The Philippines’ top defense official has questioned a key treaty with the US over fears it could drag the country into war in the South China Sea.
The West Philippine Sea is the local term for the South China Sea, where US naval vessels have been conducting freedom of navigation exercises, sparking furious denunciations from China, which claims much of the region as its territory and has built up and militarized islands and reefs throughout the sea.
On Monday, a US B-52 bomber flew near contested islands in the sea, according to US Pacific Air Forces, which oversees air operations in the region. This was the first flyover involving a nuclear-capable B-52 since November.
The MDT between the US and the Philippines was signed in 1951, in the early years of the Cold War. It commits both countries to come to the assistance of the other in the event of an “armed attack on the metropolitan territory of either of the parties, or on the island territories under its jurisdiction in the Pacific or on its armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific.”
In December, Lorenzana ordered a review into whether the treaty was “still valid or still relevant today.”
“It’s a 67-year-old treaty. Is it still relevant to our national interest? That’s what we should look at. Let us look at it dispassionately, without considering about past ties, about future ties — dispassionately,” he said, adding the end goal was “to maintain it, strengthen it, or scrap it.
