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Why the Philippines Picked America Over China

Ralph Jennings

   TAIPEI - The Philippine government's decision to restore its Visiting
   Forces Agreement with the U.S. military after 18 months of threats to
   scrap it shows thatBeijinghad not delivered enough to the Southeast
   Asian country to sustain a friendship or excite common Filipinos,
   analystssay.

   Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced July 29 during U.S.
   Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's visit to Manila that he
   wouldcontinuethe 22-year-old pact,commonly known asthe VFA. Duterte had
   said since February 2020thathe planned to quit the deal.

   Duterte,who tookoffice in 2016, had come to realizethat China would not
   deliver on pledges made that yearof $33 billion in aid and investment
   in the fast-growing, infrastructure-thirsty Southeast Asian
   archipelago, experts say.

   A flap in March and April over 220 Chinese boats moored off a reef
   that's disputed by the two countries further upset officials in Manila,
   reminding them of a broader maritime sovereignty dispute with
   Beijing,analystssay.

   "Had China delivered more on its promises of infrastructure and
   investment, it could have given Duterte a more solid ground and a solid
   push to stay adamant on the VFA," said Yun Sun,senior fellow and
   co-director of theEast Asiaprogram at the Stimson Center in Washington.
   "It is widely observed that the Chinese promises never really
   transpired for Duterte."

   Just $4.7 billion of China's pledges had reached Manila by early 2019,
   local media said that year.

   The Visiting Forces Agreement provides for arms sales, intelligence
   exchanges and discussions on military cooperation. It allows U.S.
   troops access to Philippine soil for military exercises aimed at
   regional security and local humanitarian work. Those measures bolster a
   1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the two countries.

   The United States had governed the Philippines for more than five
   decades beforegranting its independence after World War II. For
   Washington today, the Philippines represents one in a chain ofWestern
   Pacific allies that can work together to check Chinese maritime
   expansion.

   Duterte probably agreed to keep the military pact in view of the early
   2022 presidential election, Sun said. He's allowed just one six-year
   term in office, but domestic media reports say his daughter Sara
   Duterte wants to run for the office. Most Filipinos,including the armed
   forces,prefer the United States over China, Quezon City-based research
   organization Social Weather Stations has said,based on opinion polls
   since 2016.

   "I suspect his chief motivation in making peace with Washington, on his
   way out of office, is to cover himself politically at home should he
   ever want to run for anything again," said Sean King, vice president of
   the Park Strategies political consultancy in New York.

   Duterte, a long-time anti-U.S. firebrand, ordered an end to the
   military deal after the U.S. government canceled a visa for
   aFilipinosenator and former police chief who was instrumental in a
   deadly anti-drug campaign that generated outrage abroad. Last
   year,Duterte indicated he favored relations with China and Russia.

   Sino-Philippine relations today hinge largely on competing claims in
   the 3.5 million-square-kilometer South China Sea, which is rich in
   fisheries and undersea energy reserves. China has alarmed the
   Philippines among other Southeast Asian maritime claimant states over
   the past decade by landfilling islets for military installations.

   The Sino-Philippine dispute eased in 2016 after Manila won a world
   arbitral court ruling against Beijing's maritime claims and Duterte
   pursued a new friendship with China.

   Earlier this year,the Philippine government approached Washington about
   renegotiating terms of the VFA. Officials in Manila wanted the pact to
   guarantee U.S. help in defending Philippine maritime claims, said
   EduardoAraral, associate professor at the National University of
   Singapore's public policy school. U.S. officials since the presidency
   of Barack Obama have made verbal commitments only,Araralsaid.

   "They always make assurances, but those assurances are not credible
   because they are not written in the VFA," he said. "There's got to be
   some clarity in the wording of the VFA itself."

   The two sides did not indicate last week whether the agreement would be
   renegotiated.

   Chinese media, which had covered the U.S.-Philippine pact's pending
   termination, have gonemostlyquiet since July 29, Sun said. The official
   Xinhuanewsagencyreportedthe VFA reapproval last month and noted that
   Manila's plan to cancel it had been suspended three times.

   Beijing is disappointed now, Sun said, as it was trying to "drive a
   wedge" between the United States and its allies.

   Duterte's salvaging of the agreement will help Washington coordinate
   allies in Asia, King said.

   "Keeping the Visiting Forces Agreement in place, along with re-upping
   U.S. defense burden-sharing deals with South Korea and Japan earlier
   this year, gives the sense that U.S. President(Joe)Biden is getting
   America's friends and allies onside as we (U.S.) square off with
   Beijing for influence and position in the region," King said.

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