Philippines and Vietnam deepen ties with enhanced strategic partnership
Manila and Hanoi elevated ties as maritime pressure sharpened, pairing defense, intelligence and trade steps with a firmer stance on the South China Sea.
The Philippines and Viet Nam elevated their relationship to an enhanced strategic partnership on June 1, a move that tied together diplomacy, defense and trade as both governments confronted overlapping maritime pressures in the South China Sea.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced the upgrade during the state visit of To Lam, the first Vietnamese Party General Secretary to make a state visit to the Philippines. The visit, which ran from May 31 to June 1, also marked 50 years since diplomatic relations were established on July 12, 1976, and a decade since the two countries first created a strategic partnership in 2015.
The upgrade was more than ceremonial. Manila and Hanoi renewed their 2010 Memorandum of Agreement on Defense Cooperation, a step meant to strengthen maritime security, military education and disaster response. They also signed a memorandum on information technology and digital transformation cooperation, widening the relationship beyond naval diplomacy into the digital domain.
Marcos said the two sides would intensify intelligence sharing and coordinated law-enforcement action against internet fraud, human trafficking, illegal gambling and people smuggling. The joint statement also reaffirmed adherence to international law, the UN Charter and the ASEAN Charter, underscoring a shared interest in preserving room for maneuver inside Southeast Asia even as larger powers compete more openly around them.
That calculation has been building for years. The Philippine and Vietnamese coast guards held their first joint exercise on August 9, 2024, in Manila Bay, despite unresolved territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The two countries have long had overlapping claims there, but they have also found common cause in resisting coercive maritime behavior and in coordinating diplomatic and coast guard activity. The latest upgrade deepened that alignment and signaled a quiet effort to build a tighter regional coalition around practical security cooperation.
Economic ties also factored into the visit. Philippine officials said bilateral trade reached US$7.8 billion in 2025, and Marcos said the two countries aimed to push beyond a US$10 billion target. Vietnam is the Philippines’ 11th-largest trading partner. A Philippine tourism cooperation program for 2026 to 2029 is intended to improve air connectivity and increase flight frequency, while the joint statement pointed to rising tourism and direct flights.
The broader message was clear: Manila and Hanoi are turning shared maritime anxieties into a more structured partnership, one that could shape the regional balance of power and complicate Beijing’s efforts to isolate individual Southeast Asian claimants. For Washington, the result is a more capable ASEAN-centered security web, with two states that are willing to coordinate more closely on the South China Sea while still insisting that disputes be settled under the law of the sea and the 2016 arbitral award.
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