Japan’s Official Security Assistance to the Philippines: Legitimizing a New Strategic Tool

Both Japan and the Philippines are navigating an increasingly intricate security landscape, in which various actors––China being the most significant––are making unilateral efforts to alter the regional power dynamics. The tensions are particularly concentrated in the maritime domain, with the Philippines emerging as a prominent adversary of China’s actions in the South China Sea. Numerous questions remain regarding the aid program’s future trajectory. This issue brief examines how the Japanese government establishes legitimacy to extend its Official Security Assistance (OSA) to the Philippines. Japan is exploring the boundaries of its role as a security actor and the extent to which it can broaden its new aid initiative, with much of OSA’s future implementation and transformation hinging on the international community and recipient nations’ responses.