IAN HALL |
Since the start of Battle for Marawi, in late May 2017, attention has tended to focus on the development of a stronger partnership between Australia and the Philippines in the areas of counter-terrorism and enhanced training for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). But in parallel, there have been significant developments in bilateral cooperation on maritime security, as the Philippines Navy (PN) acquires new assets and seeks to develop new capabilities. This paper explores the evolution of that element of the evolving defence and security partnership between Australia and the Philippines and the drivers of closer ties. It observes that not only is there a growing intensity in bilateral maritime security cooperation, but also that there has been a shift from non-traditional to more traditional, harder-edged, activities.
Background
The framework in which this maritime security cooperation takes place is made up of three key agreements: the 1995 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Cooperative Defence Activities; the Philippines-Australia Status of Visiting Forces Agreement (SOVFA), signed in 2007, which was ratified and came into force in 2012; and the 2015 Comprehensive Partnership agreement. A fourth – a logistics support agreement – was promised in the Comprehensive Partnership declaration, but has not yet been agreed. The 1995 MoU created a Joint Defence Cooperation Committee to coordinate activities; the 2012 SOFVA brought into being a set of legal arrangements to facilitate those activities. The 2015 Joint Declaration on Comprehensive Partnership, for its part, observed past and on-going cooperation, including high-level dialogue, but was vague about the specifics of future plans, other than floating the idea of the logistics agreement.
Within this framework, a number of maritime security initiatives have developed, alongside Australian Defence Force (ADF) and AFP involvement in a number of army, air force, and joint exercises. The most of important of these is the annual Maritime Training Activity LUMBAS, involving the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and the PN, which began in the early 2000s. In the past, LUMBAS has focused on a range of activities, including ship-to-ship communication, humanitarian and disaster relief, anti-piracy, anti-narcotics, and managing a number of other contingencies.
Intensifying Cooperation
Since the declaration of a Comprehensive Partnership, bilateral security cooperation has both broadened and deepened. In 2015, the same year that the Partnership was announced, Australia gifted two landing craft (ex-HMAS Tarakan and ex-HMAS Brunei) to the PN, and concluded a deal to supply three more at an affordable rate, which were delivered in 2016. In March 2017, a couple of months before the takeover of Marawi by Islamist militants, the first Navy-to-Navy Strategy Dialogue was held, led by the Deputy Chief of the Royal Australian Navy and the Vice Commander Philippine Navy.
Six months later, in October 2017, there was a marked step up in that year’s Exercise LUMBAS from past practice. A year earlier, the sea phase of the Exercise had involved two Armadale-class patrol boats, HMAS Glenelg and HMAS Larrakia, and the focus had been on combatting narcotics smuggling. This was in line with earlier iterations of this Exercise, which had historically concentrated more on maritime safety and managing non-traditional security challenges than on higher-end activities. For LUMBAS 2017, by contrast, the RAN sent the Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) HMAS Adelaide and the frigate HMAS Darwin, two significantly larger and more capable ships, which had earlier been deployed to the region as part of Indo-Pacific Endeavour. This commitment by the RAN reflected the agreement reached in the first Navy-to-Navy strategic dialogue that LUMBAS should be re-designated as a ‘Naval Warfare Exercise’ and focus on developing the PN’s ‘warfighting capabilities’. Although a RAN LHD was not involved in the 2018, another ANZAC-class frigate, HMAS Anzac, was sent, and it exercised alongside the PN’s frigate BRP Ramon Alcaraz.
Drivers of Change
While the Marawi episode clearly helped catalyse an intensification of bilateral security cooperation during and after 2017, it is also clear that other factors have driven defence engagement in the past few years, especially in the maritime domain. The most important, clearly, are the People’s Republic of China’s modernisation and rapid expansion of its navy, coast guard, and so-called maritime militia, as well as it militarisation of features in the South China Sea. As the last Australian Defence White Paper makes clear, Canberra is very concerned about these developments, the potential for disruption to the sea lines of communication (SLOCs) through the Indian Ocean, South and East China Seas that could follow, and a range of other maritime security challenges. These include illegal fishing, including activities aided and abetted by coastguards and so-called ‘maritime militias’, transnational crime, and possible humanitarian contingencies arising from natural disasters in those areas, as well as terrorism.
The Philippines, for its part, has more proximate concerns, given its territorial dispute with China, growing pressure on its fisheries and its fishing industry from foreign and illegal operations, and the challenges inherent in managing larger and better-equipped navy, coastguard, and militia. Manila needs to – and is seeking to – build and modernise the AFP, including the PN, into an institution capable of territorial defence as well as counter-insurgency, which has been its primary function for some time. It is presently in the process of inducting or acquiring a series of new assets, notably two Strategic Sealift Vessels, three former US Coast Guard cutters reconfigured as frigates, and two new frigates to be supplied by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries. It has discussed – so far without decision – acquiring submarines, either from Russia or even Japan. The acquisition of these new assets will demand the enhancement of existing capabilities and the addition of new ones – in anti-submarine warfare, for example – that will require not just the procurement of new assets, but also the development of the skills and experience to operate them. In turn, this will necessitate further engagement with partners like Australia capable of helping develop those capacities.
Ian Hall, Griffith Asia Institute.
This commentary is based on the discussions in the recent Philippine-Australia Dialogue, jointly organised by the Asia Pacific Pathways to Progress and the Griffith Asia Institute, and with the support of the Australian Embassy in Manila.
