Last week, Philippine and US Marines demonstrated “lethal firepower in two separate live fire exercises” the Philippine Marine Corps portrayed as “defense partnership.” It went hand in hand with high-profile, high-cost military deals.
These follow Manila’s flirting with US Army Typhon missile systems. The deployment is part of US military’s strategic repositioning in the Pacific and a money-maker to the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. In April, US also approved the potential sale of 20 F-16 fighter jets to the Philippines in a $5.6 billion deal.
The Marcos Jr government has also been busy negotiating a variety of military access deals not just with the US, but with Japan and European powers.
To defense contractors, Manila is now a prime weapons theater in Southeast Asia.
Deals heralding the showdown
In parallel, the Marcos Jr government, which is still licking its wounds after its weak performance in the recent mid-term elections, signed a $700-million contract with Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) to acquire an additional batch of 12 FA-50PH light combat aircraft.
Days before, the government inked a $460-million deal with French shipbuilder OCEA for 40 fast patrol boats for the Philippine Coast Guard. In mid-2020, at the eve of the proxy war in Ukraine, the French OCEA also signed a $186 million deal with Ukraine to provide 20 fast patrol boats. It’s great business to France, which is today the world’s second-largest arms exporter.
Manila purchased four similar FPB-72 gun-boats already in 2018, quickly renamed as Boracay-class patrol vessels. In the past few years, these have played a key role in the Philippine-China incidents in South China Sea, thanks to Project Myoushu, a derivative of the US Naval Institute’s Maritime Counterinsurgency Project, and an initiative by a Stanford University think-tank.
Ever since President Marcos Jr agreed to a number of new rotating military bases for the US in the Philippines, Manila has become a model of militarization in the region – as verified by military spending and arms transfers.
Philippines as ASEAN’s fastest rising military spender
The ASEAN community features 10 nations. Today, only three of them are included in the Top-40 list of military spenders: Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. Unlike the first two that have fallen in rank, the Philippines is on the rise and made the list for the first time in 2025. It is right behind Iraq.
Source: SIPRI
The Philippines is investing increasingly in military spending. On per capita basis, it spends more in arms than Indonesia, which has a population of over 280 million as opposed to 115 million Filipinos.
Furthermore, the Philippines increase of military spending is on average twice as fast in comparison to Singapore and Indonesia. In the tiny city state, the share of military spending of GDP is 2.8%; and in Indonesia, 0.8%. But in the Philippines, it is 1.3% – in relative terms more than 50 percentage points higher than in Indonesia.
In the Duterte era, the Philippines was an aspiring BRIC-like economy. Today, it is an assertive military spender that is cannibalizing its economic futures.
Philippines as a major global arms importer
The Philippines is one of the world’s largest importer of arms. In a gross mis-allocation of resources, Manila is boosting its arms imports faster than any other major ASEAN arms importer.
In the global top-40 list of the world’s largest arms importers, there are just four ASEAN countries: Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. Although the tiny city-state has the largest share of global arms imports, the Philippines is second, ahead of both Indonesia and Thailand.
Source: SIPRI
In the past half a decade, these other ASEAN states have cut their arms imports by 20% (Singapore) to almost 50% (Indonesia, Thailand). They have tried to prepare for the economic headwinds that now drastically penalize global economic prospects. Unlike them, the Philippines has dramatically increased its share of global arms imports by more than 50 percentage points.
The ongoing militarization is dragging the Philippines into twisted alignments, which are undermining its foreign policy and diplomacy.
Atrocious alignments
Manila imports more than 80% of its arms from just three countries: South Korea (33%), Israel (27%) and the US (20%), which is also Ukraine’s main supplier (45%) and provides most arms imports to South Korea (86%) and Taiwan (98%).
The Philippines’ military suppliers are arms exporters cashing on mass atrocities. Gaza is the prime example. After 1.5 years of abject obliteration, some Western countries are stopping arming Israel. By contrast, South Korea raked in $6 million in arms exports to Israel in eight months of 2024 alone.
Despite some chill in bilateral ties, Manila has been a big client of the Israeli military exports (over 8% of Israel’s total exports), including Spyder air defense systems from Rafael, Sabra 2 light tanks from Elbit Systems, Shaldag boats from Israel Shipyards, and Hermes-type drones. As Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit produces killer drones for Gaza, while its MPR 500 multi-purpose bombs contain 26,000 controlled fragments for “high kill probability.”
In the Philippines, Shaldag patrol gunboats are known as Nestor Acero-class. Off the coast of Gaza, they ensure nobody can escape the living hell in Gaza, while keeping aid flotillas away.
The failing economic promise
In the Philippines, self-rated poverty exceeds 55% of the population while 30% see themselves in the borderline of abject poverty. Militarization represents a massive misallocation of resources away from desperately-needed social spending.
Not so long ago, the Marcos Jr government boldly projected the country had potential for 7% economic growth in annual terms. Thanks to costly militarization, misallocated spending and the consequent political divides and volatility, the real growth rate in 2025 is likely to be slightly above 5.0%.
But when and if these weapons replace diplomacy in Southeast Asia, the worst is still ahead.
Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized strategist of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net
