The ASEANs also have an eye to India, even more so since India resumed nuclear testing in 1998. Not much reassured by reminders that India is a democracy, the ASEANs see it as a regional bully which harbours dangerous designs of its own in the Indian Ocean. India, like China, may also be seeking a secure submarine based force. But ambitious nuclear armed great powers on ASEAN's peripheries are unlikely to be deterred by a nuclear weapons free zone. If the ASEANs encourage anti-nuclear constituencies in the United States, Japan and Australia, they will be cutting their own throats.
Reversing the slide
How can ASEAN's slide towards preemptive capitulation to China be reversed? That process should start with the archipelagic states of Southeast Asia. Archipelagic states are always potentially weak because of the ease with which maritime power can be brought to bear against their capitals ― a lesson brought home to Japan by its original Perry experience in 1853.
Since the overthrow of Marcos in 1986, the Philippines has proved more resilient than many expected. Partly because it was still under IMF tutelage, the Philippines has been less affected than others by the economic crisis. The military are in the barracks, and the country has undergone a successful democratic transfer of power from President Ramos to President Estrada.
With the Chinese now entrenched on Mischief Reef, and the Philippines with virtually no defense capability, many Filipinos realise their growing vulnerability to Chinese power. The uncontested exercise of Chinese maritime power in the South China Sea would rapidly bring the Philippines to heel, without need for invasion.
After the Taiwan straits crisis in March 1996, elements of the Nimitz task force called into Subic Bay.16. But no US-Philippines joint exercises have been held since 1996 because of the absence of a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), now called a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). Usually such arrangements are executive agreements, but under the 1986 Philippine constitution, a VFA requires a two-thirds majority in the Philippine senate.
Richard Fisher of the Heritage Foundation has recently proposed a large scale US military aid package for the Philippines, in return for a VFA which gives the US useful access to bases in the Philippines.17 The VFA is due to be put before the Philippine senate in April. Fisher also advocates that the US call on China to evacuate Mischief Reef, while continuing to make it clear to the Philippines that the United States will not support its claims in the Spratlys.
