Duterte’s
Power Play: Rocking the US-Philippines Alliance
By Binoy Kampmark
I do not like the Americans. It’s
simply a matter of principle for me.
— Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte,
September 12, 2016
September
15, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Dissident
Voice"
- The frictions excited by the antics of Philippine
President Rodrigo Duterte have caused even greater
heat over the last few days, with calls for the
departure of US special forces operating in
Mindanao. Having already made it clear to Washington
that he intends pursuing “an independent foreign
policy,” he has now insisted that the general root
of ills in instability lie in the troublesome,
headache-causing alliance with the United States.
A
continuing problem of that alliance remained US
forces in Zamboanga on the island of Mindanao,
ostensibly engaged in advising local troops on
counter-terrorism operations. “For as long as we
stay with America, we will never have peace in that
land [Mindanao]. We might as well give it up.” It
was therefore imperative that “those [American]
special forces, they have to go.” He did not want “a
rift with the US, but they have to go.”
Nothing
could stand in greater contrast to such sentiment
than the pact of 2014 signed between Manila and
Washington, a confirmation of all the ills Duterte
despises. While that agreement did not countenance
the reopening of US bases in the Philippines,
something that would have had a constitutional
hurdle to climb, it permitted roving and near
unlimited US access to military bases across the
country.
Despite the
pretence of being severed from the US umbilical cord
in 1946, the neo-colonial aftertaste has remained.
From 2002 to 2013, $441 million in security funding
was provided to Manila. The Obama administration had
set aside a hefty $120 million in military aid for
2016.
As Senator
Miriam Defensor-Santiago, chairman of the
Philippines Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs,
explained with the signatures on the agreement
barely dry, the agreement was of limited value to
the country, while being splendid for US interests.
In
signing the agreement, the US “could claim that
it has ‘contained’ China, because the Asian
countries involved, including the Philippines, are
now bound by their respective agreements with
America.”
This would,
in effect, convert Manila into a compliant satellite
to Washington’s goals in the Asia-Pacific. As if to
emphasise that point, both states had agreed earlier
this year to the deployment of thousands of American
troops to five Philippine bases, measures that are
hardly accidental given the spike in tensions in the
South China Sea.
President
Barack Obama has preferred to avoid the terminology
of containment and control, preferring to see such
moves as pursuant to a self-proclaimed international
order of norms. When one is attempting to be a
decent bully on the international stage, cast a nod
in the direction of international law. “Our goal,”
he explained in 2014, “is to make international
rules and norms [that] are respected, and that
includes areas of maritime disputes.”
The
boisterous Duterte, a vastly different creature from
Benigno Aquino III, has
issued directives to his defence secretary to
seek military supplies from China and Russia rather
than US sources. “I want weaponry and armaments…. We
don’t need F16 jets, that is of no use to us.” Jets
were useless in counter-insurgency operations in the
Philippines; far better stick, he suggested, to
“propeller-driven planes”.
Such moves
are not suggestive of a total distancing from the
United States; Duterte is evidently keen to widen
his appeal to other powers, rather than clinging on
the tired assumption that all that stems from
Washington is somehow good. On that level, the
politics is sound, an attempt to defuse a
confrontation that risks involving China and the US
in a regional punch-up.
The
Philippine military were also bemused by the
Presidential directive, unclear about how they were
to go about their new orders. In the words of a
defence spokesman, “We are awaiting guidelines on
how the president’s policy statements will be
implemented.”
On Tuesday,
Duterte also
explained that the Philippines would cease
patrolling the South China Sea alongside the US
Navy. What was less extensively reported by US media
outlets is that he would prefer Filipino forces to
be doing their own patrolling up to 12 nautical
miles offshore, rather than having entanglements
with either US or Chinese forces.
All that
said, a more than significant nudge is being
contemplated in Beijing’s direction, while the
president envisages refocusing the broader struggle
on domestic maladies: drug trafficking and niggling
insurgencies. “Only China will help us,” he claimed.
“America just gave you principles of law and nothing
else.”
The old
myopic view that Duterte is merely the resident
buffoon and brute is delightfully simple, but one
that has currency in the corridors of US power. It
holds that he is an aberration, that his legacy will
pass, and that his views are of no consequence. US
officials persist doing this at their peril,
attempting to place Manila, by proxy, in line of
Beijing’s ire.
As the
distributed Nelson Report (September 14), a summary
dispatch on foreign relations, put it, “if you want
to see what a Trump Presidency would look and sound
like, watch the Philippines’ Duterte… an impertinent
reference to Trump’s unpredictability, boorishness,
lack of knowledge or sophistication, and penchant
for ill-considered dramatics.”
The point
that has been missed is that this entire revision
has been stewing for some time. It has bubbled with
fury, bypassing the traditional, submissive
structures of power that have favoured an imperial
influence for all too long. The point to see will be
whether Duterte’s legacy persists in its indignation
and redirection, or fizzles in the great power game.
Binoy
Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn
College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University,
Melbourne and can be reached at:
bkampmark@gmail.com. |