How Much Damage Can Duterte Do to the U.S.-Philippine Relationship?

From the World Politics Review (Oct 7): How Much Damage Can Duterte Do to the U.S.-Philippine Relationship? (By Joshua Kurlantzick)

 

President Rodrigo Duterte reviewing troops at the Philippine Air Force headquarters, Pasay, Philippines, Sept. 13, 2016 (AP photo by Bullit Marquez

Over the past decade, the United States and the Philippines have bolstered what was already a strong strategic and diplomatic relationship with deep historical roots and a 65-year treaty alliance. During the George W. Bush administration, after 9/11, the U.S. launched a training and assistance program for the Philippine armed forces, designed to help combat terrorist networks based in the southern Philippines, especially Abu Sayyaf. For a time, a significant detachment of U.S. Special Forces was based there, training Philippine soldiers.

Under the Obama administration, the U.S. and the Philippines have moved even closer together. For the past six years under President Benigno Aquino III, the Philippines was a major recipient of increased U.S. assistance for maritime security in Southeast Asia—the result of frequent travels to Washington by Philippine officials to plead for aid to modernize their navy and coast guard. Two years ago, Manila and Washington signed a 10-year enhanced defense partnership that is supposed to allow U.S. forces to rotate through the Philippines for extended periods of time at local bases.

But since Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines earlier this year, he has staked out a drastically different approach to Manila’s relations with the U.S.—or at least, he appears to have, based on his bombastic rhetoric. In his latest tirade Tuesday, the new Philippine president said that Obama could “go to hell” for criticisms of Duterte’s vigilante war on drugs and suggestions the U.S. might refuse to sell his government weapons, although that seems unlikely. Last week, Duterte likened himself to Hitler, boasting he would potentially kill 3 million drug dealers and users in the Philippines.

Behind these diatribes are possible policy moves that Duterte previewed on the campaign trail, when he frequently bashed the United States. He had hinted that he would pursue closer relations with China, while making the Philippines less dependent on Washington for military protection. Aquino, by contrast, had publicly compared China’s growing regional assertiveness to Germany’s domination of Europe in the years just before World War II. His government filed a case against Beijing’s South China Sea claims with international arbitrators in The Hague, which the Philippines won this summer. China has refused to accept the arbitrators’ ruling; Duterte has sent his own mixed signals on it.

Already in his short time in office, Duterte has rattled the U.S.-Philippines relationship much more rapidly and thoroughly than even many American officials expected. In addition to the tirades—including personally insulting Obama and the U.S. ambassador to Manila before a gathering of Southeast Asian and foreign leaders in Vientiane, Laos, last month—Duterte surprised many Philippine and U.S. officials in the past two weeks with a series of statements about U.S.-Philippine military cooperation. During a visit to Vietnam last week, Duterte declared that this week’s joint military exercises with the U.S. would be the last ones held under his administration. Duterte had previously called for all remaining U.S. Special Forces operating in the southern Philippines to leave the archipelago.

In Hanoi, he insisted that the U.S. and the Philippines would maintain their treaty alliance, but that they would have to sit down and negotiate any future exercises. Duterte added that, under his administration, the Philippines would pursue closer strategic relations with other partners like Russia and China, with an emphasis on weapons sales. Russia has eagerly courted Southeast Asian nations as potential arms buyers in recent years. In addition to its longtime client Vietnam, Russia has courted Thailand and now the Philippines, promising cheaper weapons than the U.S. and other suppliers and, in many cases, substantial offsets and credits.

The contrast with Duterte’s predecessor is jarring. In addition to increasing the scope of joint exercises with the U.S., Manila under Aquino also shared more intelligence on maritime security and terrorism with other U.S. partners in the region, including Singapore, Japan, India and Australia. With U.S. assistance and its own budget, the Philippines aggressively modernized its archaic coast guard, navy and army. Their collective failings were exposed not only by China’s assertive behavior in the South China Sea, but also by growing piracy near the southern Philippines and by the tenacity of the Islamist militant group Abu Sayyaf. In 2015, the Philippine government spent $3.9 billion on new weaponry, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, up from $2.4 billion in 2010. Weapons spending went up almost every year under Aquino.

Southeast Asia is now the world’s biggest center for piracy, surpassing the waters off the Horn of Africa. And even though the Philippines launched new patrols of pirate-infested waters with Indonesian and Malaysian forces, there has been little sign in recent months that piracy is decreasing in the seas off the southern Philippines.

But perhaps the bigger threat is Abu Sayyaf, which has staged a comeback in the past three years after it appeared to be severely weakened. In 2015 and 2016, Abu Sayyaf increased its kidnappings and killings, including of captured foreign and Philippine sailors, and its leadership declared its allegiance to the so-called Islamic State. Abu Sayyaf is tough to track and destroy given its remote areas of operation in the southern Philippines. Earlier this year, an attempt by Philippine armed forces to ambush a group of Abu Sayyaf militants turned into an extended firefight that left 18 Philippine soldiers dead. So while Duterte makes headlines with almost-daily controversies, there are major issues at stake.

But what does Duterte really intend to do? Many Philippine officials believe he is merely gesturing to the U.S., embracing a nationalist but also left-leaning view of the U.S.-Philippine relationship that reflects his background, and looking to gain leverage in the new defense relationship. He made his remarks on ending exercises during what wire reports called a “rambling” address in Hanoi, in which he often seemed to contradict himself. He has no prior experience in international affairs, and he is notoriously outspoken, so not all of this should come as a surprise. He clearly subscribes to a strain of powerful nationalism that resonates with many people in the former U.S. colony. And he bristles at any foreign pushback on his vigilante approach to crime and the drug trade, lashing out at not only the U.S. but the European Union, the United Nations and other critics.

Duterte does want to boost relations with Beijing and reduce Manila’s reliance on Washington, but several officials close to the president say he hopes to balance ties with China and Washington, not trade one relationship for the other, since Beijing is not yet able to provide the same type of assistance for many nontraditional security issues. Weapons aside, Duterte hopes to dramatically boost Chinese companies’ investments in the Philippines, including in much-needed infrastructure projects that are critical to his economic plans.

What’s more, the U.S.-Philippine alliance still has strong support among many Filipinos, as well as in the Philippine armed forces. Studies show that some 90 percent of people in the Philippines have a positive view of the United States. The Obama administration is attempting to mostly ignore Duterte’s tirades, while trying to figure out how much of his rhetoric reflects a real strain of Filipino nationalism, and how much Manila really wants to shift its security posture. It is unclear whether Filipinos want significantly closer strategic ties with China, even if some of them enjoy watching Duterte thumb his nose at American officials and assert the Philippines’ independence. In a 2014 Pew study, only 38 percent of Filipinos had a positive view of China. Even if Duterte courts China and actually ends U.S.-Philippine military exercises, Beijing would be unable to provide Manila with what it really needs: weaponry and training to battle Abu Sayyaf and take on piracy. So while Duterte has introduced uncertainty into the U.S.-Philippine relationship, he is unlikely to find an attractive alternative to it for the Philippines’ many pressing security needs.

[Joshua Kurlantzick is a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the forthcoming book, “A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA.”]

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