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WASHINGTON D.C., United States — President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and US President Joe Biden on Monday (early morning Tuesday, Philippine time) reaffirmed Manila and Washington’s decades-old defense alliance in a bilateral meeting at the White House.
In his opening statement before the meeting, Biden told Marcos that the US commitment to the defense of the Philippines remained “ironclad,” including the South China Sea.
A joint statement between the two leaders said that this meant that any armed attack on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft in the Pacific, including in the South China Sea, would invoke US mutual defense commitments under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty.
Marcos then told Biden that the US is Manila’s sole treaty ally in a region with “arguably the most complicated geopolitical situation in the world right now.”
According to a “fact sheet” released by the White House on the Marcos-Biden meeting, Washington and Manila will adopt “bilateral defense guidelines “to deepen alliance cooperation and interoperability across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace.
