Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete
Duterte declares upcoming Philippines-U.S. war games 'the last one'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/duterte-s...-business.html
"HANOI (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte plunged one of the United States' most important Asian alliances deeper into uncertainty on Wednesday by declaring upcoming U.S.-Philippine military exercises "the last", and ruling out any joint navy patrols.
The firebrand Duterte pledged to honor a longstanding security treaty with the United States but said China opposed joint marine drills in the Philippines starting next week and there would be no more war games with Washington after that.
"I am serving notice now to the Americans, this will be the last military exercise," Duterte said during a visit to Vietnam. "Jointly, Philippines-U.S.: the last one."...."
Well OK then.
I thing a reduction in aid is now called for. |
Talk about a schizophrenic government posture towards the US.
Love, Hate, Love, Hate.
I wonder what the Filipino people think? I haven't seen any opinion polls.
But there's roughly 80 million Catholic Filipinos and only 5 million Muslim Filipinos, I would think most of them would make natural allies.
While I could understand a post Marcos, post Cold War cold shoulder for a bit towards the US, this just seems really silly and potentially very stupid.
Not long ago Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines were all working on national internet backbone projects.
Australia didn't allow Chinese networking gear to be used, New Zealand made the mistake of using Chinese networking gear, and the Philippines reported ripped out the Chinese networking gear(at great expense) due to the associated national security risk when "little white fishing boats" started aggressively hitting the Filipino EEZ.
I met a pair of Filipino Coast Guard SOG guys a while's back. Good dudes with what sounded like a very hard and very under resourced job to do.
The sense I got from them was that they and their peers would love nothing more than healthy relationships and help from regional/global aligned nations.
Due to the fact they are dealing with a similar issue with China as Ukraine had/has with China.....magnified by EEZ resource exploitation.
This just seems totally incongruent to the anecdotal stuff I've heard from all the Filipinos I've met over the years.
Being a "hard man" and pandering to domestic audience fringes is one thing, and trying to be a Machiavellian geopolitical fence sitter is another, but this sounds like potentially irreversible suicide.