MANILA >> The Biden administration announced today an additional $500 million of military aid to the Philippines, further bolstering the defense alliance between the two nations while the Philippine military is grappling with aggressive actions by Chinese ships in the South China Sea.

The U.S. and Philippine governments have deepened their military alliance since Ferdinand Marcos Jr. became president of the Philippines two years ago. Unlike his predecessor, who favored an opening with China, Marcos has leaned into ties with the United States.

Marcos, who lived in Hawaii while his family was in political exile and has met President Joe Biden one-on-one multiple times since taking office, hosted a meeting today of the top diplomatic and military officials from both nations in Manila. It was the first time that such a so-called 2+2 session between the allied nations has taken place in the Philippines.

Biden has made alliance-building a hallmark of his foreign policy, especially in Europe and Asia, where different sets of alliances are aimed at countering or deterring military action by two nuclear-armed superpowers that are partners with each other — Russia and China. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Manila on Monday night as part of a diplomatic mission to the Indo-Pacific region.

The backdrop of the talks in Manila was a fraught one: Not only have Chinese coast guard vessels carried out more hostile actions against Philippine naval ships in recent months in the South China Sea, but Marcos and other Asian leaders are wondering who will take over from Biden as the U.S. president next January. Will it be Kamala Harris, the current vice president and presumed Democratic nominee, or Donald Trump, the former president who says U.S. military alliances are a waste of resources?

Marcos remarked to Blinken and Austin on the circumstances of their visit at the presidential palace on this morning.

“I am a bit surprised considering how interesting your political situation has become back in the States, but I’m glad that you’ve found the time to come and visit with us,” Marcos said.

Blinken, in his remarks, made sure to mention Harris, saying he brought “greetings from President Biden and Vice President Harris along with Secretary Austin.”

At an afternoon news conference with Austin and with their Philippine counterparts at Camp Aguinaldo, the headquarters of the Philippine military, Blinken highlighted the $500 million in additional military aid and said it would be used for helping to modernize the Philippine military and the coast guard.

Austin said “this level of funding is unprecedented, and it sends a clear message of support for the Philippines from the Biden-Harris administration, the U.S. Congress and the American people.”

Under the Biden and Marcos administrations, the first substantial boost to the U.S.-Philippine alliance took place in February 2023, when the governments announced, during a visit by Austin to Manila, that the Philippines had granted the United States access to four additional military bases. The northernmost of those are near Taiwan. The agreement allows the United States to use the bases for humanitarian purposes, but in the event of a war — for instance, a Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan — officials in Manila and Washington could decide that the U.S. military could use the bases for combat support.

At the news conference today, Philippine Defense Minister Gilbert Teodoro said his country looked forward to enhancing cooperation on those military bases.

It is in the South China Sea where tensions between the Philippines and China are the most heated. For months, Chinese coast guard vessels tried to keep Philippine naval ships from bringing supplies to marines posted at the Sierra Madre, a grounded ship on the Second Thomas Shoal, a submerged reef. Both China and the Philippines claim the area as their territory. Chinese coast guard vessels have rammed Philippine ships and fired water cannons at them; in one episode, two ships hitting each other resulted in the severing of a Philippine sailor’s thumb.

Austin stressed at the news conference that the mutual defense clause of the U.S.-Philippine treaty applies to actions against the forces of both of those countries in the South China Sea.

China and the Philippines signed an agreement last week in which China would allow the Philippine navy to run resupply missions to the Sierra Madre. There have been some questions on whether the two governments have clashing interpretations of the agreement, but the Philippines was able to run a resupply mission on Saturday to the grounded ship without harassment by Chinese vessels.

Blinken said that at a meeting he had in Vientiane, Laos, on Saturday with Wang Yi, China’s top foreign policy official, he told Wang that China had to refrain from hostilities against the Philippines in the South China Sea.

At their stops in Tokyo and Manila, Blinken, Austin and their aides have coordinated with foreign counterparts to issue strong messages pushing back against China’s assertive territorial moves.

In Tokyo on Monday, Blinken and three foreign ministers from the so-called Quad countries that have a nonmilitary partnership — Japan, India, Australia and the United States — issued a joint statement that, among other things, denounced military aggression in the South and East China seas. Like a similar statement that the ministers issued last year in New Delhi, this one did not name China, but it was clear they were referring to that country.

“We are seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas and reiterate our strong opposition to any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion,” the four top diplomats said in the latest Quad statement.

“We continue to express our serious concern about the militarization of disputed features, and coercive and intimidating maneuvers in the South China Sea,” they said. “We also express our serious concern about the dangerous use of coast guard and maritime militia vessels, the increasing use of various kinds of dangerous maneuvers, and efforts to disrupt other countries’ offshore resource exploitation activities.”

As in New Delhi in 2023, because the statement did not name China, it was not as strong as it could have been. Some countries in Asia want a robust U.S. military, diplomatic and economic presence in the region as a counterweight to China, but at the same time they want to avoid provoking China, which is rapidly building up its military — and especially its navy — while being the largest trading partner for many Asian nations.

The Quad is an example of the Biden administration taking a moribund multilateral partnership and reinvigorating it. The administration has also created new latticeworks of trilateral military partnerships. It has done this with Japan and South Korea, and with Japan and the Philippines. Leaders announced the latter in April, when Marcos and Fumio Kishida, the prime minister of Japan, visited Biden at the White House.

On Sunday, during the first day of their visit to Japan, Blinken and Austin also held a meeting with Japanese counterparts on extended deterrence, the term that refers to deterrence protection provided to nonnuclear-armed nations by the U.S. nuclear umbrella. It was the first time that a session on extended deterrence had been scheduled outside of the regular 2+2 conference, underscoring the growing anxieties over possible military conflict in the Asia-Pacific region.

After the news conference at Camp Aguinaldo, Blinken stopped by an artisanal chocolate shop, Auro, on his way to the airport to fly to Singapore. Blinken is visiting six nations on his 18th trip to the Indo-Pacific region. He tasted both chocolate and pandesal, a Philippine bread, this one stuffed with ube, a paste of purple yam, and sipped from a cup of mocha. He walked away from this final stop in Manila with a gift box of chocolates from the owner, Mark Ocampo.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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