Core interests

In September 1991, Orlando Mercado joined 11 other senators in voting to abrogate the military bases agreement between the Philippines and the United States. The voting was a narrow 12-11.

The senators, led by Jovito Salonga and including Joseph Estrada, were unmoved by the sight of then president Corazon Aquino marching to the Senate in a drizzle at the head of a large crowd to plead against the shutdown of the US bases.

Eight years later, when Mercado was defense chief in the Estrada administration, he lobbied the Senate for the approval of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

The administration of Fidel Ramos had hammered out the VFA with the Americans. Even back then, Mercado recalls, senators had raised objections to certain provisions in the VFA particularly on criminal jurisdiction over US forces as well as the lack of reciprocity.

He raised these concerns with his US counterpart at the time, William Cohen. Mercado was told that the US has a template for all its VFAs worldwide, and Washington saw no need to change anything. All their VFAs, Cohen told Mercado, were executive agreements that needed no ratification by the US Senate.

The Philippine Constitution, on the other hand, requires Senate concurrence for allowing foreign military forces to operate here. So the VFA had to be considered as a treaty needing Senate ratification.

Mercado was tasked to pitch the VFA to the Senate. It had to be all or nothing, he told the senators; they could not change any provision that they deemed to be lopsided. Their role was confined to ratification of a deal that was crafted and signed by the executive branches of the two countries.

His mission was a success; the senators approved the VFA in 1999.

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Facing “The Chiefs” recently on Cignal TV’s One News channel, Mercado explained his apparent change of heart on US troop presence.

First of all, he told us, the VFA is not another military basing arrangement, which he had voted against as a senator; it merely laid down the ground rules for the visits of the two allies’ military forces in each other’s countries.

Second, he said, a nation must be guided by clearly defined long-term “core interests” rather than whimsical political winds that change direction from one administration to the next.

Such core interests are clearly defined in the case of China, he pointed out. Regardless of the views of neighbors, Beijing claims Tibet, Taiwan and nearly the entire South China Sea as part of its territory. Whoever chairs the Communist Party of China and serves as its president, all of the country’s policies and public pronouncements are aligned with the furtherance of these core interests.

While he believed the US bases had to go, Mercado also believes it serves Philippine interests to maintain its treaty alliance with the United States – for counterterrorism, and especially for external defense, in which the Philippines has one of the weakest capabilities in the region.

He noted that in line with the two countries’ Mutual Defense Treaty, joint military exercises help enhance inter-operability, which is critical in case a situation arises wherein the MDT would have to be invoked and the allies must come to each other’s external defense.

The VFA also covers humanitarian operations of US troops, which we saw during Super Typhoon Yolanda, as well as assistance in fighting human trafficking and even the drug menace.

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By the time Joseph Estrada was ousted and replaced by his vice president, the Georgetown-educated Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the VFA was in place and just waiting to be fully operationalized.

This Arroyo did. The horrific attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001 plus a seemingly intractable kidnap-for-ransom spree by the Abu Sayyaf that targeted foreigners softened Filipino nationalist resistance to the return of US forces.

And so, in early 2002, for the first time since the last US troops sailed out of Subic Bay with their floating drydock in tow, GI Joe was back in the Philippines. As then US president George W. Bush called it, the southern Philippines had become another front in the war on terror, a.k.a. Operation Enduring Freedom.

The Americans brought portable offices and quarters fashioned out of retrofitted shipping containers to the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ Edwin Andrews Air Base in Zamboanga City, and their troops – many of them mid-level Special Forces officers – were deployed in Basilan to assist the AFP in battling the Abu Sayyaf.

The US Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines was dismantled in 2015, but the Balikatan joint military exercises have continued.

Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles told The Chiefs recently that as far as he knows, the President is serious about the abrogation of the VFA, and there is no talk about a renegotiation.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. told the Senate yesterday he is still waiting for Duterte’s order to send the US the notice of termination. Locsin said the VFA could use a “vigorous review.”

Malacañang has said Duterte resents US interference in the way he is running the government – its criticism of the prosecution of Sen. Leila de Lima on drug charges, and the cancellation of the visa of Sen. Bato dela Rosa.

The visa issue cropped up only recently, but it reportedly happened when Dela Rosa was not yet a senator. It was said to be in accordance with the US Asia Reassurance Initiative Act – for his lead role in implementing the brutal first phase of Duterte’s war on drugs. The ARIA law, passed in December 2018, aims to promote US strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific as well as democracy, rule of law, good governance and human rights.

Is waging a bloody campaign against drug traffickers among the core interests of the Philippines?

Certainly, it is a core interest of President Duterte. What if it is not a core interest of the next president? Then if the VFA is abrogated over Dela Rosa’s US visa, the security pact might be restored by the next administration, perhaps after a renegotiation.

So Orly Mercado is among those who are saying, why not just push for a renegotiation at this point? It will speak better about the reliability of our security alliances.