"This is not poking the bear."

The Philippines' efforts to defend its territory are not "poking the bear" as the country will keep off from causing any conflict in the South China Sea even after President Marcos claimed that the threat in the disputed waters has grown.

"We want to do everything we possibly can together with our partners and our allies, to avoid that situation. This is not poking the bear, as it were. We are trying to do quite the opposite," Marcos said in a Bloomberg interview on Wednesday, March 20.

"We are trying to keep things at a manageable level, to continue the dialogues, whatever they are, at every level. And we have initiated many of those dialogues, we have dialogues at the sub ministerial level, at the ministerial level and at the executive level," Marcos added.

The President also expressed hopes that the dialogues in various levels would continue amid the "many volatilities in the area, in the region."

He reiterated that the country has "not instigated any kind of conflict, we have not instigated any kind of confrontation."

Although he believes that the threat in the disputed waters "has grown" and stressed that it compels the country to "do more to defend our territory," he said the government is bent on resolving this peacefully.

"[W]e are avoiding, we avoid, as I said, we think about peace in the national interest. It is, it does not serve any purpose to heighten tensions," he said.

The Chief Executive also affirmed that the Philippines is not treating the United States as a "Big Brother" whom it can run into "when something goes wrong" even though the US has been very supportive to the Philippines' assertion in the West Philippine Sea.

"Well, thus far, we can say that the United States has been very, certainly very supportive in every way. And it has, the United States has really shown that it takes very seriously these agreements that we have. And so, but it is dangerous for one to think in terms of when something goes wrong,  we’ll run to Big Brother," Marcos said.  

"That's not the way we treat it at all. We do this for ourselves. We do this because we feel that we have to do it. And it's not at the behest of the United States," Marcos added.