The arrival of the Shiloh at Subic Bay, where the U.S. had a base from the early days of U.S. rule over the Philippines at the beginning of the last century, showed the close coordination between the U.S. and the Philippines over defense in the South China Sea.
U.S. officials in Manila said the Shiloh would stay in Subic Bay only long enough to refuel and take on other supplies before going on patrol in nearby waters. The question was whether the Shiloh, accompanied by other vessels, including destroyers and perhaps submarines, would enter waters close to the Chinese reclamation projects. The result would, at the least, provoke a fusillade of demands for the ships to go away as well as a critical comments from the Chinese officials and the Chinese media.
For Filipinos, the question was whether the occasional use of Subic Bay for U.S. navy vessels would be a precursor to a bygone era. U.S. forces withdrew from Subic, and from Clark Air Base across the Zambales mountains, in 1991, after the Philippines refused to renew its longstanding bases agreement with the U.S. The Philippine-American alliance, however, has remained in force with U.S. troops going to the Philippines for frequent military exercises and U.S. soldiers advising Philippine troops fighting Muslim rebels on the large southern Island of Mindanao and the outlying Sulu archipelago.
In recent years the U.S. and Philippines have coordinated still more closely under a "visiting forces agreement" that has aroused widespread controversy in the Philippines.In a still greater historical irony, President Aquino goes to Japan this week in search of support -- and perhaps assistance -- for the Philippine position.
Japan has extended massive economic aid to the Philippines but has refrained from military assistance to a country that still harbors bitter memories of a Japanese occupation that lasted more than three years after Japanese forces drove out the Americans at the outset of World War II. The Americans finally retook the Philippines after some of the bloodiest urban fighting of the war in and around Manila.