Transforming 21st PH-Vietnam bilateral relations from security to strategic partnership

States form alliances when confronted with more powerful and aggressive powers. As a form of cooperative relations, an alliance is a political calculation that recognizes, despite differing and conflicting interests, its members’ need for each other’s assistance to achieve or defend the security agenda they all share.

Alliances are protean entities as they take several shapes and forms. Whatever form they take, however, alliances perform an essential role in stabilizing an anarchic international system that enables its members to aggregate their resources and commitment to confront a more powerful state. 

Security or strategic partnerships are informal alliances or ententes through which countries engage in periodic meetings, joint exercises, and other limited security activities without creating a formal military alliance. A security partnership is a functional security cooperation based on something different than an alliance that does not aspire to develop into a formal one.

This functionalist form of security cooperation is conducted through the exchange of visits by senior officials and issuing of joint statements, enhanced staff-level exchanges, port visits by naval vessels, participation in humanitarian missions, provision of training and technology related to facilities and equipment, and other types of training. However, this trend of functionalist security cooperation can only develop into a partial-fledged movement toward alliance politics.

The primary goal of a security partnership is to address security challenges. Still, this type of inter-state cooperation also intends to balance relations with the great powers when appropriate and to what extent. States form security partnerships because they value their autonomy. They are unwilling to accept the cost of strengthening their relations with one great power over another. 

The Philippines and Vietnam have formed a security partnership since 2015. The two ASEAN states reacted to growing Chinese aggression and expansion in the South China Sea. Among the ASEAN member states, the Philippines considers Vietnam its only security partner in this regional organization. Both Southeast Asian countries have