Earlier that month, the defence ministers of the Philippines, Japan, Australia and the United States assembled in Honolulu, where their conversation focused on cooperative responses to PRC actions in the East and South China Seas. In April, the navies of those four nations conducted drills in the South China Sea. This team-up has gained the moniker “Security Quad”, or “Squad”. These activities all represent choices that the island nations situated along China’s maritime periphery are making to beef up their defences and collectively resist what they regard as aggressive Chinese behaviour.

No one should be overjoyed to see tensions rise or more resources being put into military power when so many socio-economic challenges lurk in Southeast Asia. Yet, few Southeast Asians would disagree with Marcos when he said, “China’s determining influence over the security situation and the economic evolution of this region is a permanent fact.” Therefore, the rise of a counterbalancing coalition will contribute to the independence and autonomy of Southeast Asian states.

In both Japan and the Philippines, a strong political consensus has emerged where Chinese power is seen as a direct threat to national security. In both cases, this consensus only developed after deep debates and the observed failure of policies designed to accommodate Chinese power and avoid confrontation.

In 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took control of the Japanese Diet from the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Critical of the LDP’s reliance on the US-Japan alliance and the support Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro had given to American military activities in the Middle East and Central Asia, the DPJ’s first prime minister, Hatoyama Yukio, sought to re-evaluate foundational elements of the US-Japan alliance while reaching out to China.

However, the steps that China took during a 2010 crisis discredited the DPJ’s accommodation efforts. When a Chinese trawler rammed two Japan Coast Guard cutters in disputed waters of the East China Sea, Japan apprehended the crew and sought to prosecute the captain as a police action. Beijing, believing that the matter should be handled as a diplomatic rather than legal affair, escalated the matter.

At least 20 Sino-Japanese exchanges were cancelled, including the travel of a senior PRC official to Japan. Four Japanese citizens were detained in China, a Japanese school in Tianjin was vandalised, rare earth elements bound for Japan were held up in Chinese ports, and Premier Wen Jiabao threatened “further actions”. When Japan released the captain without prosecution, he returned home as a national hero and Chinese media trumpeted its presumed victory over Japan.

According to my discussions with dozens of Japanese strategists, these events gave Japan a “wake-up call” by demonstrating that the PRC was not only powerful but also inclined to use that strength against Japan. The experience was fundamental to building what scholar Andrew Oros calls “Japan’s security renaissance”. By the time the LDP returned to power in 2012, a broad consensus had formed that Japan needed to harden itself against Chinese aggression.

Japan’s expanded security budget, the development of defensive positions on the islands closest to China, decisions to acquire a “counter-strike” capability that targets weapons which strike Japan from foreign soil, and the embrace of security partnerships such as the Squad all reflect this security renaissance.

A similar story played out in the Philippines. I vividly remember sitting as the only foreigner at a lunch table of senior Philippine Navy officers in 2017 as they passionately debated the preferred strategy for facing PRC maritime aggression.

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