After years of threatening to abandon the Philippines’ military alliance with the United States, President Rodrigo Duterte last week confirmed plans to terminate the agreement governing the presence of American troops, a key part of one of Southeast Asia’s major security partnerships.
The announcement was widely interpreted as an attempt by Duterte to extract concessions from Washington, which regards military cooperation with Manila as crucial to countering Beijing’s activities in the South China Sea. US President Donald Trump, however, told reporters he had no concerns about the treaty being scrapped.
“I really don’t mind, if they would like to do that,” Trump said on Wednesday. “We’ll save a lot of money.”
Between 2016 and 2019, the US spent US$550 million on military assistance to the Philippines, which is also a top recipient of US aid – second only to Indonesia in Asia – receiving nearly US$280 million in 2018, according to the US aid agency.
The Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) is one of three pacts governing the US-Philippines defence relationship. Experts warn that without it, the other two – a mutual defence agreement and the 2014 enhanced defence cooperation agreement, known as EDCA – will be substantially less effective. The agreements provide for training and assistance to the Philippines’ military modernisation effort as well as annual joint military exercises.
US Defence Secretary Mark Esper last week described the termination of the VFA as “unfortunate” and “a move in the wrong direction”.
“We have to digest it. We have to work through the policy angles, the military angles,” Esper told reporters.
Trump has also pressured US allies Korea and Japan to pay more for their defence partnerships, and experts warn the deterioration of the partnership with Manila, although initiated by Duterte, could undermine Washington’s status as a security guarantor in the region.
“Trump’s willingness to let the agreement end certainly hurts US credibility,” said Amy Searight, former deputy assistant secretary of defence for South and Southeast Asia who is now senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Being so dismissive of alliance relationships hurts our image in Southeast Asia.”
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The Philippines was a US territory before independence in 1946, and the US has remained its primary defence partner. However, Duterte has regularly complained about Manila’s relationship with Washington and sought to realign his foreign policy towards Beijing and Moscow since he took office in 2016. Last month, he repeated his threat to end the pact after the US denied a visa to one of his allies, Ronald Dela Rosa, who oversaw the controversial war on drugs while he was police chief.
Those complaints notwithstanding, Washington was a key ally in Manila’s fight against Isis-linked insurgents in 2017 after they laid siege to Marawi on Duterte’s home island of Mindanao.
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The US has also been a critical ally to the Philippines in countering China’s claims in the disputed South China Sea. Before Duterte confirmed he wanted to terminate the agreement, the Philippines Foreign Secretary Tedoro Locsin Jnr told a televised Senate hearing that: “While the Philippines has the prerogative to terminate the VFA anytime, the continuance of the agreement is deemed to be more beneficial to the Philippines compared to any predicates were it to be terminated.”
Maritime expert Jay Batongbacal told the Philippines media that without the VFA, Beijing could continue building military bases in contested waters.
For Washington, the treaty’s collapse could leave it without a key outpost for force projection in the South China Sea.
Although the US has outposts in Darwin, Guam and Okinawa, its presence in the Philippines is described by the defence establishment as an “immediate footprint”in the South China Sea and a critical part of Washington’s strategy to pursue a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Trump’s comments could also call into question the mutual defence agreement with the Philippines, according to Derek Grossman, senior defence analyst at the Rand Corporation, a Washington think tank.
Trump’s willingness to let the agreement end certainly hurts US credibility
Amy Searight, defence analyst
“If the mutual defence treaty collapses, it would be a huge win for China,” Grossman said. “This would send exactly the wrong message to Washington’s remaining allies and partners – that is, you simply shouldn’t trust that the US will defend or assist you against China, and it is therefore right to question the value of the American presence in the Indo-Pacific in the years to come.”
In a commentary for the Chinese state-run tabloid Global Times, Li Kaisheng, the deputy director at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of International Relations said he did not believe the scrapping of the pact would see Manila “gravitate towards Beijing” as China was only one of several countries it was pursuing closer ties with.
Instead, there would be an impact on the South China Sea, he added.
“Washington has repeatedly meddled in regional affairs through various means, such as sending its warships to conduct so-called freedom of navigation operations, and joint military exercises with other claimants, including Vietnam. Without the VFA, US interference with the South China Sea will be constrained,” Li wrote.
The US continuously deploys between 500 and 600 troops in the Philippines, according to Rand. The US presence was dramatically reduced in the early 1990s when lawmakers in Manila moved to shut down two bases in the 1990s which were at the time the largest US military outposts in the western Pacific.
Philippines Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana on Thursday said the annual joint military exercises – called Balikatan, meaning “shoulder to shoulder” in Tagalog – planned for May would take place during the agreement’s remaining 180 days.
“Once the termination is final, we will cease to have exercises with them,” Lorenzana said.
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More distant relations between Washington and Manila could also lead to a recalculation by other countries in Southeast Asia, especially those whose South China Sea claims overlap with Beijing’s.
Collin Koh, research fellow at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said Indonesia and Vietnam could seek closer military cooperation with the US. Singapore has also been a key defence partner of the US and could expand military cooperation, Koh said.
“On the cusp of the closure of the US military bases in the Philippines in the 1990s, Singapore offered the US access to Changi naval base,” he said. “Singapore has been an ardent supporter of the US military presence in the region.”
Australia also maintains a visiting forces agreement with the Philippines and has in the past, along with Japan, taken part in the annual joint military exercises with the US and the Philippines. Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff General Felimon Santos Junior said the nation will increase military engagements with these neighbours after the agreement with the US ends, local media reported.
On the other hand, some experts regard the back-and-forth between Trump and Duterte as typical of two leaders known for conducting foreign affairs via dramatic statements on social media, which is ultimately unlikely to result in the dissolution of one of Asia’s longest-standing military partnerships.
Koh suggested domestic stakeholders in Manila’s security establishment would not support Duterte scrapping the Philippines’ military relationship with the US altogether, and that the relationship would endure.
“This defence relationship is a long-standing, proven and deeply entrenched one that has over the decades survived the ups and downs of different administrations,” Koh said. “It’s difficult to imagine the loss of the visiting forces agreement will unravel such close bilateral military ties.”
