The secretary of the United States Defense Pete Hegseth has announced That next week he will visit the Philippines as the first stage of his journey into the Indus-Pacific. The visit was motivated by interviews that will concern the development of greater military deterrence against the attitude deemed aggressive of Beijing in the dispute of the southern Chinese Sea. Hegseth will then be in Manila on 28 and 29 March to meet his Filipino counterpart Gilberto Teodoro and the president Ferdinand Marcos Juniorwith whom the US secretary will decide how to stem more and more assertive actions by Beijing in the southern Chinese Sea and provide more important support to the Philippine security forces, as per the administration led by Donald Trump.
Action, this, which is part of the foreign policy program “America First” of Trump and which has triggered concerns about the scope of the United States’s commitment to the region during his new mandate. But it is certain that it is a strong message to China that reiterates the solid bilateral relationships between the United States and the Philippines. On the opposite front, China practically claims the entire southern Chinese Sea, geographically a real “funnel” in which important commercial routes pass and where safety patrols are carried out. Filippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also advance claims on these waters, however full of resources, and very busy, but the clash episodes between the Coast Guard and the Chinese and the Philippine naval forces in the last two years have deconted in number. In his first telephone conversation between President Gilberto Teodoro and Secretary Hegseth, which took place last month, the latter had reiterated the Ferrean commitment of the United States against the 1951 mutual defense treaty and its importance for the maintenance of the “safe and prosperous” indo-transposition area. Since the time of the Vietnam War, the Philippines have hosted two of the major US military bases abroad, namely the Naval Base of Subic Bay and the Aerial of Clark, widely used in the sixties and seventies to hit Vietnam, and therefore passed under Filipino control in 1994.
In fact, the two diplomats discussed the importance of restoring deterrence in the southern Chinese Sea, even working with allies and partners; of the strengthening of the military capabilities of the Philippine Armed Forces in terms of discovery (radar and satellites) and deterrence (armaments). However, this approach marks a line of continuity with what was made by the Administration of Joe Biden, That no later than last year had repeatedly remembered Beijing that the United States are obliged to help the defense of the Philippines precisely on the basis of the 1951 Treaty and that if the forces, ships and Filippine planes suffered an armed attack in the Pacific, included in the Southern Chinese Sea, Washington would be forced to intervene. China had therefore warned Washington, in exchange, to stay out of what defines a purely Asian dispute and to stop the actions that jeopardize “harmony and stability” of the region. The treaty between the United States and the Philippines was amended and strengthened several times, the last in 2014, allowing Washington to reposition the military equipment area and distributing soldiers at nine military bases of the archipelago.
Also because the territory controlled by Manila is considered decidedly strategic In case of a war between Taiwan and China. Last year the US also strengthened their presence at Guam, the largest strategic military base in Washington in the region, site whose importance is relevant for several reasons, including the hosting one of the control centers of the Navstar-Gps constellation. Here the new structure, called Camp Blaz, hosts almost 5,000 men between Marines, Marina and Air Force staff (USEF)
