LAPU-LAPU CITY — Southeast Asian nations must strengthen their unity and defense cooperation to navigate an increasingly fragmented international environment, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said on Wednesday, as regional defense leaders gathered in Cebu with United States Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Teodoro delivered the call during the opening of the 20th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM), which the Philippines is hosting under the theme “Navigating Our Future Together.”
“First, in a fragmenting world, our internal stability and intra-Asean unity are vital, perhaps even in the future existential,” Teodoro said.