PBBM concedes country’s geographical location puts it ‘on the front line’
It’s “very hard” to imagine that the Philippines would not be pulled into a possible conflict between China and Taiwan, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. told a Japanese business magazine as he came home Sunday from Tokyo following a five-day official visit.
“When we look at the situation in the area, especially the tensions in the Taiwan Strait, we can see that just by our geographical location, should there, in fact, be conflict in that area … it’s very hard to imagine a scenario where the Philippines will not somehow getinvolved,” Mr. Marcos told Nikkei Asia in an exclusive interview, which was published on its website.
“We will be brought into the conflict because of whoever is… whichever sides are at work,” the President added.
Despite warmer ties with China, especially under his predecessor President Rodrigo Duterte, Mr. Marcos met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida with security and defense as key topics.
Defense officials from both countries have also said they were closer to signing a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA)-type pact that the Philippines currently has with the United States, which wants to preserve the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, areas of which are wholly claimed by China.
Mr. Marcos on Friday also said the Philippines would review a “tripartite agreement” with its two close allies, the US and Japan.
The President told Nikkei Asia that his home province of Ilocos Norte is just a 40-minute flight away from the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung.
“We feel that we’re very much on the front line,” he said, adding thatdifferences between the Chinese and Taiwanese should be solved diplomatically rather than militarily.
“I sincerely believe that nobody wants to go to war… But we havecontinued to advise and to counsel all the parties involved to show restraint,” Mr. Marcos said.
The President and Japanese Prime Minister on Thursday agreed to find ways to bolster their countries’ defense ties, Nikkei Asia reported.
The possible VFA would make it easier for Japanese troops to be deployed in the Philippines for disaster response and military drills.
Manila has an existing troop deployment deal with Washington, while Japan participates in their annual war games as an observer.
“The temperature in the region has slowly ratcheted up. We have to also, as a response, be more judicious in making sure that we are defending properly our sovereign territory,” Mr. Marcos said.
Asked if he was concerned about Manila’s new security deals with the US and Japan potentially derailing Chinese investments, Marcos told Nikkei Asia: “None of these actions are directed against China.”
“Now, the coordination, the joint exercises now that we are doing with other countries such as Japan, such as South Korea, such as Australia, is really a response by all of us to what we see as a heightening of tensions in the region,” he said.
“The primordial interest is to have continuing safe passage through the South China Sea,” where around $3 trillion worth of trade passes annually, Mr. Marcos added.
“Many of our economies depend on it. Japan, including China even,” he said. “That is something that’s very, very important to all of us around the region.”
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on Sunday welcomed the plan to allow Japanese troops to hold exercises and exchanges with Filipino soldiers through an agreement like the country’s VFA with the US.
During Mr. Marcos’s visit to Japan, House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez said that Manila and Tokyo were in the “general direction” of drafting an agreement similar to the VFA.
“It will be to the advantage of the AFP,” Col. Medel Aguilar, spokesperson of the AFP told ABS-CBN News. “We will know more about their technology, hopefully acquire some of it, and be able to establish that capability that we need to protect what rightfully belongs to us.”
The plan to forge closer defense ties with Japan was in line with the President’s policy to be a “friend to all and enemy to no one,” he said.
Enhanced security and defense cooperation between Japan and the Philippines could ease tensions in the West Philippine Sea, which overlaps with the South China Sea, a political analyst said Saturday.
Froilan Calilung, a political science professor at the University of Santo Tomas, made this observation after the two countries agreed todiscuss “in-depth” issues concerning regional and international situations, including collaboration toward realizing a “free and openIndo-Pacific.”
The plan, he said, sends a message to countries like the United States and China that the security dimension is “not being monopolized by the regional or the world superpowers themselves.”
Calilung said the leaders from both countries agreed on how to attain a free and open Indo-Pacific, which could defuse some of the tension over the West Philippine Sea.
“These cooperative patterns are good. The President we have right now definitely is more statesman-like,” he added.
In a joint statement, Mr. Marcos and Kishida vowed to strengthen the two nations’ defense and security cooperation through “strategic reciprocal port calls and aircraft visits, transfer of more defense equipment and technology, continuous cooperation previously-transferred defense equipment and capacity building.”
The professor said the Philippines would reap the benefits of Marcos’ five-day working visit to Japan, given the “very positive” response from the Japanese government and private leaders.
In an interview with Japan’s Kyodo News, the President said one of the “many other issues” raised by the Philippine delegation in Tokyo is fostering alliances with its long-time partners.
“It is something that we certainly are going to be studying upon my return to the Philippines. I think just part of the continuing process of strengthening our alliances because in this rather confusing, and I dare say dangerous situation that we have,” he said.