THE US MILITARY PRESENCE IN THE PHILIPPINES AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

Source: Rey Claro Casambre, Philippine Peace Center

In September 1991, the Filipino people kicked out US troops and shut down US bases in the Philippines.

Subic Naval Base

Today, US troops are back in the Philippines. Permanently, if US and Phi-lippine government would have their way. Displaying utter disregard for Philippine sovereignity and terretorial integrity, they have circumvented the constitutional ban on foreign military troops and bases. They did this by sneaking two highly questionable military agreements through the token scrutiny of Congress and the Supreme Court, and ramming these roughshod over the people’s protest and oppposition.

First, the Philippine Senate ratified a “status-of-forces agreement” – the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) in May 1999, opening up the Philippines to US troops and equipment for unspecified military activities for virtually unlimited periods of time. Second, the US Defense Department and the Philippine Department of National Defense entered into an “aquisition and cross-servicing agreement”, the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA) last December, 2002 through their respective Defense Departments allows US Forces to acess or use Philippine installations and to practically set up their own facilities anywhere on Philippine terretory. The arithmetic is simple:

VFA = Status of Forces Agreement > US TROOPS

MLSA = Aquisition and Cross-servicing Agreement >  US FASCILITIES

Vfa + mlsa = US bases

This time, throughout the Philippine Archipelago, not just in Clark and Subic – the entire country is now one big US military base.

The Philippines has long been known to be the closest ally of the US in Southeast Asia. But in fact, it is more accurately described as a neo-colonial vassal state. A half century of colonial rule and another half century as a neo-colonial client state has secured for the US an all too compliant and servile ruling elite and a population that still looks up to the US as a benevolent Big White Brother.

Factions of the ruling elite vie for US support, with the most favored assured of winning the elections and remaining in power. Thus, the US has several stables of aspiring puppets, and enjoys the luxury of allowing whoever could most effectively serve its interest to rule.

What is not too well known is that outside Malakanyang (Presidential Palace), the most trusted and reliable subalterns of the US in the Philippines are to be found not in civil bureaucracy but in the military: the armed forces, and the police. Since its formation under American colonial rule, the Philippine military has always been oriented, trained, supplied and directed by the US. This went on even after the Philippines was granted political independence in 1946 through a series of military treaties and agreements such as the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), Military Assistance Pact (MAP), and the Military Bases Agreement (MBA).

In 1991, the MBA expired and a draft of US-RP Treaty of Friendship which would have allowed the continuation of US bases was rejected by a Philippine Senate in the face of massive demonstrations for the expulsion of the US bases. This was followed by a brief period of feverish but low profile negotiations for a Status-of-Forces Agreement (SOFA) that would allow the temporary presence of US troops in the Philippines, and an Aquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) that would allow the US to use Philippine facilities for training, repairs and other services, port calls, pre-positioning of war materiel, and other logistic support.

Using its assets in the bureaucracy and the military, the US eventually secured the VFA in 1999 despite widespread protest and outrage over its onerous and blatantly one-sided provisions. Joint military excersies has been resumed since then, all of them low key if not secret.

Up until 9-11. Then, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo loudly proclaimed her government’s all out support for “Operations Enduring Freedom”. In November, 2001, she accepted George W. Bush’s offer for US troops and equipment purportedly to help the Philippine military wipe out the Abu-Sayyaf, a bandit group once linked to Al Qaeda, with a paltry sum of military and economic aid as a thinly veiled “reward”. Bush and Macapagal-Arroyo would not have been so brazen in courting this deal and publicly announcing it, had not for the September 11 bombings occurred.

In the first half of 2002, more than 3,000 US troops came to the Philip-pines and participated in offensive operations against the Abu-Sayyaf group. The relative ease by which Bush and Macapagal-Arroyo were able to pass off the “Balikatan 02-1” as a legitimate Joint Military Training Excercise in accordance with the MDT and VFA owes not so much to the merit of their arguments as to the overwhelming sentiment that the Abu-Sayyaf deserve to be blown off this planet, the sooner, the better. The general perception was that the US abundantly had the motivation and the means to locate and pulverize Abu-Sayyaf, the two things the AFP had a miserable lack of, ergo, let the Americanos “just do it”.

Protests and objections were not lacking. US TROOPS OUT NOW!, a broad multi-sectoral coalition of patriotic organizations and individuals, condemmed “Balikatan 02-1” and the “war against terror” as a mere pretext for allowing the entry of US troops in violation of Philippine sovereignity and terretorial integrity.

All tese have proven further the critics and oppositors of the VFA right. The VFA will allow the stationing of US troops in the country for indefinite periods of time, not to mention granting them immunity from criminal prosecution for offenses committed while “on duty”.

President Macapagal Arroyo has unabashedly declared there will be more “Balikatans” in 2003 and in the coming years. True enough, while “Balikatan 02-1” was underway, another joint military exercise was being held in another island. And as some of the US troops packed up and returned to their home bases, other troops arrived for a joint Naval evacuation and rescue exercise. Further more, long after the joint exercises were over, there are still hundreds of US Marines and Special Forces elements left behind at Basilan and elsewhere in Southwestern Mindanao purportedly to finish the public works and construction projects jointly undertaken by the US and Philippine troops as part of “humanitarian operations” in the area and to defend these from hostile attacks.

The message however, is clear. US troops are not only here to stay, they will continue to come in greater force and continue to intervene militarily in the country’s internal affairs.

Recently, the White house, State Department and Pentagon announced that US forces will engage in combat operations in another round of “joint military exercises” against the Abu Sayyaf in Sulu. The US also reportedly proposed that certain area be assigned as the US “area of responsability” (AOR) where its troops can operate alone, separate from Philippine troops and not under a Filipino commander. The Philippine government quickly denied this and signalled the US that they could not get away with such a blatant violation of the constitution.

US GLOBAL INTERESTS AND MILITARY OBJECTIVES

If “Balikatan 02-1” and the “war against terrorism” were mere pretexts for US presence, what then were the US troops really doing in Basilan, Zamboanga, and for that matter in all other “Balikatan” areas? To Answer this question, we should need to look at the US global military objectives, policies strategy and tactics.

The Quadrenial Defense Review Report (Sept. 30, 2001) pub-lished by US Department of Defense candidly states the “US res-ponsabiilities and commitments span the world”. The QDRR 2001 explicitly states:

    ...The global nature of US interests and obligations implies that full  expectrum dominance will continue to depend on overseas presence and power projection capabilities.

One can easily see that the US can invoke “US national interest to justify US military presence and, if necessary, military intervention in any place in the world, in fact, US military strategy is designed to do precisely that.

The US conduct of the Afghanistan war showed a clear break from the more passive “multilateral approach” to more aggressive unila-teral  approach and military posture. The change are also reflected in the QDRR 2001, in particular, Sections III, Paradign Shift in Force Planning and IV reorienting the US Military Global Posture.

The “paradigm shift” is a shift from “rapid deployment” to any given trouble spot to “forward stationing” and “forward deployment” in all potential theaters of war. The object is to station or deploy sufficient US forces in all critical regions worldwide in order to deter all threat with a minimum of reinforcement from other theaters or regions. Further, the paradigm shift arrogantly and brazenly states that the military posture shall preserve “the President’s option to call for a decisive victory ... “including the possibility of regime change or occupation”. We can see in Iraq invasion and occupation, the application of the QDRR 2001 as an unabashed handbook of US agression and intervention, in blatant violation of international laws.

The US Navy Pacific Fleet

QDRR 2001 envisages the reorientation of US military posture to include among others:

•  increase in aircraft carrier battlegoup presence and homeporting an additional three to four surface combatants, and guided cruise missile submarines (SSGNs) in Western Pacific.
•  increase in contigency basing in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and the Arabian Gulf ... And sufficient en route infrastructure for refuelling and logistics to support operations in Arabian Gulf or Western Pacific Area.
• new concepts of maritime pre-positioning ... high speed sealift, and new am-phibious capabilities for Marine Corps ... Conducting training for littoral warfare in Western Pacific for the Marine Corps (in coordination with “allies and friends”).

this “paradigm shift” has already resulted in the establishment of additional bases, forward stationed and forward deployed US forces notably in the Balkans, Central Asia or Middle East

This was before September 11. 9 -11 gave Bush’s drive a big and timely boost by generating a wave of domestic and international support for his “war vs. terrorism” that translated into bipartisan Congressional approval of his defense budget. According to the Defense Department’s  Base Structure Report the US currently has military bases in at least 38 countries worldwide, not including newly acquired bases, forward bases such as in Saudi Arabia and the Balkans, and considerable troop concentrations in Central Asia (60,00) since 9-11.

It is in the context of the renewed US drive for military bases and access agreement all over the world that the question of US basing in the Philippines should be viewed. Both US and Philippine go-vernments, in attaining the VFA and the MLSA, repeatedly profess that the US is no longer interested in setting up US military bases in the Philippines. The argument is that with the end of the cold war after the collapse of East European and Soviet regimes in 1989 and 1991, the US no longer needs these bases and has in fact dismantled many of them worldwide. 

Further, the US has shifted its strategy to the more economical forward deployment and prepositioning which would require not permanent bases but mere access agreements with its allies worldwide for limited and temporary use of facilities.

Southeast Asia is located at the center of an arc US military strategy refers to as “the East Asia Littoral” – beginning with the concentration of industrial and technological power in Japan, Korea, and Eastern China, down to the resources and manpower-rich Southeast Asian countries and the South China Sea through which half – or $500 billion worth – of world trade anually passes to the Indian sub-continent and the oil-rich Middle East. These arc also encircles China, the US considers as its potential long-term peer rival.

Considering

(1) the importance of East Asia to US global interests, or more particularly to its drive to expand and consolidate its hedgemony,

 (2) the strategic geographical position of the Philippines in Southeast Asia,

(3) the renewed drive of the US to set up military installations worldwide after 9-11, we can confidently conclude that the US is seeking to reestablish and even upgrade its military bases in the Philippines.

Maintaining an overseas military presence is a cornerstone of US National Security Strategy and a key element of US Military policy of “shape, respond, and prepare”. In Asia, US force presence plays a particular key role in promoting peace and security in regional affairs.

The Philippines is at the center of Southeast Asia, in which the US still do not have a single military base. Strategy study for the US Armed Forces, such as the Rand Corporation’s, point to the unique geographical and socio-political-economic vantage position of the Philippines as the necessary site for large permanent US military base.

In addition to the  factors above,the enthusiasm with which the Macapagal-Arroyo government supports Bush’s “war on terror” and the relative openness of the population to US presence, are factors that would allow the US push beyond the VFA and MLSA or for more favorable terms in agreements and treaties.

At present, there is no mistaking that the South China Sea-West Philippine sea dispute between China and the Philippines has given the USA a further reason to have its military presence in the Philippines and in East Asia littoral regions, and to stablish permanent bases in the Philippines. Both the Philippines under Pres Benigno Aquino III and the US has openly announced it. America has returned in Southeast region to expand its forces to ensure that its hegemony and national interest is taken care of. It is all in context of the US with the US Foreign Policy.

WHAT ABOUT THE PHILIPPINE SOVEREIGNITY?

Source: Rey Claro Casambre, Philippine Peace Center