The U.S. secures additional access in the Philippines

Subic Bay, Philippines. (Steven Borowiec)

The US received access to four more bases in the Philippines, allowing it to have more positions from which to monitor China’s activities from. Securing the deal with the Philippines completes a chain of nations in Asia that the US is closely working with to address the Chinese threat in the region.

From the BBC:

These days the US is seeking access to places where “light and flexible” operations involving supplies and surveillance can be run as and when needed, rather than bases where large numbers of troops will be stationed.

In other words, this is not a return to the 1980s, when the Philippines was home to 15,000 US troops and two of the largest American military bases in Asia, at Clark Field and nearby Subic Bay.

Then in 1991 the Philippine government called time. The Filipinos had recently overthrown the hated dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, and sending the old colonial masters home would further cement both democracy and independence.

The Vietnam war was long over, the Cold War was winding down, and China was as yet a military weakling. So, in 1992, the Americans went home – or at least most of them did.

Roll forward 30-odd years and another Marcos is back in the Malacañang Palace.

More important, China is no longer a military weakling, and it’s knocking on the Philippines’ front door. Manila has watched – horrified but powerless to intervene – as Beijing has set about redrawing the map of the South China Sea, or the West Philippine Sea as Manila insists on calling it. Since 2014 China has built 10 artificial island bases, including one at Mischief Reef, deep inside the Philippines’ own exclusive economic zone or EEZ.

Up to then relations between Manila and Beijing had been free of major problems, says Herman Kraft, a political science professor at University of the Philippines.

“We had a live and let live situation in the South China Sea. But in 2012 they tried to seize control of Scarborough Shoal. Then in 2014 they began building the islands. The land grab by China changed the relationship.”

“We have very limited capability against the threat from China,” says former Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Cuisia Jr.

He says the Chinese have repeatedly broken promises not to militarise their new South China Sea bases.

“The Chinese have militarised those features and that puts more of our territory under threat. Only the US has the power to stop them. The Philippines cannot do it alone.”

But this time there will not be thousands of US marines and airmen filling the red-light districts of Olongapo or Angeles city again.

The BBC has additional information here.

Category: China, International Affairs