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4 How the US got its Philippine bases
back By Herbert Docena
MANILA - Last year, the United States
Quadrennial Defense Review, a public and official
document required by the US Congress from the
Pentagon to express US military strategy,
announced that: "Of the major and emerging powers,
China has the greatest potential to compete
militarily with the United States and field
disruptive military technologies that could over
time offset traditional US military advantages
absent US counter-strategies."
Capping a
series of pronouncements by high-level US
officials warning China not to challenge the US as
well as a series of
actions indicating US moves
to encircle China with US military assets and
allies, the document confirmed what many had long
suspected to be the case: that the US sees China
as the rival whose rise it must prevent and whose
military power it must contain. One of the
countries in which the US has been deepening its
military presence in is the Philippines -
considered by US analysts as firmly located within
what they call "the dragon's lair" - that
strategic area around China where decisive battles
could erupt in certain war-planning scenarios.
Though the US military officially vacated
the Philippines and its mammoth Subic Bay base in
1991, since 2001 it has moved to re-integrate the
Philippines firmly within what it now calls its
"global defense posture". Despite the US and
Philippine governments' efforts to play down their
presence, a clearer but still incomplete picture
of the extent and depth of the re-establishment of
the US's military presence in the Philippines has
emerged.
Recurring
exercises First, the US has stepped up
deploying troops, ships and equipment to the
country, ostensibly for training exercises,
humanitarian and engineering projects and other
missions, even though its military officially
vacated the Philippines and its mammoth Subic Bay
base in 1991.
Since 1998, a steady stream
of US troops has arrived in the country for
regular military exercises involving up to 5,000
troops, depending on the exercise in various
locations throughout the country. Through the
Visiting Forces Agreement, which was required by
the US to conduct the exercises, it was only
beginning in 2001 that the number and the size of
troops involved jumped significantly. In 2006, up
to 37 exercises were scheduled, up from 17 to 24
in the preceding years. [1]
In any given
year since then, few are the days or weeks when
there would be no US troops somewhere in the
country, giving lectures to Philippine troops,
participating in large-scale maneuvers, joining
command exercises, simulating war games or taking
part in other related activities. Compared to any
other Southeast Asian country, the Philippines
hosts the most number of such exercises and
activities. As a result of these continuing
deployments, former US ambassador to the
Philippines Francis Ricciardone has described the
US presence in the country as "semi-continuous".
[2]
Though presented largely as efforts to
improve the skills of Filipino soldiers, the aim
is also to gain strategic ground. As former US
Pacific Command chief Thomas Fargo himself has
pointed out: "The habitual relationships built
through exercises and training and a coherent view
of regional security with regional partners is our
biggest guarantor of access in time of need ...
Access over time can develop into habitual use of
certain facilities by deployed US forces with the
eventual goal of being guaranteed use in a crisis,
or permission to preposition logistics stocks and
other critical material in strategic forward
locations." [3]
As US troops come and go
in rotation for frequent regular exercises, their
presence - when taken together - makes up a
formidable forward-presence that brings them
closer to areas of possible action without need
for huge infrastructure to support them - and
without inciting a lot of public attention and
opposition. For instance, US troops will be able
to deploy faster to the South China Sea if they
are holding exercises off Palawan or in Zambales
than if they were in Hawaii. In the face of
domestic sensitivities regarding a permanent US
military presence, they would also be able to say
publicly that they are only in the Philippines
temporarily and that they will be leaving soon.
What is left unsaid, however, is that they are
also always arriving.
And as US troops
depart then come back again, they leave behind the
infrastructure that they had built and used
ostensibly for the exercises and which could still
be of use to the US military in the future for
missions different from those for which they were
initially built. In General Santos City, for
example, the US constructed a deepwater port and
one of the most modern domestic airports in the
country, connected to each other by one of the
country's best roads.
In Fort Magsaysay in
Nueva Ecija, where US troops routinely go for
exercises, the airport has been renovated and its
runway strengthened to carry the weight of C-130
planes. [4] In the southern islands of Basilan and
Sulu, venues of Balikatan exercises, the US,
through United States Agency for International
Development (USAID), has also built roads and
ports that can berth huge ships. [5]
Along
with troops, an increasing number of ships have
also entered the country with increasing
frequency, ostensibly for exercises and
humanitarian missions. On at least one occasion,
it appeared that they even came unannounced and
unexpected. [6] According to the US Congressional
Budget Office, "[T]he Navy counts those ships as
providing overseas presence full time, even when
they are training or simply tied up at the pier."
[7] Though they come and go, the US military sees
their regular and frequent "temporary" deployments
as part of its global "posture."
As the US
National Defense Strategy states, "Our posture
also includes the many military activities in
which we engage around the world. This means not
only our physical presence in key regions, but
also our training, exercises and operations. They
involve small units working together in a wide
range of capacities, major formations conducting
elaborate exercises to achieve proficiency in
joint and combined operations, and the 'nuts and
bolts' of providing support to ongoing operations.
They also involve the force protection that we and
our allies provide to each other." [8]
Just-in-time basing Second, the
US has secured arrangements and built
infrastructure that would allow it to use ports
and airfields to pre-position equipment, secure
logistics support and engage a broad range of
locally-provided services that would enable it to
launch and sustain operations from the Philippines
if necessary.
In September 2001, President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo granted the US free access
to its ports and offered it over-flight rights to
its airspace. [9] In November 2002, the US and
Philippine governments signed the Mutual Logistics
Support Agreement (MLSA), which has been described
by researchers with the US Congressional Research
Service as "allowing the United States to use the
Philippines as a supply base for military
operations throughout the region". [10] The MLSA
obliges the Philippine government to exert "best
efforts" to provide the US logistics supplies,
support and services during exercises, training,
operations and other US military deployments.
The agreement defines these to include
food, water, petroleum, oils, clothing,
ammunition, spare part and components, billeting,
transportation, communication, medical services,
operation support, training services, repair and
maintenance, storage services, and port services.
"Construction and use of temporary structures" is
also covered. [11] In other words, the MLSA gives
the US access to the full range of services that
the US military would require to operate in and
from the country. Also through the MLSA, the US
has secured the services that it would normally be
able to provide itself inside a large permanent
base but without constructing and retaining large
permanent bases - and without incurring the costs
and the political problems that such bases often
pose.
In 2003, an analyst reported that
among all Southeast Asian countries only the
Philippines has provided a "forward positioning
site" for the US to store equipment to be used for
regional operations. [12] In August 2005, the
Overseas Basing Commission, the official
commission tasked to review US basing, identified
the Philippines as one of the countries - along
with Thailand, India and Australia - in which
so-called "Cooperative Security Locations" (CSLs)
are being developed by the US in the region. [13]
According to the Pentagon, CSLs are a new category
of bases that refer to facilities owned by
host-governments but are to be made available for
use by the US military as needed.
The
Philippine government has not disclosed the
locations and other details about these CSLs. The
airport in Mactan, which now
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