US, Philippines to hold military exercises in disputed South China Sea

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The Philippines and the United States launched three weeks of military exercises on Monday that are expected to further strain the countries' relations with China.

This year's staging of Balikatan, the allies' largest annual military exercise, will include joint navigation in the disputed South China Sea outside the Philippines' territorial waters. The French navy, participating for the first time in Balikatan, and the Australian navy will also join the maneuvers.

While the United States and the Philippines resumed joint naval patrols in the region last year and the United States has sailed there in the past with other allies and partners, this will be the first time the exercises of Balikatan extend beyond 12 nautical miles off the coast of the Philippines. coast and in waters claimed by China.

Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea, despite a 2016 arbitration ruling that rejected key elements of its claims and found that many of its uses of the waters violated Manila's rights under the Convention of United Nations on the Law of the Sea.

Six Philippine Coast Guard vessels will also participate in this exercise. It is the first time that the service, which has been at the forefront of frequent clashes with China over the past year, has been included in a military exercise.

Chinese coast guard ships have used increasingly violent means, such as water cannons, to disrupt regular resupply missions from Manila to a Navy outpost on a former warship stranded on Second Thomas Shoal. The shoal is located in the Philippines' exclusive economic zone, but China claims sovereignty over it.

Referring to Balikatan, China's Foreign Ministry warned the Philippines last week that entrusting its security to forces outside the region would only breed greater insecurity and turn into a chess piece for someone another one.

Col. Michael Logico, director of the Philippine Army's Joint and Combined Training Center, said every country has the right to defend itself. We are not deterred by what other countries think about what they are doing, he added.

Another closely watched element of the exercises will be the medium-range strategic missile system, known as Typhoon, which has a range of up to 2,500 km. The U.S. military airlifted the system to the Philippines this month, the first such deployment in the Indo-Pacific. Intermediate-range ground-launched missiles had been banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, but the deal collapsed in 2019 after the United States and Russia left it.

U.S. and Philippine officials said Balikatan would only feature logistical exercises with the Typhoon, such as quickly moving the launch system in the event of a threat, but that there would be no launch.

Troops will also train to track and target air and missile threats, retake enemy-occupied islands in the far northern Philippines just south of Taiwan, and sink a ship off the coast facing the South China Sea, expanding their exercises last year.

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The 2023 exercises marked a significant expansion and deepening of the Philippine-US military alliance, doubling the number of participating troops and including for the first time Taiwan's neighboring islands, which in the past were considered too sensitive. It also included Philippine bases that U.S. troops only recently had access to.

This year's exercise, with nearly 17,000 troops, will be roughly the same scale, but Lt. Gen. William Jurney, commander of the U.S. Marines in the Pacific, called it the largest yet. because the exercises will be more complex.

The exercise coincides with an annual conference of the Chinese navy, which will be attended by senior military officers, including Americans. It also comes as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits China on Wednesday in the latest effort by the two countries to manage strained relations.

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