The U.S. returns to the Philippines. Is that a good thing?
A fraught history. A fraught future, too?
To paraphrase General MacArthur: We have returned.
American officials announced this week that American forces are returning to the Philippines, preparing for a possible war with China if that country ever invades Taiwan. (NYT: “Among the U.S.’s five treaty allies in Asia, the Philippines and Japan are closest geographically to Taiwan, with the Philippines’ northernmost island of Itbayat just 93 miles away.)
It’s been more than 30 years since Philippine lawmakers moved to end the permanent U.S. military presence in the country. Previously, the U.S. operated two major bases, but many Filipinos saw the bases as a legacy of U.S. colonialism, and wanted to assert their independence.
Now, the Philippines is inviting the U.S. to increase its military footprint in the country again—giving access to four new military bases amid rising tensions with China, the two countries announced Thursday.
I’m already on record thinking war with China is a bad idea. Here are three reasons I’m uncomfortable with the latest announcement:
The U.S. has a nasty history in the Philippines
I’m not sure most Americans are familiar with their country’s brutal colonization of the Philippines during the early part of the 20th century. The U.S. occupied the islands after the Spanish-American war, then proceeded to fight a counterinsurgency war against native rebels that was — by any standards — flatly criminal1.
Within the first year of the war, news of atrocities by U.S. forces—the torching of villages, the killing of prisoners—began to appear in American newspapers. Although the U.S. military censored outgoing cables, stories crossed the Pacific through the mail, which wasn’t censored. Soldiers, in their letters home, wrote about extreme violence against Filipinos, alongside complaints about the weather, the food, and their officers; and some of these letters were published in home-town newspapers. A letter by A. F. Miller, of the 32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment, published in the Omaha World-Herald in May, 1900, told of how Miller’s unit uncovered hidden weapons by subjecting a prisoner to what he and others called the “water cure.” “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure,” he explained. “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I’ll tell you it is a terrible torture.”
Britannica: “An estimated 20,000 Filipino combatants were killed [in the U.S. war], and more than 200,000 civilians perished as a result of combat, hunger, or disease.”
Even after the Philippines became an independent nation in 1946, the U.S. still wielded what might be called imperialist influence over the country — propping up the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos during the 1970s and 80s until a national revolt sent him into exile. By 1991, the Philippines had had enough: Americans were ordered to leave their military bases in the country.
We don’t really have an honorable history in the country.
We’re undermining the rule of law there
The return of U.S. forces2 means creating a legal fiction of sorts:
In a news conference, the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, stressed that these new sites were not permanent. The last U.S. soldiers left the Philippines in the 1990s, and it is now against the country’s Constitution for foreign troops to be permanently based there.
“This is an opportunity to increase our effectiveness, increase interoperability,” he said during a visit to Manila that began on Tuesday. “It is not about permanent basing, but it is a big deal. It’s a really big deal.”
Oh c’mon.
Listen, we know that the Pentagon is experienced at obeying the rules while not quite obeying the rules on things like this. Remember the Washington Post story about how Defense officials sidestepped President Trump’s order that American forces were supposed to leave Africa? And how the officials complied by rotating forces there every few weeks in order to be in technical compliance with Trump’s order while continuing the mission there?
It was a mess:
U.S. soldiers leaving the Baledogle base had to pull out sewage and power lines, remove computers, desks and other furniture, and take away drones, radar systems and other sensitive equipment. For each month spent in Somalia, the soldiers would spend a week and a half setting up equipment and another week taking it down and packing it up, four U.S. service members said. U.S. service members rotating into Somalia would get diarrhea for the first week, because water had stagnated in the systems, the four said.
The new arrangement in the Philippines seems like more of the same. No, the United States isn’t establishing “permanent bases” — however that’s defined — but we are going to “put military equipment and build facilities in as many as nine locations across the Philippines, which would lead to the biggest American military presence in that country in 30 years.”
That’s not breaking the rules, technically, maybe. But we certainly seem to be violating their intent. And everybody has to pretend that’s not the case. Maybe — maybe — that’s justifiable, but it’s worth some skepticism.
What does China think about all this?
Let’s go back to that bit of geography I mentioned earlier: The tippy-top of the Philippines is just 90 miles or so from Taiwan, which would be the center of any war the U.S. fights with China. It’s not quite the same as the U.S. hawkishness toward Cuba as a Soviet client — just 90 miles away from Florida — during the Cold War, but it’s not entirely dissimilar.
To get a sense of what this might look like from China’s point-of-view, consider this BBC headline: “US secures deal on Philippines bases to complete arc around China.” the new deal means that “Washington has stitched the gap in the arc of US alliances stretching from South Korea and Japan in the north to Australia in the south.”
Here’s where we might practice a little bit of strategic empathy: If we were Chinese leaders, would the new U.S. bases look benign? Or like a potential threat? A provocation, even? What would we think about being surrounded by our biggest rival?
Or to put the question a bit differently: Do the new U.S. bases — in helping America prepare for a Pacific war — actually make war more likely?
I’m not going to pretend that China’s actions in the South Pacific are entirely benign — and if China does invade Taiwan, that’s a (bad) choice that it’s leaders will choose entirely from their own agency. Both sides have choices to make. But let’s not pretend that our own choices down’t have potential tradeoffs and downsides, either.
You know who loved America’s colonial war in the Philippines? Donald Trump.
Well, even more of a return. After 9/11, U.S. forces participated in “training and assisting” Phillipine forces, which actually means they helped wage war on Muslim insurgents there.