More than a hundred years ago on January 9, 1900, during the debate in the United States Senate on whether the US should keep the Philippines as a colony in Asia, Sen. Alfredo J. Beveridge declared:
… to hold it would be no mistake. Our largest trade must henceforth be with China. More and more Europe will manufacture the most it needs, secure from it’s colonies the most it consumes. Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer. She is nearer to us than to England, Germany, or Russia, the commercial powers of the present and the future. They have moved nearer to China by securing permanent bases on her borders. The Philippines gives us a base at the door of all the East.
Today America’s concerns encompass the globe. As the only global economic and military superpower, it has assumed the role of “maintaining international peace and spreading democracy”. Despite the Philippines achieving its independence on July 4, 1946, it still continues to be America’s most steadfast and reliable ally in Asia.
America’s first foray into international peacekeeping activity in Asia took place just six months after Senator Beveridge’s speech. In June 1900 the US sent 3,400 troops from the Philippines to China to participate in the eight-nation alliance that put down the Boxer Rebellion that was aimed against foreigners. American troops were among the foreign soldiers that marched on Beijing.
“The United States was able to play a significant role in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion because of the large number of American ships and troops deployed in the Philippines as a result of the U.S. conquest of the islands during the Spanish American War (1898) and the subsequent Philippine-American War. In the United States military, the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion was known as the China Relief Expedition.” (Wikipedia Encyclopedia.)
Thus the US was able to establish a foothold in China at the turn of the century, using the Philippines as a launching pad.
In the Second World War, 70,000 Filipino soldiers and 30,000 regular American troops in the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East fought a fierce battle against Japanese invaders, upsetting their timetable for the conquest of the Far East. Filipino guerrillas prepared the way for the return of General MacArthur to the Philippines. In the Korean war, Filipino troops fought under the banner of the United Nations forces led by the US. In the Vietnam war, the US was able to support its troops in Vietnam with planes and ships based in the Philippines. After 9/11, the Philippines was one of the frontiers of America against global terrorism.
Last May 24, 2006, the Philippines and the United States formed the Security Engagement Board (SEB) to address non-traditional security concerns, including international terrorism, transnational crimes and disasters. The new board was established with the exchange of diplomatic notes between DFA Secretary Alberto Romulo0 and US Ambassador Kristie Kenny on April 11.
“The SEB is not a new treaty as it merely implements existing bilateral treaties with the US,” the DFA said in a formal statement. “The SEB complements the existing Mutual Defense Board (MDB) mechanism that focuses on cooperation against traditional or conventional threats such as an external armed attack envisioned under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty.”
The new security amendments will also allow more US troops in the Philippines, if requested by the government in cases of natural disasters and other emergencies, but will continue to prohibit a permanent US troop presence or basing arrangements in the country, according to Philippine Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita.
Under the Visiting Forces Agreement, American troops are allowed to enter the Philippines for training exercises with Philippine troops. The RP-US Bases treaty, adopted in 1947, expired in 1991 and was not extended by the Philippine senate. Unlike the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, the bases treaty was controversial because many Filipinos feared that the US military and naval bases in the Philippines could act as a “magnet” for nuclear weapons in case of a nuclear war involving the United States.
Under the Mutual Defense Treaty, the Philippines and the United States agreed that “an armed attack in the Pacific Area on either of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety.” Both nations pledged that in such an event each “would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes.” Filipino critics deplored that the MDT did not provide for automatic military aid in case of an attack against the Philippines. This is in contrast to the agreement between the US and NATO allies which provided for automatic retaliation in case of an attack against a NATO country.
Signed in 1947 by the government of the newly independent Philippines, the Military Bases Agreement originally provided the United States with 99 years of access. Almost from the beginning, however, several Military Bases Agreement-related issues were the subject of controversy in the Philippines, arousing sometimes strident opposition to the presence of United States bases. The 99-year-lease was amended and set to expire in 1991, unless further extended by both sides. In 1991, the Philippine Senate voted not to extend the treaty.
Some Filipinos had considered the US bases as infringing on Philippine sovereignty and was a vestige of the country’s colonial past. Some also charged that the agreement’s rules on criminal jurisdiction shielded United States military personnel from Philippine law and that the economic and military aid provided by the United States as compensation was inadequate. Finally, opponents blamed the United States military for conditions in towns around the facilities, which were notorious for their red-light districts and consequent social problems.
The bases agreement has been replaced by the VFA. Disputing Secretary Ermita, critics say the VFA has given the US even wider access to Philippine territories and provides for practically permanent stay of US troops in the Philippines in the guise of performing periodic training exercises and missions. The Philippines in effect has become an entire base for the American military, the critics contend. The former US naval base at Subic has hosted VFA US troops, resulting in the revival of the red light districts and other social problems.
Since the closing of the bases, security relations between the Philippines and the US have expanded with global terrorism as an additional ground for concern. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which is conducting a secessionist war in Mindanao, as well as the Communist-led New People’s Army which has been waging a nationwide insurgency, have both been labeled by the US as “terrorist” organizations. The NPA’s predecessor, the Hukbalahap organization that was originally formed to fight the Japanese, was largely beaten by the Philippine military with the aid of the Joint US Military Assistance Group (JUSMAG).
Highlighting its strategic role in the “global” war against terrorism is the Philippines’ common border with Indonesia which is the largest Muslim nation in the world in terms of population. The Muslim insurgency in the Muslim-dominated areas in Mindanao in the southern Philippines has provided fertile ground for the training of Muslim terrorists.
Connections have been drawn between the Muslim terrorists trained in the Philippines and the suicide attackers in the 9/11 incident in New York City and Washington D.C., some of whom reportedly trained in Mindanao.
Meanwhile, the US leadership and military brass have pinpointed China as a strategic security threat to the United States because of its rising economic and military power. The Philippines, being located virtually at the doorsteps of China, risks being drawn into any future war between it and the US as a long-time and loyal ally of the US. The US’s pending dispute with North Korea over its nuclear program could also draw the Philippines into a nuclear war over the issue. Thus, for strategic purposes, the Philippines has become a much more valuable and necessary ally of the US in view of the China and North Korean “threats.”
The Philippines has its own territorial dispute with China over the Spratly islands, while Taiwan, only a few hundred miles off the Philippines’ northernmost frontier, is a tinderbox of possible conflagration among China, the United States and Taiwan. Because of its strong alliance with the US, the Philippines thus faces danger of being sucked into war largely because of American, rather than, domestic interests.
Consequently, Philippine government officials, politicians from all spectrums and military leaders believe it is to the vital interest of the United States, as well as its moral obligation to Filipino citizens, to provide adequate financial aid to modernize the Armed Forces of the Philippines to enable it to meet the threats not only of insurgency and terrorism within its territory, but also to meet possible external armed threats. The consensus in the Philippines is that such aid has been grossly inadequate, even if viewed strictly from the standpoint of combating endemic terrorism and insurgency, not to mention global terrorism and international conflict.
Filipino nationalist critics of the long-running security relations between the Philippines and the United States have long advocated the pursuit by the Philippines of a more independent foreign policy. They mean by this that the Philippines should stop “clinging to the coattails” of the US government which, they said, could draw the country into a conflict with foreign countries, not necessarily in its own national interests, but in the interest of America’s global concerns.
These critics briefly took the upper hand when in 1991 they succeeded in blocking the government’s proposal to extend the 1947 RP-US Military Bases Agreement in the Philippine Senate. These critics have now redirected their objections to the VFA, which they maintain is even worse than the MBA. They have used the indictment of three US soldiers for rape while on VFA mission in the Philippines as one of their grounds against the agreement.
On the basis of actual and immediate need, as well as to silence the critics, the Philippine government, especially the armed forces establishment, has asked for more military aid from the US government. They say that this aid has been grossly insufficient and ineffective.
A press release by the US Embassy in Manila dated Oct. 16, 2003, claimed that the United States military aid to the Philippines has been increasing considerably from $38.03 million in 2001 to $94.50 million in 2002 to $114.46 million in 2003, citing a fact sheet prepared by the Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group (JUSMAG).
The JUSMAG also ranked the Philippines as the world’s fourth top recipient of U.S. foreign military financing, and the world’s second – but Asia’s biggest– beneficiary of the U.S. International Military Exercise and Training Program. Filipinos note, however, that the JUSMAG fact sheet merely mentioned the Philippines as Asia’s “biggest beneficiary” only in the area of training, but not in military equipment which the local armed forces need most.
Herbert Docena, a foreign policy analyst of Focus on the Global South, a policy research center, disagrees with the US Embassy and JUSMAG assertions. He cites in particular the decrepit state of the airplanes of the Philippine Air Force which have been dubbed as “flying coffins” and the ships of the Philippine Navy which have been ridiculed as “floating coffins.” The PAF and the PN were formerly the best outfits of their kind in Southeast Asia. Now they have fallen behind their Asian neighbors in fitness, firepower and modernity.
Docena wrote in 2005:
“Having tallied at least six accidents in the past ten years alone, the Hueys have been lovingly called ‘flying coffins’ by the [Philippine] Air Force. Going farther back, in 1987, three helicopters all of them Hueys crashed in various places in the span of just three months. Even in its heyday, the Huey’s record during the Vietnam War was not comforting: Up to 2,500 Hueys were lost around half of them due to combat, the rest to `operational accidents.’ No wonder even Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Romulo Neri dismissed these aging helicopters as ‘scraps’ and US military assistance in general as ‘very limited’.”
Philippine civilian and military officials also complain that most of the US aid in military equipment is composed of surplus and obsolete equipment which have been discarded by the US military. Certainly in case of a war of the 21st century, these weapons and hardware would be practically useless. It would be like fighting World War II with World War I weapons.
Philippine military officers, who asked to remain anonymous, also described as “scraps” the 33 military hardware that were among what President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo proudly brought home from a visit to the White House in 2003. While she reported bagging $356 million in military aid in that trip, it turned out that she may have been counting her eggs prematurely. In 2003, the Philippines eventually received only $82 million in both “Foreign Military Financing” (FMF) and in “International Education and Training” (IMET). In 2004, total FMF and IMET went down to $23 million and up again to around $33 million in 2005. The request for 2006 is back to $23 million.
“For all that we’re giving, what we get, ¬at least those that get reflected in official records, is a bargain,” Docena wrote. “Despite the country’s strategic value to the US, military aid to the Philippines lags behind that of Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Poland, Pakistan, Colombia, Chile, among others. The requested FMF for the Philippines is only 0.4% of the total, compared to 50% for Israel and nearly 30% for Egypt. Its share in IMET funds in 2006 is just 3% of the total. Such allocation undermines the image of the Philippines being particularly dear to the US, and therefore subject to some extra generosity.”
Clearly in view of the Philippines’ tactical and strategic value to the United States in its global war against terrorism, as well as in the pursuit of its global concerns in the economic and social fields, the US should spend much more to update and modernize the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Otherwise, in the event of an actual armed conflict, whether in the fight against terrorism or in its pursuit of international peacekeeping and propagation of democracy, the Philippines could prove but a pathetic ally.
From the standpoint of Philippine interests, unless the Philippines’ armed forces are updated and modernized to cope adequately with present and future threats, the Philippines would be unduly sticking its neck out and endangering its survival and that of its citizens for the sake of a nation that is blind to the needs and interests of its most reliable, dependable and loyal friend in Asia.
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