MANILA, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Philippine academics and analysts lauded on Wednesday the decision of President Rodrigo Duterte to pursue an independent foreign policy by standing up and declaring that the Philippines should cease from being America's "proxy nation".
In a forum to assess Duterte's foreign policy, the analysts and scholars stressed the need to review the Mutual Defense Treaty that the U.S. and the Philippines signed in 1951 and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) that Washington and Manila inked in 2014.
Retired Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus, an author, said that EDCA promotes the national interest of the U.S. in the region. Former Senator Francisco Tatad, for his part, said that the Philippines should have re-negotiated the 1951 treaty as the treaty, which was crafted during the Cold War has become irrelevant under the post-Cold War era.
Political analyst and author Adolfo Paglinawan said EDCA is a "forward deployment of the U.S. pivot of its military presence to the Asia-Pacific," making the Philippines a proxy nation.
Read the full story at Xinhua