A key military pact between the Philippines and the United States is likely to stay in limbo – neither signed nor scrapped – until President Rodrigo Duterte steps down from office next year. The status of the 23-year-old Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which was supposed to have been cancelled by the Philippines last year, is currently in stasis due to two opposing forces: Duterte’s antipathy towards the US, and pressure from the Philippines’ pro-US military and foreign secretary. According to Renato de Castro, a professor of international studies at De La Salle University in Manila, Duterte was not likely to want his name linked to a revised agreement, which has been “sitting on his table”. “If he signs it, it will be recorded in history that the renegotiated VFA happened during his term,” said de Castro. “He will probably pass it to the next president. He doesn’t want to be associated with a new agreement, especially a new agreement with the US.” An enraged Duterte announced in February last year that he was terminating the VFA after the US cancelled the visa of his former subordinate, Senator Ronald dela Rosa, who is closely linked to the government’s violent war on drugs. But several months later in June, Duterte backtracked and said he was “suspending” the termination for six months. He again put off the cancellation in November. Last week, foreign secretary Teodoro Locsin Jnr announced the president was “extending” the suspension for yet another half a year, “while he studies, and both sides further address his concerns regarding particular aspects of the agreement”. Philippines once again suspends termination of troop pact with US While Duterte has distanced himself from the US, an analyst said the military and others were backing for the VFA to stay over concerns about China. “The Philippine military, together with many in the public, harbour mistrust of China, which is why they want a sustained VFA as a check against Chinese activities in the South China Sea,” said Aaron Jed Rabena, a research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress think tank. “The periodic extension of the suspension gives the Chinese hope that President Duterte is still not all in on its alliance with the US,” he added. Over the past few years, Beijing has been increasing its activities in the resource-rich waterway, which is claimed by several nations including the Philippines. On Wednesday, Locsin took a subtle dig at China ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague’s ruling on the South China Sea, saying it “dashed among others a nine-dash line, and any expectation that possession is nine-tenths of the law”, in reference to Beijing’s claims to the sea. “Might does not make right,” he added. US ready to pull troops from Philippines ‘in months’: expert The VFA, signed in 1998, makes it possible for US troops, as well as their vehicles and equipment, to move in and out of Philippine territory. Philippine defence officials see the pact as essential to building up and training forces, as well as conducting exercises and joint operations with the US military. They also see it as a deterrent to Chinese encroachment on Philippine maritime territory. The VFA is a keystone in the two countries’ 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty, which commits the signatories to support each other in the event either is attacked by an external party. If the VFA is scrapped, it might be possible for at least some Southeast Asian countries to rethink their … defence and security engagements with the US Collin Koh, research fellow Collin Koh, a research fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said Southeast Asian countries were “definitely” following the issue. “If VFA is retained, with or without amendments, it’s likely Southeast Asia will still continue to engage the US militarily in the region, though there’ll also be interest in engaging other extra-regional powers, such as India and Japan,” he said. “If the VFA is scrapped, it might be possible for at least some Southeast Asian countries to rethink their … defence and security engagements with the US, possibly to expand on them to keep the US militarily engaged,” Koh added. Will China and the Whitsun Reef dispute loom large over the Philippine election? Duterte has complained that the VFA is unfair, and that the Philippines should get billions of dollars in military aid from the US in return. Duterte’s stance was not driven by nationalism or politics. “It’s more of his personal animosity vis-à-vis the US,” said De Castro, the professor. The leader’s hostility goes back to at least 2003, when a bomb went off in a hotel room in Davao City, where a Filipino-American was staying. Duterte, the city’s mayor at the time, went to investigate but discovered the man had been spirited away, reportedly by US embassy officials and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. “They think and act nonchalant as if they own the place … I don’t give a s*** who they are,” an enraged Duterte reportedly said. He has made other disparaging remarks, such as when he called former US President Barack Obama the “son of a whore” and threatened to throw out the VFA while pushing back against opposition to his war on drugs. He also ordered the military to stop joint patrols with the US and reduce the training exercises it conducted with American forces. In 2018, the Philippine leader claimed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was planning to kill him. “If my helicopter explodes, it’s them,” he said. The cancellation of dela Rosa’s visa was apparently the last straw. Opinion: Duterte’s promised ‘separation’ from the US is more fiction than fact De Castro pointed out: “You know Duterte, if he gets angry, he really gets angry, especially against the US, because of all his baggage.” In contrast, Duterte has cosied up to China since taking power in 2016. While visiting Beijing in 2016, he said: “I announce my separation from the United States … both in military, not maybe social, but economics also. America has lost.” He also set aside a Philippine victory in an arbitral case that the country filed over the South China Sea at an international court. INDEPENDENT FOREIGN POLICY? Duterte officials have stressed the need to have an independent foreign policy, steering between two superpowers. In this context, de Castro said rejecting the VFA “would be a gesture, in indication this administration is determined to pursue an independent foreign policy”. “[But] we cannot absolutely have an absolute independent foreign policy (if) it is marked by moving away from the US but getting closer to China,” the academic said. “What kind of foreign policy is this? We are just replacing one patron with another.” The Philippines and the US have close military ties going back generations: the weapons, equipment, uniforms, tactics of Filipino soldiers are derived from the US military. Even the Philippine Military Academy is modelled after the US academy at West Point. Can the US enlist the Philippines to help contain China in the Indo-Pacific? Without openly defying the president, the Philippine military has maintained its ties with the traditional ally, continuing to source its equipment from the US and conducting scaled down exercises with American forces. “The majority (of the Philippine military) would like to maintain the alliance as is, but some have already lent their ears to President Duterte’s statements that the military can survive without US military training and assistance,” de Castro said, although he suspected it was a minority view from opportunists who were angling for “possible promotion”. De Castro said that at the start of Duterte’s term, it was Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana alone who supported the VFA, but his view was later reinforced when Locsin was appointed to the cabinet. “The former foreign secretary, Alan Peter Cayetano, shared Duterte’s animosity to the US … but now you have a dynamic duo, Locsin and Lorenzana, who are both champions in terms of praising and emphasising our alliance with the US,” de Castro said. Meanwhile as the VFA hangs in limbo, the Philippines could benefit from the uncertainty in negotiating a revised agreement. Manila has a strong negotiating position because US President Joe Biden administration’s was leaning on its allies in Southeast Asia in its campaign to reduce China’s influence, de Castro said. “It wants the Philippines to jump on board this bandwagon against China.”