As the Quad struggles with internal contradictions and worsening US-India tensions, the Philippines is rapidly becoming central to Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Joint military exercises, missile deployments, and deeper alliance integration point to a more confrontational regional order.

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Recent developments across the Indo-Pacific reveal a deeper strategic transformation underway: expanded US basingaccessin the Philippines, newmissile deploymentsnear Taiwan’s maritime approaches, growing trilateral and quadrilateral military exercises, and even emerging intelligence-sharing arrangements betweenManila and Tokyoall point toward the gradual formation of a more hard-security-oriented regional framework directed at Beijing.

Meanwhile, the Quad itself appears increasingly adrift. Amid worsening US-India tensions and New Delhi’s persistent refusal to abandon strategic autonomy, the Philippines is quietly “displacing” India in Washington’s broader Indo-Pacific strategy.

Writing for Foreign Policy, Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft,arguesthat the Philippines has actually “replaced” India in Washington’s strategic approach toward Beijing.

Shidore’s point is simple: the Quad never managed to decide whether it was a security bloc or a public-goods platform. It spoke vaguely about a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” thereby avoiding openly naming China, largely because India resisted turning the mechanism into an anti-Beijing military alliance. New Delhi, after all, shares a long disputed border with China and continues pursuing strategic autonomy through BRICS, the SCO, and diversified bilateral ties. Unlike Japan or Australia, India never accepted the role of subordinate junior partner.

One may recall that the Quad itself emerged from post-tsunamicoordination effortsin 2004 before beingrevivedunder Trump in 2017 (in his first presidency, before Biden). Yet, thus far, its practical achievements have remained arguably underwhelming. Vaccine diplomacyunderperformedduring the pandemic. In addition, infrastructure and humanitarian initiativeslackedvisibility; Southeast Asia remained ratherunconvinced.

Meanwhile, the one area where the Quad actually progressed, from a Western perspective, was precisely the domain it officially avoided emphasizing: military interoperability through theMalabar naval exercises.

Shidore argues that Washington increasingly views the so-called “first island chain” as the decisive theater against China, not the Indian Ocean. This explains why the Philippines has become rather central to US planning. A newer grouping, informally dubbed the “Squad,” comprising the US, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines, is now, some argue, potentially more operationally relevant than the Quad itself, and even the embryo of an “Asian‐style NATO”, as scholar Renato Cruz De Castroargues. Unlike India, the Philippines is geographically proximate to Taiwan and the South China Sea, and is now explicitly alignedagainstBeijing, andfullyintegrated into US alliance structures.

Source: Global Research