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

Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro reported "definite assurances" from Washington on the same day North Korea commissioned its second naval destroyer.

- Published: 2026-09-07T05:14:53.350Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/2026-09-07/manila-says-beijing-will-read-reduced-united-states-drills-i
- Publisher: Polylog (Global desk)
- Section: geopolitics
- Sources: [Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/7/philippines-warns-china-may-reassert-itself-amid-us-south-korea-drill-cuts), [The Hindu](https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/north-korea-commissions-2nd-naval-destroyer-as-us-south-korea-japan-begin-military-drill/article71437306.ece), [Korea Herald](https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10864532)

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](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/7/philippines-warns-china-may-reassert-itself-amid-us-south-korea-drill-cuts). 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](https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/north-korea-commissions-2nd-naval-destroyer-as-us-south-korea-japan-begin-military-drill/article71437306.ece). 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](https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10864532) 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.

## What this means

The channel is procurement. When allies stop assuming an American guarantee is automatic, they buy more of their own capability and they buy it from more suppliers, which raises order books for South Korean, Japanese and European defence manufacturers and reduces the share of regional purchases flowing to United States primes. It also raises regional defence spending as a share of budgets, which crowds out other public expenditure in countries with limited fiscal space, including the Philippines. Shipping and insurance in the South China Sea reprice with each incident that follows.

## What to watch

- Whether the next round of United States and South Korean exercises is restored to full scale or cut further, the concrete measure of what Washington intends.
- New Philippine defence procurement announcements and where the suppliers are based, which shows whether the assurances were believed.
- Chinese coast guard activity around Philippine-claimed features in the South China Sea, the most likely place any test of the gap would appear.