President Joe Biden warned China that the United States will stand up for the Philippines, saying that the defense commitment was “ironclad.”
Just this week PRC vessels acted dangerously and unlawfully, as our Philippine friends conducted a routine resupply mission in their own economic zone…. I want to be clear: The United States defense commitment to the Philippines is ironclad…. Any attack on the Philippine aircraft, vessels or armed forces will invoke our mutual defense treaty.
U.S. President Joe Biden. Oct 11, 2023.
Philippine news channel ANC Digital covered the story:
We have written previously about the aggressive behavior of Chinese aircraft and naval vessels attempting to assert China’s dominion over much of the South China Sea.
President Biden’s reiterated the “ironclad” nature of the US commitment to the Philippines, the same language the White House used in May of this year, after a visit with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.
The Philippines is the United States’ oldest ally in the Indo-Pacific. Since 1951, the U.S.-Philippines alliance has advanced peace, prosperity, and security for the United States, the Philippines, and the broader Indo-Pacific region. Now the United States and the Philippines are modernizing the alliance and building a strong and resilient architecture that is designed to meet emerging challenges, while routinizing joint planning and improving interoperability….
At the White House, President Biden reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad alliance commitments to the Philippines, underscoring that an armed attack in the Pacific, which includes the South China Sea, on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft, including those of the Coast Guard, would invoke U.S. mutual defense commitments under Article IV of the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.
“FACT SHEET: Investing in the Special Friendship and Alliance Between the United States and the Philippines”. Whitehouse.gov. May 1, 2023.
