Philippine military gets lift from Spratlys

Philippine military gets lift from Spratlys

China's encroachment onto a reef claimed by the Philippines has
provided the latter's armed forces with a much needed boost.
Francisco L. Roman Jr. examines the issue.

The combination of the ascendancy of Corazon Aquino to the
presidency in 1986, and the end of the Cold War in 1989,
substantially eroded the Philippine military's traditional role
as the defender of the nation against both internal and external
aggression. The communist insurgency in the Philippines has lost
its ideological edge and it is being treated, to a large extent,
as a problem of banditry. And the Philippines, without the U.S.
military bases, is no longer a prime military target in any
potential global conflict.

Up to 1991, the Philippine Armed Forces used to receive US$200
million in military aid from the U.S. as part of the U.S.' global
containment policy. During the Marcos years, the official line
item on the defense budget reached more than $300 million in 1986
when Aquino took over. The 1990s might seem unkind to the
Philippine military but the defense budget has been increasing,
although the increases have had little to do with post-Cold War
regional issues such as the Spratlys. In Aquino's time, probably
as a result of the more than half a dozen abortive coups, the
annual defense budget rose spectacularly, to a threefold high of
$1 billion by 1992, when Fidel Ramos took his turn at the helm.
Since then, the annual budget has increased by about 15 percent.
Note, however, that more than $1 billion is less than 2 percent
of the Philippines' GDP, compared with 5.5 percent of GDP for
Singapore's defense budget, or 2.7 percent for Thailand, for
example.

Since the 1990s, the Philippine armed forces has therefore
been trying to redefine its role and by experimenting with an
assortment of non-traditional social development activities,
including disaster relief and environmental protection. As an
example of the latter, soldiers have been assigned to protect
8,000 hectares of virgin forest adjacent to the former naval base
in Subic Bay and to guard watershed areas in Lake Lanao, a major
resource of hydroelectric power for the southern island of
Mindanao. The armed forces is also engaged in tree-planting
programs, and there are plans to use military helicopters to
protect forest lands from illegal loggers, whose activities
deplete the forest cover, erode the soil, and create floods and
drought. These activities result in desirable and even calculable
benefits to society and, at the very least, make for excellent
public relations by placing the military on the side of the
underdog. Unfortunately, such non-traditional activities have not
provided sufficient urgency to justify substantial increases in
the budget of the armed forces.

An incident in February this year changed this picture. This
was the "sighting" of Chinese naval vessels, followed by the
"discovery" of an assortment of Chinese installations, such as
guard posts and communication facilities, already well in place,
on one of the scattered islands in the Spratlys area. The island
is appropriately named "Mischief Reef", which the Philippines
calls "Panganiban Reef" and which it claims as part of its
territory.

The Mischief Reef incident at one point received daily media
coverage and television crews competed with one another to
broadcast from, or as close as possible to, Mischief Reef.
President Ramos himself went on television to tell the nation
that his government regarded the intrusion as a serious matter
involving national security.

The Spratlys incident coincided with a another discussion in
the Philippine legislature of long-standing proposals to spend an
additional 50 billion pesos (about $2 billion) over a five-year
period to upgrade the nation's armed forces. For example, the
current stock of a dozen aging F-5s can hardly compare with the
announced purchases of MiG-29s by Malaysia and a further tranche
of F-16s by Singapore. The expenditure would be over and above
the current line item on defense and, therefore, required
legislative approval. The armed forces got its budget increase in
mid-February. One congressman, Joker P Arroyo, went on television
to speculate that the entire affair was merely a campaign to
ensure passage of the bill. However, one of its chief proponents,
Senator Ernesto Meceda, in voting for its approval, indicated
that the bill was not a "knee-jerk" reaction to the Spratlys
crisis. The Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Roberto Romulo, went
public to state that the issue was being resolved through "quiet
diplomacy and amicable discussions" with the Chinese. In any
event, Philippine national security no longer appears to be at
stake and the issue is no longer in the public eye. The Chinese
naval vessels may or may not still be in Philippine waters but
the installations, which were present long before they were
"discovered", are still on Mischief Reef.

Where does that leave the Spratlys, at least in so far as
defense implications for the Philippines are concerned? Probably
nowhere. Hand in hand with the increase in the military's budget
came statements from the Secretary of Defense, Gen. Renato de
Villa, that the Philippines will focus on peaceful resolution of
the Spratlys problem and that any military response will be a
last resort, defensive measure. It seems unlikely that Mischief
Reef is going to be significantly reinforced by a Philippine
contingent in the near future, although naval and air
reconnaissance will undoubtedly continue.

The increases in the Philippine defense budget, however,
carries other implications unrelated to the Spratlys. For one,
the Philippine military has been concerned over the law and order
situation in the south, where regional autonomy for the Moslems
is a long-festering issue; the issue is exacerbated by the growth
of two Moslem groups, the Moro National Liberation Front, and the
larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front, both of which maintain men-
at-arms. For another, the armed forces still has strong
proponents among its generals and colonels for the military's
non-traditional activities in social development; the National
Security Council, for example, defines intelligence and defense
as tools for achieving broad-based, socio-economic goals of
equity, social justice and poverty alleviation.

Furthermore, from a purely economic perspective, illegal tuna
fish catchers, for instance, deprive the Philippines of an
estimated $1 billion in revenues, which the Philippine Navy's 50-
odd patrol, support and transport vessels can do little to
impede. So, the enhanced military budget might find immediate
uses other than that of resolving the dispute over the Spratlys.

Dr. Francisco L Roman, Jr is Director of the Manila-based Asian
Institute of Management's Policy Forum.