On Monday, Duterte said US military presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners.
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He said Monday he wanted the USA military to leave Mindanao, the site of a strategic base set to host American forces.
The new Philippine president, known for making undiplomatic remarks about the United States, doesn’t want to depend on Washington for security as much as it did under his predecessor, says Joseph Cheng a political analyst at Hong Kong City University.
He said only around 100 USA advisers were left in Mindanao.
“For as long as we stay with America, we will never have peace in that land [Mindanao]”.
In Washington, the Pentagon and State Department said they had not been officially contacted by Manila about pulling out the remaining advisers.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte holds up a photo and cites accounts of United States troops who killed Muslims during the USA occupation of the Philippines 100 years ago.
The US has also been a strong supporter of the Philippines as it pushes back against China’s assertiveness in the disputed South China Sea.
The order comes a week after he called Barack Obama “a son of a whore”, causing the U.S. president to cancel their scheduled meeting at the South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Laos.
The Philippines won the arbitration case it filed against China to the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration. The Visiting Forces Agreement signed by the two countries allow the holding of the annual Balikatan military exercises by Filipino and American troops.
The United States also joined other countries and the United Nations in criticizing Duterte’s war on drugs policy that has left hundreds dead in extrajudicial killing.
The U.S. – the Philippines’ long-time ally and former colonizer – deployed special forces soldiers to the southern region of Mindanao in 2002 to train and advise local units fighting the Abu Sayyaf, but the program – which once involved 1,200 Americans – was discontinued in 2015, although a small presence has remained.
He warned that USA troops would be at risk if they did not leave the country. “It would threaten the whole position in the Philippines”, Thayer said. USA Today reports Duterte attributes the restlessness of Muslims in the largely Catholic nation’s south to resentment for the killings, and has criticized the US for failing to apologize for the deaths.
Department spokesman John Kirby said during a regular press briefing that he had seen reports of Duterte’s demand, but “we are not aware of any official communication by the Philippine government.to seek that result”.
For Sen. Panfilo Lacson, one of the vice chairmen of the Senate national defense and security committee, said Duterte didn’t seem to have consulted his foreign policy and security advisers regarding his pronouncement to remove USA troops in Mindanao.
Duterte explained that he did not want to become “gung ho” like America and China, noting that the Philippines’ territory is only “limited to the 12-mile limit”. What’s clear now it that the United States is not the only option for the Philippines. “Otherwise, his latest tirade against American soldiers will only be considered as part of his anti-Obama stance”, Albay Representative Edcel Lagman told reporters during a media briefing with other members of the minority bloc.
Duterte spokesman Ernesto Abella has stated the Philippine president’s recent actions reflect the government’s “new direction toward coursing an independent foreign policy” in years to come, according to USA Today. President Duterte has said he will honor EDCA. Thompson says people have always been writing in the Manila papers pressing a nationalist narrative and opposition to the United States.
He said he wanted to buy arms “where they are cheap and where there are no strings attached and it is transparent”.
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“Also [Duterte] is not a classical leftist, he’s not a communist, not even a classically social democrat really, but he uses this nationalist narrative”, he said.
