'US should provide Phl with military hardware'

WASHINGTON – The United States should provide the Philippines with badly needed military hardware and any necessary training for its maritime defense in light of heightening tensions in the South China Sea, Robert Warshaw of the Heritage Foundation said.

Protecting freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is clearly in America’s national interest and key to that is the Philippines, he said.

Rotating US forces through Philippine training facilities as well as maintaining the US counterinsurgency training force and observers in Mindanao, should be discussed by the foreign and defense secretaries of both countries at their scheduled 2+2 meeting in Washington on April 30, said Warshaw, research assistant in the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will meet with Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin to discuss Philippine defense needs and a military expansion of US forces in the Philippines in addition to a current rotating force of about 600 servicemen in Mindanao.

Filipino officials have expressed interest in acquiring a third cutter and a squadron of F-16s. The Philippines took delivery of a Coast Guard cutter last year and a second one is scheduled for delivery this year.

In turn because of the Philippines’ geostrategic position in the South China Sea the Americans want to mount reconnaissance flights from Philippine airfields. 

The United States is reportedly considering an Australian coral atoll in the Indian Ocean as a possible site to launch spy flights over the South China Sea as part of a plan to shift its forces closer to Southeast Asia to counterbalance China’s growing military might. 

The moves which are under discussion are in addition to an agreement announced by both countries in November to deploy up to 2,500 US Marines to Darwin, on Australia’s northern coast. 

Analysts here view the US “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region as it winds down a costly decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq as a clear response to a rising China. 

Pentagon officials are repor-tedly looking at Perth in Western Australia as a possible site to give the US Navy a sorely needed place to refuel, reequip and repair ships on the Indian Ocean. 

The US is also eying the Cocos Islands, a remote Australian territory not only for manned surveillance aircraft, but also for Global Hawks, an unarmed, high-altitude surveillance plane, The Washington Post said recently.

The best way for the US to guarantee stability in the South China Sea is by maintaining a forward deployed, ready military posture across the Western Pacific. Thankfully, the Philippines is proving a very willing, and increasingly capable ally, Warshaw said.

State function

Meanwhile, the Department of Foreign Affairs reiterated yesterday Pag-asa Island belongs to the Philippines so the country will not be stopped in developing it.

The DFA said it is a state function and obligation of the Philippine government to the Filipinos living in the islands of Kalayaan to bring progress and development there.

The municipality of Kalayaan on Pag-asa Island is looking forward to the island’s conversion into a tourist spot and a recreation haven for visiting American troops and other friendly forces with the scheduled construction of a beaching ramp to accommodate roll-on, roll-off vessels.      – With Pia Lee-Brago