In the Korean War (1950-1953) between the United Nations coalition led by the military forces of the United States and South Korea against North Korea backed up by Chinese troops, the Philippines sent 3 battalions of some 7,000 personnel equipped, supplied, placed by and fought under U.S. operational command (The PMA post-WWII Class of 1951 had an early graduation, were sent to and had their first baptism of fire in Korea).
In August 2017, North Korea hurled missiles over islands north of Japan towards the sea over a distance of 3,600 km. Again in October, it launched a missile over Guam, a U.S. territory about 3,400 km from Pyongyang. It boasted to have tested nuclear weapons. On Guam are based U.S. B-52 long range and B-2 Stealth bombers capable of carrying nuclear bombs. U.S. nuclear-tipped Patriot missiles, anti-ballistic missiles, and Pacific Fleet are based in Japan. Top U.S officials responded to North Korea’s threat to massively retaliate if Guam would be attacked.
The exchange of threats by two nuclear capable states alarmed Department of Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana who said the Philippines could be hit by debris from an errant missile directed at Guam, 2,500 km away. He said the country has no defense against a missile attack and is vulnerable to nuclear fallout.
In the event that negotiations between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jung-Un fail and war between the two nuclear capable states is inevitable, will the Philippines be involved?
The Philippines could be involved because of its close identification and association with U.S. in the past and its obligations under two bilateral treaties, the 1951 RP-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) signed on 23-September-1951, one year after the Korean war broke out on 25-June-1950 and the 2014 RP-U.S. Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) signed on 10-February-2014.
Philippines’ close partnership with U.S. was unmistakably demonstrated by its support and loyalty in WWII and in two regional wars in the Pacific. A few weeks after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7-December-1941, a newly organized and fledging 100,000 Philippine army of the Commonwealth government of President Manuel L. Quezon was inducted by President Franklin Roosevelt into the service of the United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) and placed under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. Together with some 20,000 American soldiers they fought a heroic defense of Bataan and Corregidor in the face of overwhelming and superior Japanese Imperial army. In the Korean War, the Filipino soldier fought side by side with the American defending the South Korean territory. In the Vietnam War of the 1970’s, the Philippines provided some 2000 civic action personnel to the South Vietnamese people. The two regional conflicts in Clark Air Base in Pampanga and Subic Naval Base in Zambales were used intensively as assembly, training, staging of military forces, rest, recreation and hospitalization of American personnel, supply and support of U.S. aircraft and naval vessels.
(In the last year of the Korean War, China supported North Korea with 100, 000 soldiers that contained and drove back the U.S. led United Nations coalition forces below the 38th parallel and culminated in an Armistice in 1953. North Korea is a close economic and trading partner and receives military aid from China. Both countries signed in 1961 a mutual defense agreement obligating to assist each other in the event of attack on each other’s territory).
Under the 1951 MDT, its principal provision states that, “Each Party recognizes that an armed attack on either Parties in the Pacific would be dangerous to its own peace and security and would act to meet the common danger according to its constitutional processes.”
The Parties referred to are construed to include their territories; military forces on land, sea and air; aircraft on flight; naval vessel on sea; land equipment; or weapons in space.
The constitutional processes referred to is the sole power and authority of Congress under the 1987 Constitution which states that ‘Congress by a vote of two thirds of both Houses in joint session assembled, voting separately shall have the ‘sole power to declare the existence of an emergency or a state of war.’
It would deliberate on whether ‘an emergency or a state of war exists’ and on the why-what-how-when it ‘would act to meet common danger.’ It would consider many factors like the present utilization of the AFP, its capabilities, and the character of the next conflict in the Korean Peninsula and its environs.
Since the end of WWII, the AFP has been preoccupied with fighting internal threats like the decades old leftist insurgency, century old separatist movements, and more recently, non-state foreign inspired and funded secessionist organization. Except for a 3-year involvement in the Korean War, its armed forces have not had ample experience in conventional warfare, which is characterized by large deployment of ground forces on a wide open battlefield supported by heavy fire from aircraft and sea vessels, employing tactical maneuver, and strategic movements to destroy the enemy’s capabilities and support structure.
Unlike the Korean War (1950-53), the next conflict in the Korean Peninsula would be fought with weapons and equipment much advanced in technology, precision and destructibility. The combatants would employ air, sea and land-based missiles, smart precision bombs, tanks with precision guided rockets, laser guided guns, drones armed with bombs, cyber attack devices, equipment in space for surveillance and tracking, and other destructive weapons. The use of chemical agents or nuclear weapons launched by artillery, aircraft and missiles would result in casualties of hundred of thousands in an instant. God forbid!
With its present utilization, capabilities and weaponry, the AFP could not be of much help MILITARILY to the U.S. in the warfare scenario characterized above. It would not make a decisive impact on the battlefield. At best, its contribution would be symbolic and very limited support. It is not expected to do so.
U.S. expectations are availability of and access to military bases in the Philippines for U.S. forces and personnel as provided in two bilateral treaties, the 2014 EDCA and its responsibilities under the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) signed in 1998.
Under the 2014 EDCA signed by Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg, the Philippines allows U.S. forces and contractors to operate out of ’agreed locations’ which are facilities and areas provided by the Armed Forces of the Philippines. These are: Clark Air Base in Pampanga, Subic Naval Base in Zambales, Ft Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, Basa Air Base in Pampanga, Ebuen Air Base in Cebu city, Antonio Bautista Air Base in Palawan, and Lumbia Airport in Cagayan de Oro, and other areas as mutually agreed upon. It allows ‘U.S. forces to preposition and store defense materials, equipment and supplies’ which do not include nuclear weapons. Also, the U.S. is allowed to build structures and facilities to be occupied by its personnel and storage of equipment on a rotational basis and not allowed to have permanent bases The Agreement is renewable after ten years.
The selections of the sites are significant. Two were former U.S. military bases, Clark and Subic used intensively in support of U.S. military operations during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. These bases. One in Luzon closed a jet fighter aircraft with a runway and facilities, which could be made operational. One, in Cebu was used as a transit hub for disaster and humanitarian assistance for the victims of the Yolanda typhoon and the one in northern Mindanao and Palawan conveniently selected for future missions is Southern Mindanao and South China (West Philippine sea.). EDCA supplemented the VFA ratified in 1999 which provides guidelines and procedures for the treatment of U.S. personnel on temporary visits to the Philippines for the annual bilateral exercise with the AFP on matters such as jurisdiction and trial for crimes committed against the laws of the Philippines or the U.S., and immigration requirements like visa, passports and customs and other issues.
The 2014 EDCA was entered into to correct an incongruous situation. Under the 1951 RP-U.S. MDT, the U.S. is obligated to defend the Philippines against external attack. But with the termination in 1992 of the 1947 RP-U.S. Military Base Agreement, the U.S. government felt that without bases or ‘locations’ in the Philippines on which to preposition and operate its military forces, it cannot effectively comply with its obligations under the treaty.
On the part of the government of President Benigno Aquino III it wanted a more visible, concrete evidence and manifestation of U.S. determination and resolve to comply with its obligation under the 1951 MDT in the face of China’s increasing assertiveness and claim of historic rights over islands and waters in the vast South China sea. These disputed islands are claimed, occupied by and form parts of the territory or exclusive economic zones of Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. With the signing of EDCA, former Secretary Voltaire Gasmin would later say, “We will not be bullied anymore.”
After the civil war and subsequent takeover of China by the communists by the late 1940’s the Philippines has not had any official government contacts with China until President Ferdinand Marcos established full diplomatic relations in 1975. (It was with the Kuomintang government of Taiwan that the Philippines had official contacts). Since then the Philippine has had vigorous exchanges with China in trade, commerce, investments, tourism, employment, and others. The government of both countries had very cordial and harmonious relations.
The mood seemed to have changed in 2009 when China submitted to the United Nations its claim over islands in the vast South China Sea with an ‘old map with nine dashes (9-lines) that extended from Hainan island in southernmost China to the south in Borneo, northward to Taiwan in a U shape figure.’ The line encompassed the entire sea and overlapped the territorial claims of 4 Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines and Taiwan. As China began building structures, expanding the disputed islands at will, the Claimant Countries were alarmed.
For the Philippine government, the tipping point was a month-long standoff between a navy ship and a Chinese Coast Guard vessel that occupied and guarded the Scarborough Shoal located some 150 km west of Zambales (well within Philippine EEZ), but 550 km from southern coast of China, and has long been a traditional fishing ground of Filipino fishermen. President Aquino likened it to Nazi Germany occupying a Sudetenland, a territory with a German minority in Czechoslovakia, before the start of WWII and the Allies not doing anything about it. The historical reference riled China as unfair and unfriendly, and soured the relations between the governments of China and the Philippines.
In 2013, President Aquino filed a complaint before the Arbitral Tribunal of the Permanent Court of Justice in Hague Netherlands which ruled in 2015 invalidating China’s claim based on historic rights over the Scarborough Shoal and that the disputed islets and sea are within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. China had declared it would not recognize the court, and its decision was therefore not binding. Of the ASEAN countries that have similar claims in South China Sea, it was only the Philippines that filed a case before an international court despite the urgings and position of China that such matters should be resolved bilaterally by two neighbors.
President Rodrigo Duterte saw the scenario in a different light. He felt that an adversarial position by the Philippine government to a neighboring state economically dominant and a rising military Power is not good for the country and its people. As a corollary, too close an alignment with a big Power that has rivals for world domination and spheres of influence and also faces lower level known but highly lethal adversaries could be disastrous to the Philippines. If a disaster strikes that country, its after shocks could place the Philippines in peril.
To make things more picturesque, when two elephants quarrel, the ground will shake and quake. The frogs and mice should move away or keep a distance otherwise they will be hurt or crushed to death by the two beasts.
As writers on international relations postulate, a weak state may relate with a very strong state by three stances: (1) adversarial, (2) band wagoning, or (3) appeasement. Simply stated, adversarial is confrontational, band wagoning is getting along, and appeasement is giving in.
But there is another way as writer and sociologist Arthur Winslow Jones said is a financial risk reducer called “hedging” which is usually practiced by a player in the stock market. By buying other stocks, he hopes that a loss in stocks in his possession can be recovered from a gain in other stocks. Should all his stocks gain, then, well and good.
Explaining the paradigm shift in Philippine foreign policy Ambassador to China Jose Sta Romana stressed that the Philippines is not separating from its historic alliance with U.S., a close ally but improving its relations with China and Russia. He meant increasing contacts through trade, commerce, social and people exchanges, more jobs for Filipinos overseas and attracting more investment and tourists to the country. With China, the focus is how to lower tensions and resolve maritime dispute over certain islands and seas west of the Philippines.
The U.S. is a big donor and patron and has given much more economic and military assistance and humanitarian aid to the Philippines than any country thus far. During the ASEAN Summit last November 2017, President Duterte especially thanked the U.S. for the help given in the fight in Marawi City against the ISIS-inspired and funded rebels. He also acknowledged the equipment given to the armed forces by China and Russia and welcomed pledges for the rehabilitation of the conflict-ravaged city. These gestures of goodwill, however, did not escape cynics who warned of a possible Trojan horse. Assuring many sectors in the country –political parties, business, military, academe and others– the President categorically stated there would be no military alliance. No more entangling alliances!
As the Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alan Peter Cayeteno succinctly stated, “The core of Philippine foreign policy ‘is to be a friend to all and an enemy of no one’.”
Six decades ago a great Filipino nationalist Claro M. Recto, a senator and later ambassador, wisely counseled, “No hagamos enemigos, donde no podamos tener amigos” – Let us not make enemies where we cannot have friends. However, with the shift in its foreign policy, would the Philippines be involved in a second Korean War?
Books by the author:
- Advocacy Even in Retirement’ 2012, designated reference by National Defense College of the Philippines, AFP Education, Training & Doctrine Command, the Public Safety College and the Offices of Senators Gregorio Honasan and Antonio Trillanes III)
- ‘Two Stories of the Philippines February 1986 Revolution’, 1987, filmed in 1988 into a 2-hour tele-movie starred by top actors Eddie Garcia and Dante Rivero.
- ‘Advocacy Through the Years’ 2017 (Essays and Letters from 2003 to 2017), designated reference by the AFP Education, Training & Doctrine Command