President Joe Biden on Thursday brought together Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines for a trilateral meeting as the U.S. looks to pull its Indo-Pacific allies closer to counter China.
“I want to be clear, the United States’ defense commitments to Japan and to the Philippines are ironclad,” Biden said at the top of what the White House called the first-ever summit between the three nations. “They are ironclad.”
Biden’s forceful pledge to two Pacific allies comes in the midst of persistent skirmishes between the Philippine and Chinese coast guards in the disputed South China Sea.
In a call with reporters ahead of the summit, senior administration officials emphasized the Philippines is facing what they deemed “enormous pressure” from China’s “aggressive tactics.”
Relations between China and the Philippines have been repeatedly tested by such clashes in the sea. Chinese coast guard ships also regularly approach disputed Japanese-controlled East China Sea islands near Taiwan.
The so-called “gray-zone” harassment by China has included shining military-grade lasers at the Philippine Coast Guard, firing water cannons at vessels and ramming into Philippine ships near the Second Thomas Shoal, which both Manila and Beijing claim.
“Any attack on Philippine aircraft, vessels or armed forces in the South China Sea would invoke our mutual defense treaty,” Biden said on Thursday.
The U.S. and the Philippines have had a mutual treaty in place for more than 70 years.
The United States, Japan, Australia and the Philippines held joint naval exercises on Sunday, including anti-submarine warfare training, in a show of force in the South China Sea. On a separate call with reporters on Tuesday, senior administration officials said it was part of an effort to “flip the script” on Beijing.
“The idea of switching to a multilateral lattice-like strategic architecture is then to flip the script and isolate China,” one official said. “When you have, like we did this week, the United States, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines doing an exercise together, when you have the [trilateral summit] on Thursday, the country that’s isolated is China, not the Philippines.”
For its part, China says the U.S. is inflaming tensions by meddling in the disputes.
“You will also see in our trilateral joint statements some very strong language on our unity on the South China Sea,” an administration official told reporters on Wednesday’s call. “And that language will make very clear that we have a combined position that supports the Philippines' lawful operations and rights in the South China Sea and in particular in its own exclusive economic zone.”
The leaders on Thursday were also expected to announce that their coast guards will hold a joint patrol in the Indo-Pacific this year, a follow-up on law enforcement drills carried out last year by the allies in waters near the disputed South China Sea.
It comes just one day after the U.S. and Japan announced new efforts to strengthen their security and defense alliance during Kishida’s official visit to Washington on Wednesday, which featured a formal state dinner.
The president on Wednesday said the announcements set a “new benchmark” in military cooperation between the two allies, although taking care to emphasize it is “purely defensive in nature.”
Senior administration officials on Wednesday’s call were quick to note that Thursday’s summit speaks to the White House’ larger goal to make the Indo-Pacific region a major priority.
“As you’ve heard me say before, a great deal of history in our world will be written in the Indo-Pacific over the coming years and as three allies, three steadfast partners, three proud democracies, representing a half a billion people, today we commit to writing that story and a future together,” Biden said on Thursday, adding that the goal is an Indo-Pacific that is “free, open, prosperous and secure for all.”
Among other announcements on Thursday is a new economic corridor connecting Subic Bay, Clark, Manila, and Batangas in the Philippines to accelerate investments in infrastructure projects such as ports, rail, clean energy and semiconductor supply chains. The leaders will also make an announcement in the area of open radio access network technology, officials said.
Several major U.S.-based companies — including Meta, UPS and Greenbrier Energy — are also announcing investments in the Philippines, administration officials said. The new deals come after Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo visited Manila last month to announce more than $1 billion in new investment by American companies in the Philippines.
The United States, the United Kingdom and Japan on Wednesday announced joint military exercises in the Indo-Pacific in 2025. That followed the Pentagon revealing earlier this week that the U.S., the U.K. and Australia were considering including Japan in the AUKUS partnership, a grouping launched in 2021 that aims to equip Australia with nuclear-powered and conventionally armed submarines.
Thursday’s trilateral meeting follows last year’s first-ever summit between the U.S., Japan and South Korea hosted at the U.S. presidential retreat Camp David in what was another move coordinated, in part, to shore up alliances in the region with the goal of countering China.
Japan and South Korea put aside years of frosty relations to join the meeting, amid shared concerns about China’s actions in the Pacific and North Korea’s nuclear threats.
Biden met privately with Marcos at the White House on Thursday before the trilateral meeting.
“The relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines has also been a roller coaster,” Erin Murphy, senior fellow for the Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said. “And right now, we're in a good, very good place, which wasn't necessarily expected when Marco stepped into office.”
Biden has made improving relations with the Philippines a priority since Marcos became the country’s president in June 2022. The relationship has had ups and downs over the years and was in a difficult place when Marcos took office. Human rights groups said Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings.
Biden hosted him for talks at the White House last year, the first Washington visit by a Philippine president in more than a decade. Biden also met him on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly soon after Marcos took office, and dispatched Vice President Kamala Harris to Manila in 2022 to meet him.
Last year, the Philippines agreed to give the U.S. access to four more bases on the islands.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.