Signing could be during Obama’s visit
In 1991, when the Philippine Congress forced the United States out of the
military bases that they had occupied since 1898, they left. But when they did,
they went to Leyte and picked up the bronze statues of Gen. Douglas MacArthur
and the landing party that had accompanied him on MacArthur’s famed October,
1944 return to drive the Japanese from the islands.
US officials
took the statues back to the US. It’s unclear what became of them.
According to
a caretaker and guide at the MacArthur Landing Memorial Park in the city of
Palo, the Philippine government was forced to commission the new group of
statues, nearly twice life-size, to replace the ones the Americans had taken
home in a fit of national pique.
Today, 22
years after the ouster, the US and Philippine governments are the last stages
of negotiating a pact, hopefully timed with President Barack Obama’s visit
sometime this month, that would formally allow the US to return although in a
real sense they have never quite been gone. Although Clark Air Base – already
covered with volcanic ash from the Mount Pinatubo explosion – and Subic Bay
Naval Base were turned over to the Philippine government, the US continued to
maintain a mutual defense treaty and US forces have moved in and out.
The details
remain shrouded in secrecy, at least partly because Filipino nationalists
continue to object to the presence of the US military on their soil. But it
appears that the Philippines will permit the US to build facilities inside
Filipino military bases to boost the presence of US combat troops in
cooperation with the Philippine armed forces.
The expected
official return comes both as President Obama seeks to pivot the US military
presence away from the Middle East to Asia and as tension rises over
resource-rich islets in the South China Sea that are claimed by the Philippines
and other littoral nations and by China. President Benigno S. Aquino III has
told reporters the new defense pact is designed to improve the country’s
defense, particularly after China’s increasingly antagonistic stance.
In recent
weeks, the Chinese have stepped up the confrontation, at one point hosing down
Filipino fishermen with high-pressure water cannons to drive them away from the
Scarborough Shoal, which is about 200 km from Subic Bay and 2650 km from the
nearest point in China. Last week, Filipino Marines in cat-and-mouse maneuvers
managed to thread their way past a Chinese blockade to deliver food and other
supplies to Marines based on a dilapidated WWII era vessel grounded on one of
the shoals, waving the V for Victory sign at the Chinese as they pushed
through.
The
relationship between the United States and the Philippines remains complicated,
however. The US was surprised and irritated when senators led by Juan Ponce
Enrile rejected a treaty extending the lease, following denunciations of the
American presence as a vestige of colonialism and an affront to Philippine
sovereignty. It took two years and billions of dollars in expenses to remove
the US presence, including the statues. Most of the naval facilities were moved
to Singapore or scattered around other parts of Asia.
Nonetheless,
with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon iun
the United States, the US presence began to increase with 500 Special Forces
troops stationed on Mindanao, training the Filipino military to search for Islamic
radicals such as the Abu Sayyaf forces. Roughly 6,500 US troops rotate in to
conduct joint military exercises each year although the US troops were barred
from combat. They also use Philippine jungles for tropical warfare training.
The
negotiations have been slowed by US concerns over what access the Filipino
military would have to the facilities built and operated on their bases by the
US forces. That is because the US military is one of the most highly-trained
and sophisticated on the planet, while the Filipino military is under-equipped,
ill-trained, often corrupt and badly disciplined.
US troops are
equipped with sophisticated surveillance and detection equipment, much of which
is considered classified. Filipino soldiers use personal cell phones during
missions and sometimes give wives, girlfriends and relatives free rein on their
bases, causing US troops to bridle. US forces insist on high levels of security
and discipline to maintain the equipment, especially since US troops are a
lightning rod for terrorists all over the world.
Obviously,
being locked out of areas on their own bases is going to be a sticking point
for prideful Filipino officers, and not without reason. Negotiators are seeking
to work out details so that sensitive communications and surveillance equipment
will be off limits during operational periods, but that the US troops won’t get
their own mess halls and sleeping quarters – probably to be greeted with
irritation by a military used to having such exclusive facilities in the Green Zone
in Iraq and on Afghan bases.
Whether they
will bring the statues back is another matter. Asia Sentinel
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