Manila Says Beijing Will Read Reduced United States Drills in Korea as an Opening

Speaking at the Seoul Defense Dialogue, Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said China is "very quick to exploit gaps" and could treat the scaling back of United States exercises with South Korea as an opportunity to press its position in the Indo-Pacific, Al Jazeera reported. He added that Manila had received definite assurances from Washington, that there was no indication the changes in Korea would affect the United States and Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, and that joint activity with American forces had not been reduced.

North Korea commissioned its second naval destroyer as the United States, South Korea and Japan began a trilateral exercise, The Hindu reported. Pyongyang has said Kim Jong Un would return to talks if the United States drops what he calls its hostile policy and accepts North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, a condition Washington has not accepted. The Korea Herald reported that the three-country drill went ahead on schedule despite the reduction in the separate bilateral programme.

These two facts conflict. Washington is reducing the visible scale of one alliance activity while continuing another, and regional governments are drawing their own conclusions about which signal is the reliable one. Teodoro's approach, seeking assurances in public and reporting that he received them, is itself the behaviour of a government that no longer treats the commitment as automatic.

Defence procurement follows those judgements with a lag of years. Japan has moved to expand missile production and export, South Korea has become a significant arms exporter in its own right, and Southeast Asian states are diversifying suppliers.