The latest in the ever-expanding circle of U. S. military activities may be airstrikes in the Philippines according to this report from NBC News:
The Pentagon is considering a plan that allows the U.S. military to conduct airstrikes on ISIS in the Philippines, two defense officials told NBC News.
The authority to strike ISIS targets as part of collective self-defense could be granted as part of an official military operation that may be named as early as Tuesday, said the officials. The strikes would likely be conducted by armed drones.
If approved, the U.S. military would be able to conduct strikes against ISIS targets in the Philippines that could be a threat to allies in the region, which would include the Philippine forces battling ISIS on the ground in the country’s southern islands.
The U.S. military has been sharing intelligence with the Philippines for years, according to Pentagon spokesperson Capt. Jeff Davis, who called it a “steady state.”
“We have had a consistent CT [counterterror] presence in the Philippines for fifteen years now,” he said.
There is a small U.S. military presence on the ground supporting the counter-ISIS fight, called Joint Special Operations Task Force Trident.
The rationalization that’s being used in support of these actions is a 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the Philippines in the United States. The pact is clearly focused on international threats from hostile foreign governments. Construing that as a freewheeling authorization to attack anybody in the Philippines sounds like a stretch to me.
If it goes forward it would be yet another example of the illegal and immoral use of military force by the United States. How this would not expand to attacking drug dealers or political opponents of Duterte is unclear.
The rule of law means sometimes not being able to do things that you think you should be able to do.
“How this would not expand to attacking drug dealers or political opponents of Duterte is unclear.”
That’s a real problem. The usual answer is that the entire targeting cycle is controlled by the US and the host government provides inputs and gets a veto over any strike and I would guess that is the arrangement in this case.
If we had any trust in the PI government, we would sell them our drone capabilities and train and support them so they could do their own targeting (see Italy for example). There are also hybrid arrangements where we operate unarmed drones for intelligence and target development, but the actual kinetic actions are carried out by host nation forces without direct US involvement. I suspect the PI probably isn’t capable of timely action on provided intelligence, so we’re going with option A.
Anyway, that’s inside baseball. I agree with your concerns about escalation of US involvement. It’s one thing to assist and train host nation forces against an largely internal threat – there is a long and established history of such things and not just by the US – but conducting actual military operations is completely different though not without precedent. It does, unfortunately, normalize US armed interventions which gives Congress even more room to ignore it or pass the buck.
It’s not hard to see how the transition from “attacking Al Qaeda” to “attacking the enemies of the ruling regime” happens quickly, indeed is inevitable, and IMO has happened in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and just about everywhere else we’re using military force. We just don’t have good enough human intelligence to make the necessary determinations. We rely on host governments and they know it.
A lot actually depends on the conflict. In a case like Afghanistan and Iraq which are declared conflict zones, the military has a much freer hand in conducting strikes in the course of prosecuting a military campaign. In places like Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan the authorizations for strikes is centralized in the Executive and require a Presidential finding specifying who and what can be targeted. So, with respect to the PI, it will all depend on what President Trump will authorize which I’m sure gives us all a warm-and-fuzzy feeling….
My take is the situation in the Philippines is more serious then is being reported.
Duterte is not exactly pro-American; in fact he’s been pretty anti-American when it suits him. Accepting American military help is not something he would do as a first option.