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President Trump toasts Philippine President
Rodrigo Duterte at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
Summit in Manila in 2017.
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President Trump promised a cozy personal relationship with
Philippine
President Rodrigo Duterte. After they first spoke in late 2016,
Duterte said that the
incoming U.S. leader approved of his bloody and
controversial war on
the Philippine drug trade. Trump said it was being handled
in “the
right way,” Duterte recalled.
On a personal level, common ground made sense. The two men share
vulgar verbal styles, inflated egos and scorn of political correctness
— not to mention a
mutual dislike of former president Barack Obama.
Obama had criticized the Philippine leader on human rights, and
Duterte
repeatedly insulted Obama in response. But Trump
didn’t push.
“We’ve had a great relationship,” Trump said when he visited Manila
in November 2017,
declining to answer questions about the startling toll o
f Duterte’s
war on drugs, which has resulted in thousands of extrajudicial
killings since it went nationwide in 2016.
But perhaps the two leaders were too alike for their relationship
to last.
This week, the Philippines took a step away from the United
States,
notifying Washington on Tuesday that it would end
a major security
pact that allowed American forces to train in the
country.
Trump has dismissed the importance of the move, telling reporters
Wednesday that it would save the United States money.
But Defense
Secretary Mark T. Esper warned that it is a shift in the
“wrong
direction” and analysts have said it could be a turning point in
U.S.-Philippine relations.
Duterte’s planned withdrawal from the agreement was a death blow
to
U.S.-Philippine ties that “effectively ended his country’s
century
-old alliance with the United States,” Richard Javad Heydarian
wrote for
the Asia Times this week.
Implicit is something else: Despite the American overtures, the
Philippines may
be choosing Chinese President Xi Jinping over Trump.
Duterte’s move may have been a shock, but it shouldn’t have
been a surprise. He for years has threatened to walk away from
the
Visiting Forces Agreement, or VFA, a pact that allows joint
military
exercises and a small number of U.S. troops to be stationed
in
the Philippines.
“I want, maybe in the next two years, my country free of the
presence
of foreign military troops. I want them out,” he said in
Beijing in
October 2016, a month before Trump’s election win.
Even before the colorful personalities of Trump and Duterte came
to power,
the military relationship between the United States and the
Philippines bore
a lot of baggage. After almost 50 years as a U.S. colony,
the Philippines
gained independence in 1946, and the two countries
maintained joint
military cooperation.
But in 1991, the Philippine Senate rejected a proposal to renew
U.S. bases,
prompting the withdrawal of the majority of U.S. troops
from the country and the closure of the largest U.S. military base outside the United States.
The two countries kept a mutual defense treaty, despite its vague wording,
and in 1999 they
entered into the VFA, which was followed in 2014 by
an enhanced
agreement for increased cooperation. In recent years, as many as
100
U.S. Special Forces troops had been based on the Philippine island
of
Mindanao, helping in the fight against militants linked to the
Islamic
State.
The Philippines remained an attractive ally for the United States
— the two countries shared history, as well as fears of Islamist
extremism and a rising China. In the Philippines, opinions of
the
United States
and Trump are far higher than in most countries. But the
Philippines
’ strategic
location was, it turns out, also a curse for
its relations with the
United States.
With its proximity to China and interests in the disputed South
China Sea,
the Philippines has become a target for Chinese investment
— Beijing
has been developing the former Clark Air Base, first
established by
American forces during the Spanish-American War, into,
among
other projects, an airport.
Trump’s pushback on Chinese influence is one of his signature
foreign policies. In that context, Duterte’s decision to withdraw
from the VFA looks like a geopolitical loss for the U.S. president.
“Beijing will certainly be happy with this,” said Jeffrey Ordaniel,
a
ssistant professor of international security studies at Tokyo
International
University.
“One of the very few options available for the U.S. to influence
China’s
behavior in the South China Sea, long-term, is to work with
its alliance
with the Philippines,” Ordaniel told Stars and Stripes, noting that other
U.S.
bases in the area are simply too far away to be of use.
But there may still be time to pull back: There are 180 days
before the
withdrawal from the VFA takes legal effect. Duterte made
the move
amid criticism from some Philippine lawmakers and even s
ome
in his government.
Despite the geopolitical implications, Duterte has framed the
shift in
-personal terms, pointing toward a U.S. decision to
revoke a visa for a
former police chief, Ronald Dela Rosa, who had been implicated in
extrajudicial killings during
Duterte’s war on drugs.
Trump may say that Duterte’s push against U.S. troops has no
impact,
but he can’t knock the Philippine leader’s strategy. Duterte
is ignoring
the advice of domestic allies and rivals alike to play
hardball in
negotiations and conflating personal issues with
geopolitics.
Trump might admire it, if only he’d done it himself. |
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Talking Points
• Beijing says
to a coronavirus-struck China: Back to work!
Anna
Fifield reports from the Chinese capital where business
as usual is anything but.
• Will
America’s presidential race become a race between t
wo mega-wealthy
New Yorkers? Former New York mayor
Michael
Bloomberg’s bet on buying the Democratic nomination
might
pay off, but his rivals say he is tipping the scales in President
Trump’s favor.
• An Iranian
couple who lost a child in the shootdown of a
Ukrainian airliner in
Tehran have been denied a visa
for the United States.
The couple were planning to visit their other
child who lives in
Texas, Jason Rezaian writes. |
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By
Lenny Bernstein and Carolyn Y. Johnson ●
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