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Estrada Brought the VFA; Will Arroyo Bring In the U.S. Troops?

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has welcomed an offer of intelligence assistance by the U.S. government in her war against the Abu Sayyaf hostage-takers. That decision unfolds a scenario of deeper U.S. involvement in the Philippines not necessarily to fight “international terrorism,” as the American officials call it, but to make their economic interests and their fellow nationals safe from other threats, including the Marxist guerilla and Muslim movements. Pentagon and U.S. Pacific Command statements about the new American security strategy in the region offer some explanations.

By Edmundo Santuario III
Bulatlat.com

Deeper American involvement in the Philippines’ domestic affairs particularly the Abu Sayyaf hostage crisis and the Leftist and Muslim rebellions looms. Such renewed intervention is the result not only of the United States’ own unilateral moves to align the Philippines actively in an envisioned Asian multilateral security community but also because of the Manila government’s own desire for greater American involvement.

As a vice president last year, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo supported a proposal to form a multi-force to fight terrorism including piracy, banditry and drug trafficking not only in the Philippines but the rest of the region. Arroyo’s stance came up during a press briefing held by Admiral Dennis Blair, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Command (CINCPAC) in Manila on Sept. 26 that year. Blair was talking about United States plans of a stronger multilateral security cooperation in Asia particularly in its Southeast Asian region in the light of growing international terrorism, Leftist insurgencies, ethnic conflicts and other core security issues.

Last week, President Arroyo revealed that the U.S. military will finally assist Philippine Armed Forces operations against the Abu Sayyaf hostage-takers in southern Mindanao through intelligence surveillance. Her announcement could have also been calculated to confirm previous suspicions that the U.S. was all along involved in the military assaults against the Abu Sayyaf extremists whose latest catch of hostages included Americans.

Considering the “special relations” between the two countries, the creeping involvement of the U.S. military in the country’s internal affairs is not something new. A look at the nation’s history since the late ‘40s after the Philippines was finally granted independence by its colonial master reveals consistent American meddling. This was made possible through the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, the bases agreement and the military assistance pact, among several agreements, which forced the Philippines to help fight America’s proxy wars in the region and elsewhere while fighting rebellions at home. The Americans lost their bases in 1991 when a strong anti-imperialist movement succeeded in pressuring the Senate to junk the proposed bases renewal treaty. Eight years later, the Senate would betray its own historic decision by ratifying the onerous Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

What makes Arroyo’s recent announcement worrisome is that it virtually opens the door for new American security structures for the Philippines that could make a mockery of what’s left of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

U.S. Pacific Command

Upon taking over the U.S. Pacific command in February 1999, Blair began promoting what he called “a security community” for Asia-Pacific. His plan included multilateral exchanges and initiatives including peacekeeping, piracy prevention, drug interdiction, disaster relief and bilateral-multilateral military exercises. The latest of such exercises, “Cobra Gold,” includes the Philippines along with Thailand, Australia and Singapore.

The war games with Philippine forces now include a training and equipment package that, U.S. military officials say, seeks to enhance the country’s anti-terrorism capability including police and military work. Fresh from this training is the new Anti-Crime Task Force of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ACTAFP) whose formation was unveiled last week by Arroyo herself. The new elite force is supposed to coordinate with the Philippine National Police (PNP) in fighting kidnap-for-ransom gangs and illegal drug syndicates. The unit is separate from the AFP Counter-Terrorist Force which fights organized crime such as the Abu Sayyaf.

Other components of the U.S. military package for the Philippines are exchange of intelligence information, visits and training in American anti-terrorism training schools and regular briefings. AFP and defense officials as well as a number of University of the Philippines political science and security experts regularly attend seminars at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) in Hawaii which was opened by the Pentagon in 1995. Their reports give the Pacific Command valuable data and analysis on security issues in the Philippines and the region.

Rand Corporation, a think tank which advises the Pentagon, envisioned last May the widening of the U.S.’ bilateral security treaties with South Korea, Japan and Australia with those of the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand towards building a comprehensive multinational security partnership. Its proposal beefs up the new U.S. security strategy in Asia particularly in Southeast Asia. But the strategy, which traces its roots to the 1995 “Clinton Doctrine,” does not single out piracy, drug syndicates and other forms of international terrorism as major American security concerns in the area. Uppermost in U.S. strategy thinkers are other issues that warrant greater American security involvement in Asia: cross-border aggression, civil wars, internal aggression (read: insurgency), armed uprisings and civil disturbances. They also saw the threat of China as a power to contend with in the next few years, the internal conflicts in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the Leftist and Muslim “insurgencies” as security flashpoints.

American interests

Former U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen made this quite clear early this year in his last annual report to Clinton and Congress. These concerns, he said, have the most serious potential consequences in Asia where U.S. economic interests will be affected and the lives of Americans will be endangered.

“The United States will do whatever it takes to defend them including, when necessary, the unilateral use of military power,” Cohen said.

In oblique reference to the VFA and other similar agreements with other countries, he said the use of U.S. military power will include “forces deployed temporarily for exercises, combined training or military-to-military interactions.” The other forces are those permanently stationed abroad, those rotationally deployed overseas, defense and security cooperation programs, “humanitarian and civic assistance,” as well as regional centers for security studies including the APCSS.

In particular, Cohen said, American forces will be involved in “show-of-force operations, coercive campaigns, limited strikes, noncombatant evacuation operations, no-fly enforcement, maritime sanctions enforcement, operations to address a mass migration, counter-terrorism operations, peace operations, counter-drug operations, foreign humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and emergency operations overseas in support of other U.S. government agencies.”

In a similar vein though, Blair cited expressions of concern by members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Manila about the explosive political and security scenario in the Philippines as elsewhere. This itself warrants the beefing up of a regional security framework, the Pacific Command chief said.

(The U.S. remains the Philippines’ largest trading partner and export market – 1/3 of its total exports. Twenty percent - about $20 billion annually - of Manila’s imports come from the U.S. Americans are also the country’s largest foreign investors, with about 25 percent - or $3 billion - of the FDI.)

The new U.S. security strategy and Blair’s own words paint a scenario of renewed direct American interventionism in the Philippines under the pretext of a multinational cooperation in the fight against “international terrorism.” Was Arroyo naïve enough to believe that American expressions of support in the war against the Abu Sayyaf will be limited to that scale? Or are we seeing yet another president in need of American support in her fight against the growing anti-U.S. imperialist Leftist guerilla threat–a threat which she herself vowed last week to eliminate along with the Abu Sayyaf banditry and organized crime?

Arroyo’s predecessor, Joseph Estrada, made possible the ratification of the VFA. The current Malacañang occupant may go down in history as the president who allowed U.S. military aggression to deepen in the Philippines again. Bulatlat.com

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