Marcos Jr treads a fine line over military ties as he heads to US

Manila, Philippines – When they learned that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr planned to meet US President Joe Biden at the White House on May 1, Philippine progressive groups immediately made protest plans.

The regular Labor Day rally had a new theme, Renato Reyes Jr, secretary general of the New Patriotic Alliance of Bayan, told would-be protesters: the US’s reassertion of the Philippines as its “military outpost” in Asia.

Reyes promised a demonstration in front of the US Embassy in Manila and that Marcos Jr would also be greeted by protesting Filipinos in Washington, DC.

Leaders, he said, were expected to announce new bilateral directives on the presence of the US military in the Philippines “as if we were a protectorate of America, in clear violation of our national sovereignty and constitution.”

The visit to the White House is the first for Marcos Jr, who was elected in May 2022 and has since led the Southeast Asian nation closer to the US, unlike predecessor Rodrigo Duterte who leaned the country towards Beijing.

China is the Philippines’ main trading partner, and although Marcos Jr. was honored with a state visit to Beijing in January, his increasingly assertive claim to nearly all of the South China Sea has become a source of growing unrest in Manila.

In February, the Philippines filed a formal protest after accusing the Chinese Coast Guard of directing a high-powered laser at one of their naval vessels near Second Thomas Shoal, known as Ayungin Shoal in the Philippines. It also reported that China carried out “dangerous maneuvers” in the same area this month.

The US, too, is concerned about China’s military ambitions, not only in the South China Sea, but also in self-governed Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory.

Announcing the visit, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden and Marcos Jr. would talk about the US’s “ironky commitment” to defense in the region, plus “efforts to uphold international law and promote a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

The summit follows US Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to the Philippines in November 2022 and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s meeting with Marcos Jr. in Manila last February, which culminated in an agreement to allow the US access to more of the Philippine military bases, a deal that drew criticism from Beijing.

“It is clear that these steps are part of the US effort to encircle and contain China,” a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in the Philippines said in a March statement. “Bundling the Philippines in the wagons of geopolitical strife will seriously harm Philippine national interests and jeopardize regional peace and stability.”

Pax Americana

With its strategic position separating the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean, the Philippines is a “point of contention” for China and the US, foreign policy expert Roland Simbulan told Al Jazeera.

The rival powers vie for influence and control over maritime trade routes, fishing grounds, offshore mineral and gas resources, and to secure military dominance, he said.

Despite Duterte being what he called “good friends” with Beijing, Simbulan believes he never really strayed far from the US.

Dependence on and submission to the US military could well be the “lifeline of Duterte and now Marcos Jr.” could have been, he said.

The Philippines was an American colony for 48 years, and even after full independence, the two nations maintained a close relationship, which deepened after Ferdinand Marcos Sr. became president in 1965.

Marcos Sr sent support troops to Vietnam in the 1970s and welcomed a steady stream of US investment in the country.

Even after the elder Marcos declared martial law in 1972, suspended parliament, arrested his political opponents, and took control of the courts, Washington viewed him as a trusted ally.

And when he was finally overthrown in the popular power revolution of 1986, the US provided a plane to take the family to safety and the fallen dictator lived out his life in exile in Hawaii.

Experts say the relationship reflected the geopolitics of the time.

The US “turned a blind eye to the regime’s human rights abuses and corruption,” said Professor Michael Pante, a historian at Ateneo de Manila University.

The late dictator and the US “needed each other. The US wanted a compliant government in Southeast Asia for its main geopolitical purpose, which was to fly the banner of Cold War anti-communism.”

The strength of the relationship manifested itself militarily.

The Philippines was once home to some of the largest US military bases in the region, including in Subic Bay overlooking the South China Sea.

Those bases were shut down in 1992—Simbulan was an adviser to the Senate at the time—as the Philippines attempted to rebuild its democracy after the rampant corruption and abuses of the martial law era.

Since then, US forces have traveled to the archipelago on a rotational basis, using domestic military facilities under the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

The US is also the largest supplier of military equipment to the Philippines, while the archipelago receives the bulk of US military aid within Southeast Asia.

The recently expanded EDCA means the US will have access to nine bases in the Philippines, including three on the northern island of Luzon, which is just 300km (186 miles) from Taiwan, one of the region’s major hot spots.

The deal also provides reassurance to the Philippines, who were so upset by Beijing’s 2012 seizure of Scarborough Shoal that they took their case to the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

The court eventually ruled that China’s claim to the South China Sea was unfounded, but Beijing ignored the ruling and continued to expand its military presence, including in the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone.

China precipitation

This year’s joint military exercises at Balikatan – shoulder-to-shoulder in Tagalog – were a sign that Marcos Jr. at the helm is a renewed warmth in the relationship between Washington and Manila.

The exercises, which ended on April 28, were the largest ever held with 12,200 US soldiers participating.

“The Balikatan exercise improves both AFP [Armes Forces of the Philippines] and the tactics, techniques and procedures of the United States armed forces in a wide variety of military operations,” AFP spokesman Colonel Medel Aguilar said in a statement released by the US embassy ahead of the exercises. “It increases our ability to work together effectively and efficiently in different crisis situations.”

Balikatan concluded its last day with live fire exercises and the sinking of a decommissioned ship, and Marcos Jr was there to watch.

China, which has held exercises with Cambodia this year and is about to start exercises with Singapore, has shown anger at the closer relationship.

Chinese ambassador Huang Xilian claimed that the US wanted to use the EDCA deal to advance its own “anti-China agenda” and “interfere in the situation across the Taiwan Strait”.

He also pointedly referred to the thousands of Filipinos working in Taiwan.

“The Philippines is advised to unequivocally oppose the ‘independence of Taiwan’ rather than fan the fire by allowing the US access to the military bases near the Taiwan Strait, if you sincerely care about the 150,000 OFWs gives. [overseas foreign workers],” he said.

The US said EDCA was not about Taiwan, and while Filipinos erupted in anger over what appeared to be a threat against their compatriots, China moved into damage control, claiming Huang had been misquoted and publishing the full transcript of his remarks.

Marco Jr. himself admitted that he was “a little surprised” at what had been said, but he tried to downplay the incident. When China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, visited shortly afterwards, the Philippine president spoke of establishing better “lines of communication” to avoid conflict with Beijing.

As Marcos Jr tries to deal with the growing rivalry between the world’s two greatest powers – and ensure that Manila has a cordial relationship with both – his communication skills can often be put to the test, and not just by Beijing and Washington.

Bayan’s Reyes criticized the presence of Marcos Jr. in the Balikatan ship sinking drilling operation and called him “ignorant” of the risks of openly supporting displays of US firepower.

“US militarism is not the answer to the Philippines’ lack of capacity for external defense,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Mr. Marcos needs to know that this is not an innocent Command and Conquer video game.”