‘Balikatan 02-1’: Warming Up for a Permanent U.S. Armed Presence

Issue 50 --- ‘Balikatan 02-1’: Warming Up for a Permanent U.S. Armed Presence

The arrival of U.S. special forces in southern Mindanao ostensibly for
‘war games’ is just the start of a long-term, permanent presence in the
Philippines. Making this scenario possible is the controversial
Visiting Forces Agreement which, since 1999, is giving the Americans a bridge
for increased deployments, a permanent stay and actual combat
operations in the country.

BY BOBBY TUAZON
Bulatlat.com



The admission last Thursday by U.S. charge d’affaires Robert Fitts that
four Balikatan war exercises between American and Filipino troops are
scheduled this year confirms patriotic organizations’ fears that,
indeed, U.S. forces are here to stay for good. The U.S. forces’ permanent
presence in the Philippines is guaranteed not only by the onerous Visiting
Forces Agreement (VFA) but by the fact that the Americans are using
this pact to upgrade their presence starting with the frequent scheduling
of war games and ending with actual combat operations.

This is the heart of renewed U.S. armed intervention in the
Philippines, plain and simple.

Long before the Sept. 11 bombings on New York and Washington, American
officials had been eyeing an expanded security presence in the
Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia. In previous articles, Bulatlat.com
had reported that this specific plan is in compliance with a security
doctrine crafted by the Pentagon for an expanded military presence in
Asia-Pacific where America’s vital economic and geo-political interests
must be protected.

In May last year, a Pentagon-sponsored study done by RAND, a think tank
with close connections to the White House, called for “frequent
rotational deployments” to the Philippines that would “allow for
infrastructure improvements and keep facilities ‘warm’ to enable the rapid start of
operations in a crisis.” The RAND study was led by Zalmay Khalilzad,
leader of the transition team at the Pentagon for President Gorge W. Bush
before he was appointed as a senior director at the National Security
Council.

Stars and Stripes, an American daily, quoted a top Philippine official
that the RAND-Pentagon scenario fits well into the arrangement
contemplated by U.S. military forces under the VFA.

A permanent presence

The Philippine official, who asked he not be named, said U.S. troops
would deploy for two to four weeks with a two- to three-day gap before
the next unit arrives. Deployments can often overlap, he said. He also
revealed that this scheme allows the U.S. military to maintain a
permanent presence in the country – a “temporary-permanent arrangement.”

To illustrate, the number of U.S. elite troops participating in the
current Balikatan 02-1 exercise – 650 – may be increased and could go
beyond end-2002, a senior military official in Washington confirmed
recently. According to a report by Elmer Cato, a young foreign affairs
official who headed the VFA Monitoring Committee, since the VFA was ratified
in early 1999, U.S. forces have been arriving in the country in
increasing numbers ostensibly for “war exercises.” But some of such “exercises”
with the use of aircraft were being held unilaterally, whether known or
unknown to their Filipino counterparts. (Cato has since been bumped out
of the committee leadership due to pressures coming from the American
embassy in Manila, it was reported.)

In short, the frequency by which the “war games” are being scheduled
allows the U.S. a virtual permanent presence in the country and the VFA
provides the shield. But, in violation of some provisions of the VFA
itself, the war games have been upgraded into actual combat operations and
actual involvement by U.S. troops in a war scenario - initially against
the small Abu Sayyaf bandit group, now numbering just 80 members, and
eventually, in long-term counter-insurgency operations.

The infrastructures for a permanent presence in the Philippines remain
intact for all the American forces to use. There are, first of all, the
former U.S. air and naval bases in Angeles City and Olongapo City in
Central Luzon. In Mindanao, there is a large airfield in Gen. Santos City
whose construction was financed by the USAID all set for use. Depending
on certain conditions, fears – not unfounded – are that this region is
being developed as the United States’ next staging base for expanded
military presence in the region.

Not first time

Incidentally, it is not at all correct to say that this will be the
first time ever for U.S. forces to engage in actual combat operations
against live targets. At the height of the government’s relentless
campaigns against the New People’s Army (NPA) in Central Luzon, Cordillera and
other regions in the 1970s-1980s, Green Berets and other American
forces, backed by military aircraft from Clark Airbase, were joining Marcos
troops. Those operations could be sustained as a result of increased
U.S. military assistance to the Marcos dictatorship even as military
atrocities against civilians were mounting.

It was also RAND Corporation which called for stronger U.S. military
measures against the Islamic movement in the Philippines as well as in
Malaysia and Indonesia. In its perception, the Islamic religious and
separatist movement – including extremist groups such as Abu Sayyaf –
threatens the stability of America’s allies in the region and, eventually,
the long-term security interests of the United States.

This is the policy line advanced by a RAND senior policy analyst, Angel
M. Rabasa, when he testified before the U.S. House international
relations committee on Dec. 21 last year. The Philippines, he said, faces a
persistent Muslim insurgency (in reference to the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front or MILF) and a “serious terrorist threat.” It is not
surprising, he said, that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo “came out strongly in
support of (Bush’s) war on terrorism.” “Her government allowed U.S.
forces to overfly Philippine airspace and use airfields as transit points
in support of Operation Enduring Freedom,” he went further.

Rabasa said that the Sept. 11 attacks fundamentally changed “the
calculus of U.S. interests.” Therefore, he said, American actions should be
framed by “a strategy of strengthening security structures… and
promoting stability” in the Philippines and the rest of the region.

Integrated regional security

In the new “Integrated U.S. Approach to Regional Security,” Rabasa said
the U.S. should “deepen and widen” its bilateral security alliances and
partnerships to bring about a “comprehensive security network in the
Asia-Pacific region.” This multilateralization of U.S. defense and
security arrangements in Asia should “complement” rather than just serve as a
substitute for its existing bilateral alliances including that with the
Philippines.

In addition, he said, the United States must strengthen its robust
security assistance program to allies in the region, especially the
Philippines, a “front-line state in the war on terrorism.” The $92.3 million
in military assistance promised during Macapagal-Arroyo’s Washington
visit in November last year is a step in this direction, he said.

In return for increased military assistance, the United States should
be allowed to expand and diversify its military access and support
arrangements in the Philippines and throughout the region, to be able to
respond more effectively to “unexpected contingencies.”

Previous to his testimony, the RAND senior policy analyst said an
expansion of military cooperation with the Macapagal-Arroyo administration
could be foreseen, one that “could include an expansion of deployments.”
Bulatlat.com