A Budding Alliance: Vietnam And The Philippines Confront China (tags)
Last year, the Philippines brought a complaint against China’s aggressive actions in the West Philippine Sea to the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal. The Chinese “were really unprepared for that and were really embarrassed by it,” one of Vietnam’s top experts on Chinese diplomacy told me during my recent visit to Hanoi.
Filipinos should not depend on the US for its own defense of the Kalayaan Island Group- AJ (tags)
If there is the best way to illustrate the lop-sided Philippines-United Stares relations is about, it can be shown when latest US missile destroyers will join ageing Philippine warships for naval exercises this week in a timely show of unity as tensions with China escalate over a maritime dispute. While US has modern missile ships it has given WWII vintage ships like all the war materials hands me down to its puppet state. And the bad thing is that the Philippines has to buy it not at a bargain price but a cut throat cost. For 11 days of the RP-US exercises start on Tuesday off the southwest Philippine island of Palawan in the Sulu Sea, close to the disputed waters of the West Philippine Sea where Manila has complained of increasing Chinese provocation. Officially the training is an annual event not linked to the territorial row, but it nevertheless offers the Philippines comfort shortly after appealing to its long-time ally and former colonial power for help in containing China.