US President Joe Biden was on the line.
The speed with which Biden wanted the new president to give Marcos a lot of luck was extremely cheerful, according to his brother-in-law Gregorio Maria Araneta III, who said the Filipino leader proudly told his family circle about the call a few days later, over lunch. “It made him smile,” Araneta, one of the country’s most prominent tycoons, said in a rare interview, speaking from his wood-paneled office in Manila.
The U. S. Embassy in Manila said Biden was the first to call. What followed were two trips to the United States in less than a year for Marcos and visits to the Philippines by senior Biden administration officials. Among them: Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Manila-based political analyst Julio Amador III described the US outreach as “unprecedented love-bombing” aimed at resetting the US-Philippines relationship. Mr. Marcos’ predecessor, the populist firebrand Rodrigo Duterte, was openly hostile to the United States and attempted to bring his country closer to communist China during his six-year term.
The U. S. charm offensive is urgent: The U. S. wants Manila to be in its camp at a time when tensions with China are emerging in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Philippines, Taiwan’s neighbor to the south, would be an indispensable staging point for the US military to aid Taipei in the event of a Chinese attack, military analysts say. China’s ruling Communist Party views democratically governed Taiwan as an inalienable part of China and refuses to rule out force to bring the island under its control.
Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has claimed increasingly giant dominance in the South China Sea and is determined to make its country the undisputed military force in East Asia. Such a replacement would have far-reaching consequences for U. S. regional and regional influence. security and global trade. More than one-fifth of the world’s shipping passes through the South China Sea each year. The straits around the Philippines and Taiwan are bristling with undersea cables and are important channels for U. S. naval forces patrolling the region.
Reuters detailed the race between China and the United States to rely on complex technologies that may determine who will ensure military and economic supremacy in this century. Aerial and maritime drones, AI-controlled weapons, and complex surveillance are reshaping warfare, with implications. for the global balance of power.
For the U. S. , consolidating alliances in the Asia-Pacific region also means keeping China in check. U. S. support for Marcos is the key to this project.
To gauge U. S. efforts to repair ties and Marcos’ pivot to Washington, Reuters spoke to more than two dozen current and former officials from both countries. Some spoke on condition of anonymity because it was legal to speak to the media.
The report revealed a picture of a superpower preoccupied with China, destabilized by Duterte and eager to marry Marcos despite her family’s history of brutality and corruption.
Mr. Marcos’ father, former strongman Ferdinand Marcos Sr. , a loyal best friend of the United States who deposed in 1986 after Filipinos rebelled against his rule. Major Marcos is accused of orchestrating the arrest and murder of thousands of political enemies. and his illegal best friend who siphons billions of dollars from the public coffers. He died in exile in Hawaii in 1989 without trial. After his death, members of his family circle returned to the Philippines, where they remained a political force.
President Marcos did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this report. He has sought to recast his father’s time in power as a golden era of development for the Philippines, while saying little about the allegations of wrongdoing. “Judge me not by my ancestors, but by my actions,” he said after his 2022 election win.
The US State Department declined to comment on the Mr. Marcos family’s past. In a statement to Reuters, it said US support for civilian security, democracy and human rights was “integral to US foreign policy and national security interests” in the Pacific. “The US-Philippines alliance is strategically irreplaceable, and a Philippine government that respects the rule of law, good governance, and human rights is essential to maintaining a strong alliance.”
Reuters also learned of efforts by senior Philippine military and government officials who succeeded in blocking Duterte with the aim of destroying the U. S. -Philippine security alliance. The report also sheds light on Marcos’ calculations about the dangers of aligning himself as well. strongly with China.
Duterte’s pro-Beijing stance, unpopular with the Filipino public, failed to generate as much Chinese investment as promised and failed to end the escalating territorial disputes between the two nations.
In October, the Philippines alleged that a Chinese coast guard shipment and a maritime defense force ship “intentionally” collided with two Philippine ships while on a trip to resupply the group of Filipino workers stationed at Second Thomas Shoal, a disputed outpost in the South China Sea. China claimed that the Philippine shipments were to blame.
The U. S. temporarily subsidized the Philippines and warned Beijing that it would protect its best friend in the event of an armed attack (a 1951 mutual defense treaty).
It’s a stance that has appealed to Manila, which has at times felt Washington was not doing enough for the Philippines in such clashes, two existing and one former official told Reuters.
Duterte declined to comment on the report.
China’s Foreign Ministry, in a message to Reuters, called China and the Philippines “close neighbors across the sea” with a not unusual interest in friendship. He noted that China is the Philippines’ largest trading partner and a major source of investment that “has stepped up. “to promote the criteria of life of the Filipino people. “
Without naming the United States, the Foreign Ministry added that “some countries, out of self-interest and with a zero-sum game mentality, continue to increase their military deployment in the region, which exactly intensifies tensions. “
Regarding Taiwan, said China “insists on the prospect of non-violent reunification with the greatest sincerity and effort, but will never dedicate itself to renouncing the use of force. “
‘HOUSE OF CARDS’
The Philippines is a former U. S. colony that gained its independence in 1946, shortly after World War II. Part of the so-called First Island Chain, a chain of islands that surrounds China’s coastal waters, has long been a key node in the United States. Defense Strategy in the Pacific.
In addition to the Philippines, the U. S. has for decades partnered with other regional allies, such as Japan, South Korea and Australia, to gain access to military bases and conduct naval exercises. The enduring U. S. presence has irritated a militarized and self-confident society. Porcelain.
The People’s Liberation Army now has a complicated missile force designed to destroy the facilities, aircraft carriers and warships that make up the backbone of the U. S. force in Asia. China has the largest military in the world. It has stepped up its operations in the “grey zone” at sea – competitive military moves that amount to acts of war – specifically around Taiwan and in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
Last year’s tank-based war exercises, adding the Washington-based Center for a New American Security (CNAS), illustrated how indispensable the Philippines would be to the U. S. defense of Taiwan.
U. S. supply of airstrips and fuel for Philippine jets has proved important in scenarios that look like a successful repulse of Chinese forces in the early days of a conflict, said Becca Wasser, a defense analyst and war games expert who led the trainings for CNAS and did the same during the U. S. Department of Defense.
“I think it showed how vital the Philippines can be and how, in a way, it can be quite dependent on Japan and Australia, which are very far away,” said Wasser, who directs the Gaming Lab at CNAS.
But relations between the U. S. and the Philippines were strained by the 2016 election of Duterte, nicknamed “The Punisher” in the media. He temporarily introduced an anti-narcotics crusade that resulted in the extrajudicial execution of thousands of suspected criminals, a policy that set off alarm bells within President Barack Obama’s administration. Duterte has also taken steps to bring his country closer to the economic powerhouse of China, whose leader Xi shares his grievances about a U. S. -led global order.
In October 2016, Duterte visited Beijing and proclaimed a new era of cooperation between China and the Philippines. “The U. S. has lost,” he told a group of Chinese business leaders. “I’ve realigned myself in their ideological flow. ” Duterte returned to Manila with $24 billion in commitments under the Belt and Road Initiative, a global investment task that Beijing has used to wield its comfortable power. According to the National Economic Development Authority of the Philippines, only a small fraction has been achieved. .
Hostilities came to a head in early 2020 after the U. S. revoked the visa of Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, who had led Davis’ war on drugs. Duterte in his previous post as chief of the Philippine National Police. On Duterte’s orders, the Philippines informed Washington of its goal to end the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) within 180 days. Ratified in 1999, the agreement lays out regulations for the rotation of thousands of U. S. troops in and out of the Philippines. The VFA is central to the implementation of the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, which requires the United States and the Philippines to confront each other in the event of an attack in the Pacific.
Dela Rosa did not respond to a request for comment. At the time, he said the cancellation of his visa was the latest in a list of “reproaches and disrespect” by the United States.
A retired senior Philippine officer who served that time recalled that U. S. officials were “very worried, they thought everything was going to happen as if a card space was collapsing. “
The Americans “saw the increasing influence of the Chinese” over Mr. Duterte, the officer said.
BLOCK DUTERTE
But scenes in which the Philippine military opposed Duterte’s status quo were aimed at undermining the alliance with the United States, a Philippine army officer and six other people told Reuters.
Cultural ties between the United States and the Philippines are strong. More than 4 million Filipino Americans live in the United States, and public opinion polls have consistently shown that Filipinos have higher degrees of acceptance in the United States than in China. Duterte, during a press conference in 2017, said, “Our foot soldiers are pro-American, I can’t deny that. “
Two of the military officials said the president early in his term had ordered the Philippine navy to stop patrols in areas of dispute with China, instructions they said were ignored by senior commanders on the grounds of national defense. Philippine navy chief Vice Admiral Toribio Adaci Jr. did not respond to a request for comment.
In late 2018, China and 10 Southeast Asian countries held their first joint maritime exercises. Some were detained off the coast of southern China’s Guangdong province. While other countries showed up with frigates and destroyers, the Philippine Navy sent a single logistics ship. according to a senior Philippine military officer with knowledge of the unreported events in the past.
The official explanation given to China that the Philippine military may simply not release larger ships because it had not been sufficiently informed before the exercises, the official said. The real reason, the officer explained, is to avoid hunting like an army best friend. “If we were to send a warship, it wouldn’t send an intelligent message to the foreign community. Two other Philippine officials familiar with the scenario told Reuters.
China’s Foreign Ministry responded to a request for comment on the incident.
Meanwhile, the Philippine military continued its joint exercises with the United States, even though Duterte said publicly in September 2016 that such exercises would end because they were something “China doesn’t want. “
A senior defense official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters he opposed the order and the benefits of moving U. S. technology to Duterte. The workouts continued.
Still, to Duterte’s ire, either force halted the simulated combat exercises and focused on crisis response, according to Blake Herzinger, a former maritime security adviser to the U. S. Pacific Fleet.
“We had to remember all the training,” said Herzinger, who at the time was a U. S. government contractor handling maritime security cooperation between the U. S. and the Philippines. For example, the long-running regional war trainings known as CARAT, or Cooperation-Afloat, Readiness and Training exercise, were stopped and reinstated under the Filipino name “Sama Sama” meaning “together. “
The military has also effectively thwarted plans through a Sino-Philippine joint venture, Fong Zhi Enterprise Corporation, to redevelop the island of Fuga in the northern Philippines into a “smart city” with a high-tech trading park. The remote island is located less than 400 miles from Taiwan and close to undersea cables that connect the Philippines to the rest of Asia. Duterte agreed in principle to the $2 billion deal with a vacation in Beijing in 2019, but temporarily backtracked after Philippine military officials publicly expressed fears that China could simply use the progression as a marquee for an espionage post or to facilitate an invasion of Taiwan.
Fong Zhi Enterprise Corporation may be contacted for comment. A representative for the Chinese investor, Hongji Yongye, declined to comment.
Senior government officials in 2019 killed efforts by Chinese companies to take over a shipyard in Subic Bay, a former US naval base in the Philippines that closed in 1992 after Manila terminated a bases agreement with Washington.
Two Chinese corporations have expressed interest, the government said at the time, without naming them. Teodoro “Teddy” Locsin Jr. , then the Philippines’ foreign minister, told Reuters he had concluded that the United States would consider such a sale “an act of hostility. “”, given the strategic price of the place. The deep-water port is located in the immediate vicinity of the Bashi Channel, facing Taiwan and the South China Sea. Reuters was unable to find out the names of the Chinese corporations.
Jose Manuel “Babe” Romualdez, the Philippines’ ambassador to the United States, said he looked for a U. S. buyer. In 2022, Cerberus Capital Management, a New York-based personal equity firm that has invested in defense contractors and national security assets, paid $300 million for the shipyard.
Cerberus declined to comment on the deal.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in its statement, said the Fuga Island and Subic Bay projects were “purely moves by companies on both sides and were not subject to exaggerated political interpretations. “
Offensive Charm
While many Philippine officials have been alarmed by Duterte’s arrival in China, two officials told Reuters there was a silver lining: They began to hear a more respectful tone from their U. S. counterparts.
“The US was, of course, nervous, and they showed this nervousness by actually reaching out to us and actually speaking in a language that’s very uncharacteristic of the United States,” one of the officials said.
The change in U. S. leadership with the election of U. S. President Donald Trump has led to more concrete demonstrations in the Philippines.
Many islands, shoals and reefs in the South China Sea now claimed through the Philippines – some of which are disputed through China and other countries – were not officially annexed through Manila until 1978. This long after the signing of the 1951 Mutual Defense Agreement. A treaty between the United States and the Philippines, which creates ambiguity about whether Washington would help its best friend in the event of an attack in those places. The U. S. dispelled any doubts in 2019, when then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Manila. to reassure officials that the U. S. would protect the Philippines in those spaces as well.
Pompeo told Reuters he was seeking to send a “clear” message that the United States was committed to providing “the deterrent needed to push back the Chinese Communist Party’s growing footprint in the South China Sea and elsewhere. “That was “the singular purpose of the visit,” Pompeo said.
It has gifted drones to the Philippines to combat Islamist militants operating in the south of the country. The Obama administration had suspended some arms sales to the Philippines on human rights grounds.
When Trump came to force and stopped “talking about human rights, the more complicated thing disappeared from it,” said Gregory Winger, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati who specializes in U. S. -Philippine relations.
Two Philippine officials agreed. Between Trump and Duterte there is “a club of mutual admiration,” one of them said.
Duterte has continued to extend the deadline for terminating the Visiting Forces Agreement, or VFA. His advisers had warned him that he was opposed to this dismissal. Behind the scenes, the army was still making plans for its renewal.
In December 2020, shortly after Biden defeated Trump as president, Duterte announced express conditions to keep the AFV intact: 20 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Philippines, with a population of around 110 million, hit hard from the pandemic and had few resources to fight it. International vaccine relations would be essential to keep AFV alive, according to a senior Philippine official with direct knowledge of the situation.
As part of the Biden administration’s first Southeast Asia vacation in July 2021, Austin, the secretary of defense, was scheduled to travel to the Philippines to meet with the DM. uterus. The Philippine official told Reuters he had informed a member of the Austin team in advance that the defense leader would have to bring with him a vaccination commitment to ensure the continuation of the VFA.
The Pentagon responded to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, Mr. Romualdez, the Philippine ambassador to the United States, ran for president. Romualdez told Reuters that he had suggested Romualdez. Duterte to allow the continuation of the military pact because it would be “in our interest” in the fight against the pandemic.
On July 30, 2021, a day after Mr. Austin and Mr. Duterte met in Manila, the White House announced it was giving three million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine to the Philippines, bringing the total from the United States to six million doses, the largest donation from a single country. That same day, Mr. Duterte said publicly he would fully restore the VFA.
Biden had announced a month earlier that the United States would donate one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to countries suffering without supplies “with no strings attached. ” Still, a U. S. embassy official told Reuters that “demonstrating our partnership with the Philippines in the fight against COVID” helped sway Mr. Duterte.
A FRESH START
In some ways, Marcos’ election in mid-2022 did not seem to guarantee greater U. S. -Philippines relations.
Marcos has ties to Beijing dating back to a vacation from his formative years with his mother to meet with China’s most sensible leaders, Mao Zedong added. As a young man, he traveled to China to “stimulate business,” according to a 2007 U. S. diplomat. During the presidential campaign, Marcos was asked by a reporter if he would seek U. S. help in dealing with Chinese aggression in the disputed waters. His response: “If you let the U. S. intervene, you make China your enemy. “
Araneta, Marcos’ brother-in-law, told Reuters that the president and his circle of relatives had long felt “betrayed” through Washington by the United States’ role in supporting the replacement of the government that ousted Marcos’s father from office. can. Still, Araneta said, Marcos Jr. is a pragmatist who spent a lot of time before his election thinking about “how to win back the Americans” for the sake of the Philippine economy and security.
The Biden administration lost no time in trying to reset relations. After Mr. Biden’s congratulatory call, the US president sent Mr. Marcos an invitation to the White House. In September 2022, the two met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Mr. Biden “put him at ease, to assure and explain to him that he wanted to step up the relationship,” a senior Biden administration official told Reuters.
The Philippine side expressed excitement and amazement at what the official said was the respect the Biden team had shown them. An interlocutor said that the Philippines “experience the marvelous force in international relations is reduced to sermons and we communicate less. ” the official recalled.
Brother-in-law Araneta said Marcos told his family that Biden had asked the new Philippine president at the U. N. meeting, “What can I give you?” and Mark replied lightly that he would settle for “anything” that was offered.
The White House responded to a request for comment.
Marcos told Filipino journalist Anthony Taberna in August 2021 that he had not traveled to the United States in more than a decade due to the threat of arrest stemming from a 1995 ruling in a class-action lawsuit filed in the U. S. District Court in Hawaii against him. and his mother, Imelda, as executors of his father’s estate. The goal of the lawsuit was to demand repayment from Filipinos who were suffering under martial law under the government of Mr. Marcos Sr. , when tens of thousands of people were imprisoned and thousands were killed, according to Amnesty International.
The court entered a judgment against the Marcos estate for nearly $2 billion to be paid to more than 9,500 victims, a decision the Marcoses appealed unsuccessfully. When the family refused to disclose the location of the estate’s assets, a contempt judgment of $353 million was imposed in 2012 against Mr. Marcos Jr and Imelda. That penalty has not been paid. Plaintiffs have collected just a sliver – $37 million – of the $2 billion award, from sales of seized artwork and property owned by the family in the United States.
Mr. Marcos did not comment on the case.
In Manila last year, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman clarified that Mr. Marcos could now enter the United States because of diplomatic immunity conferred on him as president.
Robert Swift, the Philadelphia-based lawyer who initiated the civil lawsuit, told Reuters that Washington puts its “geopolitical interests first and ignores the interests of the United States. “Filipino Victims of Human Rights. “
The State Department declined to comment.
Since Marcos took office on June 30, 2022, the Philippines has gained patrol boats and a surveillance plane from the U. S. military. The U. S. has pledged to deliver air and coastal defense systems, radars, military transport aircraft, and drones over the next five to ten years.
Mr. Marcos has reciprocated. The president has increased from five to nine the number of bases and strategic sites that the US military can access in the Philippines. The US Department of Defense in April said it planned to allocate more than $100 million by the end of the fiscal year for infrastructure investments for the nine locations.
Manila and Washington have publicly touted the agreement as a way to provide crisis relief in a country vulnerable to typhoons.
Privately, five current and former Philippine officials stated that the bases would likely be a base for any confrontation around Taiwan. Three officials said the sites would house pre-positioned appliances and fuel. Three of the new sites are in the northern component of the Philippines. The U. S. is also in talks to build a port on the strategic Batanes Islands, less than two hundred kilometers from Taiwan.
Beijing has condemned the expansion of the U. S. military to sites in the Philippines as a risk to regional peace and stability.
The State Department told Reuters the new sites would allow the two nations to “operate together more frequently and with enhanced capabilities.” It referred further questions to the Pentagon, which did not respond to requests for comment.
Locsin, a former foreign secretary of the Philippines, is now ambassador to the United Kingdom and special presidential envoy to Beijing. He thanked Mr. Marcos for learning from the mistakes of his predecessor. Even as Duterte’s efforts to be China’s best friend have surprised the U. S. and earned him more respect, they have not brought him the wealth and security his government had hoped for, he said.
Mr. Marcos “was going to repeat this experience. So what is the only answer to this question?Mr. Locsin said. Go back to the U. S. and tell them to produce. »-Reuters