Senator Marco Rubio, US President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the State Department, said China should “stop messing around” with the Philippines and Taiwan, noting that its “deeply destabilizing” actions in the region are compelling the US to “counteract.”
During his confirmation hearing before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Thursday (Manila time), Rubio discouraged Beijing from carrying out “anything rash or irrational” when it comes to the Philippines or Taiwan if it is serious about stabilizing US-China relations.
“The actions they are taking now are deeply destabilizing, they are forcing us to take counteractions because we have commitments to the Philippines and we have commitments to Taiwan that we intend to keep,” he said.
“If they want to destabilize the relationship or they want to at least create some pathway for stabilization of our relationship with them, they really need to stop messing around with Taiwan and with the Philippines because it’s forcing us to focus our attention in ways we prefer not to have to.”
The US senator from Florida warned that if any “miscommunication” or “some inadvertent conflict” emerges out of China’s harassment in the South China Sea, which would then force the US to defend the Philippines as its treaty ally, the impact it would have on the entire globe would be “enormous.”
Most recently, Beijing drew Manila’s ire after it deployed a 165-meter-long coast guard vessel, dubbed “monster ship,” near Zambales, an example of the “harassment” Rubio mentioned in the hearing.
“The Philippines feels threatened by it, rightfully so. We’ve seen this on a daily basis with the harassment and so forth,” he said.
“If, God forbid, there is some miscommunication or some inadvertent conflict emerges there and we have obligations to them (the Philippines), the impact that it will have on the entire globe is enormous and that includes Europe.”
In a text message to the Philippine News Agency, Manila-based geopolitical analyst and De La Salle University Department of International Studies professor Don McLain Gill said Rubio’s remarks indicate that the stability of US-China relations “rests greatly on whether China would respect Philippine sovereignty and sovereign rights.”
His statements, Gill said, also made it “clear that China is indeed the aggressor in the West Philippine Sea and that the US-Philippines alliance will remain vital in Washington’s security calculations.”
“By upholding US security commitments to the Philippines and highlighting the significance of Philippine security as a determinant for future US-China ties, Senator Rubio illustrated how the bilateral alliance and US security commitments to the Philippines are not up for bargain and will not be subjected to any tradeoff between the US and China,” Gill said.
In the same hearing, Rubio emphasized Manila’s “strategic importance” to Washington DC not only on the military perspective but also over the “real economic opportunities” it could explore with the country.
