US War Games Resume in the Philippines
by Murray Horton
Special to Antiwar.com
July 31, 2001

The years 2000 and 2001 have been tumultuous in Philippine politics, even by that country’s usually volatile standard. But one thing doesn’t change – the US military is in the Philippines.

Forced out by the 1991 Senate vote (including Senator Estrada's) which terminated the century-old bases treaty, the US military has had no bases in the Philippines since 1992. This was a major blow to the Pentagon, but it assiduously worked away at its former colony under the Ramos and Estrada presidencies, finally getting the US/Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) ratified by the Senate in 1999 (under Estrada). This VFA allowed the US military to frequently conduct large-scale exercises in the Philippines, without having to bother with the expensive infrastructure of bases. As with its Status of Forces Agreements with Japan and South Korea, where it does still have many bases, the VFA offers virtual immunity to US servicemen accused of crimes in the Philippines.

Joint exercises started in 2000 and from the outset there were incidents. In March 2000, during joint naval exercises, three US sailors were arrested and charged with bashing up a Cebu City taxi driver in a dispute over his fare. The case was dropped after the US paid the cabbie $5,000 (US). A more deadly situation occurred in August 2000, also on Cebu. US Navy SEALs (Sea, Air, Land special forces) and their Philippine Navy counterparts held a secret exercise in the former Atlas Mine, at Toledo, in the island’s interior. All went swimmingly for the Navy boys, but they left an unexploded rocket-launched grenade behind. Local kids found it and the thing blew up, killing two and injuring another. This was the first that relevant Filipino authorities even knew about the Flash Piston exercise. They filed homicide and injury charges against thirty-nine US Seals and Philippine Navy commandos. That did not go down well with the US military, which claimed immunity for its men. Once again, money solved the problem. In January 2001, the parents of the dead boys were a paid a total of 1.5 million pesos (divide by 50 for $US approximation) and duly asked the prosecutors to drop the charges. One result of this tragedy was that the Philippine government tightened rules on live-fire exercises, including mandating the daily cleanup of firing sites.

Thirty-four large, medium and small VFA joint exercises were scheduled for 2001, but it hasn’t been a smooth ride. In January, two hundred US Air Force personnel and five aircraft arrived at the former Clark Air Force Base to take part in the Teak Piston exercise with the Philippine Air Force. The exercise never got off the ground – literally. It coincided with the peak of the protests demanding Estrada’s ouster. The US, in the final week of Clinton’s presidency, was hypersensitive to any suggestion that its military was involved in Filipino politics, or providing any sort of an escape service for Estrada (in 1986, the USAF flew the Marcoses and their loot from their besieged Metro Manila palace to Clark, then out of the country). The exercise was called off, the US military forces left, and it was rescheduled for January 2002. President George W. Bush was sworn in during the same weekend that Estrada was overthrown.

The next big exercise was Balikatan 2001, involving 1,700 US troops, from late April until mid May, and taking place over several provinces. A similar number of US troops took part in the May/June Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT 2001) exercise, involving US warships, jet fighters, helicopters, transport planes and Marines from their Okinawa base. The US has tried to convince the Philippines to accept the involvement of Thailand, Singapore, Australia and Canada, but the Philippine government baulked, fearing diplomatic problems with China and Vietnam. It is wary about getting dragged into Bush’s increasingly confrontational relationship with China.

Similarly, the US is wary about being dragged into the tar baby of internal Filipino wars. Despite Americans being amongst the hostages seized by the Abu Sayyaf bandits, in both 2000 and 2001, the US military has stayed out of that fiasco. On the other war front, the Communist Party of the Philippines’ New People’s Army missed a golden opportunity to strike directly at the US military. In June, NPA guerillas held up a party of American tourists and Philippine guides on the slopes of Mt Pinatubo (whose 1991 mega-eruption was the final nail in the coffin of the US military’s 100 years of bases in the Philippines). The guerillas released everyone, unharmed, after stealing their weapons, but the "tourists" were actually a group of US servicemen, in civvies, on leave from CARAT 2001, accompanied by Philippine Navy guides.

In the good old days of the US bases, everybody’s military got to play in the Philippines – even little New Zealand's. Special Air Service troops practiced counterinsurgency there (two were killed in the 1981 crash of a US military aircraft) and Royal New Zealand Air Force Skyhawks used to practice bombing runs in the regular Cope Thunder exercises at the Crow Valley Bombing Range. Now, the RNZAF air combat wing is being consigned to redundancy and those geriatric Skyhawks are up for sale. Maybe the Philippines can buy them and practice bombing their own country – although, knowing the Philippine military, any such planes would be used for real bombing.

Both the Pentagon and the Philippine government are working to cement the US military back into its oldest colony and client. (The latest tentative proposal from the government is to transform the Subic Bay deepwater port – the former US Navy base – into a base for hire, where the US military could dock, service and repair warships, for a fee.) But they may not succeed; every US military exercise is met by large scale protests. The Filipino people fought for 100 years to get rid of the US military and they are not going to sit idly by and allow it back.

Murray Horton is editor of Kapatiran and Secretary of the Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (New Zealand).