How do we reconcile the photo from this source.
How do we reconcile the photo from this source.
A leaked letter from ’ foreign secretary has exposed a fault line in the country over how to publicly confront Beijing in the , days before the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) created its own maritime spokesman role. The new position was in addition to existing voices from the Philippine coastguard, armed forces and the National Maritime Council.
The January 20 letter, written by Foreign Affairs Secretary Ma. Theresa P. Lazaro to opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros, argued that maritime disputes were best handled through diplomatic channels and cautioned against public exchanges that could narrow the country’s “diplomatic space”, according to accounts cited by Filipino academic Dr Jeffrey Ordaniel.
In an opinion piece in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on February 8, Ordaniel, an associate professor at Tokyo International University, said the letter treated the public documentation of confrontations with Chinese vessels as an “irritant” rather than a strategic necessity.
The U.S. Army’s rotation in the Philippines is easy to overlook. Experts say that might be the point.
The service confirmed this week that in July 2025, it established a rotational presence in the Southeast Asian nation. The roughly 50-person force is operating under U.S. Army Pacific with coordination through Task Force Philippines, a spokesman said Wednesday
If needed, officers and enlisted personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are ready to lay down their lives to defend the country's territory, which includes its 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG), a ranking naval official said on Tuesday.
"I would like to leave their statements as they are. (As) far as the AFP is concerned, napakaliwanag ng ating mandato (our mandate is clear) and this is stated in the Constitution itself, we know the limits of the Philippine territory. It is our mandate to protect national sovereignty, to ensure the integrity of the national territory all the way up to our 200 nautical mile EEZ and the regime of islands covering KIG which is beyond our EEZ and to look after the welfare of the Filipino people," Trinidad said.
On July 12, 2016, the Arbitral Tribunal constituted under the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention dismissed China’s expansive claims under its so-called nine-dash-line as illegal. To this day, Beijing continues to reject the ruling.
Malacañang and the AFP have both said the Philippines would never give up an inch of any part of its territory to foreign powers.
KAI Signs $75 Million FA-50PH Logistics Support Deal With Philippines
Using Google Earth, the image from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative is only a small spot on the southeastern edge of Antelope Reef. You can see it on October 15, 2025 and the December 31, 2025 pictures (if you look really hard with magnification). The current reclaimed land is at least an order of magnitude bigger than the previous reclamation/construction.
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