The Philippines wants India and South Korea to join the “Squad” grouping of nations that has been established to curb and counter China’s growing maritime power, the country’s armed forces chief said yesterday.
Speaking yesterday at the Raisina Dialogue security forum in New Delhi, Gen. Romeo S. Brawner said that the Armed Forces of the Philippines was making efforts to improve its deterrence capabilities, including by expanding its joint operations with its Squad partners.
“Together with Japan and our partners we are trying to expand the Squad to include India and probably South Korea,” Brawner said during a panel discussion, according to a report by Reuters.
“We find commonality with India because we have a common enemy,” Brawner later told reporters. “And I’m not afraid to say that China is our common enemy. So, it’s important that we collaborate together, maybe exchange intelligence.”
Formed in May 2024, the Squad is not a formal military alliance, but an informal collaborative grouping made up of Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States, who have cooperated on activities like military patrols, intelligence sharing, and joint exercises and operations.
In separate comments to Bloomberg, Brawner said that he was planning to talk with India’s defense chief, Gen. Anil Chauhan, about the prospect of India joining the Squad grouping in some capacity. “I think we’re going to get a positive response,” he said. Reuters cited a “senior Indian defense officer” as saying that the meeting took place later yesterday, but that it was “not immediately clear if the matter was discussed.”
As Brawner’s remarks suggest, the last few years have seen heightened tensions between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea, where the China Coast Guard (CCG) and maritime militia has encroached repeatedly into waters claimed by Manila. This has resulted in a long string of dangerous encounters between the CCG and Philippine Coast Guard and Fisheries Bureau vessels, in which the latter have been chased, rammed, and hit with high-pressure water cannons.
All four of the members of the Squad have taken part in joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea, and affirmed the validity of the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal Award, which ruled that China’s expansive claims to the vital waterway had no standing under international law.
The formation of the Squad is part of a broader shift toward ad hoc “minilateral” groupings of like-minded nations. The U.S. government has also helped coordinate the Quadrilateral Dialogue (Quad) involving Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.; the AUKUS alliance comprising Australia, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.; and the Japan-Philippines-U.S. trilateral.
As one Indian observer noted at the time of its foundation, the formation of the Squad reflected the need for “new complementary frameworks to strengthen the maritime security in [the South China Sea] through a mesh of a viable security arrangement, both bilateral and trilateral.” It also reflected “the failure of multilateral institutions like ASEAN in the region and the unwillingness of many ASEAN members to condemn Chinese coercive action outrightly.”
In many ways, India and South Korea seem like natural extensions of the Squad, given that both nations share its broad concerns about China’s growing power and ambition. The informal nature of the grouping also lowers the potential hurdles to membership and participation. However, neither nation has yet commented on the Philippine proposal and their official views remain unclear. Of the two countries, South Korea is likely to be most cautious about joining, given its close economic relationship with China. As one Korean observer noted in 2016, the country “is not entirely free to support either power in the South China Sea without expecting a serious backlash from the other superpower.”
In India, the Squad has since its formation been a subject of interest to strategists and think-tankers, who have generally welcomed the grouping insofar as it may “compel China to focus upon its eastern maritime frontiers, thereby offsetting its strategic attention to the India-China border, and towards the Indian Ocean.” Whether New Delhi ultimately views formal membership as the best means of advancing this goal, and its broader security interests, remains to be seen.