{"id":81698,"date":"2016-10-24T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T11:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=81698"},"modified":"2016-10-21T14:26:03","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T13:26:03","slug":"philippine-president-duterte-i-announce-my-separation-from-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/10\/philippine-president-duterte-i-announce-my-separation-from-the-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Philippine President Duterte: ‘I Announce My Separation from the United States’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Philippine<\/a>

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte makes a speech during the Philippines-China Trade and Investment Forum in Beijing on Thursday. (Wu Hong \/ European Pressphoto Agency)<\/p><\/div>\n

20 Oct 2016 – <\/em>Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte<\/a> announced today that he was \u201cseparating\u201d from the United States and embracing China as the new best friend of the Philippines.<\/p>\n

The 71-year-old president, famous for blunt, often profane rhetoric, announced his country\u2019s realignment in a state visit to Beijing, where he was hailed as China\u2019s new \u201cbrother.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cYour honors, in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States \u2026\u00a0both in military, but also economics,\u2019\u2019 Duterte said to thunderous applause at a forum inside the Great Hall of the People, the bastion of the Chinese Communist Party. Without the United States, he said addressing the Chinese audience, \u201cI will be dependent on you.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the visit, China and the Philippines are signing agreements for $13.5 billion in trade deals.\u00a0The Philippines also said China had committed itself to $9 billion in low-interest loans. And the Philippines offered to open negotiations with China over disputed fishing waters in the South China Sea, a surprising change of policy given that an international tribunal in The Hague had ruled in July against China\u2019s claim of historical rights to the waters.<\/p>\n

Duterte, who took office July 30, had other choice words for the United States during his Beijing visit. He said that “America has lost now\u201d and suggested that he was also eager to cozy up to Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve realigned myself in your ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world \u2014\u00a0China, Philippines and Russia,\u2019\u2019 he said. And as an added slap, Duterte mimicked an American accent and said:\u00a0\u201cAmericans are loud, sometimes rowdy. Their larynx is not adjusted to civility.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Duterte has been issuing increasingly anti-American rhetoric for months, mostly in reaction to U.S. criticism of a shoot-to-kill vigilante campaign against drug dealers and addicts.\u00a0Since winning the presidential election in May, an estimated 3,500 people have been killed.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuterte doesn\u2019t like Western finger-wagging over human rights and he is not going to get that from China,\u2019\u2019 said\u00a0John Gershman, a professor at New York University\u2019s Wagner School of Public Service and a founder of the New York Southeast Asia Network.<\/p>\n

“Maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world \u2014 China, Philippines and Russia.” \u2014 Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Still, the unequivocal declaration by Duterte in Beijing came as a surprise to the Chinese and the Americans, Gershman believes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as I can tell, the United States was unprepared. I don\u2019t think anybody could imagine this could happen, or happen this quickly,\u2019\u2019 said Gershman. \u201cThe Chinese must be very happy, but I don\u2019t think they could have dreamed of this opportunity.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Chinese President Xi Jinping<\/a> called the visit by Duterte a \u201cmilestone.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cChina and the Philippines are neighbors across the sea and the two peoples are blood brothers,\u201d Xi said.<\/p>\n

At least for now, Duterte made no reference to canceling the mutual defense treaty with the United States, which dates to 1951. The previous U.S.-friendly administration of Benigno Aquino III<\/a>\u00a0had agreed to allow the United States stepped-up access to Philippine military bases, and that agreement apparently remains in effect.<\/p>\n

Duterte\u2019s announcement is a blow to the Obama administration\u2019s much-heralded \u201cpivot\u201d to Asia. U.S. diplomats had pointed to warmer relations with Manila \u2014\u00a0and tension between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea \u2014\u00a0as evidence that the policy was succeeding.<\/p>\n

The State Department said Thursday that it is baffled by Duterte’s latest suggestion that the Philippines was separating from the U.S. and that it is seeking an explanation of what the Philippine leader meant.<\/p>\n

Despite Duterte’s increasingly fiery rhetoric aimed at the United States, coming as he made warm diplomatic gestures to erstwhile rival China, Washington “remains rock solid” in its commitment to the mutual defense treaty and to the two countries’ 70-year alliance, State Department spokesman John Kirby said.<\/p>\n

Duterte’s hostility “is inexplicably at odds with the very close relationship that we have with the Filipino people as well as the government there, on many different levels,” Kirby said.<\/p>\n

“We are going to be seeking an explanation of exactly what the president meant when he talked about separation from the U.S.,” Kirby said. “It’s not clear to us exactly what that means in all its ramifications.”<\/p>\n

Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, will travel to Manila this weekend on a previously scheduled trip and will raise the issue with officials there, Kirby said.<\/p>\n

He said other countries in the region \u2014\u00a0presumably Japan and South Korea \u2014 are similarly confused by Duterte’s outbursts and “where this is going … what it portends.”<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 latimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 Oct 2016 – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced today that he was \u201cseparating\u201d from the United States and embracing China as the new best friend of the Philippines. Chinese President Xi Jinping called the visit by Duterte a \u201cmilestone.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}