US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will discuss growing military ties with the Philippines on Tuesday in Washington DC (Wednesday in Manila) before heading to Vietnam and Japan days after a new flare-up of tensions with China over Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the Philippines and the United States launched their largest-ever joint military exercises on Tuesday, as the longstanding allies seek to counter growing Chinese assertiveness in the region.
At a joint news conference in Quezon City, both US and PH armies did not address questions about the Taiwan tensions and a possible role for the Philippines if China invaded Taiwan.
Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet jointly in Washington with their Philippine counterparts – Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo and DND chief Carlito Galvez, who are already in the US capital — in the first such joint talks in seven years between the United States and its former colony.
Austin confirmed the meeting in a press statement.
“The secretary participates in joint press availability with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Philippines’ Secretary of Foreign Affairs Enrique A. Manalo and Officer in Charge of the Department of National Defense Carlito Galvez on the outcomes of the U.S-Philippines 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue at 3:15 p.m. EDT at the Department of State,” it said.
The Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan all have longstanding territorial disputes with China that have grown more intense in recent years as Beijing flexes its muscle.
Meanwhile, Senator Imee Marcos – sister of the President — called for certain limits in the implementation of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) including those on the number of US troops in the country and the length of their stay.
Marcos, the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said having thousands of Americans conducting exercises daily is like the US forces already living in the country.
“From what we heard in Ilocos, around 17,000 American troops will come and conduct military exercises every day… In my opinion, that’s not an exercise anymore. It’s like they will live here, is that right?” she added.
“I think there should be limitations on their numbers and visa validity. It should be cleared if they are allowed for a three-month-visa to 90-day visa to make sure they are not basing here permanently and there are still Filipino soldiers in our bases,” Sen. Marcos said.
Signed in 2014, the EDCA grants US troops access to designated Philippine military facilities and allows them to build facilities, and preposition equipment, aircraft, and vessels. Permanent basing is prohibited.
Last week, the Philippines announced four more military bases that US forces will be able to use, including one on Luzon Island just 400 kilometers from Taiwan — a stark shift from a previous push by Manila to improve ties with China.
After condemnation from Beijing, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said that Manila would not take “any offensive actions” from the four bases, as well from five others agreed to with Washington in a 2014 agreement.
“If no one is attacking us, they need not worry because we will not fight them,” Mr. Marcos told reporters Monday.
Months earlier, the United States reached a separate agreement with Japan, a fellow ally on the other side of Taiwan, to disperse US forces across the southern island of Okinawa, another move seen as preparing for a potential Chinese move on Taiwan.
Beijing on Monday completed three days of military exercises said to simulate sealing Taiwan, a self-governing democracy it considers part of its territory (see story on A1 – Editors).
The show of force came after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met in California with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is second in line to the US presidency, in defiance of Beijing’s warnings.
The United States called for restraint by China but privately some officials were relieved the reaction was more muted than in August 2022, when Beijing fired projectiles around and over Taiwan after McCarthy’s predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, flew to Taipei.
“It’s not what it was in August and this could, hopefully, pave the way, let’s say, to calming the situation a bit on the Straits between China and the United States,” Manalo said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies ahead of Tuesday’s talks.
Mr. Marcos last year succeeded President Rodrigo Duterte, who early in his tenure sought closer ties with China.
But experts say the Philippines has increasingly realized that appeasing China has not brought any progress with its giant neighbor to the north, which has ignored a 2016 international court ruling in favor of Manila over Beijing’s sweeping claims in the South China Sea. AFP with Rey E. Requejo, Charles Dantes, and Butch Gunio
Manila is also “aware that if an armed conflict between Beijing and Taipei erupts and intensifies over the Taiwan Strait, there is little chance the country will escape the adverse consequences,” Renato Cruz De Castro, an expert at De La Salle University, wrote in a recent essay for the Brookings Institution.
Repercussions could include “massive refugee flows, the rapid return of Filipino overseas workers based in Taiwan and the actual spread of the conflict to the Luzon Straits and even northern Luzon,” he wrote.
Vietnam, where Blinken will head later this week before traveling to a Group of Seven meeting in Japan, has also sought closer defense cooperation with the United States despite bitter war memories.
“Washington and Hanoi are almost completely aligned on the kind of Indo-Pacific we want to see,” said Daniel Kritenbrink, the top US diplomat for East Asia, “where large countries don’t bully small countries.”
The leader of another key US ally, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, pays a state visit to Washington on April 26.
The US effort to rally Asian allies comes after French President Emmanuel Macron raised eyebrows following a state visit to Beijing by saying that European allies of the United States should not get caught between Beijing and Washington in the standoff over Taiwan.
President Joe Biden’s administration and France played down the remarks but Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Republican, called them a “massive propaganda victory” for Beijing.
Nearly 18,000 troops are taking part in the annual exercises dubbed Balikatan, or “shoulder to shoulder” in Filipino, which for the first time will include a live-fire drill in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost entirely.
The drills follow Monday’s conclusion of a three-day Chinese military exercise that simulated targeted strikes and a blockade of self-ruled, democratic Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its territory.
Balikatan will include military helicopters landing on a Philippine island off the northern tip of the main island of Luzon, nearly 300 kilometers from Taiwan, and the retaking of another island by amphibious forces.
It will be the first time the exercises have been held under President Marcos, who has sought to strengthen ties with the United States after his predecessor Duterte trashed the alliance.
“In order for us to protect our sovereign territory, we really have to drill and exercise how we are going to retake an island that’s been taken away from us,” Philippine exercises spokesman Col. Michael Logico told reporters after the opening ceremony at a military camp in Manila.
In recent months, Manila and Washington have agreed to restart joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea and struck a deal to expand the US forces’ footprint in the Philippines, which has infuriated China.
About 12,200 American, 5,400 Filipino and just over 100 Australian soldiers will participate in the two weeks of Balikatan exercises — about twice as many as last year.
About 50 leftwing protesters staged a rally outside the opening ceremony venue, calling on the Philippine government to scrap the exercises.
As part of the exercises, troops will stage an amphibious landing on the western island of Palawan, the closest Philippine landmass to the Spratly Islands, where Beijing and Manila have rival claims.
The Americans will also use their Patriot missiles, considered one of the best air defense systems in the world, and the HIMARS precision rocket system, which has helped Ukrainian forces fighting the Russian invaders.
The two armies originally planned to fire live rounds at sea off the northern province of Ilocos Norte, about 355 kilometers from Taiwan’s south coast, but later on had to move it further down the South China Sea, Philippine Army Maj. Gen. Marvin Licudine said.
The original site was “not sufficiently prepared” for unloading the needed equipment, he added.
The new venue is less than 300 kilometers east of the Chinese-held Scarborough Shoal.
The exercises will enhance “tactics, techniques and procedures across a wide range of military operations,” said Philippine military spokesman Col. Medel Aguilar.
Soon after the opening ceremony in Manila, the Philippine defense and foreign ministers will jointly meet their US counterparts in Washington.
The Philippine Army (PA) on Tuesday announced that it will be conducting a live-fire exercise using the FGM-148 “Javelin” anti-tank system at Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija on April 13.
Army spokesperson Col. Xerxes Trinidad said the live-fire drills follow “Javelin” lectures and simulations during the just concluded “Salaknib” exercises which took place from March 13 to April 4.
The FGM-148 “Javelin” missile has proven effective in neutralizing tanks and other armored vehicles in the conflict between Russian and Ukraine. The portable anti-tank system has been in service since 1996 and has been continuously upgraded.
Its fire-and-forget design uses automatic infrared guidance that allows the user to seek cover immediately after launch.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Manalo on Tuesday said the goals to achieve long-term economic growth and protect its sovereignty from threats and “infringements” have galvanized the Philippines’ strategic partnership with the United States.
In his speech before a forum organized by Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., Manalo pointed out that the high-level visits conducted by Washington—including that of Vice President Kamala Harris, State Secretary Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin—to the Philippines showed how the “modern alliance” between the two countries will look like, as both sides pursue their shared vision.
Manalo said the socio-economic security and defense capability enhancement will be the focal points of the US-Philippines strategic bilateral relations.
“Repeated infringements” on the Philippine sovereignty that go against many international laws have led the Philippines to enhance its defense capabilities, Manalo said.
This is why the Philippines continues to fortify its alliance with the US and expand its own capacity by partnering with other countries, such as Japan and Australia, he added.
“The Philippines has been clear and consistent about our interest in maintaining the South China Sea as a sea of peace and stability—and our aim to boost our defense capabilities, including in the framework of EDCA,” he said, referring to the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the United States.
He said safeguarding and exercising the Philippines’ rights over its exclusive economic zone would protect the livelihood of Filipino fishermen and ensure their access to fishing grounds.
Also on Tuesday, Zambales Gov. Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. urged government agencies and military and police forces in Central Luzon to maintain heightened security amid the deployment of foreign troops in the region for military exercises between the Philippines and the United States.
Presiding over the first quarter meeting of the reorganized Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC), Ebdane called on both civilian and military units of the government to anticipate situations that may threaten peace in the region during the visit of foreign troops. – AFP with Rey E. Requejo, Charles Dantes, and Butch Gunio