The Philippines and the United States have agreed to further improve their defense relations and strengthen their interoperability and exchange of security information following a meeting between Department of National Defense (DND) Officer-in-Charge Jose Faustino Jr. and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III in Hawaii on Saturday.
“Our meeting highlighted the importance of the bilateral defense relations between the Philippines and the US, and we were able to discuss forward-looking, practical, and tangible ways on how to empower our partnership through improving defense cooperation across various lines of efforts, as well as increasing interoperability and information sharing between our two armed forces with the end view of further enhancing the credibility of our alliance,” Faustino said.
The meeting, held upon the invitation of Austin, was the second time this month that both officials engaged in talks following Austin’s phone call to Faustino wherein they discussed bilateral defense and security cooperation under the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT).
Sharing a little bit about the focus of their discussions, Austin said he and his Philippine counterpart agreed on a number of ways to “continue to grow” the defense and security cooperation between the two countries.
“As you know, we’ve been able to move forward our VFA (Visiting Forces Agreement) and we discussed EDCA (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement) which is critical to our alliance cooperation and strengthening our combined capabilities… it’s about the engagement, it’s about the opportunity to work together and that’s really the focus of our discussion today,” Austin said.
Austin and Faustino held a news briefing and answered questions related to the Russia-Ukraine war, North Korea, and regional security issues, including the West Philippine Sea (WPS) and the Taiwan Strait, which both involved China.
“Our next step concerning the WPS and the SCS (South China Sea), Philippines underscore the importance of diplomacy and dialogue for peaceful resolution of these issues in SCS. This includes continuous engagement with China and both bilateral and multilateral platforms or multilateral dialogues without prejudice of course to the PH’s position in WPS to facilitate mutual trust and understanding,” Faustino said.
“Admittedly the volatile situation in the SCS and WPS remains as the PH’s form of security concern and as it is right now, we continue to engage with like-minded countries and make sure that the rule of law and the rules based on international order will prevail in the SCS,” he added.
Earlier, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr. said there is no conflict in the WPS. Instead, he said, what the country has is a territorial challenge from China, with Beijing “claiming a territory that belongs to the Philippines.”
Austin reiterated that the US remains committed to “maintaining an open and free Indo-Pacific region,” and it wants to “maintain the ability to sail the seas and navigate the skies as we should be allowed to do and we will continue to work on that [until the very end].”
On the Taiwan issue, the US defense chief said they do not want to see “any type of unilateral change to the status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, adding, “we are focused on making sure that we are working together to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
“We remain focused on making sure that we do everything we can to continue to strengthen our alliance with the ROK (Republic of Korea). We remain committed to the protection and defense of the ROK. We’ll continue to work with our allies here and other allies in the region like the Japanese. We remain our focus going forward,” he also said.
On the other hand, Faustino expressed the government’s serious concern over security developments in the Taiwan Strait as he called on both China and Taiwan to exercise restraint and diplomacy, while saying the country adheres to the “One China” policy.
“In view of the volatile situation in the cross Straits, the Philippines’sw immediate concern is the safety of our OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) in Taiwan which, is at this point, numbering to around 130,000 to 150,000 OFWs,” he said.
“And we continue to update and enhance our contingency plans. It is also imperative to regularly update and exercise the PHL-US mutual defense concept plan under the ambit of MDT based on our dynamic security environment,” he added.
Image credits: AP