Cebu chessboard: How Washington turns partners into pawns

Editor's note: CGTN's First Voice provides instant commentary on breaking stories. The column clarifies emerging issues and better defines the news agenda, offering a Chinese perspective on the latest global events.

On the sidelines of the 20th ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sat down separately with his Japanese and Philippine counterparts – and with several other regional ministers – to discuss "effective denial defense in the First Island Chain," "close coordination" on munitions production, and a proposed US-ASEAN defense framework.

The language is bureaucratic. The reality is not. What Washington is assembling in the region is not a defensive architecture. It is a forward-leaning military posture that uses the Philippines and Japan as political cover – all while insisting that the goal is "stability."

Consider the material facts. The US Army's Typhon mid-range missile system was deployed to the Philippines, specifically Luzon, in 2024. Washington calls it "deterrence," but, in essence, it is destabilizing the region. The distinction is semantic: A weapon designed for offensive strike, based on an ally's territory and pointed at a third country's homeland, is not a shield. It is a spear held by someone else's hand.

The Philippines is not the only hand. In Cebu, Japan agreed to continue discussions toward transferring Abukuma-class destroyers after their retirement and one TC-90 patrol aircraft within Japan's fiscal 2027 – a plan, not a completed delivery, but a clear step toward integrating Manila into Tokyo's defense-industrial orbit.

Tokyo and Washington also pledged continued coordination on munitions production and "denial defense" along the First Island Chain. Japan's own constitutional constraints on collective self-defense have been stretched and reinterpreted for years; the Cebu meetings accelerate a quiet remilitarization that serves American strategy far more than it serves Japanese security. The more Japan ties its defense industrial base and maritime posture to American contingency planning, the less room it has for the diplomacy that actually reduces tension with its neighbors.

The most revealing move, however, is institutional. Hegseth used Cebu to propose a new US-ASEAN Framework for Defense Cooperation. The proposal is deliberately vague on details, but its function is clear: to create a parallel bilateral-multilateral track that bypasses ASEAN's consensus-based, China-inclusive processes.

ASEAN's strength has always been its refusal to become a proxy bloc. The ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting-Plus includes China because regional security cannot be arranged against the region's largest state. A US-ASEAN defense framework that emphasizes "maritime domain awareness" and naval interoperability – while saying nothing about the Code of Conduct negotiations that China and ASEAN have been advancing – is designed to erode that inclusiveness.

It invites ASEAN members to hedge toward Washington's camp under the banner of "pragmatism," not to solve disputes but to militarize them. Washington is not "responding" to a crisis. It is manufacturing the conditions in which crisis becomes the default.

The cost of this strategy is borne by the countries Washington claims to protect. The Philippines, already engaged in years of maritime confrontations, is being converted from a sovereign claimant with its own diplomatic options into a frontline node in a US-China competition it cannot control. Japan, for its part, is being drawn deeper into the Taiwan question where any intervention would invite countermeasures that it cannot afford.

Disputes must be managed by the parties directly concerned – not by extra-regional powers with their own strategic agendas. That is why Beijing has continued to push for an early conclusion of the Code of Conduct with ASEAN. The contrast is instructive. One side is building missile launchers and "denial" networks. The other is building negotiating text.

Cebu was not a turning point. It was another increment in a campaign to turn allies into assets and partners into pawns. The question for Southeast Asia is whether it will let its institutions be hollowed out by a framework designed elsewhere, for purposes that have little to do with the region's own peace.

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com. Follow @thouse_opinions on X to discover the latest commentaries in the CGTN Opinion Section.)