Is the US-Philippines Alliance Obsolete?

With the unwinding of the U.S.-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the utility of Washington’s oldest alliance in the Indo-Pacific hangs in the balance.

In February, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the termination of a 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States, accusing Washington of “neocolonial” interference in his country’s domestic affairs. As political disagreements continue to fester, recent Chinese actions in the South China Sea underscore the need for a functioning U.S.-Philippines alliance.

Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations, writing in Foreign Affairs earlier this month, warned that declining U.S. leadership and mounting global discord, coupled with a prolonged economic downturn from the COVID-19 pandemic, could accelerate trends in Asia. As China attempts to capitalize on the geopolitical flux created by the novel coronavirus, Washington’s relations with its oldest ally in the Indo-Pacific — no exception to Haass’ predictions — could threaten to spiral further, even if only through diplomatic neglect. This could give Beijing additional incentive to assert its will over the region in a hypothetical post-pandemic world order.

Occasional alliance management problems are by no means unique to the U.S.-Philippines relationship. At various points during and since the Cold War, the United States and Japan had to mitigate differences over base issues, host nation support, and bilateral trade. U.S. relations with the European Union and NATO have deteriorated in recent years, to the point that some argue they are now “irreparably damaged.” The United States and South Korea continue to lock horns over burden-sharing negotiations, a year after Seoul reluctantly agreed to pay Washington an estimated $1 billion annually to support U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula (a 10 percent increase from prior levels).

However, proponents of a strengthened U.S.-Philippines alliance worry that Duterte’s abrupt decision abandons and therefore jeopardizes the entire security relationship. Without the VFA, they fret that the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) — the basis for bilateral security cooperation — will be rendered practically “useless.”

To be sure, the VFA provides essential legal cover for U.S. forces in the Philippines. Without the preferential immunity from local criminal justice, customs, and immigration authorities granted through the VFA, the U.S. military would be hampered from maintaining its normal routine of around 300 bilateral joint exercises, rotational troop deployments, port calls, and other engagements annually. The VFA’s abrogation could also compromise the ongoing construction of military facilities and prepositioning of defense articles in the Philippines, authorized under the VFA’s implementing agreement the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

In legal theory, however, bilateral cooperation should be minimally affected by Duterte’s decision to terminate the VFA. The Philippine Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling on Saguisag vs. Executive Secretary, along with Philippine Department of Justice (DOJ) opinions in 2008 and 2015 covering all manner of short-term or transient visitations by U.S. military personnel also authorized under the EDCA, project a clear legal path forward for most established forms of bilateral security cooperation — if without the preferential immunities guaranteed under the VFA. These legal precedents should also implicitly cover logistical stopovers for U.S. freedom of navigation missions to the Indo-Pacific, as well as other intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance activities.

There may also be legal recourse to keep the bilateral response fluid in the case of emergency contingencies like an armed attack on the Philippines activating Article 4 of the MDT. During a constitutional deliberation in 1986, a member of the Philippine Constitutional Commission opined that a status of forces treaty should be unnecessary in situations where foreign militaries will provide “temporary help.” This may be construed as an admission of need for some mechanism rendering privileged, if ad hoc, access for the U.S. military during times of crisis or “very serious danger.”

Even in lieu of such a contingency device, there already exists some administrative precedent for the temporary provision of favorable access to a foreign military. For example, in 1993, following the expiry of the 1947 Military Bases Agreement (MBA) two years prior, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) issued a note to the U.S. Embassy in Manila “granting privileges and immunities to U.S. military personnel … accorded to the Embassy’s administrative and technical staff under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”

In a post-VFA landscape, there is no denying that U.S. operational rights and access to the Philippines would be hampered, if not entirely stifled. It is therefore critical to push back against the pessimistic narrative forming around Washington’s commitment to constructive engagement with the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia.

Despite opinions to the contrary, the U.S. security guarantee to the Philippines enshrined in the MDT remains uncompromising. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made abundantly clear during a visit to Manila last year, any armed attack by China on Philippine military personnel or public vessels in the disputed West Philippine Sea/South China Sea (WPS/SCS) theater would automatically trigger Article 4 of the MDT.

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By no means will Pompeo’s assurances alone put an end to dangerous notions that the United States might one day walk back its security commitments to the Philippines. But Washington’s deterrence efforts, while falling short against China’s “short of war” (or gray zone) maneuvers in the WPS/SCS, should give Beijing pause before launching a large-scale attack on the MDT’s defense of the Philippines.

Even without a VFA, future joint naval exercises and maritime patrols can be expected, albeit at a slower pace. The U.S.-led Cobra Gold and Malabar exercises, as well as Philippine participation in the Trilateral Maritime Patrols (TMP) with Malaysia and Indonesia in the Sulu Sea, are examples of exercises not governed by an explicit status of forces agreement.

The United States regularly conducts similar joint training, capacity building, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, counterterror, and other military exercises with nonallied countries including India (e.g., Yudh Abhyas), Indonesia (Garuda Shield), Malaysia (Bersama Warrior), and Vietnam (Pacific Angel). In fact, U.S. analysts argue that “most U.S.-Philippine mil-to-mil cooperation doesn’t rely on the MDT.”

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Land-based U.S.-Philippines military exercises would also outlive the VFA, and the Philippines should expect to continue receiving maritime capability assistance via other regional programs such as the U.S. Maritime Security Initiative (MSI).

As the Philippines adjusts to U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands for greater host nation support, it is important to consider whether Manila has fully discharged its burden-sharing obligations under Article 2 of the MDT.

Here, it is useful to construct a comparative thumbnail sketch of the Philippines’ efforts to “separately and jointly by self-help and mutual aid … maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack (emphases added).”

Unlike other U.S. allies such as Japan and South Korea, the Philippines is not an advanced economy. Manila is also the only U.S. treaty ally and WPS/SCS disputant to struggle with consecutive internal security threats, including a Cold War-era communist insurgency, perennial violent extremism, and an Islamic secessionist movement in Mindanao. This has siphoned a considerable amount of scarce government resources and bandwidth from military modernization and capability-upgrade programs crucial for external defense, and casts doubt on whether decades of U.S. security assistance (averaging $184 million annually under Duterte) have paid off.

The Philippines spends 1.1 percent of GDP on defense, half the ASEAN average. Compounding the situation, only 30 percent of the Philippine defense budget supports operations, with the rest appropriated for salaries and pensions. Not surprisingly, the Philippines relies overwhelmingly on U.S. support for military capacity building (e.g., through the Military Assistance Program and Excess Defense Articles). As a former Philippine national security adviser who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy put it, “In spite of our supposed ‘closeness’ to the U.S., we have the weakest navy and air force in the region.”

China’s capture of Mischief Reef in 1995 and Scarborough Shoal in 2012, island reclamation operations in 2013, periodic restriction of Philippine fishermen and supply vessels from international waters, and other strategic actions provide skeptics of American power with ample ammunition to discredit the U.S.-Philippines alliance as a paper tiger. At one point, to be sure, the Obama administration was reportedly able to frustrate China’s reclamation activities on Scarborough Shoal by strongly communicating its resolve to Beijing. However, the bilateral alliance’s dependence on joint military exercises such as Balance Piston, Balikatan, Joint Combined Exchange Training, PHIBLEX, and SALAKNIB — generally more effective in preparing for wartime contingencies — exposes its unique vulnerability to China’s short-of-war operations in the WPS/SCS.

By contrast, Japan and Vietnam have demonstrated some success in demilitarizing maritime tensions and gaining leverage for diplomatic negotiations with China through the use of counter-patrols and ramming tactics using white-hulled vessels.

Washington is clear-eyed about the need for developing a new form of deterrence capable of dealing more proportionately, and thus more credibly, with China’s gray zone tactics.

The United States and Philippines need to clearly define the parameters of their alliance. Though they share strategic challenges and objectives, each still must prioritize their respective national interests.

First, the Philippines should understand that alliance commitments are a two-way street. The Philippines cannot continue buck-passing to the United States by merely contributing land for the U.S. forward defense posture, as it has tended to do previously. Rather, Manila should uphold its end of Article 2 of the MDT by demonstrating a stronger commitment to self-reliance through “showing the flag” in the WPS/SCS, and by over time achieving a credible defense posture.

Second, Washington and Manila should engage in continued contingency planning for how great power dynamics with China will shape bilateral relations going forward. Manila must steel itself for the reality that occasional entrapment by the United States in a standoff with China is an inevitable tradeoff for security insurance. Despite heated differences between Manila and Washington at the principal level, the two sides can use their annual Bilateral Strategic Dialogue, two-plus-two foreign and defense ministerial meetings, and other working-level summits to forge continued alliance consensus, while mitigating the interference of their respective domestic interests and other exogenous factors at the margins.

In relation, it is imperative to clarify bilateral responses to China’s gray zone activities in the WPS/SCS. In this regard, the United States can open a dialogue to consider how it might accommodate the Duterte government’s stated “red lines,” which include the reclamation of Scarborough Shoal, forcible ejection or blockade of the BRP Sierra Madre on Second Thomas Shoal, and China’s unilateral exploitation of hydrocarbons within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

All is also not lost for the U.S.-Philippines VFA. As U.S. experts rightly note, a lot can happen between now and August 9. This potential for a sudden correction is illustrated by South Korea’s decision late last year to terminate a military intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan before agreeing, at nearly the literal eleventh hour, to temporarily extend and renegotiate the pact.

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Finally, the Duterte government’s decisions to explore VFAs with other countries, including Britain, Japan, Indonesia, and South Korea — and to retain a similar agreement with Australia — intimates that a resumption or renegotiation of the U.S. VFA is possible.

Even amid Duterte’s claims of U.S. neocolonialism, Washington and Manila have endeavored to put history further behind them and maintain a forward-looking alliance. In 2018, the United States returned to the Philippines the so-called Balangiga Bells, a U.S. trophy from the Philippine-American War heavy with meaning for the Filipino quest for freedom. And last year, the United States offered assurances that Manila’s claims within the WPS/SCS fall within its security umbrella.

Predictions of the U.S-Philippines alliance’s imminent demise may therefore be exaggerated, as they do not take into full account the legal technicalities, mutual geostrategic concerns, and other possible contingencies that will hopefully put a stable floor under the future alliance regardless of political differences.

Aaron Jed Rabena is a research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress, a Manila-based think tank, and a member of the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations (PCFR).

Elliot Silverberg is a fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, and a non-resident fellow in Korean studies at the Pacific Forum in Hawaii.

The Philippines is not “The Philippines”.
Opposition to US bases and treaties, and support for China, belongs to a tiny but powerful faction, namely certain Chinese business interests and President Duterte, plus the leftovers of the rabid left wing intelligentsia (much reduced since the rise of Duterte).

The people as a whole despise and fear China and welcome US engagement. There are no more pro-American people on Earth. The Philippine military are also intensely pro-American.

The complicating factor here is the pro-China attitude of Duterte, which is opposed to local public opinion. Duterte is popular for reasons unrelated to many of his actual policy positions. This makes things very complicated.

Philippines gets very little US aid.
It is about 0.5% of the national budget or 0.1% of GDP. But about half of that is military aid by one definition or other.

The situation in the Philippines is very complex. US political messaging in the country has been discordant and usually self defeating. It’s mainly been about pounding Duterte on the drug dealers massacre, which has succeeded only in prompting his defensive and spiteful responses. It is also a very poor way to obtain good relations with the Philippine military. This is hardly a good approach to local politics.

Before trying to figure out a workable US policy one must first thoroughly understand this country.

I was a Marine stationed at Subic Bay (Cubi Point) in 1959 and I remember even back then tension between Philippine and Marine and Navy personnel was strained. It only takes one generation to forget the sacrifice in blood that US Armed forces spilled in the liberation of the Filipino people. I think being the worlds police force has only cost us blood, fortune, and ridicule. No more wars that call for our forces on foreign soil.

Exactly so.
The US has an opportunity here, especially now, to cut along the grain, as it were, by exposing these local Chinese interests and subversions. The people are primed to accept any anti-Chinese message.

Attacking a popular figure like Duterte is cutting across the grain. It pleases only a tiny minority of upper-middle class bien pensants. These have been totally sidelined politically in the populist age of Duterte.

Do not attack Duterte. Attack his indefensible friends.

You have been misled by the local state of corruption in these garrison towns of that ancient time. Corrupt cops and officials scrambling desperately for the US dollar, in a desperately poor population. You saw the worst of everyone.

These days every other Filipino family has a member in the US, or working abroad under the protection of the Pax Americana. They are therefore pro American by reflex almost. You have to be here, speaking to all sorts of people, to understand this place.

But Duterte and his clique aren’t the country.
The US has badly mishandled Duterte.

One reason why Duterte was persuaded to a pro-China policy, besides being financed by a Chinese clique, was the pre-Trump “strong horse, weak horse” situation, or perception, of Chinese impunity and American weakness. This has not yet, quite, been alleviated by the Trump administration, in part because the US administration has not had control of the US State Department and military, and its constant distraction from many issues in foreign policy due to the political warfare in Washington.

This has led to a continuing impression of discord and weakness in the US.

Remember that most people abroad, including political leaders, get most of what they know of the US from CNN. No joke.

If they are more “plugged in” they read the New York Times and speak with American bureaucrats and academics. You can imagine what they hear.

But the Philippines is not “the Philippines”. If I said “the US wants x” you would correctly call me an idiot.

Certainly not. As I said, it's the new normal. Trump has been complaining about Korea and Japan and Europe not paying enough. He's complained that Korea's last offer for troop support was not enough. So "You want us there? Fine. How much will you pay?" is the standard now. And I would think that Trump would expect the Philippines to adhere to it.

The world-strategic problem of the Philippines is that you don’t want a hostile power based here.

And if the price is right one won't be.

Dutae is way less popular than SWS (Social Weather Station) and their monthly poll indicates. People absolutely abhor the Chinese Communists. Even before the Coronavirus, they are known as chekwa (not a term of endearment), just as Indians there are known as bumbay or 5-6.

Seems the Communist Chinese actually are building a military base covertly in Zambales. (Where they were getting the materials for the fake islands in the West Philippines Sea). Locals are being turned away by Communist Chinese military had guards. Sake with areas in Clark and Pasig/ Paranaque. Whole areas reserved for the Communist Chinese where no Filipinos are allowed. It’s fitting that the Bank of the Philippine Islands prominently uses Mandarin on its signage, while Tagalog/ Cebuano etc are not featured.

Dutae has a literal army of Communist Chinese paid trolls on all the social media (DDS)

With the lockdown (called the Enhanced Community Quarantine there) and threats of martial law, and his demand that Filipinos love, embrace and accept Chinese Communist Control, what’s said in the barangays are not nice things about Dutae.

The people tend to keep quiet as any criticism of Dutae (and the Communist Chinese) is a criminal offense. I unfriended my wife on Facebook because she keep telling me I’m violating Philippines law by posting and sharing Anti-Communist Chinese stuff in my wall and that I will lose my ACR I-Card (green card) if it continues (The Philippines government now monitors Facebook)

Some media run continuous stories praising the Communist Chinese response and help they are giving the Philippines (GMA) while others, under constant threat of government shutdown (ABS-CBN) by Dutae pulling its Franchise license (they refused to run pro-Dutae campaign ads in 2016), tend to run articles which are anti-Communist Chinese.

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