What BBM can tell VP Harris
FIRST THINGS FIRST
UNITED States Vice President Kamala Harris is in Manila for official talks with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. amid growing instability and turbulence in the world. This visit has raised hopes that it could lead to some post-Covid aid from our strongest ally. At the same time it has raised some fears that our ally is preparing us for war. Bongbong Marcos (BBM) will need to
convey to his honored guest as clearly as possible that one of the things we Filipinos hate the most is war.
Kamala Harris is the first woman vice president of the US, also the first African American and Asian American to hold the office. Some of her predecessors who had visited the Philippines, like Lyndon Baines Johnson and George W. Bush, eventually became president. As this visit comes not too far away from the next US presidential elections, some observers think it could help Harris, a Democrat, decide whether or not to run for president, especially if the incumbent President Joe Biden does not run again or is prevented from seeking a second term.
Included in her Philippine itinerary is a visit to Palawan, the country’s premier tourism spot from where the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Western Command provides security to the world-famous island, the Kalayaan Island Group and the West Philippine Sea. Harris is reportedly interested in the problems of Palawan fishermen who are either fishing or unable to fish in disputed waters.
Most likely, the real reason for making Palawan a major stop for the vice president is because of its place in the 2014 Philippine-US Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). It is the site of one of the original five “agreed locations” under EDCA, and of a second such facility being established there.
“Agreed locations” is the term used by EDCA to describe US facilities inside Philippine military bases where the US may construct its own structures, preposition military equipment, aircraft, vessels, security materiel, defense technologies and station troops on a “rotational basis.”
Some critics think it is just another term for “bases” — one way of circumventing the 1987 Constitution, which provides: “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 Congress so requires, ratified by a majority of the votes cast by the people in a national referendum held for that purpose and recognized as a treaty by the other contracting state.”
In 2016, they questioned EDCA’s constitutionality before the Supreme Court, but the court dismissed their petition.
Five “agreed locations” were originally established. Antonio Bautista Air Base in Palawan; Basa Air Base in Pampanga; Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija; Lumbia Airport in Cagayan de Oro; and Benio Ebuen Air Base in Mactan, Cebu. Then five others were added: two in Cagayan Valley, and one each in Zambales, Isabela and Palawan.
The new locations will be launched in Puerto Princesa tomorrow with Harris as special guest. The US is reported to have appropriated $70 million for them in the next two years.
Although the official literature says the EDCA facilities are mainly intended for “military operations other than war” (MOOTW), some observers seem to believe it is part of US preparations for a possible war with China.
Under the 1951 Philippine-US Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), an armed attack on either Party, its armed forces, vessels or aircraft in the Pacific shall be considered an armed attack on both Parties, to which they must respond either individually or jointly, according to their respective constitutional processes.
I repeat the question I asked in a previous column: What happens if instead of China attacking the Philippines or the US in the Pacific, China were attacked by the US? Does the MDT become operational then? Assuming we were not involved in the first strike, are we expected to join the US in meeting the adversary’s expected response to that first strike?
This has not come up anywhere else before. It would be good if President Marcos Jr. could raise it, initially and prudentially, in his conversation with the US vice president. This would help to make it clear that the Philippine Constitution “renounces war as an instrument of national policy.”
Instead of joining the Western hawks in calling for war, Marcos Jr. could perhaps invite Harris to join him in trying to broaden the global search for peace, which he has initiated with China’s President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Meeting in Bangkok last week, and which he is expected to pursue on his state visit to Beijing in January next year.
This could help make Harris’ visit the very opposite of US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent highly provocative visit to Taiwan that raised the political and military temperature across the Taiwan Strait nearly past boiling point. Then VP Harris could perhaps return to Washington, D.C., far better prepared than any sitting American politician to call on Presidents Biden, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin to work together in building a safer and better world for all our children and great, great, great grandchildren.