First of a series
SIMULTANEOUS, interlocking developments tend to support a positive Indo-Pacific outlook as the Philippines assumes the chairmanship of the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) summits, and China appears ready to finalize a code of conduct in the South China Sea and engage other South China Sea claimants in a more peaceful handling of their territorial dispute.
These include a report from the Senate that the Chinese ambassador is ready to sign the code of conduct on behalf of his government, and the release of a white paper authored by a group of retired Filipino ambassadors challenging the Philippine government to take a fresh look at territorial dispute and allow diplomacy to take its full course.
We shall now discuss this private initiative. Titled “Diplomacy as the Linchpin for Protecting Philippine Rights in the West Philippine Sea,” the white paper is written on behalf of the group by George Reyes, former ambassador to Mexico, Cuba and Argentina, based on a series of discussions with his former colleagues, including Raul Rabe (USA), Clemencio Montesa (Belgium), Nelson Lavina (Austria), Jesus Yabes (Islamabad and Shanghai), Generoso Calonge (Iraq and Israel), Virgilio Reyes Jr. (South Africa), Victoria Bataclan (Sweden), Lourdes Morales (Greece), Lamberto Monsanto (Oman) and former consul-general and minister counselor Joey Syjuco (Seattle/London), among others.
The former diplomats are asking the government (and also China) to consider a new approach to the West Philippine Sea issue that would focus on deterrence, defined simply as conflict prevention and resolution. Deterrence would seek to focus attention on the gains that would be achieved by the parties working together instead of working against each other as disputants. By showing a potential aggressor that the cost of aggression far outweighs its benefits, one could deter aggression without need of obvert action, the group points out.
One specific area of interest is the Reed Bank, 98 miles from the Palawan coastline, where US scientific sources calculate about 12 billion barrels of oil and one trillion cubic feet of natural gas deposited under the water surface. This resource, the group believes, could be shared jointly by China and the Philippines, in a working agreement that could replace with a profit-sharing agreement the conflict that has drawn the Chinese and Philippine coast guards in recurring nonlethal incidents in the contested waters. This is one of the high recommendations of the group.
China, the Philippines and Vietnam had earlier tried to enter into a joint seismic undertaking in the same area. But in 2023, the Supreme Court pointed out that the Constitution prohibits foreign ownership of more than 40 percent of enterprises engaged in the exploitation of the country’s natural resources. (However, the charter allows the president to enter into a financial and technical agreement (FTA) with foreign entities and RA 1828 sets the conditions for such arrangement, with the full concurrence of Congress.)
As far as the group of former diplomats is concerned, the Reed Bank project should be revived, focused on finding a legal way of meeting the constitutional objection raised by the court. The group believes that a joint venture between a Filipino and a Chinese firm could be set up, with the Filipino firm owning 60 percent of voting shares and the Chinese firm owning 40 percent, and an additional 20 percent of preferred and nonvoting shares, resulting in a 50-50 percent sharing scheme, as originally proposed by the Chinese side. The group believes this reflects more accurately the existing practice in the private sector of considering the nationality of a company on the basis of the controlling shares. This is for the legal and constitutional experts to put on the table.
The diplomats believe the Philippine group, led by Manuel Pangilinan of Forum Energy Ltd, is ready to resume negotiations with the Chinese side in order to secure the necessary service contract from the government. This could be a game-changer, the diplomats believe. With China and the Philippines jointly exploring the Reed Bank for oil and natural gas, they could work together on many other short-term and middle-term issues to improve their overall relations in the Indo-Pacific. We shall discuss these in the next part of this series. The Philippines would then be freer to define and pursue its own foreign policy and defense objectives as a sovereign and independent state, toward the building of a dynamic multipolar world.
The Constitution ordains the country to pursue an independent foreign policy in its relations with other states. “The paramount consideration shall be national sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interest and the right to self-determination.” Despite the resounding clarity of this provision, the former diplomats believe the Philippines never had the opportunity or the will to enforce this provision. From the outbreak of the Spanish-American war in 1898, when the US paid Spain the sum of $20 million for the purchase of the islands, the archipelago never managed to cut off its apron-strings from the US. The Philippines lost its independence to the US the moment it won its revolution against Spain. On July 4, 1946, it proclaimed itself as a republic, but its foreign and defense policies remained controlled by the US. It remained a client-state, a surrogate.
Under the 1947 Philippine-US military bases agreement, the Philippines hosted two of the world’s largest US military bases, rent-free, for 99 years. These were Clark Air Force Base in Pampanga, which became the home of the 13th US Air Force, and Subic Naval Base in Zambales, the home port of the US 7th Fleet. Despite its apparently strong defense ties with the Pentagon, the Philippines never benefited from any significant arms or defense technology transfer from its principal ally. The Philippines had to rely on hand-me-downs on a grant basis.
In the case of the Air Force, it had to rely on the US after World War 2 to donate P-51 Mustang Fighter planes in order to have some air assets. It would never have entered the jet age if it did not receive free of charge F-86 Sabre jets in 1957, replaced by the F5A Freedom Fighters donated by the US in 1965. This dependence on donated military equipment had its disastrous effect not only on defense policy but above all on our theoretically independent foreign policy. In 1966, Marcos Sr. made a major move to reverse the policy by cutting the 99-year lease period to the next 25 years and asking the US to pay some kind of “rent.”
But it took a major volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo at the tri-boundary of Pampanga, Zambales and Tarlac provinces in 1991—supposedly the second most disastrous volcanic eruption of the century—to compel the bases to close. Despite the express terms of the bases’ withdrawal, and the ample time given to the US forces to prepare for it, there was a last-minute attempt on the part of the Cory Aquino revolutionary government to extend the term of the bases by another 10 years. This was overwhelmingly rejected by the Senate. And the 1987 Constitution carried Sec. 25 of Article XVIII, explicitly prohibiting ”foreign military bases, troops, or facilities” in the Philippines, except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate and, when Congress so requires, ratified by a majority of the votes cast by the people in a national referendum held for that purpose and recognized as a treaty by the other contracting state.”
The closure of the bases caused a thick layer of frost to cover US-Philippine relations for many years. In 2014, the Benigno Aquino III administration signed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (or EDCA), which allowed the US to pre-position its forces against China inside Philippine military bases. This was a naked violation of the Constitution, but in 2022, instead of repudiating the unconstitutional agreement, the Marcos government added four more EDCA sites to the five originally granted the US by the Noynoy Aquino government.
To be continued
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