Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte promised an end to military exercises with longtime ally the United States today. Speaking from Hanoi, Vietnam, Duterte said that he was “serving notice now to the Americans” that an upcoming drill “will be the last military exercise.” That’s likely to come as a shock to U.S. officials, who have routinely insisted that, behind Duterte’s rhetoric, U.S.-Philippine cooperation is progressing as normal.
Earlier this month, Duterte ordered U.S. Special Forces assisting Philippine troops in counterinsurgency operations in Mindanao to leave. He later walked back those comments, explaining, “I didn’t say [U.S. forces] have to leave immediately… I never said, ‘Get out of the Philippines,’ for after all, we need them there in the [South] China Sea.”
That last part is especially interesting, as Duterte has given little indication that he wants U.S. help in the Philippines’ maritime disputes with China. In his remarks in Hanoi, in fact, Duterte made it clear that he is not interested in conducting joint patrols with Washington in the South China Sea. Whereas his predecessor, Benigno Aquino, cleaved close to the United States in the face of increasingly assertive Chinese behavior in waters also claimed by Manila, Duterte dismissed the idea of a Philippine-Chinese conflict as “imaginary.”