Kilusan
para sa Pambansang Demokrasya (KILUSAN) call on critical-minded Filipinos to
closely scrutinize the newest security pact between PH and the US that is said
to be ‘80 percent done’ as recently articulated by Defense Undersecretary Pio
Lorenzo Batino. Batino coincidentally heads the PH negotiating panel that has
been brokering this deal since August last year.
Rather
than meekly accepting that the Agreement on Enhanced Defense Cooperation (AEDC) formerly known as Agreement on
Increased Rotational Presence‘ will merely implement the general provisions of
the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) and the Visiting Forces Agreement, we need to look closer at what is really at
stake under this new deal.
New Basing Arrangements
If the Visiting
Forces Agreement opened the door to the controversial presence of more than
600 fully-armed and highly skilled Joint Special Operations Task Force –
Philippines (JSOTFP) in the heart of Mindanao, for the past 12 years, making
these areas cooperative security
locations (CSLs), a new basing arrangement.
AEDC will put in place another form of US
military presence by accessing PH military bases and other areas to their rotating
presence along with the right to pre-position their war machines and other
military hardware in our territory. This is what is known as the Forward Operating Sites or FOS.
Another disturbing facet of the deal
is that civic operation and disaster rescue are used as a flimsy cover by the
US to showcase its capacity to respond to threat. Militarizing rescue
operations sends the wrong signal altogether and actually de-sensitizes our
people to the fact that these foreign troops are fully-armed and deadly
soldiers. They are not gallivanting civilian tourists, like what Olongapo Mayor
Paulino would like us to believe.
No Mutuality of
Interests
It is highly unlikely that a small
country like ours will have the same agenda as the United States who wants to establish
sole dominion in the Pacific, using its numerous allies in the region to project
its military might against perceived rivals such as China.
In common parlance, we’re letting
our territory be used as a springboard for US aggression and power-play like in
the past, where US troops from Subic and Clark were deployed to fight its
enemies in Korea and Vietnam and even to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Have we forgotten how vulnerable our
OFWs were in the Middle East when we aligned ourselves with the US backed “Coalition
of the Willing” against Iraq, which was a war of aggression to secure Iraq oil
resources for the US? By siding with the US, our government is putting our
national security at risk rather than protecting it.
If we align ourselves with a bully
like the US, how can we expect to exist peaceably with our neighbors?
This deal is a win-lose situation. A
clear win for the US as he has another legal cover tucked under its belt to
enable it to make use of our strategic location as well as resources for its
own ends, while we are left at the losing end, left to absorb the cost and
danger of allowing access to foreign military troops in our lands and seas at
the expense of our sovereignty and independence as a nation. ####
