Lithuania, Philippines Sign Pact to Build Alliance Against Aggression
Both Lithuania and the Philippines signed a security alliance deal as they are concerned about the increasing aggressiveness that they believe China and other nations are posing to their territories.
According to the Department of National Defense in Manila, the memorandum of understanding that Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. and his Lithuanian counterpart, Dovilė Šakalienė, signed in Manila will promote defense cooperation, specifically in the areas of cyber security, defense industries, munitions production, threat mitigation, and maritime security.
At an international defense symposium last month in Singapore, Šakalienė detailed Lithuania's concerns about a new "authoritarian axis" consisting of China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia.
According to her, pro-democracy nations ought to respond to the new coalition with unity.
In the disputed South China Sea, which Beijing has claimed almost entirely, Šakalienė pointed to China's behavior toward Taiwan and Filipino fishermen. Long-running territorial disputes have existed between the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Brunei, but in recent years, clashes between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy personnel have increased significantly.
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China has accused Philippine government vessels and Filipino fishing fleets of invading what it claims has been Beijing's jurisdiction since ancient times, and has responded with water cannons and other risky tactics. A 2016 international arbitration ruling based on the 1982 U.N.
Convention on the Law of the Sea that declared China's broad historical claims to be invalid has been ignored and is still being disregarded.
In order to garner international support, the Philippines has chosen to embarrass China by recording Beijing's muscular acts in the disputed waters, which are a vital global trade route.
“We see these horrifying materials, videos of how they are threatening Filipino fishermen, how they are treating people who are simply making their living in their own waters, in their own territory,” Šakalienė said. “If they work together to threaten us, then we must work together to defend ourselves.”
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Teodoro cited the need to “resist any unilateral attempts to reword or re-engineer maritime law and the international order to the benefit of new powers that want to dominate the world to the detriment of smaller nations."
In addition to Manila's treaty alliance with Washington, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos sought to forge an arc of security alliances in Asia and with Western nations, including the agreement with Lithuania, to strengthen the Southeast Asian nation's territorial defense in the wake of Chinese actions in the South China Sea.