Philippines’ Marcos Jnr says any Filipino death due to ‘foreign power’ could activate defence treaty with US

The death of any Filipino serviceman in the event of aggression by a “foreign power” in the South China Sea would be enough to invoke a defence treaty between the Philippines and the United States, President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has warned.

Speaking at a forum on Monday, Marcos Jnr said he was assured by US defence chief Lloyd Austin last week that Washington would honour the Mutual Defence Treaty with Manila as tensions spiked in the waterways.

The Philippines and China have been locked in the long-standing dispute, with the latest incident occurring two days after Marcos Jnr met US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House for their first ever trilateral summit on April 11.

A Chinese coastguard vessel blocked a Philippine maritime research ship and its coastguard escort just 35 nautical miles (64km) from the country’s coastline for eight hours starting Saturday night, according to SeaLight, a project of the Gordian Knot Centre for National Security Innovation of Stanford University, which tracks China’s “grey zone” activities in the South China Sea.

Marcos Jnr said he “thanked [Austin] for making it very, very clear to everyone” about the invocation of the Mutual Defence Treaty in the event of a serious dispute in the waterways.

“And [Austin] said [this would happen] if a Filipino serviceman is killed because of an attack or an aggressive action by another foreign power,” Marcos Jnr told the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines in Manila on Monday.

“As long as [a foreign power] actually caused casualties and has killed a serviceman … whether they’re merchant marine or coastguard or actual grey vessels or navy vessels, it does not matter. That it is an attack on the