The 'external threat' that Marcos has brought us
• 7h • 4 min read
SPEAKING at Camp Melchor de la Cruz in Isabela on June 10, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. warned: "The external threat now has become more pronounced, has become more worrisome."
But he left out one truism his late father could have pointed out: his February 2023 decision letting the United States use nine bases of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), including the northern Luzon facility where he spoke, is precisely why the threat of external attack and even invasion has escalated.
Back in 1975, Marcos was just 18, but he surely understood what his father, then-president Ferdinand Marcos Sr., said about US bases, quoted in the Philippine Council of Foreign Relations journal (third article at http://pcfr.weebly.com/pcfr-journal.html under the subhead "Threats Posed by RP-US Agreements"):
"If the purpose of American military bases is to strengthen American military posture in the Pacific, or in the Indian Ocean and throughout the world, does this not expose the Philippines to the animosities, suspicions and the conflicts arising out of the American military build-up — animosities and conflicts that we have no participation in making — and do not these bases endanger the safety of the Filipinos and the Philippines not only from conventional armed attack, but from possible nuclear attack?"
But Marcos Jr. did not heed Marcos Sr.'s warning. So, nine AFP bases and the troops, families and communities in and around them face grave risks of death and destruction in possible US-China hostilities over Taiwan, which American generals and global security analysts believe could erupt by 2027.
If nukes are used, radioactive fallout would contaminate not just people but also farmland. That includes our main rice lands in Luzon, where there are two bases in Cagayan and one each in Isabela, Nueva Ecija and Pampanga — chosen by America precisely to counter China. We could starve.
On atomic attacks, then Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana Jr. told London's Financial Times in 2019: "Should there be a shooting war and nuclear weapons would be used, I think the Philippines would be a fair target."
Those doubting that nuclear powers would go nuclear should watch Russian President Vladimir Putin. He brandished nukes at least twice since his Ukraine invasion, including recent drills in launching and weathering atomic weapons.
Meanwhile, the US eyes missiles in Britain, prompting Putin to warn the British of nuclear retaliation. Notably, too, after decades of decline, spending on atomic weapons has been up since 2020.
Weaponizing the Philippines
What trebles the risk of widespread and possibly nuclear attack are two US strategies: Agile Combat Employment (ACE) dispersing warplanes over dozens of bases and the plan to deploy missile batteries in the so-called "first island chain," which includes the Philippines. Both strategies could draw catastrophic attacks across our archipelago.
First, ACE: A month after Marcos buckled under Washington's prodding, abandoned neutrality — remember "friend to all, enemy to none"? — and opened AFP bases to America, US Air Force Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of all American aircraft from Hawaii to India, extolled ACE:
"... the whole big picture purpose of ACE [is] to disperse your forces. So that's exactly what we're going to do during a conflict, which is we're going to have jets spread out over many, many islands like that to make it more difficult for an enemy to target. It makes them use more munitions, and it gives us a chance to keep air power in the air" (https://tinyurl.com/3pbud9en).
If ACE is implemented here, US warplanes could operate from dozens of airfields, making them harder to hit. But guess who cannot avoid attacks on facilities used by America? No wonder disaster readiness projects are earmarked for the AFP bases that Americans will use under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).
After his White House summit with US President Joseph Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in April, President Marcos maintained: "The Philippines has no plan to open, to establish more EDCA bases."
That sounds like his past insistence — repeated during his May 2023 US state visit but disregarded by Washington — that EDCA sites were solely for Philippine defense, not Taiwan conflicts.
Scared already?
It gets worse. A month before President Biden's inauguration, top Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published an article in December 2020, done like a memo from Biden's national security adviser. It said:
"US Indo-Pacific Command (IndoPacom) hopes to disperse US forces, including marine and army units, along the first island chain running from Japan through Southeast Asia. In a contingency, these small, mobile teams would support US air and naval operations and hold Chinese vessels at risk with ground-based missile units. ... But the Philippines is the only country in Southeast Asia that might realistically host such assets. So, these plans require saving the VFA (Visiting Forces Agreement) and implementing EDCA" (https://www.pressreader.com/philippines/manila-times/20240324/281608130429500).
Also in late 2020, another leading US think tank, military-funded RAND Corp., assessed whether America's Asia-Pacific treaty allies — Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand — would accept its ground-based intermediate-range missiles (GBIRMs). With a range of 500 to 5,000 kilometers, GBIRMs can hit all of China and its surrounding waters from East Asia.
The report was commissioned by the US Air Force under Gen. Charles Brown, now America's top military commander. RAND said no ally would take GBIRMs. But our president then was Rodrigo Duterte.
During US-Philippines military exercises in April, America deployed a new GBIRM reaching well beyond 1,000 km — able to hit from our shores major Chinese bases and weapons systems in coastal regions all the way to Shanghai.
If faced with countless ACE airfields and GBIRM batteries, China could be tempted to conserve munitions by nuking facilities, destroying and contaminating them.
And as Washington weaponizes us with bases and missiles, Beijing cannot but ponder whether to seek peaceful reunification till its 2049 centenary — or move before US deployment here makes it too bloody and costly to counter Taiwan independence.
Which brings to mind then Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's remark:
"Are you sure you want to get into a fight where you will be the battleground?"
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