Sayantan Haldar and Abhishek Sharma
The Indo-Pacific security landscape has emerged as a critical flashpoint for geopolitical contests. Growing Chinese naval aggression in the South China Sea (SCS) has long been a major concern for countries with strategic stakes in the region. The United States (US) and other like-minded countries have increasingly looked to bolster efforts to counter the imminent threats posed by China’s increased naval activities.
Much of the Chinese aggression in recent months has been targeted at the Philippines, a US treaty ally, which is confronting Beijing’s maritime misconduct in the SCS on a regular basis. Therefore to further strengthen the Philippines’ maritime security, the Defense Ministers of the US, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines met in Hawaii to discuss ways of advancing and continuing maritime cooperation. As per media reports, this grouping of four has been named ‘Squad’ by Pentagon officials.
Squad, security, and South China Sea
Beijing’s continued efforts to reclaim contested maritime spaces through aggressive naval posturing in the SCS have been instrumental in intensifying the geopolitical contest in the region. In recent times, tensions between China and the Philippines have been the focal point of conversations about the evolving geopolitics in the SCS. The West Philippine Sea, which Manila claims to have jurisdiction over, has emerged as the hotbed of the Sino-Filipino contest.
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