Monthly Archives: May 2021

US ready to pull troops from Philippines ‘in months’ if no new VFA: expert

Some 400 American soldiers and defence contractors deployed in the southern Philippines could be pulled out within months if Washington and Manila do not sign a new Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) by then. So heard an international conference titled “The Philippines Hedging Between Alliance or Appeasement: Can the Biden Administration Tip the Balance?” The US […]

Lacson: PH should boost alliance amid sea row with China

Members of the Philippine Coast Guard participate during a training on navigation, small boat operations, maintenance, and logistical operations in the West Philippine Sea in Palawan on April 24, 2021. Philippine Coast Guard, Handout MANILA – The Philippines should seek alliance with the world’s powerful militaries amid its maritime dispute with China, a senator said […]

Philippines’ Duterte issues gag order on cabinet over South China Sea spat

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte barred his cabinet from talking about the South China Sea in public on Monday after weeks of strong rebukes by his ministers against China’s conduct in the contested waters. Tensions between the Philippines and its giant neighbour have escalated since March, with Manila filing daily diplomatic protests over the presence of […]

Tiny Sandy Cay reveals the big lie

There is a tiny sandbar called Sandy Cay about two nautical miles from Pag-asa Island, which at about 37 hectares is the largest Philippine-occupied island in the Spratlys. Before 2017, Sandy Cay was a disappearing sandbar. Half of the year Sandy Cay would be above water at high tide when the action of the waves […]

The United Kingdom Dispatches HMS Queen Elizabeth to Confront China

Are U.S. allies finally rallying around Washington’s more aggressive stance toward Beijing? By Michael Auslin, the author of Asia’s New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific and is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. People watch from the shore as the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier leaves Portsmouth Naval Base in southeastern England on […]

Mad at Duterte West PH Sea jet ski quip, fisherman says President a ‘joke’

MANILA – A Filipino fisherman in Infanta, Pangasinan said Wednesday he took offense at President Rodrigo Duterte’s recent clarification that his 2016 campaign statement of riding a jet ski and challenging Chinese incursions in the West Philippine Sea was just a joke. “Kaming mga mangingisda dito, masama ang loob namin. Ba’t gano’n lang, joke joke […]

Locsin to Roque: Leave foreign affairs matters to me

‘There is only one voice on what’s ours: mine. Period…. I speak for the President on this subject,’ says Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr after Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque’s wrong claim regarding Julian Felipe Reef Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr reiterated that only the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) should speak on the country’s foreign […]

How the Myanmar coup and South China Sea disputes are deepening Asean’s irrelevance

“An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted,” Arthur Miller once observed. In the same vein, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), a once promising regional organisation, is confronting its own moment of truth. The raging civil war in Myanmar, and the festering disputes in the South China Sea, […]

Beijing adds ships in disputed South China Sea even after repeated protests, says Philippine top envoy

MANILA (BLOOMBERG) – China has added more ships in a disputed area of the South China Sea even after the Philippines’ repeated protests, according to President Rodrigo Duterte’s top diplomat, who has pledged to take up the issue with his Chinese counterpart. The South-east Asian nation is considering another protest after Chinese vessels in the […]