President Duterte, speaking in a country that is a staunch United States ally and hosts 50,000 American troops, said on Wednesday he wants his country to be free of foreign troops, possibly within two years.
“I want to be friends to China,” he told an audience of businesspeople in Tokyo. “I do not need the arms. I do not want missiles established in my country. I do not need to have the airports to host the bombers.”
He was referring to visiting US troops, whose presence in five Philippine military camps was established under a security deal signed under Duterte’s predecessor as a counterbalance to China’s growing military assertiveness in the region.
Since taking office at the end of June, Duterte has reached out to Beijing while criticizing US foreign policy. His approach has caused consternation in both the US and Japan.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to ask Duterte about his foreign policy when they meet later on Wednesday.
In his speech, the Philippine leader departed at the end of his prepared remarks on economic development and investment to address the topic that he said he knows is “what is in everybody’s mind.”
He said he is pursuing an independent foreign policy, and that he wants foreign troops to leave, maybe in the next two years. “I want them out,” he said.
“I may have ruffled the feelings of some, but that is how it is,” he said. “We will survive without the assistance of America, maybe a lesser quality of life, but as I said, we will survive.”
Duterte is on a three-day visit to Japan. After meeting Abe, he is attending a banquet hosted by the Japanese leader. On Thursday he is set to meet Emperor Akihito.
Senate Minority Leader Ralph G. Recto said the government must be ready to fill the logistical void in quick disaster response that is likely to ensue from the Duterte administration’s decision to mothball the Philippines’s Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (Edca) with the US.
While the senator clarified he was not against Duterte ditching Edca, Recto said Philippine authorities should be prepared to “finance and fill whatever logistical void is left by visiting American troops, recalling their role as “first responders” in typhoons and calamities that hit the country.
Recto said, “The vacuum will be felt more in disaster-relief operations, because in many typhoons in the past, Americans have been the first responders, even sending entire carrier battle groups to help in rescue and reconstruction.”
He asserted that in the era of climate change, with its powerful typhoons, “we need all the help we can get due to our lack of resources to airlift aid to damaged places.”
Recto recalled that in the aftermath of Supertyphoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan) in November 2013, the US military sent the USS George Washington carrier strike group, dispatched 13,400 personnel, including Marines in two ships, deployed 66 aircraft and 12 other ships. He added that in June 2008, the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group also parked itself in the Visayan Sea to bring aid to victims of Typhoon Frank.
Image credits: Issei Kato/AP