How Strong is the Philippine Military: Enough to Counter China?
The Philippines maintained its military strength with a power index of 0.4691 on the 2024 Military Strength Ranking, issued by Global Firepower. The Philippines landed at 34th spot globally considered as a middle power, with gains in military capability, the Philippines ranks 14th in Asia and 5th among the ASEAN 6.
The Military manpower is one of the few categories which the Philippines has an exceptional power index score. The country has total military personnel of more than 1,385,000, ranked 14th globally.
The Philippines’ strongest measure is defense networks, outpacing its regional peers, where it places ninth, reflecting the extent of its bilateral military cooperation with treaty allies with the United States. The score for defense networks is measured by a country’s regional alliances, global defense partnerships, and regional defense diplomacy.
The Philippines also exerts more influence in the region than expected given its available resources, as indicated by the country’s positive power gap score.
The Asia Power Index also reported the Philippines posted gains in diplomatic influence, which refers to a country’s diplomatic network, multilateral power, and its foreign policy thrust
In addition, the countries hold high-level bilateral, and plurilateral defense diplomacy meetings, include the US, Australia, Japan, India, Israel, South Korea, France, Germany and other western allies.
The increase in the Philippines’ overall military strength is due to its modernization efforts. The Armed Forces of the Philippines is currently undertaking a modernization program, with countries such as France, Israel, and India, offering to give new technology to the country.
Its ongoing modernization efforts are allowing the Armed Forces of the Philippines, in fulfilling its mandate of protecting the nation, and the people, including safeguarding the country's sovereignty.
The Mutual Defense Treaty between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States of America, signed in 1951, serves as a foundation for the close security cooperation between the two countries. Seventy-two years after its signing, the alliance continues to thrive in the ever-evolving security environment that surrounds the Philippines.
The US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty evolved into the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), and the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).
The VFA provides the legal basis and status protections for U.S. military and Department of Defense civilian personnel in the Philippines on official business. While EDCA authorizes U.S. forces to access of agreed locations in the Philippines on a rotational basis, for security cooperation exercises, joint and combined military training activities, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief activities.
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