'We've got your back' - Trump advisor vows U.S. support in South China Sea

MANILA, Nov 23 (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser
Robert O'Brien on Monday assured the Philippines and Vietnam,
countries both locked in maritime rows with China, that
Washington has their backs and would fight to keep the
Indo-Pacific region free and open.
"Our message is we're going to be here, we've got your back,
and we're not leaving," said O'Brien, on a visit to the
Philippines after concluding a trip to Vietnam on Sunday.
"I think when we send that message – that
peace-through-strength message – is the way to deter China. It
is a way to ensure the peace," O'Brien said.
Vietnam and the Philippines have been the most vocal
regional opponents to what they see as Chinese overreach in the
South China Sea and its disregard for boundaries outlined in
international maritime law.
China claims 90% of the potentially energy-rich South China
Sea, but Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam
each claim parts of it.
The United States has long opposed China's expansive claims,
sending warships regularly through the strategic waterway to
demonstrate freedom of navigation there.
China maintains it is a force for peace in the region and
sees the U.S. presence as provocative and interference by an
outsider.
O'Brien, who led the turnover in Manila of $18 million worth
of precision-guided munitions, said the United States stood with
the Philippines in protecting its offshore resource
entitlements.
"Those resources belong to the children and grandchildren of
the people here," he said.
"They don't belong to some other country that just because
they may be bigger than the Philippines," he said, adding:
"That's just wrong."
His visit came more than a week after the Philippines
suspended its scrapping of a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA)
with the United States for a second time, as the treaty allies
work on a long-term mutual defence arrangement. Last year, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured the
Philippines it would come to its defense if attacked in the
South China Sea.