Manila: The 65-year-old military alliance of the US and the Philippines is on the rocks as government leaders called for a review of a two-year-old defence agreement, halt to US-Philippines joint war games in the South China Sea, and wider sources of war-material such as China and Russia, the Philippine defence chief said on Friday.
Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told the US military that plans for joint patrols and naval exercises in the disputed South China Sea have been put on hold, the first concrete break in defence cooperation after months of increasingly strident comments by the country’s new president.
Lorenzana also said that 107 US troops involved in operating surveillance drones against Muslim militants would be asked to leave the southern part of the country once the Philippines acquires those intelligence-gathering capabilities in the near future.
President Rodrigo Duterte also wants to halt the 28 military exercises that are carried out with US forces each year, Lorenzana said. Duterte has said he wants an ongoing US-Philippine amphibious beach landing exercise to be the last in his six-year presidency as he backs away from what he views as too much dependence on the US.
“This year would be the last,” Duterte said of military exercises involving the Americans in a speech on Friday in southern Davao city where he lashed out at the US anew and repeated his readiness to be ousted from office for his hard-line stance.
“For as long as I am there, do not treat us like a doormat because you’ll be sorry for it,” Duterte said. “I will not speak with you. I can always go to China.”
Duterte wanted a review of the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) that the two counties signed in 2014, Lorenzana said, adding that modernisation of the Philippine military will not be affected without EDCA because Philippine Congress has responded to calls for modernisation which will “roll in 10 to 15 years”.
“It depends on the decision of the higher-ups. If they say they don’t want it [EDCA] anymore, then we scrap it. There is one year notice to EDCA, which starts this year,” said Lorenzana.
EDCA will militarise the whole country because it allows larger rotational US troops and access to eight Philippine military bases nationwide, other critics said.
The Philippine government is now shopping for war materiel elsewhere, Lorenza said, adding, “China and Russia are very eager to deal with us. Let’s see what those things are.”
“Ambassadors of India and Israel have offered to sell a lot of equipment. I see this as a healthy development with our relationship with other countries. Maybe, we should reassess what we should be getting from our alliances, maybe it is time to go to other sources for our materials; we should not depend on only one country,” said Lorenzana.
‘Hand-me-downs’
“We have been an ally of the US since 1951. All we got from that time until the [two US] bases left in 1991 [after Congress did not renew the US proposed 10-year extension of the now defunct US-Philippine Military Bases Agreement], were all hand-me-downs,” said Lorenza, adding, “The Americans failed to beef up our capabilities [in the past] that would be [on a] par with what’s happening in this region.”
US military aid to the country after 1991 was “not that much, [between $50 to 100 million (Dh183 million to Dh367 million) a year]. I think we can live without it,” said Lorenzana.
The defence department has P134.5 billion (Dh10 billion) annual budget in 2017. It represents 1.2 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Defence expenditures of other countries represent 20 per cent of GDP.
The presence of some 107 US troops with unmanned drones at Camp Navarro in Calarian in Zamboanga City for surveillance against members of the Abu Sayyaf Group and other Filipino-Muslim on Basilan and Sulu in central Mindanao will be extended, said Lorenzana, adding, “When we acquire our own drones in the near future then we can go without the help of the Americans in the south.”
He did not give details.
Lorenzana’s pronouncements were first concrete steps taken by the Philippine government in limiting US-Philippine defence cooperation, analysts said.
“Like what former national security secretary Jose Almonte declared, ‘What we are doing is not breaking off, We are just widening our options. It is not cooling off, but more of open relationship,’” said presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella.
The US has criticised Duterte for his campaign against the illegal drug trade, which has resulted in 3,000 deaths since July. The police said more than half of the fatalities were killings by drug syndicates.
Duterte has accused the US of being hypocritical by not apologising for atrocities committed by former US colonial rulers in the Philippines. He called President Barack Obama “son of a [expletive],” and told him he “should go to hell”.
