Filipinos wary of expanding military ties with Washington

MANILA — Filipinos are voicing concern about their country moving closer to the United States militarily and strategically as the US does the same with Australia and Japan.

Many are wary of a flurry of activity among the allied militaries, including more extensive joint military exercises involving a great number of US troops in the Philippines, seen as being at the center of the "Indo-Pacific" region.

The expansion of the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA, sites in the Philippines has alarmed experts. Four new locations, on top of the five existing bases, will allow the US military to deploy its troops, weapons and equipment at Philippine military bases.

The objective of the US is clear, the experts say: to preserve US dominance in Asia even at the cost of provocation or war, from which the Filipinos, who will be caught in the crossfire, will suffer the most.

"Participating in any war does not serve our national interest," the former Philippine presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in the Daily Tribune. "We must never allow our territory to become a launchpad for an offensive attack against another state."

Echoing Roque's remarks, Mario Ferdinand Pasion, director of the Philippine-BRICS Strategic Studies organization, said that expanding the number of EDCA sites in the Philippines will endanger the country.

The Philippines must learn from countries destroyed by US military occupation and interference, such as Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Iraq, Pasion said.

"Almost all unconstitutional, anti-democratic, and chaos-resultant regime changes all over the world have been orchestrated by the United States and its allies or both through their obedient local military in that country."

Rigoberto Tiglao of the Manila Times warned that allowing a greater US military presence in the Philippines endangers national security, and that a strengthened EDCA may produce a "severe economic backlash".

Anna Malindog-Uy, senior research fellow of the Global Governance Institution and vice-president of external affairs of the Philippines Strategic Studies Institute, said Filipinos "must ponder whether the nine EDCA sites and the EDCA are beneficial or detrimental to the Philippines".

Xinhua