Fire in the East / Philippines’ strategic location

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(Last of two parts)

In moving out to the Spratlys, China used naval patrols and marine deployments. The Spratlys reportedly conceal vast deposits of undersea oil and gas. Oil could probably be a sniffing pistol as China, in all probability, seeks greater leverage in the South China sea. "The more enduring consequence of the Spratly Island dispute will be to increase Chinese know-how in projecting forces over a long distance," Bracken states. "A fleet that can be sent to the southeast can also be sent to the northeast. A navy that can operate 1000 miles from home is one that can be stretched to operate even further from shore."

So America must seek to interdict Chinese military power.

This is exactly where the Philippines comes in. Close to the Spratlys, an archipelago sitting on the South China Sea, up close to China and Taiwan, the Philippines is the ideal springboard for projecting US military power to interdict China. This was already in the works with the creation of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) in 1999. The concept took even more urgent shape and substance when Twin Towers and the Pentagon came crashing down 9-11. The culprits, according to America, were Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the evil spearhead of Islam headquartered in Afghanistan.

So Afghanistan had to be invaded, the Taliban and Al Qaeda rooted out. To maintain the momentum, the US had to look for a "second front". It found this in the Philippines. There was no other country America could penetrate forthwith its anti-terror troops, not Indonesia, not Malaysia. But the fiction had to be maintained, American combat troops were simply here for joint military exercises. And if the Abu Sayyaf and the MILF could be linked to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, so much the better. US troops could now be sent in by the thousands by virtue of access and servicing agreements that handily replaced the facilities of Subic and Clark Field.

Let me explain this further.

In his military epic "The Transformation of War", Martin Van Creveld writes that huge military state machines like the Pentagon’s "are dinosaurs about to go extinct". So the use of fixed military bases on installations (as Subic and Clark were) would gradually become defunct. America’s awesome air power could soon be projected from the far rear. As bombers and fighters could streak from continent to continent, even aircraft carriers could eventually be phased out. US bases in Asia now stood in peril of being hit by a storm of missiles from China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq. They too would have to be phased out. What mattered was access, cross-servicing, the rapid deployment of US combat troops, satellite and submarine espionage. And, of course, continued US domination of the South China Sea through which the bulk of world commerce passes.

Van Creveld hits the following out of the ballpark: "When cultures rather than states fight, then cultural and religious monuments are weapons of war, making them fair game. Also, war-making entities will no longer be restricted to a specific territory. Loose and shadowy organisms such as Islamic terrorist organizations suggest why (national) borders will mean increasingly little and sedimentary layers of tribalistic identity and control will mean more. There appears every prospect that religious fanaticisms will play a larger role in the motivation of armed conflict."

Still another homer: "Once the legal monopoly of armed force, long claimed by the state, is wrested out of its hands, existing conditions between war and crime will break down." Muslim Mindanao which seeks to wrest free or loose from Philippine sovereignty, mirrors this breakdown. It also mirrors the elusive enemy America seeks to subjugate – the many faces and races of "terror". The frightening factor here is that the Philippines is being used as a guinea pig for this fight against terror while at the same time held fast as a springboard for America’s interdiction of China.

As the situation evolves, the "time and distance" advantage of the US and the West starts frittering out. As Asia enters the nuclear age it will figuratively loom like a King Kong with a thicket of missiles in both hands. A striking example of the "death of distance" was North Korea in 1998 firing a missile across Japan with a spectacular splash-down in the Pacific. Bracken comes back to say that "As the United States is pushed to much thinner rimland from which to operate, we see the West being forced out of Asia."

So the challenge now for the US, says Bracken, is how to play the geo-political game on a new and critically shrinking chessboard in Asia.

Bracken also takes off on Van Crevald. He writes: "The old techniques of power — fixed bases, arms control, and ‘managing’ China – have played out their usefulness. They can be kept for while but they cannot be the foundation for future American military presence in Asia. The value of fixed bases is certain to decline…No new arms control regime for weapons of mass destruction is likely to be anywhere near as successful as the one now ending." Meaning nyet.

And more: "Asian nations – especially China, India, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and North Korea – are overcoming the US psychological and military advantage. Much like a business going into a new geographic and product areas, Asia is expanding its military scale to bigger areas and diversifying into nuclear, chemical and biological weapons." This is what terrifies America. Overnight, it has become very vulnerable. This is what the Philippine government should understand as the nation is being lured into an arms chessboard by Uncle Sam. The latter no longer has full control of the brass ring that used to hold a post-World War II Asia together.

Now the China threat.

Bracken elucidates: "China compressed 25 years of missile development into eight months…This is the significance of Chinese espionage against American nuclear weapon labs. It is not the spying that is significant, because all countries do that. But the object of the spying is highly revealing. Chinese spies sought the design for the deadly small warhead of America’s nuclear arsenal. This espionage target was not some general collection of American technical data. Rather, it fit the clear pattern of Chinese defense modernization. With this design, China can put bombs on mobile missiles, submarines, and the ICBMs that can strike the United States."

The mix of Chinese missiles are such "that the fraction that is short range can take out American bases in Japan and South Korea…By tilting the entire mixture toward longer-range missiles, Beijing not only turns America’s Asian base into hostages. She also inhibits the US power in the whole Pacific Basin." So concludes Paul Bracken.

This columnist does not presume to know exactly and precisely what the near future will bring. What I can categorically state however is that we are caught in the pincers of the US and Asia (read China) in a hegemony race. The first is out to perpetuate Pax Americana. The latter is out to replace it. The American troops are here in the Philippines because it is in their strategic interest to be here. And they have a willing pawn or ally in this country. Our "damaged culture" cozens to the US.

This our leadership and our people must fully understand.

If we must play the American card, then let’s play it like Pakistan did. If I recall, Pakistan under Pervez Musharraf wrested $3 billion from America in economic, financial and military assistance. This for providing the bases from which US aircraft and troops swarmed into Afghanistan, evicted Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and pounded that hapless Central Asian nation literally to the Stone Age. I understand President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo managed to wangle only about $100 million from Washington. The US got us on the cheap as we swallowed hook, line and sinker the pretext their combat troops came over to get us out of the Abu Sayyaf hole. And of course for the Balikatan exercises to strengthen and modernize our military muscle.

But if we play the American card, we must get ready for the worst on the battle ground. Hundreds can die in Muslim Mindanao in a war that can rage out of control and throw tens of thousands homeless. This will certainly ricochet in Metro Manila and the urban areas where nationalism and a new middle class assertiveness will get a new lease. This means the rampage of hordes in the streets protesting the American military presence. This explains why some leaders of the Left and the Right now project themselves as messiahs out to fix a broken republic. There can be no easy war in Mindanao. Or Luzon. Any war will be dirty and messy.

Should the Americans decide to go after another "terror", the New People’s Army, they will be turning back the clock in the Philippines. Should the Americans however recover their senses, realize the futility of waging a war against "international terror", then sanity might return to the military and political chessboards that dominate, rankle and divide Asia.

The Philippines should not go into any kind of battle – blindfolded.