America’s duplicity

 

 

The current crisis in Ukraine, or more particularly in the Crimean peninsula, has become a conundrum that is both as old and as new as the issue of self-determination. To the United States and Europe, Crimea is but a smokescreen for Russian invasion.

 

Sevastopol in Crimea is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet since 1783, thus emphasizing the great strategic military value of the peninsula to the Russians. Crimea has also strong historical and ethnic ties to Russia or to the old Soviet Union before Khrushchev gave it up to Ukraine, and its population predominantly speak Russian as their language.

The Black Sea and Sevastopol, home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Photo courtesy of
Wikimedia.

Now the pro-Russian regional Parliament in Crimea has voted to hold a referendum on whether to secede from Ukraine and become part of the Russian Federation, a decision immediately condemned by the United States and Europe as a violation of the constitution of Ukraine and international law. Ignoring sanctions like suspension of negotiations on wide-ranging political-economic issues, travel bans, asset seizures and cancellation of a planned E.U.-Russia summit meeting, Russia appears to be tightening its grip over Crimea and testing the political will of the West, especially the United States.

 

Whether the proposed referendum has legal grounds is certainly problematic even though Article 73 of the Ukrainian constitution provides that altering the territory of Ukraine must be resolved exclusively by an All-Ukrainian referendum. Reality is not merely a cut-and-dried constitutional issue. Attempts toward secession in other countries have shown that it also requires recognition by other states and a form of negotiation between the seceding territory and the central government.

 

For instance, on the issue of Quebec’s referendum for secession in 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that neither the Quebec government nor its legislature has the legal right under Canadian constitutional law or under international law to unilaterally secede from Canada. The court however emphasized that the rest of Canada would have a political obligation to negotiate Quebec’s separation if a clear majority of that province’s population voted in favour of it. This has reinforced the belief of the separatist Parti Quebecois that the people of Quebec have a legitimate aspiration for independence based on the authority of a mandate from the people. Although Quebec’s secession from Canada did not materialize when the Parti Quebecois lost in the referendum, the dream of an independent Quebec continues.

 

Scotland is also voting for independence from the United Kingdom in September 2014. The British government has agreed to hold the referendum and the prospect of a separate Scotland is already dividing many citizens in the UK. In the Philippines, the proposed Bangsamoro nation that was brokered by the Aquino administration with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is about to be tabled in Congress despite attempts by renegade groups like the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) to derail the peace process. The Bangsamoro framework agreement entails carving out an autonomous region for Filipino Muslims in Mindanao that will alter the entire breadth of the Philippine territory. There are those who argue that this is only possible by amending the Constitution. Consider, too, that the referendum to ratify the Bangsamoro law is at least about two years away.

 

While Crimea is an autonomous republic in Ukraine, with its own powers under the Ukrainian constitution, its secession could depend not necessarily on the legal provisions of the national constitution, but also on the mandate of its people as determined through a popular referendum. The United States and Europe could raise their objection on whatever legal or moral grounds but in the end it is the people of Crimea who will decide their fate.

A rally backing Russia in Sevastopol in Crimea. Photo by Viktor Drachev/
Agence-France-Presse--Getty Images.

Instead of conducting the Crimean referendum under duress of Russian military occupation, Russia’s willingness to negotiate with the Ukrainian parliament for a genuine referendum could probably soften Crimea’s impending secession. Just like in the Quebec secession where the Canadian Supreme Court for the first time introduced the concept of a constitutional duty to negotiate, absent any provision in the Constitution or in international law authorizing secession by a part or territory of a state. Or as in the ongoing negotiations between the Philippine government and the MILF for a separate Bangsamoro government, which ultimately aims to establish a separate state within an existing state. In the final analysis, whatever the Crimean people choose—whether to secede from Ukraine or join the Russian Federation—must be respected. Of course, this is easier said than done.

 

The trouble with the United States and Europe which have denounced the legality of the Crimea referendum is their inconsistency and double-standard policy when it comes to the struggle for self-determination of countries or states not belonging to their political bloc.

In 1999, the United States supported Kosovo’s bid for secession from Serbia while Moscow saw it as an infringement of Serbia’s sovereignty. Kosovo ultimately gained independence in 2008.

Now 15 years later, the US and Russia are at odds again, but they have switched sides. Russia supports Crimea’s right to break off from Ukraine while the United States calls it illegitimate, a showdown that revives a long-drawn debate over the right of self-determination versus the territorial integrity of nation-states.

Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was duly elected, was ousted by a coup. No matter how you describe it, it was a demonstration supported by the West as a protest against a pro-Russian dictator. Yanukovych was seen as anti-Europe when he abandoned a trade agreement with the European Union. After fleeing Kiev and showing up in Moscow seeking help from Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian troops took over Crimea on the pretext that they were protecting Russian interests in the region.

 

This double-standard policy was evident during the crises in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The United States supported the public demonstrations and protests against the corrupt and repressive governments of these countries only to cuddle the succeeding regimes which are equally repressive and even more corrupt. American foreign policy plays favourites with repressive and not-so-democratic countries like Pakistan by pouring in millions of dollars in military assistance to fight the Taliban, yet it condemns repression in Iran and North Korea which happen to fall outside its circle of allies.

 

Duality or duplicity in American foreign relations was already evident two hundred years ago when the US forced Spain to agree to a treaty that extended American frontiers. Yet, John Quincy Adams who helped draft the Monroe Doctrine said: “We are friends of liberty all over the world, but we do not go abroad in search for monsters to destroy.” Exactly what the Americans are doing now in Ukraine, in the never-ending Middle East conflict, and in the simmering dispute between China and its neighbours over some islands and rock formations on the China Sea.

 

The United States has used the Monroe Doctrine in authorizing intervention against aggression by other countries, yet at the same time the doctrine espoused neither interference nor meddling in the internal concerns of other countries. The Iraq invasion and the Gulf War are recent examples of the application of the Monroe Doctrine with a little tweak—by involving the support of American allies. Afghanistan’s invasion could also qualify under the umbrella of the Monroe Doctrine except that it was a response to the war on terror, a new twist in justifying American intervention.

 

Last November 2013, US Secretary of State John Kerry told the Organization of American States (OAS) that that the Monroe Doctrine was dead. Not really true. While Kerry was apparently calling for mutual partnership with other countries in the Americas, it was essentially in keeping with Monroe’s initial message than with the policies the US government had enacted long after Monroe’s death. Noam Chomsky called the Monroe Doctrine as America’s endearing rationale for declaring hegemony and the right of unilateral intervention all at the same time.

 

Crimea’s future has already been sealed. It will eventually join the Russian Federation despite censure from Ukraine, the United States and its allies in Europe. Sanctions against Russia will probably intensify but in the end will not matter much.

 

Vladimir Putin and the Russian Army are marching ahead towards gradual partitioning of the countries that used to be satellites of the old Soviet regime and picking up one territory after another. Will Putin be able to restore Russia’s superpower status which it lost during the end of the Cold War in the 1990s?

 

It’s still too early to say. The Crimean crisis or the ongoing disputes among other countries elsewhere in the world, however, clearly indicate that at the heart of all these tensions is a much broader conflict. It is not about the quarrel between the smaller protagonists, i.e., between Crimea and Ukraine, or Bangsamoro and the Philippine national government, or between those for or against Scottish independence.

 

This could be what Samuel Huntington called the emergence of a “multipolar” world, where the United States hangs on as the only superpower but must now come to terms with other regional powers who resent interference in their own spheres of influence, whether by the United States alone or with its coalition of the willing.

Flunking history

 

 

As a student of history, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III gets a failing mark.

 

Recently, President Aquino compared China’s conduct of foreign relations on the simmering South China dispute with Hitler’s acquisition of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938. Aquino said the Sudetenland “was given in an attempt to appease Hitler to prevent World War II.”



Philippine President Benigno Aquino III. Photo by AFP.

Aquino’s statement was only partly correct insofar as the European powers at that time, Great Britain and France, agreed to let Czechoslovakia give up the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany in order to avert another war in the continent. This was against the position of the US commission to the Paris Peace Conference which unanimously supported the unity of Czech lands, including the area of the Sudetenland that was occupied by ethnic Germans. Of course, Hitler eventually invaded and annexed Czechoslovakia to the Third Reich.

 

But where is the parallel between Hitler’s Sudetenland with China and the South China Sea dispute that President Aquino was alluding to?

 

The Sudetenland was inhabited by German-speaking ethnic groups and was driven by local nationalist sentiment to join the German republic. There was an impulse in the Sudetenland to rejoin Germany, unlike the islands and various rock formations in the South China Sea which are largely uninhabited by any distinct population or ethnic group. In fact, after the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of ethnic-speaking Germans escaped Sudetenland and resettled in West Germany. On the other hand, most of the islands being claimed by the Philippines, China and four other Asian countries remain submerged under water during high tide and are practically uninhabitable by people.

 

The South China dispute is a territorial conflict among several Asian countries which claim competing sovereignty over islands and rock formations, primarily because of their potential rich oil and mineral deposits. No claimant country is eager about going to war for the sole reason of asserting sovereignty rights. The dispute could be considered a flashpoint for a wider armed conflict, but that’s all there is to it—not necessarily an impetus for war.

 

Comparing China with Hitler’s aggressiveness in acquiring the Sudetenland is obviously inflammatory and contrary to negotiating a settlement through diplomacy. President Aquino is simply fanning the flames and outrage against China’s aggressiveness in the South China Sea. Again, as a loyal American boy himself, Aquino is serving the interests of the United States for being the spokesperson for containing China’s rising hegemony in Asia and the Pacific.

Crisis in the South China Sea. Photo by UNCLOS and CIA.

President Aquino is emboldened by a mistaken belief in the illusion that the Mutual Defence Treaty between the Philippines and the United States will save him from his belligerent rhetoric against China. This defence agreement is a moribund instrument, signed by the two countries at the height of the Cold War in 1951, for the sole purpose of limiting the spread of communism in Asia. But with the fall of the Soviet Union and the decline of the threat of communism in the 1990s, the menace of communism has totally receded, even in the face of the local communist-inspired insurrection by the New People’s Army (NPA).

 

Like the former US bases in the Philippines, the Mutual Defence Treaty between the Philippines and the United States serves only as a magnet to foreign aggression. Instead of seeking accommodation and modus vivendi, President Aquino has been animated by the US commitments expressed in this 1950s vintage Cold War origin security treaty, which is backed by US-Philippines joint military exercises under the US Visiting Forces Agreement.

 

During her visit to Manila on November 11, 2011, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared on the 60th anniversary of the Mutual Defence Treaty that “the US will always be in the corner of the Philippines. We will always stand and fight with you to achieve the future we seek.”

 

It was the most gratuitous, yet unconstructive declaration by the former Secretary of State, that could be deemed provocative and ill-conceived given the practice of the United States not to take sides and be involved in regional conflicts in Asia and the Pacific.

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her visit to the Philippines
which coincided with the 60th anniversary of the nations' Mutual Defence Treaty.

But the US mutual obligation under the treaty in the event of a foreign invasion is more illusory than real. Reading the fine print of the 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty would show that it is not automatic for the United States to come to the defence of the Philippines in case of hostilities with China. Under Article IV of the treaty, in case of an armed attack in the Pacific, both parties must act in accordance with their constitutional processes before introducing their armies into any hostility. Thus, the treaty is not “self-executing” or binding on the United States unless its Congress enacts an implementing law to commit the US military.

 

Besides, the treaty expressly refers to an armed attack in the Pacific, and the South China Sea, arguably, is not part of the Pacific.

 

President Aquino would not have the audacity to rile China with his blunt, careless, and undiplomatic statements if not for the mirage of the US military coming to defend the Philippines in case of war. This is also true in the case of Japan. The Japan-China dispute would probably not have escalated to its current level by Japan provoking nationalization of the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, if not for assurances of applicability of the U.S. defense commitment to the disputed islands.

 

North Korea’s provocative development of nuclear weapons and other acts of belligerence are also clear examples of how these US defence treaties operate in escalating conflict rather than promoting détente. The presence of U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula serves in limiting China’s willingness and ability to exert pressure on North Korea to denuclearize.

 

At present, US servicemen join the Armed Forces of the Philippines on a rotating basis throughout the year, not only in military exercises but also in the latter’s campaigns against NPA and Muslim secessionist rebels. The U.S. also maintains some 28,500 servicemen and women in South Korea and some 34,000 uniformed personnel plus dependents in Japan. Two major U.S. air force bases and the Futenma Marine Air Base occupy a large part of Okinawa. The U.S. Seventh Fleet is also headquartered in Yokosuka, Japan.

 

To the eyes of any intelligent observer, the presence of U.S. military in Asia and the Pacific has therefore become more of an attraction for foreign aggression and an irresponsible shield used by leaders of these countries in promoting belligerence and a rationale for going to war.

 

The alliances built by the United States with the Philippines, Japan, and Korea clearly represent a dangerous remnant of the Second World War, and particularly the Cold War that has long since ceased to be justifiable under any reasonable scenarios. All countries in the region would probably enjoy greater stability and security if these alliances were dismantled and U.S. military forces withdrawn.

 

These mutual defence commitments, and the ongoing negotiations between the United States and the Philippines in Washington for a new military framework agreement, are stoking the bluster in President Noynoy Aquino’s immature broadsides against China, even to the extent of misinterpreting history. While the Aquino government has been proclaiming the need for a rules-based and peaceful settlement of the South China Sea dispute, it continues to undermine this process by unnecessarily portraying China as a bully and Hitler-like in dealing with its smaller and less powerful neighbours.

Stoking fears of China

A blogger and columnist for a Philippine newspaper wrote recently that the closure of the U.S. military bases in 1992 left the Philippines “defenceless against our enemies.” He was referring to the apparent helplessness of Filipinos to stand up alone to the Chinese threat, or to say it less mildly, to China’s arrogance and bullying tactics with regard to their territorial claim to the Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

About 300 Filipino demonstrators rally at the Chinese Consulate in Makati against China's
 aggressive tactics in the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. Photo by AFP/Ted
Aljibe. Click link to view "Filipinos Protest China-Philippines  Naval Stand-off,"
 http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/05/201251144447223660.html 

In his column “My China Phobia,” he wrote, “If we still had the U.S. military bases in our territory, would Chinese trawlers and other fishing vessels dare enter Philippine seas? Without the U.S. military bases in our country, the Chinese and just about everyone else can enter our territory with impunity and forage in what should be our exclusive 200-mile ocean.”

Exactly what the aforementioned Filipino blogger/columnist and a few expat Pinoy protesters from the U.S. and Canada have in mind in internationalizing the dispute in the Scarborough Shoal and Spratly Islands, by giving the United States the necessary reason to re-establish its previous control of the sea lanes in the South China Sea and the whole of the Pacific.

It was in 1992 when the U.S. navy left Subic Bay that China started to expand its territorial claim to almost the entire South China Sea. By that time, China has redrawn the extent of its territorial breadth, covering virtually all the islands, atolls, reefs, and rocks and their surrounding waters and encroaching on parts of the sea that other countries in the region also straddle. To date, six countries have made competing territorial claims to the islands and other land formations in the South China Sea and the dispute is being escalated by military threats and war of words.

There are at least four observations we can make from the South China Sea dispute and from the spectacle of loyalty to the motherland by the handful of Filipino expatriates before the Chinese consulates wherever they are found in the world.

First, with respect to the competing territorial claims of China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, nothing has been settled and each country’s claim is what it is: an outstanding claim that is not validated, determined by an international body, or acquiesced to by the other countries. Therefore, no country has a better right than the other. Everyone is on equal footing, although not necessarily if one considers China’s military and economic wherewithal.

No matter how vociferous Filipinos are in asserting their sovereignty over the islands and rocks in the South China Sea and in expressing their boundless patriotism, this is not going to help establish their claim. We cannot truly state that China, for example, has violated our territorial sovereignty in the Scarborough Shoal because those rocks submerged in the sea are not yet ours. The same goes for China and the rest of the other countries.

The impasse cannot be resolved by the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) since this is a not a law of the sea issue. At the core of the dispute is who has sovereignty to these islands; therefore, it is a political conundrum. Until the sovereignty issue is determined, the provisions of UNCLOS on delineating boundaries such as the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and the continental shelf are held in abeyance. All this talk about the 200-mile EEZ of the Philippines is nonsense as we have not established our legal right or title to own those islands and rocks in the disputed sea. The criticism of China’s territorial claim that likens it to Italy owning the whole of Europe or Africa because it was part of the Roman empire of yore is gibberish. We are talking of lands in the sea which are yet to be occupied or settled and governed with continuous authority, not of lands which are already subject to sovereign rule. Besides, the UNCLOS is only concerned with maritime waters, not with land formations which can be subject to territorial sovereignty claims.

Second, the sudden interest of expatriate Filipinos in the United States and Canada in the South China Sea is rather suspicious, if not apparently being orchestrated by the U.S. government itself together with their lackeys like Fil-Am lawyers Imelda Nicolas, Rodel Rodis and Ted Laguatan, organizers and leaders of the U.S. Pinoys for Good Governance (US4GG). While the true Filipino nationalists and patriots are demonstrating in the streets at home and before the American Embassy in Manila demanding the removal of U.S. special forces stationed on Philippine soil under the Visiting Forces Agreement, the USP4GG partisans are silent about American military intervention in the government’s campaign against local insurgents and Moslem secessionists in Mindanao. The USP4GG condemns China’s invasion of Philippine territories in the South China Sea, which is untrue, yet welcomes the presence of the U.S. military on Philippine soil.

Where is their true love of the motherland when they denounce China’s make-believe intrusion in Philippine territory but embrace America’s direct and actual intervention in the country’s affairs? While Filipinos in the Philippines are demanding the scrapping of the Mutual Defence Pact and the Visiting Forces Agreement with the U.S., USP4GG diehards, on the other hand, call for reinforcing these agreements by encouraging a greater build-up of American military muscle in the South China Sea.

Filipinos protest against U.S. troops under the Visiting Forces Agreement between the
Philippines and the United States. Photo by nicabil. Click link to view "Militants slam
 plan for more troops in the Philippines," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjt18T5_YWQ

Third, in shifting its foreign policy interest to Asia and the Pacific, the United States needs to restructure its military strength, especially its navy, from Australia to the Philippines in order to rein in the expanding influence of the Chinese military in the region. The U.S. military is now establishing a submarine base in Port Darwin in Australia and is also engaged along with the Philippine armed forces in actual hostilities against local insurgents and Moro separatists, even in regular military exercises in the South China Sea with its allies from the region. The South China Sea is therefore crucial to U.S. navigation and it cannot afford to simply let China control the sea lanes that are necessary for the U.S. navy to respond quickly to threats to South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, the countries of vital interest to the United States.

This is also why the Obama administration has pushed the U.S. Senate to approve the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea treaty. The U.S., which has withheld ratifying the treaty since its adoption 30 years ago and the only permanent member of the U.N. Security Council not a party to it, now believes the pact is necessary to protect the U.S. Navy’s right to carry out exercises off the coast of China. Ratification of the convention has been held over concerns among some congressional leaders that the treaty threatens U.S. sovereignty and gives the United Nations too much control over oil and other mineral rights. U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told U.S. lawmakers that ratifying the UNCLOS will ensure that U.S. warships, commercial vessels and aircraft have access to where needed.

And fourth, there appears an apparent wave of Sino-phobia that is being stoked by the U.S. and its allies in Asia and the Pacific. China has become an infinite source of fear and loathing characteristic of the Cold War between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.

Among Asian countries, China-bashing is nothing new. There is long history of resentment against the Chinese by other Asians because of their economic success as immigrants, particularly in Southeast Asia. Ethnic Chinese, for example, constitute more than 1.3 per cent of the total population of the Philippines but they control 60 to 70 per cent of the Philippine economy. This figure however does not include Chinese mestizos who have been part of the Filipino middle class since the Spanish colonial period and immigrants from the People’s Republic of China after 1949. Add them and Chinese Filipinos are one of the largest ethnic groups in the country, comprising about 22 per cent of the total population. President Noynoy Aquino’s mother, Cory Cojuangco-Aquino, also a former president, was a Chinese mestiza. In addition, all the wealthiest billionaires in the Philippines are Filipino Chinese or of partial Chinese descent.

It seems easier therefore for Filipinos to whip up fears of China’s threat of expansion or invasion rather than incite anti-Americanism despite the reality that U.S. forces are already operating on Philippine soil. After the Japanese, the Chinese have never warmed up to the hearts of Filipinos, although hardly can one detect the difference between the ethnic Filipino and the Filipino Chinese. The Americans are acclaimed as heroes by most Filipinos and they are looked upon as protectors even though that is now far from happening.

The USP4GG protests against Chinese aggression in the Philippines are obviously a smokescreen for bringing back the mighty American military in the South China Sea. Their protests are a disguised form of patriotism, a charade of love country, when in fact they are actually selling the Philippines short, just as the Philippines has agreed before to sign on with unfair and one-sided treaties with the United States.

Unfortunately, our historic animosity to the Chinese is fueling the drive to bash China when the latter’s post-Mao government does not seem to have any interest in grabbing territory from its neighbours, or in promoting revolution or spreading a dangerous ideology. Rather, China seems more focused on its internal development, especially its experimentation with the capitalist system albeit centralized state control.

On the other hand, the United States, which has a history of military expansionism, seems bent on re-taking control of the South China Sea, to add to the 9,000 miles of coastline on the Pacific Ocean, which is effectively owned and operated by the U.S. Navy. Led by the USP4GG, misguided Filipinos abroad are helping and abetting the United States achieve its objective, and they call this an act of patriotism.

No gain, no respect

 

Never been tested since it was signed in 1951, the Mutual Defence Treaty (MDT) between the Philippines and the United States is a relic of the Cold War. In the language of the treaty, both countries are bound to support each other if either was to be attacked by another country.

The closest the treaty has been invoked was during the 1960s when Malaysian troops threatened to attack the Philippines for its claim over Sabah in the island of Borneo. Declining to assist the Philippines under the MDT, U.S. officials claimed that Malaysia was also an ally and that the American government would not interfere.

Just like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the MDT was designed to stave off the spread of communism, particularly from the Soviet Union. With the dismantling of the Soviet Union and effectively reining Germany’s appetite for military aggression, NATO now is an alliance in search of a common enemy and a clear purpose. NATO cannot survive simply by aligning itself with Washington’s security policies and its seemingly endless war against the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, so many of its member nations are now veering towards less dependency on American military protection.

MANILA (Nov. 16, 2011) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is greeted by Cmdr. Brian Mutty, commanding officer of the guided-missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald. Secretary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Harry Thomas, Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert del Rosario, and Philippine Secretary of National Defense Voltaire Gazmin signed the Manila Declaration, commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Philippines-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty, aboard the ship in Manila Bay. (U.S. Navy photo) Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXY34r8vvDw to view BAYAN'S statement "60 Years is Enough."

The threat of an armed attacked in the Pacific, which the Philippines and the United States had in their minds when they signed the MDT, never materialized. While North Korea remains belligerent to its southern neighbour, its military ambition has been effectively checked beyond the 38th parallel. Vietnam has been unified after its costly war with the United States and is not a threat to attack any of its neighbours or countries in the Pacific. Other wars in the regions have been localized and there is no danger of them spreading to other countries, much less to the Philippines. Japan has been effectively neutralized and we’re not going to see the re-emergence of an imperial Japanese power in the near or distant future. China is now the second largest economy in the world after the United States but is not likely seen as an imperialist power.

Thus, many Filipino nationalists have demanded the termination of the MDT because it has become a moribund instrument. For the Philippines in particular, the MDT is a useless treaty because it is the U.S. Congress which has the power to commit the United States to an armed conflict and therefore is never an assurance that the U.S. will come to the aid of the Philippines during a foreign attack on its territory.

Whether the United States through Congress or the U.S. President as commander-in-chief would deploy its troops to support the territorial claims of the Philippines over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea remains more illusory than real. The United States cannot afford another big war. It has decided to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan and to help in the Arab Spring revolt in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya through leading by following, a much more indirect way of involvement.

Although it has publicly stated its new foreign policy pivot in Asia and the Pacific, the U.S. is not likely to be directly involved in any military conflict in the South China Sea. The most the United States would do, if the current impasse in the South China Sea escalates in a limited military confrontation, is to use the Philippines as its proxy in its emerging Cold War with China. In fact, President Benigno Aquino III is already on record, not as a do-nothing President, but as a willing and able spokesman and “fanboy” for the United States.

Out of the South China Sea conflict between the countries claiming territorial sovereignty over its islands and the waters around them, a new Cold War is coming into view.  These competing nations know in their hearts that military confrontation with China is an invitation to destruction. Show of force to reinforce their claims will plainly be a show, and nothing more.

The United States has seized their opportunity in the South China Sea to engage in a proxy war with China by using the Philippines as its fugleman. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already committed to President Aquino to help the Philippines in its territorial sovereignty claim to the Spratly Islands.

Using the MDT as its cover, the United States is sending decommissioned military equipment to the Armed Forces of the Philippines such as old ambulances, old Huey helicopters, fighter and cargo planes, which the U.S. had used extensively during the Vietnam War. Lately, the U.S. has sent to the Philippines a decommissioned battleship for reconnaissance and patrol use in the South China Sea.

The U.S. military is also using the Visiting Forces Agreement between the two countries for conducting joint Balikatan training exercises to prepare Philippine troops for armed confrontation in the South China Sea, in addition to helping the Philippines combat the local communist insurgency and the Moslem separatists in Mindanao.

Philippine and U.S. soldiers conduct raid during 2012 Balikatan Exercise
 under the Visiting Forces Agreement at Fort Magsaysay. Photo by DVIDSHUB.
 Click  link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUZgO8Dnnv4&feature=relmfu
 to view "Spratlys Emerging Cold War."

So, the MDT has found a useful purpose for the United States to continue its involvement with the Philippine military, although not in accordance with the treaty’s original objective of helping each other during a foreign attack.  There is no foreign attack yet, which is unlikely to happen, but the U.S. government is directly involved in running the Armed Forces of the Philippines just the way it was before.

If this is how the MDT should be enforced, then the United States is virtually meddling with the Philippines in protecting itself from future external armed attack. For a sovereign country to allow a foreign power to dictate how it should prepare in case of foreign aggression, the Philippines is showing its true colours not only as a dependent state but as a middling puppet as well.  But then again, this is nothing really new.

The MDT has been the basis for several agreements between the U.S. and the Philippines such as the US-RP Military Assistance Agreement, later renamed as US-RP Military Advisory Group, the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Mutual Logistics Servicing Agreement. Even the U.S. military bases agreement which was finally abrogated in 1991 also traced its roots from the MDT. Thus, the MDT is known to many Filipino nationalists as the “mother of all unequal military treaties and agreements” the Philippines agreed to accept since achieving independence in 1946.

More than 60 years have passed since the MDT was signed, yet the Philippine military still remains dependent on the advice of the U.S. military for sourcing of materials, logistics and equipment, and training. The treaty never helped the AFP modernize. It only enhanced the false dependence of the Philippines on American military protection.

With the current impasse in the South China Sea, the United States is exploiting the MDT as an instrument for meddling in the conflict by using the Philippines as its proxy in the emerging Cold War with China. The U.S. State Department has officially stated that the Mutual Defence Treaty between the United States and the Philippines continues to serve as “cornerstone of our relationship and a source of stability in the region.”

The increasing threat of Chinese hegemony in the South China Sea has worried the United States—that its navy may not have full use of the sea lanes necessary for its strategic presence in the area—and its effect, too, on commercial ships that navigate from south to north of the China Sea. The U.S. does not expect, however, to be directly engaged in any military confrontation with the Chinese, which the latter can ill-afford given the state of their national economy. The American military has already been overstretched to the limits with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and another big overseas war would wreak more havoc to U.S. economic recovery.

A Cold War between the United States and China would be the best scenario for the U.S. to remain a powerful presence in Asia and the Pacific. With support from allies like Japan, Australia and the ASEAN nations, a Cold War will help the United States in the containment of China’s rise as a Pacific power.

The Cold War would simply be carried through military alliances, strategic conventional and force deployments, appeals to neutral nations and extensive aid to the countries in the region, but never direct military action. The United States and the Soviet Union have fought proxy wars before in Latin America and the Southeast Asia. It will be China’s first foray in a Cold War and the United States will take advantage of the Chinese lack of experience.

Right now, the U.S. is using as its proxies countries like the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and Australia to stem the rise of Chinese hegemony in the region. The Philippines, in particular, plays a significant role because it has the MDT and other military agreements with the United States that enable the U.S. military to deploy its troops and warships in the guise of helping the Philippines. There are already American special forces stationed on Philippine soil and they are conducting war games with the Philippine military in waters close to the disputed area of the South China Sea.

The Philippines is drawing out the Chinese superpower to a cat-and-mouse game in the South China Sea by deploying its newest warship, courtesy of the United States, while China has responded by sending their powerful boats. This is a scenario that would be repeated many times over in the future and unless China and the other competing nations agree to a negotiated settlement of their territorial claims, the United States would only be too happy to stay in the background contented that China’s rise is at least contained at the moment.

It’s not going to be a win-win situation for the Philippines. It has already derogated its sovereignty to the United States with the MDT and other unequal military treaties, to the detriment of its own capacity to develop a self-sufficient military and to an inevitable erosion of respect from its ASEAN neighbours for its inability to stand alone.