Why’s Russia Letting India Export Jointly Produced Supersonic Missiles To The Philippines?

The calculations at play are way too sensitive for officials to formally articulate, let alone even acknowledge, which is why it falls on bonafide and credentialed analysts to explain them to the public instead.

The chief of India’s DARPA equivalent confirmed last week that the Philippines will receive jointly produced Russo-Indo BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles by early next month per their $375 million deal from January 2022. It was analyzed at the time that “Exporting BrahMos Missiles to the Philippines is a Shrewd Indo-Russian Move” since it enables Russia to balance China in Southeast Asia via India in a more gentle and ultimately manageable way than the US’ aggressive and warmongering containment policy.

“The US Is Rounding Up Allies Ahead Of A Possible War With China”, and the Philippines is expected to play a key role in this respect due to its increasingly tense maritime dispute with China and the way in which this can help integrate the regional US-led NATO-like alliance network known as AUKUS+. Nevertheless, despite being in the American camp against China in the Sino-US dimension of the New Cold War, the Russian Ambassador there just said that it wants to court all kinds of Russian investments.

Moscow appreciates that Manila defied the West’s sanctions demands and appears favorable towards its stance on the South China Sea dispute as suggested by the December 2021 Russian-Vietnamese joint statement’s three references to UNCLOS for regulating such disagreements. That same body backed the Philippines in 2016 in a process that China declined to participate in, ergo why Beijing doesn’t recognize the outcome, though all other signatories like Russia do even if only quietly like in Moscow’s case.

From the Kremlin’s perspective, this continued dispute has been exploited by the US to assemble a NATO-like alliance centered on the Philippines for containing China in Southeast Asia, which risks dividing ASEAN and provoking a hot war in the worst-case scenarios. The only realistic way to reduce these aforesaid threats is to gradually erode America’s pernicious influence over the Philippines, to which end Rusia decided to approve the export of jointly produced BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles by India.

The calculation is that this could help prevent the Philippines’ complete military-strategic dependence on the US that the latter is leveraging for accelerating its divide-and-rule goals in Southeast Asia similar in spirit to how India’s arms sales to Armenia are intended to do the same in the South Caucasus. Russia isn’t under any illusions that this single indirect military deal will shatter American influence over the Philippines, but it still believes that it’s better to help it balance China than not to help it at all.

To explain, Russia’s practice of “military diplomacy” is meant to retain or restore the balance of power between rival pairs of countries like Armenia-Azerbaijan, China-India, and Syria-Turkiye, et al. with a view towards encouraging them to then settle their disputes through political means instead of resorting to force. It doesn’t always succeed, but its intentions are the exact opposite of the US’, which arms only one side in any given rivalry in order disrupt the balance between them and thus encourage the use of force.

Whereas Russia tries to prevent conflicts that risk dividing-and-ruling Eurasia, the US tries to provoke them, which testifies to their contradictory grand strategies in the supercontinent. Circling back to the Sino-Filipino context with this insight in mind, it can therefore be concluded that Russia hopes that its indirect military deal with the Philippines via India will help Manila better manage its increasingly tense maritime dispute with Beijing, unlike the US’ method of pushing that country into provoking a war.

The jointly produced BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles are considered to be some of the best in the world, thus helping the Philippines restore the balance of power with China without having to rely even more on America and AUKUS+ than it already is. Nobody should expect that it’ll dump them, seeing as how they also have close economic and political ties, since the aim is only to help make the Philippines more sovereign and consequently reduce the chances that it provokes a war at the US’ behest.

The bilateral trust that’ll be strengthened as a result of this Indian-led strategic arms deal could also raise the chances that the Philippines integrates into the Eastern Maritime Corridor (EMC). The preceding hyperlinked analysis describes the grand strategic importance of this project more in detail, which in its simplest form seeks to reconnect Chennai and Vladivostok via the revival of this Soviet-era trade route. Bringing the Philippines and nearby Vietnam on board as well could turn this into a tri-regional corridor.

Connecting Northeast (Russia), Southeast (the Philippines and Vietnam), and South Asia (India) through these means would accelerate multipolar processes along the historically US-influenced Eurasian Rimland and bolster all participating countries’ geostrategic balancing acts between America and China. The first step in expanding the EMC is for the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership to strengthen trust with third parties like the Philippines and Vietnam via “military diplomacy” like the latest BrahMos deal.

By showing ASEAN that a third way veritably exists amidst the perceived zero-sum choice between America and China, those countries in maritime disputes with China can rely more on the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership for retaining or restoring the balance of power than on the US. This could in turn reduce the chances of a war breaking out at the US’ behest and raise the chances of these same countries participating in the EMC for accelerating multipolar processes along the Eurasian Rimland.

To sum it up, Russia’s approval of India’s BrahMos supersonic cruise missile exports to the Philippines is driven by its desire to help the latter balance China in a more gentle and ultimately manageable way, all with the intent of building the trust required to ensures its participation in the EMC. The calculations at play are way too sensitive for officials to formally articulate, let alone even acknowledge, which is why it falls on bonafide and credentialed analysts to explain them to the public instead.