Cold
War 2.0
While until
now the verbal outbursts of the outspoken, "vulgar"
Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, who last week called president
Obama a "son of a whore" (before he were mostly bark, and
no bite, something changed yesterday.
In an abrupt
departure from his nation’s longstanding military reliance on the
U.S., Duterte said the Philippines would pursue "independent"
foreign and military policies separate from US interests in the
region, and ordered his defense secretary to seek weapons from
suppliers in China and Russia to fight drug traffickers and
insurgents.
In another
dramatic shift, the WSJ notes that the president also said Tuesday
that the Philippines would stop patrolling the South China Sea
alongside the U.S. Navy, to avoid upsetting Beijing. Instead, he said
the nation’s military would focus on combating drugs and terrorism,
handing a major diplomatic victory of Beijing and a symbolic loss to
the US and its support of non-Chinese terrotorial claims to the South
China Sea.
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