US Vice President Kamala Harris is set to meet Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Monday during a visit to the Southeast Asian nation to strengthen ties and counter China’s growing regional influence.
Harris is the highest-ranking US official to visit Manila since Marcos took power in June, and signals a growing relationship between the longtime allies after years of frosty ties under his pro-Beijing predecessor Rodrigo Duterte.
She will also meet with her Filipino counterpart Sara Duterte, daughter of the former leader whose deadly drug war sparked an international probe into alleged human rights abuses.
The United States has a long and complex relationship with the Philippines — and the Marcos family. Marcos’ dictator father ruled the former US colony for two decades with the support of Washington, which viewed him as a Cold War ally.
Washington is now trying to strengthen its security alliance with Manila under another Marcos presidency.
These include a 2014 Mutual Defense Treaty and Compact, known by the acronym EDCA, that allows the US military to stockpile defense equipment and supplies at five Philippine bases.
It also allows US troops to rotate through these military bases.
EDCA stalled under Duterte, but the United States and the Philippines have expressed support for accelerated implementation as China grows more assertive.
“We have identified new sites and have begun a process with the Philippines to finalize them,” a US official told reporters on condition of anonymity ahead of Harris’ meeting with Marcos.
“The United States has committed over $82 million for implementation (of the existing bases) and more are on the way.”
On Tuesday, Harris will visit the Philippine island province of Palawan, which lies on hotly contested waters in the South China Sea.
China claims sovereignty over most of the sea, while the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have overlapping claims to parts of it.
Beijing has ignored a 2016 ruling by an international tribunal that its claims have no legal basis.
Harris will meet and address members of the Philippine Coast Guard aboard one of the country’s two largest Coast Guard vessels.
It will “reaffirm the strength of the alliance and our commitment to maintaining the international, rules-based order in the South China Sea and the broader Indo-Pacific,” the US official said, using the US term for the Asia-Pacific region.
– US engagement –
Harris’ trip to the Philippines is part of a US effort to dispel any doubts about its involvement in the Asia-Pacific region, while China aggressively expands its regional influence.
It comes after Harris and US President Joe Biden met separately with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week.
Harris reiterated Biden’s message that “we must maintain open lines of communication to responsibly manage competition between our countries” while speaking with Xi on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Bangkok, a White House official said .
While their trip to Palawan would likely anger China, the United States would have more to gain by sending a message of reassurance to the Philippines, said Greg Poling, director of the US-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.
“The Philippines will be much more reassured than China will be irritated,” Poling said.
Among the initiatives scheduled to be launched during Harris’ trip are negotiations for a civil nuclear deal between the United States and the Philippines.
That could lead to future sales of US nuclear reactors to the Southeast Asian country.
Marcos is a strong supporter of renewable energy and has insisted that building nuclear power plants in the disaster-prone country needs to be reconsidered.
However, before the United States can sell nuclear equipment to the Philippines, the two countries must sign a civilian nuclear pact known as the “123 Accord,” designed to prevent nuclear proliferation.
