Can the Philippines keep Donald Trump on its side?

In April the US Army showed up in the Philippines for annual exercises with a new weapon: medium-range ballistic missiles. China has thousands of them, but America has not fielded them in Asia since 1991. After the exercises ended, most of the American forces went home, but the missiles stayed. Philippine and American military officials say they hope the missiles will help to deter Chinese aggression around Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

Now, just days after Donald Trump’s victory in America’s presidential election, the Philippines’ defence secretary has offered to buy the missile system from America. The secretary wants his offer to pay for the missiles “to be the first thing Trump hears about when the Philippines comes up”, says Jeffrey Ordaniel of Pacific Forum, a think-tank in Hawaii. “What’s in it for America? Trump likes it when there’s a clear answer to that question, beyond just helping an ally.”

The Philippines is one of many American allies around the world struggling to answer that question. And in Asia, the Philippines might be the least capable of doing so. Unlike Australia, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan—which also all rely on explicit or implicit American security guarantees—the Philippines’ annual defence budget is just $4bn. Most of the American kit that it has bought to date has been subsidised by American taxpayers. Buying the ballistic-missile battery, known as Typhon, would blow a hole in the armed forces’ budget.

What the Philippines is asking America to defend might also trigger Mr Trump and the isolationists in his orbit. Over the past two years, Philippine coastguard and navy vessels have skirmished with their Chinese counterparts over mostly uninhabited rocks and reefs in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. No shots have been fired in anger, but the situation is tense. Chinese coastguards have damaged Philippine vessels by blasting them with water cannons and ramming them in an attempt to force them to return to port. In May Ferdinand Marcos, the president, warned that if any Filipino citizen were killed, that would cross a red line. He added that he thought it would cross a red line for America, too.

Whether it would cross a red line for Mr Trump is uncertain. The president-elect’s fans, including Jose Manuel Romualdez, the Philippines’ ambassador to America, note that during Mr Trump’s first term the Philippines did not struggle to get American assistance when it asked for it. Mr Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for example, took the unusual step of confirming that America’s security guarantees extended to Philippine vessels in the South China Sea, in an attempt to deter Chinese aggression there.

But the Philippines asked for little during Mr Trump’s first term because its own president at that time was Rodrigo Duterte, an anti-American hothead who sought to distance himself from America and at one point threatened to kick American troops out of the country. Under Mr Marcos, the Philippines has once again embraced America, but it also expects its ally to do more for it than before.

The problem is that Mr Trump tends to see alliances as protection rackets, a sentiment shared by his running-mate, J.D. Vance. In their view, allies should be prepared to pay their own way. The pair are likely to be sceptical, too, of the case for risking American blood and treasure to defend a collection of uninhabited atolls. But reports that Mr Trump will nominate Senator Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state have reassured Filipinos to some degree. Mr Rubio has argued that defending the Philippines in the South China Sea is in America’s interests.

The Trump administration’s position on the South China Sea will be shaped, too, by how it approaches the question of Taiwan. If America under Mr Trump decides to prioritise the defence of Taiwan, then the Philippines would become an asset rather than a liability. Last year President Joe Biden and Mr Marcos expanded a deal dating to 2014 to add four new sites concentrated in the north of the country, facing Taiwan. American access to the bases would be key to deterring a Chinese attempt to retake the self-governing island.

The Philippines will probably still have to trim its sails with Mr Trump back in power, however. In particular, it might need to curb its ambitious strategy to push back Chinese expansionism in its home waters. Since Mr Marcos moved into Malacañang Palace in Manila in June 2022, the Philippines has asserted its rights in the South China Sea more actively and more publicly than before. It has reinforced one outpost, a rusting ship run aground in 1999 at Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratlys, and sent ships to occupy other fishing grounds for the first time.

A tribunal in The Hague confirmed these rights in a ruling in 2016, but the Philippines’ efforts to secure them and the resulting Chinese response have raised tensions. On November 8th, Mr Marcos signed into law a bill outlining the Philippines’ maritime zones in keeping with the tribunal’s ruling. China quickly responded by drawing its own lines around Scarborough Shoal, an especially strategically important disputed feature west of Manila Bay. It sent out air and maritime patrols to stake its claim.

If these legal moves escalate into renewed confrontations on water, the first that Mr Trump hears from the Philippines might not be its offer to buy new weapons, but a call for help. In that case, he is unlikely to respond favourably. ■