by ALEX P. VIDAL
Los Angeles, California – Was it a case of bad timing?
Several days after Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago filed a joint resolution seeking the termination of the RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the Philippine government has not received any official reaction from the White House.
The lady senator had threatened to file the resolution while newly reelected President Barack Obama was about to embark on a three-nation tour of Asia where he dodged the Philippines recently.
Apparently, Obama was unfazed by Defensor-Santiago’s threat even as observers viewed his recalcitrance as a sign that his administration is willing to let go of that vital joint military project.
Or the timing of Defensor-Santiago’s resolution could have been bad as experts consider the long-raging rivalry between China and five neighbors for control of strategic and resource-rich waters in the Scarborough Shoal in South China Sea to be more urgent than the VFA fiasco.
Obama made it clear during the campaign period he was hell-bent in slashing the military budget as part of his administration’s “peacniks” policy.
During his first term, President Obama disclosed a “new military strategy” that would cut the Pentagon budget by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.
BILLION CUTS
The new military strategy includes $487 billion in cuts over the next decade. An additional $500 billion in cuts could be coming if Congress follows through on plans for deeper reductions. The announcement came weeks after the U.S. officially ended the Iraq War and after a decade of increased defense spending in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, reported the USA Today.
Obama said that the military will indeed be leaner, but the U.S. will maintain a budget that is roughly larger than the next 10 countries’ military budgets combined.
“I just want to say that this effort reflects the guidance I gave throughout this process,” Obama said. “Yes, the tide of war is receding. But the question that this strategy answers is what kind of military will we need after the long wars of the last decade are over. And today, we’re moving forward, from a position of strength.”
Obama added: “Some will no doubt say the spending reductions are too big; others will say they’re too small,” Obama said. “It will be easy to take issue with a particular change. But I would encourage all of us to remember what President Eisenhower once said — that ‘each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.”
Obama has vowed to “strengthen our presence in the Asia Pacific, and budget reductions will not come at the expense of this critical region.”
SECOND
Defensor-Santiago’s Joint Resolution, her second attempt since 2010, accused the US of non-compliance and violation of Philippine law and international norms and customs on the protection and preservation of the environment.
The resolution came in the heels of the controversy involving a US Navy contractor that allegedly dumped hazardous wastes in Subic Bay. A number of senators have called for an investigation on the allegation. It was also in prime news in the Philippines while President Obama’s tour in Asia was in progress and when he recently attended the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and leaders of Southeast Asia at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
The senate resolution also sought to direct the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs to give notice of termination to the United States. “If adopted, the joint resolution, although victimized by the President’s veto power, will become a historic compulsive force that can still gather together the broken pieces of national sovereignty shattered by the infirmity of the political leadership,” Santiago said in the measure.
RATIFY
The VFA was signed in February 1998 and was ratified by the Philippine Senate in May 1999. It is not a mutual security agreement but a support deal to the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT).
In August 2010, Santiago also filed a joint resolution calling for the termination of the VFA. It was never passed and remained pending in the committee. In her first resolution, Santiago said the US does not recognize the VFA as a treaty because its Congress never ratified the agreement, which the Philippine Senate did in 1999.
Defensor-Santiago was supported by Senator Joker Arroyo and Teofisto Guingona III who argued that the country had supposedly not benefited from the agreement. /MP
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