Austin’s Philippines visit to bring deal on expanded military base access, says Manila official
- Under Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement, US can use Philippines’ for joint training, positioning equipment, building facilities like runways and military housing
- Senior Philippines official talked of ‘a push for another 4, 5, of these EDCA sites, we are going to have announcement of some sort’; US already has access to 5 such bases
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin’s visit to the Philippines this week is expected to bring an announcement of expanded US access to military bases in the country, a senior Philippines official said on Wednesday.
Washington is eager to extend its security options in the Philippines as part of efforts to deter any move by China against self-ruled Taiwan, while Manila wants to bolster defence of its territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea.
Austin flew Tuesday night to Manila from South Korea, where he met his counterpart and said the US would increase its deployment of advanced weapons to the Korean peninsula to bolster joint training with South Korean forces in response to North Korea’s growing nuclear threat.
Austin will meet his Philippine counterpart and other officials on Thursday “to build on our strong bilateral relationship, discuss a range of security initiatives, and advance our shared vision of a free and open Pacific”, he said on Twitter.
On Wednesday morning, Austin visited US troops stationed at a Philippine military camp in the southern city of Zamboanga, according to Roy Galido, commander of the Western Mindanao Command.
“Our working relationship to them is very strong,” Galido told reporters, adding that US troops help in counterterrorism and humanitarian and disaster response missions.
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“There’s a push for another four or five of these EDCA sites,” a senior Philippines official said. “We are going to have definitely an announcement of some sort. I just don’t know how many would be the final outcome of that.”
The official declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Manila and Washington have a mutual defence treaty and have been discussing US access to four additional bases on the northern land mass of Luzon, the closest part of the Philippines to Taiwan, as well as another on the island of Palawan, facing the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
The Philippines official said increased US access needed to benefit both countries.
“We don’t want it to be directed to just for the use of the United States purely for their defence capabilities … it has to be mutually beneficial,” he said.
“And obviously, we want to make sure that no country will see … anything that we’re doing … was directed towards any conflict or anything of that sort,” he added.
Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Romualdez said on Tuesday in Manila that “the visit of Secretary Austin definitely, obviously will have to do with many of the ongoing discussions on the EDCA sites”.
Austin would hold talks with his Philippine defence counterpart, Carlito Galvez Jnr, and National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano, Romualdez said. Austin would separately call on President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, who took office in June and has since taken steps to boost relations with Washington.
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The US defence chief is the latest American leader to visit the Philippines after Vice-President Kamala Harris, who flew to the country in November in a sign of warming ties after a strained period under Marcos’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte.
Manila’s priorities in its agreements with Washington were to boost its defence capabilities and interoperability with US forces and to improve its ability to cope with climate change and natural disasters, the Philippines’ official said.
He said that after cancelling an agreement for the purchase of heavy-lift helicopters from Russia last year, Manila had reached a deal with Washington to upgrade “a couple” of Blackhawk helicopters that could be used for disaster relief.
“The deal with Russia was very attractive because for a certain budget we were able to get something like 16 of these heavy-lift helicopters,” the official said. “Now with the United States, obviously their helicopters are more expensive, so we’re looking at how we can fit in the budget that we’ve had.”
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Romualdez said the Philippines needed to cooperate with Washington militarily to deter any escalation of tensions between China and Taiwan, not only because of the treaty alliance but to help prevent a major conflict.
“We’re in a Catch-22 situation. If China makes a move on Taiwan militarily, we’ll be affected – and all Asean region, but mostly us, Japan and South Korea,” Romualdez told reporters, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the 10-nation regional bloc that includes the Philippines.
US Marine Corps units designed to fight on remote islands will soon take position close to Taiwan, reflecting preparations by the US and its allies for a potential conflict with China over the island that Beijing claims as part of its territory.
In January Austin announced that a Marine artillery regiment based on the Japanese island of Okinawa would be reorganised as a Marine Littoral Regiment by 2025 and be outfitted with “advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance” capabilities and anti-ship weaponry that is “relevant to the current and future threat environments”.
That unit, the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment, is the second of three such regiments planned for the Indo-Pacific region, the first of which was activated in March 2022 and is based in Hawaii. Within weeks of its activation, it was participating in the US-Philippine military exercise Balikatan.
The exercise itself, held for the 37th time, “was nothing new”, Colonel Timothy Brady Jnr, the regiment’s commander, said in May 2022.
“What was new was the MLR was participating in it for the very first time as our inaugural deployment. What was also new was the key terrain that we actually operated in,” Brady said.
In the past, Balikatan has taken place in the central Philippines, Brady said. “This time we were way up north, in Cagayan in northern Luzon, in areas like Aparri and ... looking more toward the Luzon Straits.”
Brady’s regiment will return to the Philippines in April for this year’s Balikatan, which will be one of the largest ever and be based in Ilocos Norte, a province in northern Luzon overlooking the Bashi Channel, a strategically valuable waterway dividing the Philippines and Taiwan.
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Marine Littoral Regiments’ return to Luzon and future presence in Okinawa illustrate the US military’s increasing focus on being present and able to operate in and around the islands off China’s coast, which US officials see as vital to thwarting any Chinese move against Taiwan and in the wider Pacific.
“The current threats that are out there require you to be lighter, more mobile, and have a lower signature or you can’t even start the fight,” General Eric Smith, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, said in July.
“You don’t have six months when you have limited, unambiguous warning from a peer adversary, a pacing threat like China. You may have a number of days before you have to respond,” Smith added.
The Philippines used to host two of the largest US Navy and Air Force bases outside the American mainland. The bases were shut down in the early 1990s after the Philippine Senate rejected an extension, but American forces returned for large-scale combat exercises with Filipino troops under a 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement.
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Gregory Poling, a Southeast Asia expert at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said access to military sites in northern Luzon would help US efforts to deter any Chinese move against Taiwan by putting the waters to the south of the island within range of shore-based missiles.
He said the US and Philippine marines were pursuing similar capabilities with ground-based rockets, with Manila’s particular interest being to protect its South China Sea claims.
The Philippines is among several countries at odds with China in the South China Sea and has been angered by the constant presence of vessels in its exclusive economic zone it says are manned by Chinese militia. China is also Manila’s main trading partner.
Additional reporting by Associated Press, Business Insider
