China doesn’t seem to approve of the deployment of a new U.S. weapons system in the northern Philippines.
“The United States and Philippine practices put the entire region under the fire of the United States (and) brought huge risks of war into the region,” Defence Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian told the media, according to Reuters.
“Intermediate-range missiles are strategic and offensive weapons with a strong Cold War colour,” he added.
The specific intermediate-range missile system behind all the uproar is the Typhon, which the U.S. deployed to the Philippines last month as part of a joint exercise with the Philippine military.
The U.S., it should be noted, didn’t even fire the missile system during the exercises, according to Reuters. The point of deploying it for the exercise was to “test the feasibility of transporting the 40-ton weapon system by air,” Philippine military official Col. Michael Logico told Reuters.
“When we are done training with it, we will bring it back home and continue to develop our tactics, techniques, procedures,” Lt. Gen. Michael Cederholm, commander of the U.S. 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, told reporters, according to the South China Morning Post.
“But this training environment, with a trusted ironclad ally, gives us an opportunity to expand that training even more,” he added.
Logico told Reuters for its Friday article that the system remained in the country, but gave no details about where specifically it was or for how long it would remain in the Philippines.
“Philippine and U.S. officials had said the exercises were meant to improve interoperability between their forces and were not directed at any third country,” Reuters reported.
Will this evolve into a bigger crisis?
Nonetheless, China said that countries from outside the South China Sea region taking part in military drills there only led to destabilization with their attempts to “flex muscles and stoke confrontation,” Reuters reported.
(China apparently doesn’t feel this way about the Middle East, however, as President Xi Jinping recently renewed his calls for Palestinian state.)
Philippine activists apparently agreed, calling on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to have the Typhon missile system removed from the Philippines and arguing that its presence could make the Philippines a more important target in China’s eyes.
Unnamed “analysts” cited by the Post claimed that the deployment of the Typhon in the Philippines could lead to “brinksmanship” if China responds in kind.
On the other hand, the Philippines have already purchased similar missiles from India, so it’s hard to see the difference made by the deployment of one additional system in the country — other than the fact that it represents the alliance between the island nation and the U.S., of course.
“Both missiles will beef up the military weapons system of the Philippines for deterrence,” Defence analyst Chester Cabalza, a fellow at the U.S. State Department’s Study of the U.S. Institutes on National Security, told This Week in Asia.
The U.S. Typhon system “is capable of firing both SM-6 anti-aircraft missiles and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, with operational ranges of more than [150 miles and about 1,550 miles] respectively,” the Post explained.
Antonio Tinio, a spokesman for the newly formed leftist movement Filipinos United for Sovereignty, warned that the system turned the Philippines into a “high value target,” should active war break out with China.
“We denounce the Marcos Jnr administration for allowing the US to deploy its new missile system. In doing so, it has turned northern Luzon into a legitimate military target if armed conflict were to break out with China,” Tinio said, according to the Post.
