Haddick phrased it like this...Originally Posted by carl
He referred to Okinawa, as nobody credible is seriously discussing bases in the Philippines.some military analysts fear that in a shooting war with China, missile strikes could close U.S. air bases and ports on the island, preventing the Marine infantrymen there from getting to where they might be needed....
...Under a growing missile threat, field commanders will likely prefer the flexibility afforded by an expeditionary approach compared to the vulnerability of fixed bases -- such as Okinawa -- located within easy range of Chinese missiles.
Certainly there'd be a balance to be weighed, but apparently there's concentrating too much force in a vulnerable area could lead to a situation where that force could easily be neutralized.
There's also a question of what threat exactly we're trying to deter, and how likely that threat is to materialize. Having rapidly mobile Marine forces in the area would be of great value in a land confrontation between South and North Korea, but would have limited applicability in many of the more likely scenarios involving China. It would not, for example, be much of a deterrent to the naval and air shadow boxing that's gone on in the SCS. Again, the presence of 4500 US troops in the Philippines for the Balikatan exercsie didn't deter the Chinese from pushing at Scarborough Shoal, and may well have encouraged them.
I'd say the two major factors that took the anti-bases movement out of the vociferous but ineffectual left corner and into the mainstream were residual bad feeling over the decades of American support for Marcos and distaste at what had grown up around the bases. Resentment over the support for Marcos has faded a bit with time, though the US still has very limited credibility as a champion of democracy. The second concern is still very much active, understandably. Angeles and Olongapo at the peak made Sodom and Gomorrah look like paragons of moral rectitude.
Not saying those were the only factors in play, but they were major ones. At the crux of it money was a key issue; the Philippine Senate made it clear that there would have to be a large increase in compensation, the US side declined to offer much. That to some extent may have been an example of the local habit of saying "no" by asking a price you know will be refused. At the level of popular support I suspect the money was less an issue than the factors cited above, and of course a simple desire to stop feeling like a colony.
I don't think it has to be like that, but I think it will be like that. One of the stupidest things about the Smith case was the ease with which it could have been prevented, if a bit of discipline and supervision had been applied. There's a "boys will be boys" attitude in some quarters, and some memories of "the good old days" in Subic. Of course not everyone thought those days so good, and that's where the problems start.
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