By Ricardo Saludo

Part Two of a Series of 4: A President who is on the bad side of history

Protecting our nation without being weaponized by the United States — that’s the subject of this series, as promised in our (August 23) article on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s hugely mistaken claim that we cannot be neutral in a US-China war over Taiwan.

Three key strategies will be presented: reducing risk, building alliances and deterring aggression through asymmetrical warfare which harnesses our strengths to counter intruders and invaders. This column looks at risk reduction — the paramount tenet that this administration has virtually discarded, if not undermined.

Part 3 will look at building alliances and deterring aggression.

Risk reduction is the first and foremost must-do in safeguarding any nation from catastrophe, natural or man-made. That applies to calamity, contagion and especially conflict. It may be impossible to avoid earthquakes, eruptions and typhoons, and very hard to escape global outbreaks. But one can avoid picking or joining hostilities, especially with far stronger opponents.

So, in securing the Philippines against foreign attack, the first step is reducing the risk of such aggression. Our current defense strategy of allowing the United States to build up forces and facilities in our country against China escalates, not reduces, the risk of devastating attack, as seen in our previous column, “Marcos is wrong: We can stay out of a Taiwan war” (https://tinyurl.com/4fkbs9wj).

Advocates of America’s military buildup here argue that it helps us counter Chinese encroachment in our exclusive economic zone (EEZ) 200 nautical miles from our shores in the South China Sea, where we have sole rights to economic activities. At Washington’s behest, President Marcos granted US access to nine bases of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in February 2023 under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) increasing American military deployment here.

Yet the US does little more than high-profile joint patrols, satellite monitoring of Chinese vessels in our EEZ and repeated expressions of concern over sea incidents between us and China. While our boats are rammed and our seamen water-cannoned, laser-blinded and even bloodied, Americans avoid direct encounters with the Chinese, which could escalate into a US-China conflict.

Our country faces massive war risk hosting American forces, yet gets nothing but Western media blasts over Chinese actions against our coast guard and navy, which serve Washington’s efforts to portray Beijing as a lawless aggressor.

For sure, we get tens of millions of dollars in US military aid, but nowhere near the billions going to other nations like Egypt and Pakistan, which face none of the perils of hosting American forces, as we shall see below.

This onerous and dangerous EDCA deal must be scrapped.

Huge, hidden peril of EDCA

What exactly is the danger of US forces operating out of our bases and deploying missile launchers in secret locations nationwide, as planned under EDCA?

Our nation’s leaders and media should have expounded on such life-and-death perils, which are widely reported in America itself, with top US think tanks and military brass openly acknowledging that facilities used by American forces would be targeted by adversaries when and even before war erupts.

But it is appalling testimony to Uncle Sam’s political and media clout in our country that along with leading politicians and press, even anti-US and anti-Marcos leftists, and normally critical papers say nil about EDCA dangers.

Even a former armed forces chief, then-defense officer in charge Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr., who knows that military facilities get attacked in war, declared that “EDCA sites are not a cause of concern.”

And when former president Rodrigo Duterte rightly argued in March 2023 that EDCA bases were US “platforms for war” and “multiple targets of Chinese missiles once war breaks out,” the political and media establishment ignored him (https://tinyurl.com/bdefa49j).

Thus, hardly any communities in or near the following facilities know the dangers they face: Lal-lo Airport and Camilo Osias Naval Base in Cagayan; Camp Melchor de la Cruz in Isabela; Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija; Cesar Basa Air Base in Pampanga; Antonio Bautista Air Base, near Puerto Princesa; Balabac Island, off southern Palawan; Benito Ebuen Air Base, near Cebu City; and Lumbia Air Base outside Cagayan de Oro City.

Two US Air Force strategies spread EDCA dangers across our islands. One is the Agile Combat Employment (ACE), explained by Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, then-chief of all air assets in the Indo-Pacific Command (IndoPacom) from India to Hawaii, a month after the US got EDCA bases in March 2023.

ACE aims “to have jets spread out over many, many islands [so as] to make the targeting problem for the adversary more difficult — it makes them use more munitions” (https://tinyurl.com/yr72hr6x).

Yet even if there were, say, 50 EDCA sites, they could all be hit since China has hundreds of missiles able to blanket the Philippines. That’s the warning of the US Air Force Air University:

“Will ACE lead to greater destruction in the Indo-Pacific in the event of conflict? Were China to consider an all-out attack in the near future, perhaps to prevent interference in a military effort to unify with Taiwan, is there any reason it would not strike all US-affiliated airfields with an opening salvo?” (https://tinyurl.com/5n75hwnb).

The same danger of wholesale rocket attack faces missile launchers like the Typhon — hidden in secret places but instantly found once fired. Top Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote then-incoming president Joe Biden in December 2020 about the US missile plan:

“IndoPacom hopes to disperse US forces, including marine and army units, along the first island chain running from Japan through Southeast Asia. In a contingency, these small, mobile teams would support US air and naval operations, and hold Chinese vessels at risk with ground-based missile units. It is a sound strategy to counter China’s naval and missile advantages in its near waters.

“But the Philippines is the only country in Southeast Asia that might realistically host such assets. So, these plans require saving the VFA (Visiting Forces Agreement) and implementing EDCA.” (https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-alliance-philippines)

Let’s slash our risk of nationwide devastation. Trash EDCA.

To be continued.

This series was first run by The Manila Times.

Postscript by Ambassador Rigoberto Tiglao

Duterte: EDCA camps are US ‘platforms for war,’ Chinese missiles’ targets

Rodrigo Duterte hasn’t lost his penchant for telling it like it is, even beating this professional writer in crafting a precise, vivid term for our military camps that the former president Benigno Aquino 3rd and incumbent President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. are allowing the US armed forces to use whenever they please, especially in a war with China.

“These are platforms for war,” Duterte said in a March 7 interview with Pastor Apollo Quiboloy aired over SMNI network.* Indeed, US and Philippine officials think Filipinos are a stupid people that they can easily fool by claiming, as Defense department Officer in Charge Carlito Galvez Jr. and the US ambassador have been doing — that these camps under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) are designed for “humanitarian, disaster-relief operations.”

Everyone in this world, whether he’s pro-US or pro-China, sees the EDCA sites as designed as camps for US forces to use as “forward operating” bases in a war with China. It is amazing how they can use words to hide the reality that these are platforms for war: “forward operating sites” the Pentagon has called these, “designated areas” the EDCA document refers to them. “Idiots,” Duterte indirectly referred to those using these terms.

As idiotic or just misinformed is the Defense department spokesman Arsenio Andolong’s claim that “EDCA sites would not be American military bases. These sites would be used as storage and warehouse facilities for military logistics.”

Obviously, he didn’t even read the EDCA document, whose Article III reads:

“The Philippines hereby authorizes and agrees that US forces and contractors, and vehicles, vessels and aircraft operated by or for United States forces may conduct the following activities with respect to Agreed Locations: training; transit; support and related activities; refueling of aircraft; bunkering of vessels; temporary maintenance of vehicles, vessels and aircraft; temporary accommodation of personnel; communications; pre-positioning of equipment, supplies and materiel; deploying forces and materiel; and such other activities as the Parties may agree.”

Bulgarian template

What is so anomalous about our EDCA is that in similar agreements the US entered into with Bulgaria and Romania in 2005 and 2006 (which was their template for our EDCA), the US can have only a maximum of 2,500 personnel (both civilian and military) at any one time.

In contrast, our EDCA prescribes no such limit. The US may well station two brigades of 30,000 Marines in the camps under EDCA, which is probably the reason why our biggest army camp, Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, was among the first five EDCA locations designated in 2014.

American propaganda has made it appear that their forces will be here only temporarily, with the use of the term “on a rotational basis.” But the EDCA text itself contains no provision as to how long a “rotation” of forces will be. A US Special Forces brigade, for example, could be at Fort Magsaysay for a year, and EDCA would allow that.

One got to be really stupid not to see that three of the new sites given by Marcos to the US, all in Northern Luzon, even at the very tip of Cagayan province (Naval Base Camilo Osias), are intended for a possible war with China if it attempts to reclaim its rogue province, Taiwan, the probability for which has increased only this year.

Duterte in the interview even explained at length Taiwan’s history that it was taken over by the Kuomintang forces after their defeat by Mao Zedong’s Communist Party, so that China has compelling reasons to integrate it to the mainland.

Targets

Duterte said, however, that we won’t be just the US “platforms for war.” “Because of these EDCA bases, we will be the multiple targets of Chinese missiles once war breaks out between China and the US.” Uulanin tayo ng mga missile ng China. Is that our national interest?”

Even without the scenario of a war, EDCA will be counterproductive to our national interest and won’t constitute a “deterrent” to China’s “aggressiveness” in the South China Sea.

In fact, the effect will be the opposite. China as a rising superpower cannot afford to appear to be cowed by American aggressiveness through the EDCA. It will beef up its fortifications in the artificial islands it has built starting in 2014 in the Spratlys (in retaliation against the Philippines’ filing of an arbitration suit against it), since it is threatened now — for the first time since US military bases here were closed down in 1992 — by US “boots in the ground” in the nine camps.

With the US openly challenging China, it cannot, as a rising superpower, abandon its claims in the area, and will be more aggressive in shooing away our fishermen and state vessels from areas in the South China Sea they believe is theirs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3qoIsrU5YQ.

Tiglao: Credits are to my colleague Ricardo Saludo for alerting us on this interview.