Allowing the United States to have four more bases is not a direct military challenge to China, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos said Thursday.
The resolution to provide the United States with military bases closer to the autonomous island of Taiwan was not a driving force of the Manila resolution, Marcos said.
During negotiations over the new sites, Biden’s administration never raised the concept of using them as “staging areas” for offensive operations in Taiwan, Marcos said. These operations would be “outside the parameters” of previous agreements between the allies.
“The United States never said it was a possibility” or asked the Philippines to contribute forces for an operation in Taiwan, Marcos said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies event. “I think we’re on the same page with the United States on this. “
Amid tensions between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan’s future, President Joe Biden has said that if China attacks Taiwan, the United States will come to its aid.
“We have made it very transparent [to Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang], the foundations we have opened under the original [the 2014 Expanded Defense Cooperation Agreement] with the United States are due to the effects of climate change,” Marcos said.
China has condemned the new sites, saying they threaten peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific and target Beijing.
China, along with Hong Kong, remains the Philippines’ largest trading partner. Manila has fared well with Beijing on economic and industrial issues, while relying on its 71-year-old treaty with Washington for its security.
“China’s withdrawal is an option,” Marcos said.
But continuously in the question-and-answer session, he described the global situation facing the Philippines as “a confused geopolitical situation,” with Beijing in reluctant territorial disputes and with the war in Ukraine raising doubts about the sovereignty of small nations.
Marcos cited the great devastation caused by typhoons Yolanda in 2014 and Odette in 2021 in the Philippines and how the U. S. military was not able to do so. The U. S. responded by offering humanitarian aid and crisis aid.
The 4 base sites were selected “to provide faster relief” to a country that “has been assessed as one of the most affected by climate change,” he said.
There has been no official announcement on what kind of weapons the U. S. will bring to the sites.
While China and the United States remain deadlocked, the U. S. and Philippine armed forces recently ended their largest joint military exercise, Balikatan.
More than 17,600 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines participated in the exercises. Philippine officials said it demonstrated Manila’s considerations of national security, a preference for modernizing its forces and greater interoperability with the United States in the event of a crisis or emergency.
Marcos, whose stopover in Washington began earlier this week, arrived in the United States following a recent incident off the Spratly Islands in disputed waters, where two Philippine Coast Guard patrol boats narrowly escaped a collision with a Chinese warship.
In an interview this week with Reuters, Marcos said the Philippines would most likely begin joint freedom of navigation patrols with the United States, Japan and Australia in disputed areas of the South China Sea. He also told Reuters that Manila’s interest in a trilateral security deal with Japan and the United States was a long-term possibility, but did not elaborate.
At the same time, Manila and Beijing are embroiled in a bitterly bitter dispute over who controls Malampaya’s herbal fuel fields near Palawan. At the CSIS event, Marcos said the fields are for the Philippines to generate power for expected business growth, as a manufacturer of specialized batteries for electric vehicles.
He cited China’s use of the so-called “nine-dash line” for a wide swath of the South China Sea, compared to the Philippines’ “baseline” for its exclusive economic zone “recognized through UNCLOS [United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea]” as the center of disputes that also come with mining and fishing.
“There is no silver bullet” to end the dispute other than continuing negotiations, he said.
Marcos added that he had urged the Chinese to identify a “hotline” between the two nations “to keep degrees of misunderstanding at a manageable level. “Initial talks between Marcos and Chinese President Xi Jinping in January over the hotline involved friction between the two nations. on fishing rights, illegal catches and oil exploration. But so far, there has been no motion from Beijing.
Regarding Ukraine, the Philippines was surprised, as the world’s top country, when Russia invaded in 2022, Marcos said.
“We will have to provide a united front” to preserve a nation’s right to sovereignty and protect its borders from attacks at the UN General Assembly, he said, adding that the Philippines and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations condemned the attack and felt it has an effect of war, especially with food supplies.
“We have to close” Kiev, he said.
Marcos’ stopover was the first time a Philippine president stopped in Washington in a decade. Biden declared that the alliance between nations was “foolproof” in his welcoming address.
Speaking at the White House event, Marcos said, “[I]t is only natural for the Philippines to seek out its only treated spouse in the world and redefine the appointments we have and the roles we play in the face of those emerging tensions that we are now seeing around the South China Sea and the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions.
John Grady, former editor of the Navy Times, retired as communications director of the Association of the United States Army. His reporting on national defense and national security has given the impression of Breaking Defense, GovExec. com, NextGov. com, DefenseOne. com, Government Executive and USNI News.