EDCA: Weaponizing our country against China

ON April 27, the 10-year Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which allows the United States to use the bases of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), will either expire or be renewed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. For a true and full exposition of the national security and life-and-death issues involved, our columns in March and April will recap and update EDCA reports and analyses over the past decade.

Our articles balance Washington’s campaign, backed by our top leaders, academics and media, to boost support for EDCA’s renewal and more facilities for America. Key to this campaign is the China friction to justify the bases and zero discourse on the grave dangers of hosting US forces with a conflict possibly erupting between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan.

That very war risk is why Washington is building up forces and alliances in Asia — and weaponizing our country. We could face the kind of devastation suffered by Ukraine, where the West has also channeled armaments to battle another nuclear-armed rival, Russia.

Weeks after Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022 to stop Ukraine from joining the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Presidents Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin nearly forged peace in exchange for Ukraine’s neutrality.

But the US and the United Kingdom opposed the deal. Instead, NATO armed and funded Ukraine in continued fighting to defeat and weaken Russia. It failed: the Russians took more territory and became far stronger militarily and economically than before.

Now, our country is also being weaponized for America’s top global priority, expounded in Chapter 3 of its National Security Strategy published by the White House in October 2022: “Out-Competing China and Constraining Russia” (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2022/10/BidenHarris-Administrations-NationalSecurity-Strategy-10.2022.pdf).

Judging from his statements over the past decade, EDCA was never Marcos’ wish — not as senator, presidential candidate or even president — until February 2023, when he opened nine sites to America: Lal-lo Airport and Camilo Osias Naval Base in Cagayan; Camp Melchor de la Cruz in Isabela; Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija; Cesar Basa Air Base in Pampanga; Antonio Bautista Air Base, near Puerto Princesa; Balabac Island, off southern Palawan; Benito Ebuen Air Base, near Cebu City; and Lumbia Air Base outside Cagayan de Oro City.

Neutral, yes; EDCA, no

When EDCA was signed in April 2014, Marcos and 14 other senators passed a resolution contending that the executive agreement was invalid because it was, in fact, a treaty needing Senate ratification. Marcos also questioned the Supreme Court ruling affirming its constitutionality (https://tinyurl.com/7x2suef4).

Marcos and other senators also cited seven EDCA flaws, including the AFP’s inability to check if US vessels docking here carried nuclear weapons, violating the Constitution’s ban on nukes entering our territory. (The same inability to check applies to aircraft.) Then-senator Marcos said: “As the EDCA is signed, there are no limitations [where the US can have sites] … nothing in the agreement precludes any area.”

He might have remembered his own father’s warning in 1975, quoted in the Philippine Council of Foreign Relations journal (third article at http://pcfr.weebly.com/pcfr-journal.html):

“If the purpose of American military bases is to strengthen American military posture in the Pacific, or in the Indian Ocean and throughout the world, does this not expose the Philippines to the animosities, suspicions and the conflicts arising out of the American military buildup — animosities and conflicts that we have no participation in making — and do not these bases endanger the safety of the Filipinos and the Philippines not only from conventional armed attack, but from possible nuclear attack?”

The nuke threat applies more so today. China has more than 500 warheads, and North Korea threatened US bases during the 2017 crisis over Pyongyang’s program to develop atomic weapons and ballistic missiles. Notably, in 2019, then-Defense secretary Delfin Lorenzana told London’s Financial Times: “Should there be a shooting war and nuclear weapons would be used, I think the Philippines would be a fair target.”

Hence, it was wise for Marcos, as candidate and as president, to repeatedly declare the Philippines “friend to all, enemy to none.” The month before fast-tracking EDCA, he noted in visits to China and Switzerland that Asia sought neutrality despite pressure to align.

Marcos also told the China Global Television Network (CGTN) that the region’s future “must be decided by the Asia-Pacific region, not anyone else.” He added that in our national interest, “we will not allow ourselves to be drawn back to the old Cold War formula where one has to take sides.”

Marcos also eschewed involving Washington in our disputes with Beijing about 14 minutes into CGTN’s interview (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=UhWaaDCcwAA): “The Americans offered to be the third party between China and the Philippines, and I said that’s not going to succeed because you (US) are a party in interest.”

When American and Philippine defense officials announced in October 2022 that we would provide the US with 10 AFP sites, the President ordered a Cabinet review of EDCA, the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement and even the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty governing our US alliance.

Heading the top-level review was his first national security adviser, Clarita Carlos, the widely respected and staunchly nationalist former head of the AFP’s National Defense College of the Philippines. But she resigned in January 2023 when the Americans pressured the President to let her go.

Weeks later, Marcos also dropped neutrality when US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited in February last year. In April 2022, Austin and then-British prime minister Boris Johnson got Zelenskyy to scrap the peace deal with Putin.

After Zelenskyy, Marcos; Austin obtained US access to nine AFP sites. The Philippines has since seen greater maritime frictions — no surprise after allowing China’s nuclear-armed top rival to use our bases. America did far worse to Cuba when the island nearly installed Russian atomic projectiles in 1962 after America put missiles in Italy and Turkey.

On March 14, we cover how EDCA compromises our sovereignty and security.

Former Cabinet secretary and Asiaweek editor Ric Saludo heads the Center for Strategy, Enterprise & Intelligence (CenSEI). He has an MS in Public Policy and Management from the University of London, postgraduate diplomas in strategy from Oxford, and Scripture from Catholic Distance University in the US.