Wars in Ukraine, Middle East Won’t Affect US-Philippines Joint Drills: General

U.S. marines take part in a joint amphibious assault exercise as part of the annual U.S.-Philippines war exercises in Claveria, Cagayan, Philippines, on March 31, 2022. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

The United States remains focused on bolstering its defense partnership with the Philippines despite its attention on the escalation in Ukraine and the Middle East, a U.S. general said on Thursday.

Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commanding general of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the ongoing wars will not affect the U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific region.

“If anything, it drives an increased sense of urgency to focus on these partnerships that we’ve developed decades ago and it’s our responsibility to continue to build on these unique training opportunities,” he said.

Gen. Evans, who is based in Hawaii, visited Manila this week for talks with his Philippine army counterparts ahead of large-scale combat maneuvers between U.S. and Philippine forces.

The United States has sought to boost engagements in the Indo-Pacific to counter China’s growing influence in the region, particularly amid disputes over Beijing’s claims to Taiwan and the South China Sea.

However, there are concerns that U.S. support for Ukraine and Israel in their respective wars could potentially result in the United States diverting its military resources intended for the Asia-Pacific region.

Gen. Evans said the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas conflict highlight the possible challenges that may arise in armed conflicts, which could be valuable lessons for allied troops in the Philippines.

“The two conflicts ... are continuing to provide us lessons to be learned and to be implemented and to be trained on here in the Philippines,” the general said.

“We talked about this today, our ability to be small and undetectable, our ability to be able to move quickly in this place, our ability to project forward and see and sense are all things that we need to continue to train on,” he added.

Shoulder-to-Shoulder

The annual U.S.-Philippines military drills, known as Balikatan—a Tagalog word meaning “shoulder-to-shoulder”—involved more than 17,600 military personnel in April 2023, marking their largest combat exercise in decades.

Some of last year’s Balikatan exercises were held in Philippine coastal areas across the sea from the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. The expanded combat exercises involving U.S. forces have been criticized by China as a threat to regional unity and peace.

The United States and the Philippines struck a deal last year to grant U.S. forces access to four new military bases in the Philippines on top of the five bases already under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.

A Philippine-flagged boat is blocked by a China Coast Guard vessel in the South China Sea in this screen grab obtained from a video released on October 22, 2023. China Coast Guard via Reuters

The Philippines is concerned about Beijing’s encroachment on territories it claims in the South China Sea and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) military drills surrounding Taiwan, with which it shares a sea border off the Luzon Strait.

Last year, the United States repeatedly expressed its support for the Philippines amid a series of increasingly tense territorial face-offs between Chinese and Philippine ships in the South China Sea.

President Joe Biden has previously warned the CCP that any attack on Philippine vessels in the South China Sea would trigger a mutual defense treaty.

“I want to be very clear, the United States’ defense commitment to the Philippines is ironclad,” he told reporters. “Any attack on Filipino aircraft, vessels, or armed forces will invoke our mutual defense treaty with the Philippines.”

The CCP has asserted territorial claims over nearly the entire South China Sea, including reefs and islands that overlap with the Exclusive Economic Zones of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.