Philippine bases access a prop for the arms trade

The proposed Philippines-US bases access accord should be scrutinised for its hidden motives, to remove chaff from grain. The agreement will chain the Philippines as a permanent station for bolstering America’s military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, and its arms trade. Building the Philippines’ “minimum deterrence capability” in territorial feuds with China and ensuring a US shield against external aggression are just sound bytes. The corporate agenda is concealed by security objectives.

Bases access was raised by Defence Secretary Voltaire Gazmin last year and again early this year in response to the territorial tensions with China in the West Philippine Sea and the North Korean missile crisis. This month, President Benigno Aquino III confirmed bilateral talks with the United States on the bases access accord. He said bases access is also open to Japan, which has its own territorial row with China.

To be clear, bases access is not the Philippines’ plan. Air and sea access is required by the Pentagon’s “pivot to Asia” or rebalancing strategy, which repositions 60 per cent of America’s global armed forces to Asia by 2020, with Southeast Asia as a specific thrust.

The strategy of keeping US supremacy in the region in the 21st century protects increased US investments and trade in Asia – the world’s leading economy – and minimises China’s economic footprint while containing its maritime power to its national boundaries. Big budget allocations boost US air and sea power. Defence partnerships and air and sea access with the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and other countries are refitted for the Pentagon’s geo-strategic goals.

But that is just one side of the truth. The other is that the Pentagon and its global military architecture are linked to America’s arms manufacturers led by Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon. Big chunks of its yearly budget – US$600 billion in 2013 – go to defence contracts. US Navy and Air Force allocations are prioritised to support air and sea power “rebalancing”. Thus, the pivot strategy secures corporate military profits; it offsets the reduction of the arms manufacturers’ profits due to troop withdrawals in the Middle East and a slowdown in European arms buying.

Arms production is inextricably linked to naval and air access agreements as well as war exercises. Admiral Samuel J Locklear, commander of the US Pacific Command, said rebalancing needs arms to modernise US treaty alliances. Predictably, the Aerospace Industries Association, the trade group of leading arms manufacturers, says that the pivot “will result in growing opportunities for our industry to help equip our friends”.

Indeed, multi-billion-dollar defence contracts sustain the Pacific Fleet’s 200-plus ships (including 11 carriers), 2,000 aircraft and 250,000 sailors and marines. In 2011, US corporations cornered $66.3 billion (75 per cent) of the $85-billion global arms trade, with the bulk going to the Asia-Pacific region – rising by 5.4 per cent in 2011-2012. This year, the US war industry plans to sell $1.2-billion worth of spy drones to South Korea, Australia and Singapore, and to Japan $421-million in guided-missile destroyers, land-based X-Band radar systems, and $5-billion worth of F-35 fighter jets.

Aside from the two old, but multi-million-dollar, Hamilton-class cutters bought from Washington, the Philippines will receive six river patrol boats from the US Navy. Four of 12 FA-50 fighter jets will also be delivered to the Philippine military by Korean Aerospace Industries, which is connected to McDonell Douglas, Lockheed and Boeing. The Philippine military’s shopping list includes radar systems, anti-sub helicopters, amphibious assault vehicles and anti-aircraft guided missiles. Arms procurement forms the bulk of its $345 million modernisation fund this year.

A US arms contractor is also involved in the Philippine Navy’s 30-hectare expanded base access in Subic for fighter jets and warships. Amsec, a unit of Pentagon contractor Huntington Ingalls Industries, last year joined South Korea’s Hanjin Heavy Industries in a $2-billion maintenance and logistics hub project. According to Gazmin, the bases access accord will also tap the Lumbia international airfield in Cagayan de Oro, and other base facilities.

The bases access accord will have the effect of permanent US military facilities in the guise of “rotational deployments” and “inter-operability”. Permanence evolves from the frequency, operability and increase in the number of US forces parking at Subic and other bases. More war exercises mean more arms facilities entering. Besides serving as a shop window for US weapons, bases access will assign Philippine waters and inland territories to test America’s new arms technology.

Thus, America will have an unrestricted platform to flex its military muscle in the region and beyond. The increased operability of the Pacific Fleet will bring its warships and carriers eyeball-to-eyeball with China’s forces, especially in contested areas of the South China Sea. Tensions will heighten. 

China warns that while it respects freedom of navigation, it will not allow America to meddle in its “core interest” territorial claims. Giving the same bases access to Japan – which has its own territorial row with China – will escalate tensions and send a chilling message to other Southeast Asian countries that remain hostile to a militarily resurgent Tokyo.

It’s uncertain whether America will side with the Philippines when armed hostilities with China break out. Washington has repeatedly called for a peaceful resolution to the territorial disputes. But in fact, keeping tensions in the disputed seas alive without necessarily going to war is good business for its merchants of death.

 

Bobby M Tuazon is the director for policy studies of the Centre for People Empowerment in Governance and a former head of UP Manila’s political science programme.