Photographer: Ted Aljibe / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Ted Aljibe / AFP / Getty Images
The Philippines said US President Joe Biden’s administration has sworn that America would help the Southeast Asian nation should an armed attack occur in the South China Sea. pledge made by former President Donald Trump’s administration.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Philippine Secretary of State Teodoro Locsin in an appeal that the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the two nations “will apply to armed attacks on the Philippines,” the Manila envoy told Washington. Jose Manuel Romualdez at a virtual forum organized by the Association of Foreign Correspondents.
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The US State Department, in a separate statement Wednesday, Blinken told Locsin about the treaty’s application “to armed attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific, including the South China Sea.”
The reassurance comes amid Beijing’s continued assertion of its claims about the South China Sea overlapping with those of Manila and other countries in the region. China recently passed a law giving the Coast Guard more freedom to fire at foreign ships, a move that could increase the risk of miscalculation in disputed waters and affect the Philippines protested.