The Philippines has granted the US greater access to its military bases, thus strengthening Washington’s presence in the region, at a time of growing concern over the possibility of Chinese aggression.
Washington will have access to four other military bases in “strategic areas of the country,” the Philippine Department of National Defense said Thursday, though it did not specify their location.
According to analysts, the expanded access will fill a crucial gap in the US’s positioning in the region, and allow it to better monitor Chinese activity in the South China Sea and near Taiwan.
The agreement has been made within the framework of an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Pact (EDCA) that authorizes the US to access Philippine bases for joint training, store equipment and supplies and build facilities, although not to establish a permanent presence. The US already has access to five military sites.
The agreement will strengthen the US presence in the Indo-Pacific, where the country maintains military treaties with countries ranging from Japan and Korea in the north, Thailand and the Philippines, and Australia in the south. US officials have previously commented that the positioning of US military equipment in Asia was too oriented towards Northeast Asia.
In its statement, the Philippine Department of National Defense stated that Washington would allocate more than 82 million dollars (75 million euros) to infrastructure investments in the five previous bases to which it had been given access. “The Philippine-American alliance has stood the test of time and remains strong,” the document states.
The spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry told a press briefing on Thursday that the United States was stepping up its military deployment in the region “for its own selfish interests and with a zero-sum mentality.”
Mao Ning accused the United States of “exacerbating regional tension and endangering the peace and stability of the region,” saying that other countries in the region should be careful that the United States “takes advantage of them.”
In Chinese state media, coverage focused on the assessment that the United States was expanding its military presence in the region “to counter China,” and that the Philippines needed to balance its relations with both countries.
The announcement was made during a visit to Manila by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who was scheduled to hold talks with his Philippine counterpart, Carlito Gálvez Jr, and national security adviser Eduardo Año, as well as President Ferdinand Marcos. Jr.
Numerous reports indicate that the US requested access to bases in Luzon, the part of the Philippines closest to Taiwan, and on the island of Palawan, the closest landmass to the disputed Spratly Islands, in the South China Sea.
These sites were valuable for two reasons, according to Denny Roy, a senior researcher at the East-West Center in Honolulu. “They are geographically close to the two main points of conflict with China: Taiwan and the South China Sea. Second, the additional locations in the area where the US can preposition forces help reduce the problem of concentrating too many forces in a small number of locations that could be vulnerable to Chinese missile attacks.”
The Luzon location would allow the US to provide operational and logistical support to Taiwan, if needed, said Herman Kraft, a professor of political science at the University of the Philippines. For now, he said, the access is most likely being used for surveillance purposes. According to Kraft, expanded access fills a missing link in terms of US positioning in the region that dates back to 1991, when the Philippines refused to ratify a new agreement with Washington, its former colonial ruler, forcing the US to withdraw. “Southeast Asia has always been more or less a hollow [para Estados Unidos]Kraft said. “They have a troop deployment agreement with Singapore, but it’s small.”
Relations with the US had deteriorated with the previous president, Rodrigo Duterte, who on one occasion said it was “time to say goodbye” to the US, and threatened to scrap a bilateral agreement covering troop visits. americans. In Kraft’s view, Marcos, who took office last year, “wants to establish a more cooperative and less adversarial relationship with the United States.” The announcement comes amid concerns about China’s steadfastness in the disputed South China Sea, one of the main potential hotbeds of conflict. The Philippines, as well as Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, claim parts of the sea, while Beijing claims sovereignty over almost all of it.
According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Initiative for Maritime Transparency in Asia, in 2022 the Chinese Coast Guard maintained near-daily patrols at key points in the South China Sea, and its presence was “more robust than ever.” .
The report, which analyzed data from commercial provider MarineTraffic’s automatic identification system, found that compared to 2020 data, the number of days a China Coast Guard vessel patrolled key points had increased across the board. cases. Points surveyed included regions known as Second Thomas Shoal, Luconia Shoals, Scarborough Shoal, Vanguard Bank and Thitu Island.
Translation of Santiago Armando