What I'd do in the Philippines.

What I'd Do In the Philippines

FOR THE FIRST TIME since the end of the Second World War, the United States finds itself facing a credible naval challenge in East Asia. Soviet maritime forces now have access to four naval bases in Vietnam and Kampuchea. Soviet submarines, missile-capable battle cruisers, and light aircraft carriers have used these port facilities, and twenty to thirty Soviet naval combat and support vessels regularly use Camranh Bay. These maritime forces are supported by seven major airfields in Laos and Vietnam. Soviet aircraft make reconnaissance sweeps over the South China Sea as far east as Philippine airspace. At the same time, growing Soviet contacts with Kiribati, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea--and the recent events in Fiji--all suggest that the strategic balance in the South Pacific is under considerable pressure.

To offset this Soviet presence and maintain a deterrent balance in the region, the United States must have access to local onshore support facilities. For that purpose, the Philippine bases have always been critical. If the United States lost access to the facilities in the Philippines, it would have to move its forces to the east and north. Tinian, Palau, and Saipan have been suggested; however, not only would they be some considerable distance from the critical ship passages of the South China Sea, but facilities would still have to be constructed. Labor and supplies would have to be imported at very high cost, and construction of adequate facilities would probably take about a decade--and even then the facilities would not compare with those already available at Subic and Clark in the Philippines. In short, too little, too late.

U.S. sea power in the region is of paramount importance to the economic and security interests not only of the U.S. itself, but also of the Philippines and all the other trade-oriented nations of East Asia. Because of the long security relationship with the United States, the armed forces of the Philippines have never been charged with sealane-defense missions. The unique contribution of the Philippines to the security of the region has been that of making facilities available to U.S. forces in a strategically important locale. The arrangement thus provided the Phillippines with cost-effective security; the United States with communications, intelligence, command, logistics, ship-repair, and training facilities in a critical region of the world; and the ASEAN nations with the stability that allowed the economies of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia to grow as rapidly as they have.

Pre-Aquino Philippine governments understood all of this, and allowed the renewal of base agreements without demanding compensation or concessions. With each renewal, the U.S. President pledged only to make his "best effort" to obtain economic-assistance funds and some military-aid grants. In comparison to concessions demanded by, say, Greece, Spain, or Portugal, the Philippines asked little of the United States.

It is a security connection between allied sovereign nations, calculated to serve the best interests of both. That is, it was, until the ascension of Corazon Aquino in February 1986 broke the continuity of the Republic of the Philippines. The coup came at a time when the Philippine-U.S. Bases Agreement (which is scheduled to terminate in 1991) was up for renegotiation.

Few Americans seem prepared to consider the difficulties that will attend the next attempt to renew the Philippine-bases agreement. Indeed, few Americans seem prepared to seriously consider the larger implications of the new administration in Manila, both for U.S. and for Philippine security.

Corazon Aquino has been remarkably explicit--if not wholly consistent--about her opposition to continued U.S. access to military facilities in the Philippines. Early in her campaign against my administration, she announced her opposition to the presence of "foreign troops" on Philipine soil. In December 1984, she crafted a "Unity Platform" to bring together all the political opposition to the established government of the Philippines at that time. Article 3.6 of that platform (which was subsequently published as A Declaration of Unity) states: "Foreign military bases on Philippine territory must be removed, and no foreign military bases shall hereafter be allowed." Among those who signed the document were Jovito Salonga, now President of the new Philippine Senate, and Representative Ramon Mitra, now Speaker of the new House of Representatives. Those whom Mrs. Aquino gathered around herself include many other signatories to the Unity Platform, such as the late Jaime V. Ongpin, who served as Secretary of Finance; Aquilino Pimentel, formerly Minister of Local Government, who now serves in the Philippine legislature; and Raul Manglapus, Minister of Foreign Affairs.

When Corazon Aquino put together the team charged with the responsibility of writing a new constitution for the Republic of the Philippines, she knew perfectly well what they would produce. In Article 18, Section 25 of the "temporary provisions" of the Aquino constitution, we find the following:

After the expiration in 1991 of the Agreement between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States of America concerning Military Bases, foreign military bases, troops, or facilities shall not be allowed in the Philippines except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate and, when the Congress so requires, ratified by a majority of the votes cast by the people in a national referendum held for that purpose.

By including such provisions in her constitution, Corazon Aquino has accomplished several things. On the one hand, she satisfied her anti-American supporters by making it virtually impossible to renew the Philippine-U.S. Bases Agreement. The present members of the new Philippine Senate are scheduled to hold office for six years--until after the current bases agreement has expired. According to the new constitution, a ratification of any treaty renewing the bases would require confirmation by two-thirds of the 24 senators. A recent survey of Philippine senators showed less than half the required number supporting a new treaty.

The last surveys of public opinion collected during my administration indicated that a plurality of voters--about 40 per cent of those responding to the query--favored the continuation of U.S. access to Philippine facilities. About 30 per cent of respondents were opposed to the continued presence of U.S. forces; that left 30 per cent undecided. Which means that only if the government made a strong case in support of a new treaty could it hope to win a national referendum on the issue.

Given the prevailing disposition of the leadership in Manila, this will not happen. And yet Corazon Aquino will be free to tell her American critics that final termination of the Philippine-U.S. Bases Agreement reflects, not her choice, but the will of the Philippine people. She has established the grounds for what Americans nowadays like to call "plausible denial."

UNITED STATES withdrawal from the Philippines would significantly alter the balance of power in Southeast Asia, to the detriment of the future security of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan--even the People's Republic of China. The response time of U.S. armed forces to any crisis in the South China Sea would be measurably increased. The greater distances involved would reduce the on-station time of U.S. aircraft and surface vessels throughout the region, and the diminished presence would affect local perceptions of America's credibility as a security partner. Ever since the announcement of Richard Nixon's "Guam Doctrine," with its withdrawal of U.S. forces from Southeast Asia and Taiwan, U.S. allies in the region have entertained doubts about the United States' determination and ability to defend their general interests, which the loss of access to Philippine bases could only exacerbate. Certainly the loss of forward bases in the area would make defense of the sealanes manifestly more difficult and increasingly expensive.

OF COURSE, Mrs. Aquino and her entourage may not be able to remain in control of the situation in the Philippines until 1991. For one thing, the most sanguine estimates are that the Philippine economy will enjoy only modest real growth over the next four or five years. Unemployment will increase and poverty will become more pervasive, improving the recruitment opportunities of the radical Left. Guerrilla activity in the countryside will probably intensify.

The survival of the Aquino administration under such conditions will be very problematic, for unlike prior administrations it will have great difficulty in dealing with enemies on the Left. Before the 1986 coup, the Aquino opposition made extensive use of radical students, disaffected neo-Marxist intellectuals, "progressive" clerics, and left-wing "nationalists." All these groups entertained some variant of Marxism as central to their beliefs, and many of them provided members of the new government. Administration members Joker Arroyo, the late Jose Diokno, and Lorenzo Tanada, among many others, represent the tendentious anti-Americanism and overtly leftist orientation of the Aquino administration.

Because of these political debts to the Left, Corazon Aquino, once she was in power, offered an unconditional amnesty to all political offenders (see paragraph 2.3 of the Unity Platform). The arrangement granted amnesty to Marxist-Leninist-Maoist criminals who were guilty of murdering members of the national-security forces, civilian functionaries, and ordinary citizens. It extended immunity to leftist terrorists, as well as to felons who had extorted "revolutionary taxes" from all and sundry.

While murderers and felons were being granted unconditional amnesty, the Aquino administration gave Jose Diokno the job of prosecuting members of the military who were charged with human-rights violations. In other words, those who had taken up arms against the state were granted unconditional amnesty, but members of the armed forces of the Philippines were made subject to prosecution.

In consequence, Communist guerrilla leaders were able to become celebrities in Manila. They appeared on national television advocating an early abrogation of the security arrangement between the Philippines and the United States. By the middle of 1986, while the Philippine military protested in vain, Communist leaders had achieved star status, recruited more guerrilla fighters, and improved their communications and logistics infrastructure.

At the same time, the Aquino administration did little to improve the fighting capacity of the armed forces. Threatened with prosecution for human-rights infractions on the one hand, and denied the material support necessary to the effective suppression of armed rebellion on the other, the Philippine military felt compelled to make its case dramatically. The result has been a series of tragic coup attempts--the surface manifestation of deep and fundamental frustrations.

As the credibility of the Aquino administration erodes, the organized "legal" Left and the armed revolutionaries in the countryside will operate increasingly from a position of strength. The prospects are that a fatally weakened Aquino government would be drawn into a coalition with the Communist Left. That would be the penultimate stage in the progression toward a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist state. Among the first acts of such an interim "national democratic" government would be the expulsion of all "foreign" military forces from the Philippine archipelago.

Should the United States react by withdrawing economic assistance, the immediate counter-reaction would be a Philippine appeal for assistance from the Soviet bloc. Moscow, in fact, has already made overtures to Manila, offering substantial economic assistance. In this scenario, negotiations between Moscow and Manila would probably give the Soviets access to support facilities in the Philippines in exchange for general economic aid and some general security guarantees. (Many of those groups associated with the Aquino opposition before February 1986 advocated just such a policy.) In short, in exchange for a level of aid that would allow an impoverished, Cuban-style economy to survive, the Philippines would have to provide the Soviet Union the same kind of benefits extended by Hanoi and Havana.

Such developments could well presage the collapse of the U.S. defense perimeter in the Western Pacific. In the face of the consequent major Soviet expansion in Southeast Asia, Japan might well feel constrained to reassess the virtues of remaining a Western ally. The Soviet Union has already undertaken a number of initiatives designed to improve its relations with Japan. Opening its Far Eastern provinces to Japanese investment and joint ventures could be part of a long-range program for reorienting Tokyo's foreign policy in general and its security policy in particular.

At best, U.S. withdrawal from the Philippines would place the continued prosperity of the pluralistic and market-governed polities of East and Southeast Asia at risk. At worst, it could mean the expansion of the oppressive system that swallowed Kampuchea, Laos, and Vietnam. One-third of the population of Kampuchea perished at the hands of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist revolutionaries. Hundreds of thousands were compelled to flee Laos and Vietnam, scattering their dead across the vast sea spaces of Asia and the Pacific. For Americans the "Philippine crisis" is an issue of access to strategically important military facilities. For Filipinos, it may prove a matter of life and death.