Our neighbors in Thailand were treated to a special Valentine’s Day gift—sorta—when no less than the head of the US Pacific Command launched the annual “Cobra Gold” joint US-Thai military exercise, the largest such exercise in the region.
The vaguely Asian-looking PacCom head, Admiral Harry Harris, is the most senior US official to ever attend this 10-day exercise. In his opening remarks, he insisted that “our alliance is a big deal. Nations don’t enter security treaty alliances lightly. It means we’re in it for the long haul.”
Recall that the supremely self-righteous Obama administration canceled millions of dollars of military aid to Thailand after their military pulled off a coup in 2014 that put the current Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha in power.
Not to be outdone, the Thais thereupon ramped up joint exercises with China and turned to them, as well as the Russians, for their hardware, including three Chinese submarines purchased last year for a cool billion dollars.
This pivot-away clearly got the attention of the new American president and former deal-maker. The signal Trump now seems to be sending is that geopolitical realities still matter more than differences of opinion over human rights.
It’s a message that he probably hopes will also resonate among Thailand’s neighbors, including the Philippines, which if anything may even be more valuable to him because it straddles the West Philippine Sea waters so coveted by both US and Chinese naval planners.
Commercial relationships also matter. The new US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson (fondly nicknamed “T. Rex”), used to be CEO of ExxonMobil. The world’s largest oil company notes on its website that it has been in Thailand for over a hundred years, with “a full range of downstream operations…and an onshore natural gas production site”.
Evidently the policy of playing the US off against China has been around in the region even before our own President Duterte picked it up. But in our case, there are additional issues to work around that the Thais don’t have to deal with.
One is the risks posed to our BPO businesses by Trump’s protectionist instincts on trade. A second, though more remote, is the treatment of thousands of Filipino immigrants who are in the US illegally. And the third, of course, is our country being caught in the cross-fire if a shooting war breaks out between the US and China.
All of these risks only reconfirm that Duterte’s pivot-away from the US is eminently sensible. But it’s a policy that will require a lot of flexibility and creative thinking to pull off, such as relying on our business leaders to keep back channels always open to the Tillersons in their rolodexes.
And when soldiers like Admiral Harris promise that the US “is in it for the long haul,” let’s not just take his word for it. Let’s make sure that we hear and see the same message from his political bosses.
In the meanwhile, this newfound US support for Thailand is already a boon, in and of itself. A stronger Thailand can only mean a stronger Asean, with each link in the chain depending on the integrity of the others.
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Elsewhere in Asia, a senior Japanese minister last week expressed the commitment of his government to pursue “deeper defense cooperation” with the Philippines through inter-service exchanges and transfers of military equipment.
Speaking in Tokyo, Vice Minister Ro Manabe said that Japan will contribute to efforts by the Philippines, together with Indonesia and Malaysia, to curb piracy and kidnapping in their maritime areas. This March, the Philippines will be taking delivery of the first of five TC-90 aircraft for use in maritime surveillance.
The Japanese have even gone so far as to share with us the results of their monitoring of Chinese and other activities in disputed West Philippine Sea waters. In exchange, our Defense officials have encouraged them to pursue a visiting forces agreement with us, similar to what we have with the US.
What seems to be developing here is nothing less than a Japanese “pivot to the PH.” It’s evident from the ostentatious welcome they gave to the President during his recent visit there, which he in turn reciprocated by showing the Japanese prime minister around his home in another display of his trademark charm and informality.
Given the historical rivalry between China and Japan, as well as more recent face-offs over islands disputed by the two, it is clearly in Japan’s interest to counter-balance the “pivot to China” (among others) that the President has to execute in order to properly distance us from the US.
At the same time, because Japan is still, and is likely to remain, America’s most dependable ally in the region—measured by capability as well as loyalty—Japanese engagement with countries like ours serves to sustain an indirect US security presence in the region.
As the war of words heats up between the two increasingly bellicose rivals, China and the US, it is comforting to know that a strong but silent type like Japan has our back. This is probably what Duterte had in mind when he called them “closer than brothers” to us.
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