US officials are doing their best to ignore Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s hostile rhetoric and taking comfort in the fact that he has yet to translate his words into less military cooperation.
The US is trying not to give the new Philippine president, who recently appeared to liken himself to Hitler, a pretext for further outbursts while at the same time pressing ahead with military and other cooperation at lower levels, US officials said on Monday.
Two US officials said that while an open break with Manila would create problems in a region where China has grown increasingly aggressive, there are no serious discussions about taking punitive steps, such as cutting aid to the Philippines.
Photo: EPA
Mindful of anti-colonial sentiment, US officials do not want to say or do anything that might encourage Duterte to turn his rhetoric into reality.
“He is like Mr Trump,” a senior Southeast Asian official said, referring to the US Republican presidential candidate. “He craves attention, and the more he gets, the more outrageous he becomes. It is wisest to ignore him.”
In the past month, Duterte has appeared to call US President Barack Obama a “son of a bitch,” leading the White House to cancel a planned meeting, and to liken himself to Hitler, saying he would “be happy” to kill 3 million drug users and peddlers in the country.
Duterte said he regretted using that language to describe Obama and apologized to the Jewish community for his references to the Holocaust.
In his latest broadside, Duterte on Sunday said he got expressions of support from Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and from an unnamed Chinese official after he complained of ill-treatment by Washington.
While Duterte has publicly suggested he would end joint military exercises, push US special operations forces out of the southern Philippines and review a defense pact signed two years ago, US officials said none of this has happened.
‘ALL BLUSTER’
US military officials said they were well aware of Duterte’s comments, but their counterparts in the Philippines had reassured them that business continues as usual.
“No one is really losing sleep over it,” one US defense official said on condition of anonymity.
“It is all bluster,” a second defense official said, adding that Duterte’s remarks “have not bled over into our world.”
There are about 100 US soldiers in Zamboanga City, a Philippine military spokesman said, well below the 1,200 US forces initially deployed to help train and advise local troops fight the Abu Sayyaf Group, a Muslim militant group.
The Philippine military spokesman said he was not aware of any plan to pull them out.
Other than Japan’s 1942-1945 occupation, the US ruled the Philippines from 1898 until 1946.
The two nations signed a mutual defense treaty in 1951, but their close cooperation diminished a quarter century ago, when the Philippines kicked US forces out of two large military installations, including the naval base at Subic Bay.
However, two years ago, the two signed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which allows US troops to build storage facilities for maritime security and humanitarian and disaster response operations.
Under the pact, two C-130 transport planes and 100 US servicemen have been at an air base in the central Philippines since Sept. 25 as part of a two-week exercise.
US Commander Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman, said the EDCA is an international agreement, and Washington and Manila are bound by international law.
Citing the agreement’s text, Ross said it has an initial term of 10 years, after which either side may end it with a year’s written notice.
The Philippines is a key element of the Obama administration’s policy of “rebalancing” its foreign policy toward Asia, and the two nations have begun joint patrols in the South China Sea as China asserts its territorial claims.
China claims 90 percent of the South China Sea, which is believed to be rich in oil and gas, its claims overlapping with those of Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.
DRUG WAR
US officials are disturbed by the fact that thousands of people have been killed since Duterte took office three months ago and launched a promised drugs war, yet they value the country’s long-standing military ties.
“Sometimes you have to hold your nose about the individuals and deal with the countries. The United States doesn’t have the luxury of writing off the Philippines, so we have to find a way to deal with this extraordinarily distasteful leader while still conveying our opposition to his human rights policies,” said Frank Jannuzi, a former US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Asia specialist now at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation.
US lawmakers have conveyed their concerns in repeated conversations with the Philippine embassy, where diplomats are torn between their need to represent Duterte’s government and their concerns about what he has been saying.
The US has sent the Philippines hundreds of millions of US dollars in foreign aid and military and development assistance in recent years, making it the third-largest Asian recipient of US military aid after Afghanistan and Pakistan.
One US official said that while the Obama administration is more worried about Duterte that it is letting on publicly, there is no great concern about the defense implications of a political break because the US has alternatives.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said these include the Navy Region Center Singapore, training facilities in Brunei and the possibility of greater naval access in Vietnam.
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