Sometime around the first week of October, the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) announced that the Subic Bay International Airport (SBIA) was being eyed as a forward base for the joint operations of the Philippine Air Force and the United States Air Force. The aim is to maintain regional balance in light of territorial disputes in the West Philippine Sea.
This obviously conflicted with the SBMA plan adopted early this year to convert the 200 hectare area into a tourism hub. That plan involved the development of family-oriented tourism facilities, theme parks, convention and entertainment centers, hotels and casinos, technology parks that could house business process outsourcing companies, a golf course and a yacht club, office and residential buildings, and of course, the SBMA corporate headquarters. The SBMA, consequently, said it will be deferring this plan.
So, airport conversion “deferred,” military forward base “eyed.” Not a lot of certainty reflected on both words.
However, from the look of things, it is almost certain that the SBIA will now be used for military purposes—either only for Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) exercises or as a forward base.
Photo credit: SBMA.com taken during PHIBLEX 2012
The latter, most likely, since VFA Commission Executive Director Edilberto Adan pointed out that the US will be shifting the bulk of its fleet to the Pacific by 2020 as it focuses on Asia. This would mean more naval and air assets in the Western Pacific and Subic is one of very few ports that can accommodate these assets. If this would happen, then the airport conversion to a tourism hub is not only deferred, it is dead on the water.
Forward base it is then.
But how can this be possible? The Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, under Section 25 of Article 18, specifically states, “foreign military bases, troops, or facilities shall not be allowed in the Philippines except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate.”
While the VFA is actually a treaty—an international instrument concluded between countries in written form and governed by international law—it covers only troops and not the other two prohibitions of the constitution.
But is the VFA even constitutional? Yes, the Supreme Court decided in 2009 that it is since it was a treaty duly concurred by the Senate. It is, however, limited to only the movement of troops since the VFA does not cover military bases or facilities.
In fact, the VFA, or VFA-1 in particular, according to the Supreme Court, is an agreement which defines the treatment of US troops and personnel visiting the Philippines. It provides for the guidelines to govern such visits of military personnel, and further defines the rights of the US and the Philippine government in the matter of criminal jurisdiction, movement of vessel and aircraft, and importation and exportation of equipment, materials and supplies. The VFA is not a basing arrangement but an agreement which involves merely the temporary visits of US personnel engaged in joint military exercises.
Unless the Senate approves a new treaty that covers foreign military bases or facilities, a US forward base would be unconstitutional.
But are there workarounds? Sure.
How about subcontracting the US Navy’s ship repair requirements to a private company? What would stop the SBMA or the Philippine government, for that matter, from approving a commercial ship building and repair investor? And could not that investor undertake ship repair jobs for the military?
In fact, AMSEC, a subsidiary of Huntington Ingalls Industries, one of the biggest builders of ships for the US Navy, announced in April that it would set up a maintenance, repair, and logistics hub at Subic Bay using facilities owned by Hanjin. There you go.
What about air assets? Well, the same arrangement could also be made for aircraft repairs. This was, in fact, part of SBMA’s Plan “B”, which is to turn the Subic airport into an aircraft repair and general aviation facility.
With ships and aircraft repair facilities accessible from private commercial companies, with most supplies readily available from local vendors, and with the VFA as the basis for “temporary” troop movement, there seemed to be little need for an actual and official US military base.
Not enough? Throw in the Basa Air Base for good measure.
Indeed, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, in his letter to the SBMA, wrote about plans to transfer the Philippine Air Force (PAF) base from the Basa Air Base in Floridablanca, Pampanga, to the Subic Airport. Inside a Philippine Air Force base, the US can obviously have a more permanent status; you know, training and stuff as some of the reasons.
Or, maybe a bolder reason, perhaps something akin to “Operation Enduring Freedom” where, since 2002, about 1,200 members of the US Special Operations Command Pacific (SOCPAC) worked with the AFP against Islamist terror groups in Mindanao. Of course, the mission there was simply to “advise” the AFP in combating terrorism in the Philippines. That being the case, providing “advice” on combating the China bullying around the Scarborough and Spratlys may not be considered a stretch, therefore.
“Forward base?” Yes, it will likely happen.
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