SCRAP
THE VISITING FORCES AGREEMENT!
Peace Researcher 38 – July 2009
-
Murray Horton
This was written, in
my capacity as Secretary of the Philippines
Solidarity Network of Aotearoa, and published in Bulatlat (an online Philippine
publication www.bulatlat.com)
26/5/09. MH.
In September 1991 I was one of the tens of
thousands of jubilant, soaking wet people who gathered outside the Senate when
the historic vote was taken to not renew the bases treaty with the US. It
was quite a night, marking the culmination of decades of struggle by one of the
most successful anti-bases movements in the world. Coming only a few years
after People Power astonished the world by peacefully getting rid of Marcos,
the Philippines once again earned the admiration of the world’s peoples for its
courageous and principled rejection of the presence of American or any other
foreign military forces on its soil (those has included New Zealand, which had
regularly used the US bases for training purposes during the Marcos
dictatorship).
I had seen the effect of those US bases for myself, having been in Olongapo
when the US
fleet was in Subic Bay Naval Base and the sailors were out on the town. And I
had been in Angeles
City and seen the
concentration of brothels, many of them owned by foreigners, around the
entrance to Clark Air Force Base. To be honest, witnessing that made me ashamed
to be a white male. In my home town of Christchurch, New Zealand, there has
been a continuous US military presence at our airport since the 1950s but it
will come as no surprise to Filipinos that GIs behave very differently in white
First World countries than they do in brown Third World ones. Suffice to say
that the US
military in NZ has never been able to enjoy and/or exploit any equivalent of
Olongapo or Angeles.
So, it has been with sadness and alarm that I,
and millions of likeminded people around the world, have witnessed the
Philippine government determinedly undermining the clearly expressed will of
the Philippine people and doing their damnedest to get back into bed with the
US military in every way except offering it permanent bases again. It is no
surprise that the dynasties who comprise the ruling class want that
relationship restored to exactly how it was. Every Philippine President since
Marcos has actively promoted the restoration of such ties. Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo seized the opportunity presented by 9/11 to offer the Philippines
on a plate to George Bush. Bush has gone, Gloria is still there and nothing
much appears to be changing under Obama.
The legal justification of all this is the
Visiting Forces Agreement but the way that it has been utilised by both the US
and Philippine governments is that the US military is back in the country as the
visitor that never goes home. The VFA means that, once again, the US treats the Philippines as a door mat, with the
Philippine government and military as the obsequious doorman. In this
master/servant relationship, even the tips don’t amount to much. The US
military has never entrusted its Philippine counterpart with very much in the
way of its most modern and expensive equipment, only the outdated castoffs that
it no longer needs. And once again US GIs are treating the Philippines as the place to sow their
wild oats. If the Philippines
actually asserts its sovereign rights to punish such behaviour, as it
reluctantly did in the case of Marine Lance Corporal Daniel Smith, then the US pulls out all the stops to remind the Philippines
just who is the boss. The message that it sent via the Smith case was: “Don’t
mess with Uncle Sam”.
The
Sky Didn’t Fall In NZ & It Won’t In Philippines
The Philippine government and military peddle
the line that a close military relationship with the US
is indispensable to the country’s national security; that the Philippines cannot manage without
it. There is a parallel between our two countries. The US used to have no more
loyal ally in the South Pacific than New Zealand, which had fought in every
American war of the second half of the 20th Century (and, before
that, in every British one, including those in the Philippines’ nearest
neighbours). But, in the 1980s, after a prolonged and heroic people’s struggle,
the Government declared NZ to be nuclear free. This provoked a thunderous
reaction from the US (NZ was
expelled from the cornerstone ANZUS Treaty between it, Australia and the US). NZ’s “AmBoys” (i.e. America’s
Boys) declared that the sky would fall. One by-product was that the NZ military
was no longer able to use the US
bases in the Philippines
for training.
But, guess what? A quarter of a century later,
after several changes of Government, NZ remains nuclear free, the policy has
become the status quo among all parties, the servile military relationship with
the US has never been restored (Iraq was the first US war that NZ refused to
join), and the sky has not fallen. NZ currently has a Rightwing government but
it has not automatically ceded to the formal request from the US to commit combat troops to Afghanistan, saying that it wants
to think about whether that is the best use of NZ’s military. So, take it from
us – the sky won’t fall if the Philippines
kicks out the US
military. After all, you’ve done it once and earned the admiration of the
world. Scrap the VFA, show Uncle Sam the door, stand on your own two feet, be
masters of your own destiny by finally ending the colonial relationship and
being truly independent of the US.
.