The US-Philippine alliance: an evolving hedge against an emerging China challenge.

• Author: De Castro, Renato Cruz
• Position: Report

In the mid-1990s the Philippines and the United States revived their dormant alliance after China's occupied Mischief Reef, a small atoll in the disputed Spratlys archipelago and lying 130 miles off the country's easternmost island of Palawan. On the heels of the 11 September 2001 Al Qaeda attacks in the United States, the two allies further revitalized their security relationship to address transnational terrorism. In the process, Manila was able to secure vital US military and economic assistance for its counter-terrorism/insurgency campaign against domestic insurgents, i.e. Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), the New People's Army (NPA) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Since that time, the two allies have taken gradual but significant steps to transform their alliance as a hedge against the geostrategic challenges posed by China's rising power. This transformation involves deepening the two countries' military relations through organizational planning, professional training and the development of interoperability for a long-term mobilization strategy in a potential US-China military/diplomatic face-off.

This article examines recent trends that have gradually transformed the US-Philippine alliance from a product of the Cold War to a hedge against changes in the regional strategic equation generated by China's economic and political emergence. Hedging is primarily a long-term insurance policy that involves the following strategies: (i) the hedging states engage the potentially threatening state in an effort to socialize it into accepting certain norms of international behaviour; and (ii) the hedging states strengthen their diplomatic and military relations so that they can effectively influence the target state's foreign policy behaviour. Neither Manila nor Washington considers Beiiing as an imminent security threat. Both countries, in fact, are pursuing policies of active engagement with China. However, the two allies view that China has the potential to become an acute security challenge in East Asia due to its expansive claims in the South China Sea and ongoing military modernization. Should engagement fail, and should China adopt a more assertive posture that undermines the regional status quo, the US and the Philippines will have in place a cohesive and strengthened security relationship to constrain this emerging power's behaviour. This article specifically addresses one primary question: what recent developments have deepened the US-Philippine security relationship against international terrorism and in the process, slowly and incrementally transformed the alliance into a hedge strategy for dealing with a long-term China challenge? The article also tackles several corollary questions: First, what incidents led to the revival of US-Philippine security relations in the mid-1990s? Second, how is this revitalized alliance functioning in the current campaign against global terrorism? Third, how has China tried to create a cleavage in the alliance? Fourth, how has the US responded to China's economic and diplomatic gambits in the Philippines? And fifth, what is the future of the US-Philippine alliance in the face of China's rising power?

Alliances and Alliance Cohesion

States form alliances for the purposes of aggregating power, enhancing the capacities of each member through a deterrent guarantee provided by a more powerful state, or to increase their capabilities by pooling their resources to bolster their defence and security capabilities. As a form of interstate cooperation, an alliance is defined as an explicit "promise or commitment" of mutual military (and sometimes political) assistance between two or more sovereign states. (1) Thus in general, alliances involve the physical act of assisting allies through military cooperation and collaboration. Allies usually combine their efforts against a specific and common enemy, ordinarily another state, more powerful than either or any of the allies individually.

In his work on alliance formation, Stephen Walt examined the importance of economic and military assistance to exert leverage over an ally's foreign policy decision-making process. (2) He argued, however, that economic and military aid does not automatically lead to alliance cohesion and solidarity. Small states choose their patrons on grounds other than prospects of aid; hence the giving of aid rarely yields significant leverage for the patron over the client state. In their study of developing countries, Michael Barnett and Jack Levy offered an alternative perspective. Looking at the case of Egypt from the 1960s to the 1970s, they observed that Egyptian alliance formation and alignment were influenced by the infusion of economic and military aid. This assistance benefited the economy and the supporters of the regime in power, and could also be used for both internal and external security purposes. (3) Frequently, political leaders in developing countries are tempted to secure material resources for dealing with internal threats through external alliance formation rather than through internal extraction from their already economically stretched and politically alienated societies. The authors concluded that developing countries often form (and maintain) external alliances as a means of confronting internal threats. Moreover, they aver that external alignments by many developing states can be explained by the nature of security guarantees, and more significantly, by economic and military resources that the more powerful state can provide despite the autonomy cost that might be paid by the client or recipient state in return.

Current developments in Philippine-US security relations reflect Barnett's and Levy's observation on how a security assistance from a strong state to a weak state can influence the latter's foreign and security policies. Since late 2001, Washington has extended military and technical assistance to Manila with the aim of strengthening the Armed Forces of the Philippines' (AFP) counter-terrorism/counter- insurgency capabilities. The AFP has received US military equipment, training and technical assistance as a reward for the country's support in the "war on terror". This has provided Washington the opportunity to incrementally direct the alliance from its current focus on counter-terrorism to a possible hedge against a long-term China challenge in the twenty-first century. By strengthening and deepening its security ties with Manila, Washington aims to counter China's growing political and military influence in the Philippines. Through organizational planning, professional training and the development of interoperability, Washington is slowly gearing the alliance as a hedge against an emerging China. Manila has consented to this shift due to its lack of external defence capabilities and its chronic territorial dispute with Beijing in the South China Sea.

Facing the China Challenge: An Evolving Hedge Strategy?

Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, China has emerged as (most likely, if not positively) America's major competitor for geostrategic dominance in the Asia Pacific. (4) Since 2005 the annual reports on the Chinese military issued by the US Department of Defense have expressed concern over the modernization of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the implications for the regional balance of power. The reports have recommended that the US boost its military presence in the Asia Pacific to maintain the balance of power. (5) China's growing economic and technological base is enabling the PLA to improve its capabilities in areas such as cyber warfare and counter-space operations that could pose problems for US forces in the region. (6) Moreover, the PLA's more potent anti-access/area- denial capabilities such as mines, attack submarines, maritime strike aircraft, short-range ballistic missiles and sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities, pose a definite challenge to the US military's previously uncontested quantitative, technological and operational advantages.

The 2008 Pentagon report was timely. (7) The day after the report was released, Beijing announced that the country's defence budget would increase by 17.6 per cent to $58.8 billion, thereby giving China the second-highest defence budget in the world. (8) The report likewise echoes the view of some US foreign policy-makers and defence analysts that China is likely to be the principal military threat to US interests in East Asia in the twenty-first century. (9) For other observers, China has become a major foreign policy puzzle, a powerful nation with the "greatest potential to compete militarily with the US". (10) While analysts disagree over China's intentions and the future of Sino-US relations, there is near consensus that "managing the rise of China constitutes one of the greatest challenges facing the United States in the early 21st century". (11)

Faced with this dilemma, Washington has decided not to confront Beijing but to adopt a proactive hedging strategy to manage China's emerging capabilities and influence its behaviour. The 2008 National Defense Strategy emphasizes the need for the US to hedge against China's growing power and influence. It specifically states that "our [US] strategy seeks to encourage China to make the right strategic choices for its people, while we hedge against other possibilities". (12) Similarly, a policy paper issued by the National Defense University in 2008 captured the very essence of America's hedging strategy towards China, noting that Washington "should also work more actively to ensure that China's growing regional influence does not begin to erode the foundations of the US security" to the point that the "United States could no longer rely on bases and other military assets to counter [Chinese] aggression." (13) America's hedging strategy assumes that among the emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the US. (14)...