冷戦後の米比同盟-基地撤廃、VFA、「対テロ戦争」と米比関係-

冷戦後世界とアメリカ外交

抄録

This article intends to explore the transformation of the U. S. -Philippine military alliance during the post-cold war period. The U. S. bases in the Philippines, among which the Subic Bay Naval Installations and the Clark Air Base were the major ones, were the symbol of the U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia, as well as the continued post-colonial relationship between the two countries. Although those bases were peripheral in America's military strategy, they were retained during the cold war period, due to the then existing international structure in which they worked as a balancer against the Soviet military presence in the region. The removal of the U. S. bases in the Philippines in 1992 has been generally viewed as the triumph of Philippine nationalism against the continued presence and influence of the ex-sovereign state. However, this type of interpretation does not explain why the Philippines invited the United States to come back to use her bases in the late 1990's, signing the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). Moreover, after September 11, 2001, the two countries resumed joint military operations in an attempt to suppress the activities of anti-government organizations in the Philippines. This article investigates international as well as domestic political-economic factors that enabled the bases removal and the following conclusion of the VFA. In addition, it tries to explain the characteristics of the US-Philippine cooperation on the “war against terrorism” in the 21st century, namely, America's intervention in internal affairs of the Philippines under the name of “win [ning] the hearts and minds of the people.”
From the above analysis, it is obvious that the essential feature of the U. S. -Philippine relations during the cold war period, namely the Philippine's dependence on the United States with regard to international security and domestic counter-insurgency, as well as the pattern of the U. S. intervention, still continue in the post-cold war world. Meanwhile, however, the United States has become more demanding from her allies their utmost contributions to the so-called “common defense, ” and set her policy to supply economic and military aid as rewards to the allies' cooperation. Unlike the cold war era when the international structure was relatively fixed, given the United States and the Soviet Union as two contending superpowers, the United States herself decides who the enemies are, in the era of the “war against terror.” Under such circumstances, it tends to be more difficult than before for the weak “ally” to behave autonomously, and the intervention by the superpower in the ally's counterinsurgency operations tends to be justified under the name of the “war against terrorism”.