Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he wants to cut the cord with the U.S. and pivot to China and Russia, words that signal a deepening split with his country’s biggest military ally and prompted bafflement in Washington.
American officials said they would seek an explanation of Duterte’s pronouncement on Thursday during a state visit to Beijing, several weeks after he told President Barack Obama to “go to hell.” Since taking office in June, the brash 71-year-old leader has repeatedly questioned his nation’s links with the U.S. while touting the economic benefits of closer ties with China.
“I announce my separation from the U.S.,” Duterte said to a packed room of business leaders in the Chinese capital after meeting with President Xi Jinping. Duterte also said he might go to Russian President Vladimir Putin and tell him “there’s three of us against the world.”
The comments marked Duterte’s strongest yet in disparaging an alliance that has underpinned the U.S.’s Asia-Pacific strategy since World War II. Yet it remains to be seen whether he will follow through on the heated rhetoric with actions — such as jointly exploring for energy with Beijing in disputed waters or tearing up defense agreements that give the U.S. access to bases in the Philippines. The U.S. has strong ties with the Philippine defense establishment, and the nation’s citizens say they trust America more than China by a wide margin.
“Symbolically none of this good for the U.S., but in concrete terms the U.S. has thick skin,” said Malcolm Cook, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “If the Duterte government starts to restrict U.S. access to Philippine bases or something like that, then the U.S. will have a problem.”
On Thursday, State Department spokesman John Kirby described the U.S. as “baffled” by Duterte’s rhetoric. The U.S. will seek an explanation when Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, visits the Philippines this weekend on a previously scheduled trip, Kirby said.
‘At Odds’
Duterte’s comments are “inexplicably at odds with the very close relationship that we have with the Filipino people, as well as the government there, on many different levels, not just from a security perspective,” Kirby said. The U.S. remains committed to the two countries’ mutual defense treaty, he said.
For a QuickTake on Duterte and his nation’s economy, click here.
While Duterte’s cabinet members often seek to tone down his remarks — a routine they followed again on Thursday — the president has kept repeating them. In his speech to the Chinese business leaders, Duterte said that the separation from the U.S. would be both military and economic, without elaborating. Duterte said he was mulling plans to require U.S. visitors to the Philippines to obtain a visa.
In a joint statement issued after Duterte’s speech, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia said the Philippine Cabinet would move strongly and swiftly toward regional economic integration.
“We will maintain relations with the West, but we desire stronger integration with our neighbors,” the statement said. Overseas investors, however, appear to have been unsettled by the mixed messages. The peso dropped to the weakest in seven years this month as $666 million fled from the nation’s local-currency stocks and bonds since Aug. 1.
To read about what it would take for Duterte to cut defense ties with the U.S., click here.
Earlier in the day, China announced a resumption of bilateral talks on contested territory in the South China Sea, an issue that had previously pushed the Philippines closer to America. China’s Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Liu Zhenmin hailed a “new stage of maritime cooperation.”
“It’s a win-win for both,” said Kang Lin, deputy director of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, China’s only state-backed research institution dedicated to South China Sea research. “The Philippines can reap a commercial harvest from his trip, including much-needed infrastructure funding. And for China, it’s the temporary end of the South China Sea migraine that lasted for the past couple of years.”
$9 Billion
Officials from both countries signed 13 pacts on areas including trade, investment and tourism. China agreed to extend $9 billion in credit to the Philippines, the Inquirer reported, including $6 billion in soft loans. China overtook the U.S. as the Philippines’s largest trading partner in 2006.
Duterte welcomed investment from China, telling the business forum: “I have separated from them, so I will be dependent on you for a long time.”
“If China can get the Philippines out of the orbit of the U.S., it will be a big victory for it even if the Philippines doesn’t necessarily align itself with China,” said Ramon Casiple, executive director at the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform in Manila. “Duterte wants to get more benefits from all — that’s the card he’s playing and he’s playing it to the hilt.”
Before his meeting with Xi, Duterte told hundreds of Filipinos in Beijing that “it’s time to say goodbye” to the U.S.
“Foreign policy veers now” toward China, Duterte said on Wednesday night. “No more American interference. No more American exercises,” he told a cheering crowd. “I will not go to America anymore” for assistance, he said. “We will just be insulted there.”
‘Zero-Sum Game’
The U.S. has expressed concern about Duterte’s policies. Philip Goldberg, the U.S. envoy in Manila, said Wednesday that the Philippines’s efforts to improve ties with China “shouldn’t be a zero-sum game.” Kirby at the State Department also said the U.S. welcomes better China-Philippines ties.
While Duterte and the Philippines weren’t mentioned in Wednesday night’s presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, U.S. relations with China and Russia came up repeatedly. Trump again said he would pressure American partners to pay more for American assistance, while Clinton said the alliances made both the U.S. and the world safer.
Even as Duterte warmed up to China, Beijing appeared eager to distance itself from his anti-U.S. rhetoric. A commentary run by the official Chinese news agency Xinhua on Thursday said the rekindling of ties between Manila and Beijing carried “no meaning” for the Philippine-U.S. alliance.
“The Chinese government never attempts to build up its ties with other countries on condition that these nations have to sacrifice their partnership with any third party,” it said.
‘Pay the Piper’
Despite his remarks, Duterte still has yet to commit to anything that may permanently undermine the long-standing alliance between the U.S. and the Philippines. He hasn’t torn up any agreements, conceded that China has sovereignty in disputed waters or undermined the right of the U.S. to conduct military operations in the South China Sea.
“The ‘yet’ is a very big ‘yet,’” said Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra. “At a certain point, if Duterte wants to reap the economic benefits from his visit to China he will need to pay the piper. He will need to do what he is saying, otherwise he won’t get anything from China.”
—With assistance from Clarissa Batino Ditas Lopez Ting Shi Chris Blake and David Tweed To contact the reporters on this story: Andreo Calonzo in Manila at acalonzo1@bloomberg.net, Nick Wadhams in Washington at nwadhams@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Daniel Ten Kate at dtenkate@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert