Aquino presages a new era in RP-US alliance

WASHINGTON – President Aquino will never capture the magic his mother had with Americans but his convincing election victory provides an opportunity to renew and refocus the RP-US alliance, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation said.

A report by Walter Lohman, director of the foundation’s Asia Studies Center, said US and Philippine interests coincide very closely on China – the Philippines in protecting its claims in the disputed Spratly islands in the South China Sea and the US in protecting freedom of navigation there.

Chinese claims to the South China Sea are becoming more assertive by the day, the report said, and left unchallenged, one day in the not too distant future, safe passage of more than half of global trade and the conduct of routine US naval operations will be hostage to the discretion of China.

Since US bases in the Philippines were closed in 1992, the conventional capacity of the Armed Forces of the Philippines has deteriorated sharply, the Lohman report said.

“It does not even own a fighter jet, or have the capacity to consistently patrol territory disputed by the Chinese. In a neighborhood where Chinese military spending has been growing at double digit rates for more than two decades, this is a problem,” it said.

An earlier report authored by Lohman and Renato de Castro, a professor in international studies at De La Salle University in Manila, said the US should review and reprioritize its assistance programs to make them responsive to the AFP’s shift from internal security to territorial defense.

It also said the US should encourage its allies in the region such as Australia, Japan, Thailand, and South Korea to give the Philippines more surplus defense articles as grants or as long-term loans.