US, PH mull potential restoration of bases

by the Obama administration) – the United States appears to be angling to use Subic Bay once more as its naval base in this part of the world.

INVOKING the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty – acknowledging and repeatedly stressing its applicability in the West Philippine Sea (a Philippine proposition earlier rejected

After the Philippine Senate voted in 1991 to reject the continued presence of American bases, Subic is now a freeport, with a 300-hectare shipyard that was built in 2006 by the South Korean firm Hanjin. Considered in 2015 as one among the top 10 shipbuilders in the world, Hanjin was sold to U.S.-based Cerberus Capital Management in 2020 in the wake of the Korean company’s financial troubles.

(It is now known as the Agila Subic Shipyard.)

Cerberus appears to have entered the picture to foil a move by Chinese investors to buy the facility, according to a report last year citing an unnamed “security official.”

It was “very opportune that the (U.S.) came into the picture,” Ambassador to the U.S. Jose Manuel Romualdez candidly admitted in a forum early this month. “We would like to have more economic activity between the

Philippines and China, being a neighbor, but we were also quite disturbed by the fact that they came in very strongly wanting to take over that project.”

The shipyard could soon see the presence of U.S. Navy ships because an American defense contractor, Vectrus Inc., has set up shop there. Earlier, in May last year, the

Philippine Navy had leased the shipyard’s northern part to set up a naval operations base.

Security cooperation and “issues related to the South China Sea” were the core issues tackled at a four-day meeting held in Manila last week, billed as the 10th Bilateral Strategic Dialogue.

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