Marcos-Biden meet seen to spark tensions in region

The second meeting of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. with US President Joe Biden in months is seen to stir more tension in the Southeast Asian region, analysts and activist leaders said.

Protests marked Marcos and Biden's meeting in Washington, DC, on Monday. Marcos' state visit to Washington came on the heels of a joint military drill after allowing US forces access to more Philippine military bases right across China's Taiwan.

The US chapter of the New Patriotic Alliance, or BAYAN, a coalition of Filipino grassroots organizations across the United States, has led a rally in front of the White House, protesting Marcos' arrival. Marcos' new meeting with Biden this year "will only put the Filipino people in more danger of poverty and war", BAYAN said in a statement.

BAYAN has cited the Philippine government's decision to give the US access to four new military facilities under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA, and the holding of the largest joint military exercises. The organization said US military intervention "will not help defend the Filipino people", detracts from the diplomatic methods that can be used to resolve territorial disputes in the region, and "leaves the people at risk of being caught" between the US and China.

A joint leaders' statement issued after Biden's meeting seems to be binding the Philippines closer to the US military, further away from ASEAN centrality persistent for decades.

Biden reaffirmed the US' "ironclad alliance commitments" to the Philippines, underscoring that an 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 as outlined in the Mutual Defense Treaty, or MDT.

"I hope US military presence in the Philippines and the ASEAN will no longer expand, for the sake of regional stability, peace and economic progress," said Wilson Lee Flores, chairman of the Anvil Business Club, a Manila-based business group.

Anna Rosario Malindog-Uy, vice-president for external affairs at the Asian Century Philippines Strategic Studies, said Marcos seems to be open to trilateral defense and military cooperation with the US and Japan and with Australia and the US. She said the Philippine president is also "warming up" to the QUAD and this sends an "unpleasant and confusing signal" to Beijing. This is "injuring further the already tension-driven political relations "between the Philippines and China, Malindog-Uy said.

In a news briefing held in Manila on Sunday, Marcos said that the Philippines will not be used a "staging post" for any military action amid tensions in the region.

Apart from security issues, Marcos said that one of his priorities for the visit is "to push for greater economic engagement" between the two countries.

"As promised, Marcos picked up economic issues as well in his meeting with Biden," said Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, research fellow at the Asia Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation. But he noted that security issues still "dominated the discussion" between the two sides.

But Pitlo noted that the matter of joint sails and combined maritime activities in the South China Sea were not reflected in the joint statement.

Flores of Anvil Business Club questioned why the US couldn't just focus on improving its relations with the Philippines and extend genuine economic and other support instead of having to "undiplomatically and publicly attack" other countries?

"Why this adversarial, antagonistic language by the US, when the world now urgently needs stability, dialogues, cooperation and efforts in global economic recovery?" he said.