The coast guards of the Philippines and Vietnam will hold their first-ever joint exercises in a bid to bolster maritime cooperation in the face of China’s aggression in the South China Sea.
The drills, set for Friday, will be the first of their kind between the two Southeast Asian nations, both of which claim part of the South China Sea and have confronted Beijing in separate occasions over the disputed waterway.
Vietnam’s 90-meter ship CSB 8002 was welcomed at the port of Manila on Monday for five days of training exercises with the Philippines’ 83-meter offshore patrol vessel, BRP Gabriela Silang. The joint drills will be conducted involving search and rescue simulation and fire and explosion prevention training.
The maritime operations come on the heels of an agreement between Manila and Beijing to deescalate tensions in the South China Sea with a provisional arrangement over Philippine resupply missions to Second Thomas Shoal, a flashpoint in the region. The drills also come amid a change of leadership in Hanoi following the death of Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and the official succession of Vietnamese President To Lam as party leader on Saturday.
Officials and experts see the drills as significant for the two nation’s bilateral relations and collective security.
“This is important because we’re building partnership and we’re showing the world that two countries who have problems in the West Philippine Sea can agree on something,” Rear Admiral Armand Balilo, Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson, told reporters on Monday, referring to the area within the country’s exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea.
The Vietnamese coast guard’s port call is a culmination of an agreement — including “capacity building” between the two maritime forces — struck between the two countries in January this year when Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. jetted off to Hanoi for a state visit.
“This is good because it’s like a template that in spite of being a rival [claimant], we can do such things such as an exercise and people-to-people exchange,” Balilo stressed separately to Nikkei Asia.
Commodore Algier Ricafrente, PCG deputy chief of staff for international affairs, also told reporters that the joint exercises are being held “should the need arise that the two nations would need to join forces and address incidents in the future.”
China implemented a domestic regulation in June which allowed its coast guard personnel to detain foreign nationals who cross maritime lines set by Beijing. Notably these drills will be staged in Manila Bay, a body of water facing the South China Sea.
For Julio Amador, CEO of Amador Research Services in Manila, the prospect of holding joint training exercises between two claimant countries is only possible if “there is good faith,” since both are not giving up on their maritime claims but finding ways to work together.
“I would like to see this expanding and including other ASEAN claimant states in the South China Sea,” Amador said, adding, “Beijing will find a way to be offended by this.”
Don McLain Gill, analyst and lecturer at De La Salle University in Manila, described the activities as “important developments” for bilateral relations. On the other hand, deepening mutual trust and improving communication between the two countries “would make it harder for China to interfere between us,” he said.
Gill argued that where Philippine and Vietnamese embassies are present they should work together if warranted, similar to how U.S. embassies interface with other embassies in the Philippines. “That’s the goal, because a more unified position from Southeast Asian countries is a recipe for a significant pushback toward Beijing’s expansionism,” he said.
