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Friday, March 29, 2024

With their military bases gone, have the Americans really left?

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With their military bases gone, have the Americans really left?"This is a development that our neighbor China views with no small measure of concern."

 

 

You would think that, when the Philippine Senate rejected the renewal of our Military Bases Agreement with the United States by a slim margin 30 years ago—on September 16, 1991 to be exact—the Filipinos who lost their jobs and their families would feel despondent and resigned to facing an uncertain future.

Banish the thought.

Since then, the Philippine government has converted the two former American military bases here—Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base—to civilian use and in their place put up freeports and economic zones that now provide gainful employment to thousands of Filipinos.

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The Clark Freeport and Special Economic Zone (CFEZ) in Pampanga covers parts of the cities of Angeles and Mabalacat and portions of Porac.  In Tarlac, it includes parts of the towns of Capas and Bamban.

The CFEZ consists of two areas, the Clark Freeport Zone (CFZ) and the Clark Special Economic Zone (CSEZ). The New Clark City is part of the Clark Special Economic Zone. The CFZ covers the area of the former Clark Air Base. The greater portion of the former Clark Air Base has been converted to the Clark International Airport. Clark Global City is part of the Clark Freeport Zone.

Clark forms the hub for business, industry, aviation, education, and tourism in the Philippines as well as a leisure, fitness, entertainment, and gaming center in Central Luzon.

The Bases Conversion and Development Act of 1992 (Republic Act 7227) created the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) that facilitated the conversion process.

The former U.S. Naval Base Subic Bay, on the other hand, is now the Subic Bay  Special Economic and Freeport Zone covering portions of Olongapo and Subic in Zambales and Olongapo and Hermosa in Bataan. The Subic Bay Freeport Zone (SBFZ) is operated and managed by the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA), which is under the supervision of the BCDA. Subic Bay harbor occupies a strategic location as it faces the South China Sea and our closest neighbor to the west, the People's Republic of China.

Now, three decades later, have we really cut our security alliance with the country with  whom we have what's been described as "special relations"?  

Well, not really.

Today, the MBA has been replaced by the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) that both seek to maintain the American military presence in the  Philippines given current geopolitical realities in this side of the Pacific.  

A brief history lesson may be necessary for those born in the 1990s.

In 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War, the Philippines and the United States signed the Military Bases Agreement that gave the latter a 99-year lease on a number of Philippine military and naval bases.

Four years later, in August 1951, the two countries signed a Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) that said both nations would support each other if either one were to be attacked by an external party. That was the period when the Cold War between the US and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was starting to simmer, with both sides engaged in frenzied arms build-up.

The MBA allowed the US to operate major facilities at Clark Air Base in Pampanga and at Subic Bay Naval Base in Zambales, and several small installations in the Philippines. These two facilities figured prominently in the US involvement in the Vietnam War from the mid-60s up to the early 70s.

An amendment to the MBA in 1966, meanwhile, reduced its original 99-year term to just 25 years.

In 1979, after two years of negotiation, the bases agreement was renewed with some amendments.

By 1991, operations at Clark had already been scaled back because of the end of the Cold War, with the last combat aircraft leaving in 1990, before the base was heavily damaged by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo.

As a result, the Philippine Government informed the US on December 6, 1991, that it would have one year to complete withdrawal. That withdrawal went smoothly and was completed ahead of schedule, with the last U.S. forces departing on November 24, 1992. The U.S. Government turned over assets worth more than $1.3 billion to the Philippines, including the airport and ship-repair facility.

Changing global realities, particularly the recent U.S. pivot to Asia amid the emergence of China as an economic and military power in this part of the world, have convinced the Philippine government to allow the Americans to maintain their military presence here, although on a far smaller scale than before.

In February 1998, US and Philippine negotiators concluded the VFA, paving the way for increased military cooperation under the MDT. The agreement was approved by the Philippine Senate in May 1999 and entered into force on June 1, 1999.     

Under the VFA, the US has conducted ship visits to Philippine ports and has resumed large combined military exercises with Philippine forces.

The EDCA allows the United States to rotate troops into the Philippines for extended stays and to build and operate facilities on Philippine bases. The agreement, however, does not allow the US to establish any permanent military bases. It also gives Philippine personnel access to American ships and planes. The EDCA is a supplemental agreement to the VFA. It was signed on April 28, 2014.

On February 7, 2020, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the termination of the VFA as a response to what he considered an affront to national sovereignty by a few US senators who had openly voiced concern over human rights violations in the country. But only recently, the two sides were able to hammer out their differences, so that the VFA is expected to keep American military presence here in the years ahead, a development that our neighbor China views with no small measure of concern and in fact, considers a grave threat to regional peace and stability. 

ernhil@yahoo.com

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