From the Philippine Daily Inquirer (Aug 31): UP prof doubts Hagel’s no-bases line
A university professor, whose input helped the Senate reject the extension of a bases treaty on Sept. 16, 1991, doubts the assurances made by US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that the United States would not revive permanent bases in the Philippines.
Professor Roland Simbulan of the University of the Philippines said Hagel’s statement masked a US strategy that intends to “consolidate US interventionary forces in the Asia Pacific.”
Simbulan said the US had “long wanted to move a significant number of its forces from the 1st US Marine Expeditionary Forces to the Philippines from Okinawa [Japan], where they have committed heinous crimes ranging from the rape of Okinawan school children to environmental destruction during live fire military exercises.”
He said that as early as 2003, 12 years after the Senate voted to close the Subic Naval Base in Zambales, Camp John Hay in Baguio City and Clark Air Base in Pampanga, the US set up administrative, training, logistical and communications structures inside Philippine Army bases.
In 1999, then President Joseph Estrada, one of the senators who rejected the bases treaty, signed the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) which authorized joint military exercises by American and Filipino troops in the country.
The Philippine bases, Simbulan said, still perform the functions of an American-controlled base. “They may call it any name, but it is still a base to project US military forces for their military missions,” he said.
The Philippines, Simbulan warned, would be a “disposable pawn in America’s economic and political rivalry with China.”
He said the Philippines’ role in American strategic programs allows the US access to resources in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea).
He said members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China were the “real stakeholders” who should share maritime and offshore resources with the Philippines.
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/84699/up-prof-doubts-hagels-no-bases-line
Roland Simbulan is a University of the Philippines professor with a long track record of opposing the U.S. military presence in the Philippines.
ReplyDeleteProf. Simbulan has authored the following books: The Bases of Our Insecurity(1983,1985, 1987); A Guide to Nuclear Philippines(1989); and The Continuing Struggle for an Independent Philippine Foreign Policy(1991 and he has written a widely-circulated pamphlet on the "The Hidden History of the CIA in the Philippines."
The Bases of Our Insecurity was considered a seminal work by those involved in the anti-bases movement back in the late 1980s-early 1990s.
More recently (2009) he published a work entitled Forging a Nationalist Foreign Policy: Essays on US Military Presence and the Challenges to Philippine Foreign Policy.
He subsequently participated in a forum/book launch for his work put on by the pro-CPP U.S. Troops Out Now-Mindanao Coalition (see http://www.arkibongbayan.org/2009/2009-11Nov23-ForumbooklaunchonUStroops/RS%20book%20luanching.htm)
Furthermore Simbulan has held or holds positions in several organizations that are CPP fronts or are influenced by the clandetine movement.
Simbulan also helps maintain YONIP.com - the Philippine Peace & Sovereignty Website that routinely posts anti-US propaganda especially on the alleged "toxic waste issue" at the former US bases and the Balikatan exercises/Visiting Forces Agreement (see http://www.yonip.com/index/-VFA.html)
By the way, the author of this article, Tonette Orejas, appears to be plugged in to the leftist organizational structure in Central Luzon. In the past, she has been a conduit for leftist anti-US military propaganda themes including attacks on the alleged “toxic waste issue” at the former US military bases at Clark and Subic Bay. She appears to have a good relationship with Roland Simbulan.
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