New deal

Both sides have emphasized that there is no timetable or pressure to finalize an agreement on increased rotational presence of US troops in the Philippines. Still, it looks like the agreement will be ready in time for the visit of US President Barack Obama at the end of the month.

For both governments, the biggest challenge is persuading the public that the security arrangement being worked out is a different creature from what we saw when the Americans had bases in the Philippines.

Much has happened to US security priorities since 1992 when the last of its troops pulled out of Subic Bay, floating dry dock in tow.

By that time the Cold War was deemed over following the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day 1991. But in the 1990s the US and its NATO allies would remain preoccupied with the new nations emerging from the former Soviet bloc and the Balkan conflict.

 The Americans hardly noticed (and likely didn’t care) when a year after the shutdown of their bases here, the Chinese set up huts ostensibly for their fishermen on Mischief Reef off Palawan. The huts have evolved into a multi-story concrete fort flying the Chinese flag.

Back then, as in the present, our forces could not shoo away the Chinese. Apparently not wanting to see more Mischief incidents, but with no Uncle Sam to turn to for help, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) parked its World War II-era tank landing ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, on Ayungin or Second Thomas Shoal, where the rusty tub still lies like a beached whale.

These incidents were outside the US radar at the time, preoccupied as it was with other parts of the world. Some US officials during that decade told me there was resentment in Washington over the shutdown of the bases.

The Philippines would blip back into the US radar soon enough, but not because of any threat posed by China.

In the same year that the Chinese occupied Mischief, the first terrorist attack on US oil was staged. This was the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.

Two years later, the principal perpetrator, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, was arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he fled following a fire in his apartment in Manila. He left behind his computer, which detailed the terrorist Bojinka plot. Filipino lawmen who pursued Yousef were flown to Manhattan to testify against him during his trial.

Yousef is the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, another Manila visitor. Mohammed is tagged as the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, but he was still a long way from global notoriety at the time of Yousef’s arrest.

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As we know, the attacks on 9/11 altered the American security landscape. It was a new type of enemy and the US found itself engaged in a borderless, asymmetrical and virulent warfare. The new threat called for new responses, including new ways of defining America’s international alliances.

There were many missteps and much soul-searching as America became stuck in Iraq and faced the abuses in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Defining the parameters of interrogation in the name of US national security is a work in progress.

In the wake of 9/11, American military attention turned to Central and South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. And George W. Bush described the southern Philippines as “the second front” in the war on terror.

GI Joe returned to the Philippines in 2002, and as far as I remember, there was little public protest as US troops helped drive out the Abu Sayyaf from Basilan.

Since then US troops have been stationed on rotation in Zamboanga City, providing training and assisting the AFP in intelligence gathering. The joint Balikatan military exercises, involving visiting US forces, are also conducted on a regular basis.

Now the rotational presence is about to be substantially increased, as the Philippines turns to allies for help in facing a threat to its territorial integrity.

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The threat, which affects other countries in the region, is seen as one of the factors behind America’s “rebalance” or pivot to Asia.

With al-Qaeda decapitated following the death of Osama bin Laden, and with US forces disengaging from Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington can return its attention to its own Pacific yard, where its dominance is being challenged by a new player.

But while China is defined as a regional “threat” by the Hawaii-based US Pacific Command, it is no al-Qaeda, it is not a member of George W’s Axis of Evil, and it is in fact a US partner in many aspects including trade and engaging with North Korea.

This is a different challenge for the US and its allies, and it calls for a response that is different from previous arrangements.

US officials have emphasized that the planned increased rotational presence of their troops in the Philippines is not meant mainly to counter China’s muscle-flexing in its surrounding waters.

But that’s the impression in the Philippines, where those opposing US troop presence see a return of old security arrangements with Uncle Sam. Their concerns include a possible repeat of the rape case in Subic involving a young US Navy member on furlough and a Filipina.

The national outcry ended when the Filipina dropped her complaint and resettled in the US, which might have been what she wanted all along. But such concerns, dating back to the days of the US bases, persist. US Ambassador Philip Goldberg was recently accused of trying to promote sex tourism.

These perceptions must be confronted if the two governments want to sell to the public the deal on increased US rotational presence.

Criminal jurisdiction must be more clearly defined than in the Visiting Forces Agreement. Will there be reciprocity under the new arrangement, similar to what we have with the Australians?

It’s a new deal in a new world order. If it’s not a basing arrangement, what is it exactly? How is it different? These questions may be fully answered, however, only when the agreement has been implemented.

Having no template, everyone is left to speculate on what form the new agreement will take. And the past is the most convenient basis for the guessing game.