1. Home
  2. Blue Economy
  3. Philippine-India Defense Relations: From Good to Great
Blue Economy Maritime Security

Philippine-India Defense Relations: From Good to Great

  • April 24, 2025
  • 260 Views
Mimi Fade.png

Key highlights:

  • As a way to expand Philippine-India defense relations, there needs to be more engagement and collaboration, particularly in the area of Underwater Maritime Domain Awareness.
  • The Philippines can rely on India for enhanced maritime cooperation agreements in the form of Underwater Maritime Domain Awareness partnerships and technology exchange.

Introduction

The Philippines is both an archipelagic and a maritime nation that relies on the stability of maritime commerce and global trade. President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. expressed his intention to elevate the ties between the Philippines and India’s bilateral relations amid the current geopolitical conditions during his meeting with Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Pabitra Margherita. The Philippines and India marked the 75th anniversary of their diplomatic relations last November 16, 2024.

“The interactions between India and the Philippines have certainly increased in the past few years. And certainly we would like to continue that closeness.” “Well, the plan to elevate the bilateral relations is very interesting because in terms of geopolitical issues. Whereas we used to speak of Pacific or Asia Pacific. It’s now Indo-Pacific. And that’s why I think that the alliances and the partnerships that we make become more important, ” President Marcos told Minister Margherita during their meeting at Malacanang Palace (Presidential Communications Office, January 15, 2025).

Philippine trade with India has been consistently increasing. In 2023, total trade with India reached US$3.08 billion, with exports valued at US$1.1 billion and imports at 1.98 billion. India ranked as the Philippines’ 15th top trading partner.

There are 53 signed agreements between the Philippines and India in the fields of trade, investment, science and technology, maritime, air services, taxation, culture, energy, agriculture, and defense, among others (Presidential Communications Office, January 15, 2025).

In recent times, the Philippines and India further expanded defense relations. In 2017, the Philippines and India signed a Memorandum of Understanding on defense industry and logistics cooperation. Last September 10, 2024, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Indian Armed Forces held their 5th Joint Defense Cooperation Committee and 3rd Service-to-Service Meeting in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City, Philippines. During both events, the senior military officers of the two respective governments expressed their firm devotion to “a more robust defense cooperation.” India is a reliable supplier of defense products and services. India had delivered to the Philippines the BrahMos cruise missiles last 2024. These intercontinental missiles give the Philippines more leverage and options in the ever-growing threat of conflict in the South China Sea (Philippine News Agency, September 24, 2024).

The Philippines strongly supports multilateralism and works within global institutions, such as the United Nations, that support this international rules-based order. Specifically, the Philippines also strongly supports regional rules-based multilateralism and dispute resolution and management, most significantly through its membership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The ASEAN blueprint envisages ASEAN to be a ‘rules-based ’community of shared norms and values, including maritime affairs.

The promotion of the ‘Indo-Pacific vision ’offers a contemporary framework for shaping and reinforcing the rules that will contribute to regional order. Provided it is calibrated to the interests and expectations of nations across the region, it has the potential to generate wider purchase in a ‘rules-based ’approach (Fabe 2025).

In recent years, land features and maritime boundaries in the South China Sea have been contested by some countries that border it. China, in particular, has been aggressive in claiming and developing the region. As a strategy to address this, President Ferdinand Marcos signed Executive Order 57 on March 25, 2024, to deal with issues that impact the country’s national security, sovereignty, sovereign rights, and maritime jurisdiction over its extensive maritime zones. As part of its efforts to repel maritime security threats, the Philippines has to improve its deterrence capabilities through the use of AI and electronic warfare in the South China Sea, including through the establishment of a Special Technologies Department within the National Maritime Council (Fabe, 2025).

As a way to expand Philippine-India defense relations, there needs to be more engagement and collaboration, particularly in the area of Underwater Maritime Domain Awareness (UDA). This is a strategic alignment of security priorities between the two countries.

To exemplify further, India, through the Maritime Research Center Dr (Cdr) Arnab Das, a center dedicated to the expertise of Underwater Maritime Domain Awareness, can establish close linkages with the National Police College, the Philippines’ premier training center for senior public safety officers. Senior officers of the Philippines Coast Guard and the Philippine National Police Maritime Group undergo advanced training in Maritime Security and Practice at the college. A capability building linkages and the provision of Fellowship Training is essential to empower Filipino maritime law enforcement officers with the appropriate knowledge and practical expertise in Indian indigenous technologies and best practices in managing underwater domain awareness security threats. This kind of training is timely with the discovery of underwater Chinese drones (Naval News, January 3, 2025). Moreover, the Philippine Navy also detected the presence of a Russian submarine inside Philippine territorial waters (Associated Press, December 2, 2024). Given these new maritime security threats, Indian security expertise will be helpful to repel any Chinese and Russian maritime operations in the Philippines.

India’s “Look East” Policy

Southeast Asia holds strategic importance due to its geographical proximity to India and its role as a gateway to the South China Sea. Southeast Asia is a crucial part of the Indo-Pacific’s geopolitical framework, and India’s growing relationship with the region is seen as a counterbalance to China’s expanding economic and military influence. In Modi 3.0, India aims to solidify its position as a reliable partner in the Indo-Pacific region, with Southeast Asia being a crucial element of this strategy (Bajpaee, 2023). Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi noted in his speech in 2018 that Southeast Asia remains a strategic area for India’s external engagement, stating that, ‘for India, no region now receives as much attention as this [Southeast Asia] ’(International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2018). Currently, India’s trade with Southeast Asia is low compared to Western and Gulf countries. For example, India-ASEAN trade posed a massive growth from US$2.9 billion in 1993 to US$80 billion in 2018 (ASEAN Secretariat, 2020).

Furthermore, India has demonstrated to Southeast Asia that it is a reliable regional powerhouse by fostering greater transparency regarding its fast military modernization efforts and reaffirming the absence of any territorial ambitions in the region (Bajpaee, 2019). For example, India’s admission to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) by 1996 represents a historical phase since this was the first time that India had opted to be part of a multilateral security forum, a radical departure from its usual practice of nonalignment/neutrality and aversion to security alliances (Naidu, 2000). Moreover, India’s accession to

ASEAN norms of interaction, including the ‘Treaty of Amity and Cooperation ’in 2003, reflected the country’s peaceful intentions (Bajpaee, 2023).

India’s concern on the maritime domain under the Modi government was revealed with the promotion of the SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) Initiative in 2015 which cited the importance of reinforcing maritime connectivity and emphasizing the importance of the‘ Blue Economy ’(India Ministry of External Affairs, 2019, p. 88; Parliamentary Question, 2019). This focus was further expanded eastwards to include the Western Pacific, with ASEAN at the centre of this maritime space (India Ministry of External Affairs, 2021, p. 148). Prime Minister Modi crafted the India Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI) during the East Asia Summit meeting in 2019, which aims to ‘create a safe, secure, stable, prosperous and sustainable maritime domain ’(India Ministry of External Affairs, 2020a, pp. 17, 217).

Modi highlighted the need for ‘a common rules-based order for the region ’that ‘must equally apply to all individually as well as to the global commons ’and ‘believe in sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as equality of all nations, irrespective of size and strength ’(International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2018).

Moreover, India has placed particular emphasis on fostering closer ties with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member states. Trade between India and ASEAN has grown steadily in recent years, with bilateral trade exceeding US$100 billion in 2023. In addition to the prevailing economic cooperation, India’s strategic interests in the region have also deepened. India’s position on the South China Sea had shifted from a cautious, neutral stance to one that has clearly articulated its support for the Philippines’ sovereign maritime territorial claims, freedom of navigation and maritime resource exploitation, in line with international law. This aligns India with Southeast Asian nations against unilateral actions by China, while also serving India’s strategic interests by ensuring freedom of navigation and bolstering regional security. India’s nuanced stance, informed by its own territorial tensions with China on its northern land border, underscores its intent to deter unilateral and unlawful advances by China (Observer Research Foundation, September 14, 2024).

Conclusion

Philippine-India relations have continued to deepen and strengthen gradually over the years. The strong economic relations, focusing on a vibrant trade of basic commodities, have expanded to defense products and technologies. Overseas Filipino workers have also gone to India to support its healthcare and domestic sectors. In exchange, the Indian pharmaceutical companies have provided affordable medicines to the Philippines.

As the Philippines faces Chinese coercive actions in the South China Sea, the country can rely on India for enhanced maritime cooperation agreements in the form of Underwater Maritime Domain Awareness partnerships and technology exchange.

References:

Amparo Pamela Fabe

Amparo Pamela Fabe, a Professor of the National Police College, Philippines, is a maritime security researcher on the Indo-Pacific. She is a Fellow of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, the Brute Krulak Center, US Marine Corps University, the Irregular Warfare Initiative of the the US Military Academy at Westpoint and the Empirical Studies of Conflict at Princeton University and the Centre of Policing and International Security, University of South Wales. Her expertise covers maritime domain awareness, cognitive warfare, counterterrorist financing, preventing/countering violent extremism, and project monitoring and evaluation. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Indonesian Police Agency. She can be reached at mimi.fabe@gmail.com

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *