UNITED we stand, divided we fall.
That adage rings true today for our country amid the challenges we face in our foreign policy, particularly our relations with our next-door neighbor China.
We are currently strengthening ties with other friendly nations, the latest of which is New Zealand. Our two countries will conclude a visiting forces agreement within the year as we seek to shore up support from more like-minded partners amid growing tensions between Manila and Beijing in the South China Sea.
According to Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., the negotiations for the key defense pact could finish “within the first semester of the year.
We’re now on the phase of alliance building, strengthening alliances, so the Sovfa (status of visiting forces agreement) with New Zealand is an important part of initiatives to resist China’s unilateral narrative to change international law.”
The Philippines and New Zealand officially started negotiations for the Sovfa on Jan. 23 in Manila. The Sovfa, once signed, will see increased and deeper defense cooperation and allow both countries to hold exercises in each other’s territories.
“There is a strong political commitment to conclude a status of visiting forces agreement,” New Zealand Ambassador Catherine McIntosh. “We are deeply concerned by the current developments in the West Philippine Sea and New Zealand has been consistent in our messages around de-escalation of tensions,” she said.
Like Manila, Wellington is a close security partner of Washington.
New Zealand and the United States are also close strategic partners and members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which includes Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Last September, New Zealand joined for the first time a “maritime cooperative activity”—another term for joint patrols and exercises—with the Philippines, Australia, Japan and the United States in the West Philippine Sea as part of its efforts to demonstrate its support for “a peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific.”
The defense ministries of both countries also signed in June last year a “mutual logistics supporting arrangement,” a precursor to the Sovfa.
The agreement establishes a process for reciprocal provision of supplies and services during combined exercises and training, UN peacekeeping operations, humanitarian and international relief operation or operations to cope with large scale disasters.
These alliances are needed to counter China’s aggressive claim over nearly the entire South China Sea.
It has already seized control of some disputed features from the Philippines, and deployed maritime militia, oil rigs and fishing fleets into our exclusive economic zone.
What we need to do is to continue to assert our sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea with the help of allied countries who share the same rules-based international order and the maintenance of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.