U.S. can’t afford to lose the Philippines | The Japan Times
▻https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/02/24/commentary/world-commentary/u-s-cant-afford-lose-philippines
Demonstrating in front of the Department of National Defense in Manila on Friday, members of the activist group Gabriela Alliance for Women call for the termination of U.S.-Philippines military exercises for 2020.
AFP-JIJI
The U.S. provided a half-billion dollars in security assistance from 2016 to 2019. So it was shocking when the Philippines notified the U.S. this month that it intended to withdraw from the Visiting Forces Agreement, which since 1999 has allowed the presence of American troops. U.S. officials were surprised and dismayed; Secretary of Defense Mark Esper put it very mildly when he called it a “move in the wrong direction.”
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Relations between the U.S. and the Philippines have always been fraught, but this is the biggest crisis since the fall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Washington should not allow Duterte to push his people into the arms of China, which can use proximity and a perceived lack of U.S. engagement in ways that America’s friends in the Philippines, and across the entire South China Sea, will come to regret in the decades ahead.