintain the alliance’s focus on principal regional security concerns. They include expanding investments in defense capacity building, improving combined ability to counter armed attacks, expanding the scope, scale, and complexity of exercises, prioritizing the procurement of interoperable defense platforms sourced from US programs, and deepening cooperation on maritime security and maritime domain awareness. The two countries should also participate in multilateral fora anchored in shared support for ASEAN centrality, prioritize trilateral and other forms of multilateral cooperation, and enhance bilateral planning and information sharing on “early indicators of threats” to peace and security. Moreover, they should consult on policies, practices and procedures “for the protection of classified defense and military information” to enhance information security. The guidelines, which chart their vision for alliance cooperation across all operational domains, reaffirm the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty’s enduring relevance in addressing current and emerging threats and Manila and Washington’s combined deterrence in an evolving security environment.
