The Obama administration is not taking seriously Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte’s vow to pull out of the former U.S. colony’s military alliance with Washington.
The controversial new leader has launched profanity-laced tirades against President Obama, most recently saying that Obama can “go to hell” during a speech in Manila Tuesday.
“Those comments are at odds with the warm relationship that exists between the Filipino and American people,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Tuesday. “There’s also an important record of cooperation between our two governments, cooperation that has continued under the Duterte government,” he said, pointing out that the annual joint military exercise in the Philippines got underway this week as scheduled.
Duterte said he would cancel that exercise after next year and wants to end joint patrols of the South China Sea, as well as evict U.S. special forces from the Philippines.
“The United States-Philippines alliance is built on a 70-year history of strong people-to-people ties, including a vibrant Filipino-American diaspora and a long list of shared security concerns,” Earnest said. “So the focus of the Obama administration right now is on the broad relationship with the Philippines and our work together in the many areas of mutual interest to improve the livelihoods of the Filipino people and uphold our shared Democratic values.”
Earnest said the U.S. will continue to help its long-time ally, as it did in 2013 after a particularly damaging typhoon.
“Significant U.S. military assets were deployed to the Philippines to help communities that, in some cases, were cut off from the rest of the world because of the strength of the storm and the amount of rainfall and mudslides and other impacts that were precipitated by the storm,” Earnest said. “I think it’s just one recent good example of the extraordinarily warm feelings that the Filipino people have for the United States of America.”
Earnest also said that for all of Duterte’s bluster, he has not asked Washington to change anything.
“And I can tell you that the United States has not received any official requests from President Duterte, or any other Filipino officials, to alter any aspects of our bilateral cooperation,” he said. “In fact … today marks the beginning of our annual joint military exercises with the Philippines, an example of the strong partnership and alliance that is in place.”
