OPINION | Community Members Say Joint Base Lewis-McChord Supports U.S.-Philippine War Games. They Want It to End.

by Gloria Baughman

As Trump escalates a trade war with China, the United States continues to escalate geopolitical pressure in the Asia-Pacific region by conducting military exercises in the Philippines. Monday, April 21, marked the start of annual U.S.-Philippines Balikatan war games, as 9,000 U.S. soldiers engage in weeks of "full battle tests" on Philippine soil, including using units and weapons deployed directly from our own backyard at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) south of Tacoma. On April 21, protesters gathered at JBLM to call for the end of these war games, and a final end to the long history of U.S. military involvement in the Philippines.

Starting in the late 1890s with the end of the Spanish-American War and the start of the bloody Philippine-American War that followed, the U.S. enjoyed direct colonial rule of the Philippines until the Japanese invasion and subsequent U.S. bombing of Manila at the end of World War II. After granting nominal "independence" to the Philippines in 1946, the U.S. maintained military bases in the archipelago until a mass movement led by BAYAN forced the Philippine government to rescind only the U.S. military land leases in 1992.

Since the late 1990s, the U.S. has methodically reintroduced military bases and personnel under a dizzying constellation of agreements, starting with the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement, all to maintain a foothold in the Philippine archipelago — which current U.S. government officials have referred to rather crassly as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" and, perhaps even more devilishly, as part of the "first island chain" for military containment of U.S. economic rival China.

While the Navy touts the annual "Balikatan" (shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises as an endeavor "to strengthen our ironclad alliance and demonstrate commitment to regional security and stability," many Filipinos and anti-war allies have an opposing analysis. Led by BAYAN USA and over 30 endorsing organizations, progressive Filipino community and allies joined in the national day of action against the war games by peacefully protesting at JBLM.

How Is JBLM Involved in This?

Well over 6,000 miles from the Philippines, the Puget Sound has been a launch point for U.S. troops throughout the United States' 125-year colonial history in the Asia-Pacific region. Ranging from units deployed for last month's Salaknib exercise, to the World War II shellings of occupied Manila, to the siege of Marawi (which forcibly displaced nearly 1.1 million Filipinos in 2017), Tacoma's JBLM has served as a primary U.S. base for decades of military operations in the Philippines. 

As the "premier power-projection platform" west of the Rockies, JBLM remains the primary launchpad for the U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific, and it has been deeply involved in a recent flurry of military exercises that the U.S. has conducted as tensions escalate with China. In fact, missile systems that U.S. officials boldly boasted about in the Wall Street Journal last month as "capable of targeting major military-command and industrial centers in mainland China" — known as the Typhon and HIMARS missile systems — were recently deployed to the Philippines directly from JBLM.

These developments and connections to the Puget Sound are deeply concerning given the abysmal human rights record of the U.S. military in the Philippines and the governments it has propped up.

Although many have heard of the infamous dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., fewer know that the U.S. supported his rule until the U.S. Department of State convinced Ronald Reagan that he was more of a liability than an asset. Subsequent presidents have ranged from plantation owners to gangsters to nepo babies, each one seemingly more corrupt than the last. Case in point: The recent International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest and trial of Rodrigo Duterte for crimes against humanity reveal the stunningly corrupt practice of managing a police bounty system for extrajudicial killings of suspected drug users, human rights activists, and government critics alike.

Just when you think things couldn't get worse, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — the son of the former dictator — was elected in 2022, funding his campaign with portions of the still unrecovered billions of dollars — that's right, billions — that his father embezzled from IMF- and World Bank-funded infrastructure projects in the 1980s.

While it may seem obvious that the U.S. government should not be providing military equipment to these human rights offenders, the U.S. recently approved the sale of $5.58 billion worth of military equipment directly from Lockheed Martin to the Armed Forces of the Philippines in April. The government of the Philippines will be taking out a loan with the U.S. Department of State to facilitate this transaction as it continues to slash social services for Filipinos at home and abroad.

Stateside, the Philippine consulate has failed to provide even the most basic assistance to detained Filipino migrants. In the case of Lewelyn Dixon, a green card holder who has lived in the U.S. for over 50 years and works at the University of Washington, the Philippine consulate failed to make an effort to facilitate her release from the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, or even visit her, despite her family's requests, during recent consulate visits to Seattle.

Instead of investing $5 billion to support Filipino people at home and migrants overseas, the Philippine government ignores the needs of its people and continues to push thousands of Filipinos out of their homeland each day to solve the country's debt crisis, subjecting them to the harsh realities of forced migration and even more violence upon their arrival to places like Washington State. 

Another speaker, Kim of the International Migrants Alliance, revealed that since Trump took office, 15 of the 18 migrant-deportation flights used military transportation planes from JBLM, including the flight that took a Venezuelan migrant named Jose to Guantanamo Bay in February.

Citing this treatment of migrants, the impact on the Filipino people, and the continuous U.S. escalation with China, Meesh of Malaya Seattle added that the "U.S. is using the Philippines as its chessboard, with the Filipino people as its pawns."

What Can We Do?

A primary demand of protestors on April 21 was to uphold human rights and Philippine sovereignty, via an end to the perpetual usage of the Philippines as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" by the United States. For many, this would look like a swift congressional block of the recent $5.58 billion arms sale and loan to the Armed Forces of the Philippines. While local legislators like Adam Smith and Patty Murray have largely been silent on the crisis of U.S.-funded human rights violations in the Philippines, others like Pramila Jayapal have been vocally supportive of upholding human rights — including via measures like the Philippine Human Rights Act.

For others, primary action may look like strengthening grassroots movements such as the recently launched Tanggol Migrante network — in support of migrants, asylum seekers, and Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). This is proving urgent for those who have been forced abroad to seek work by the conditions of their home countries, only to be instructed to "self-deport" by both the Trump administration and by their own governments, especially now given recent comments on self deportation by the U.S.-Philippine ambassador and longtime Marcos-crony, Manuel Romualdez. 

Regardless, the progressive Filipino community and allies made it apparent on April 21 that the United States' role in forced migration and militarization of our communities will not go unnoticed or unopposed, from the Puget Sound to Subic Bay and beyond.

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Gloria Baughman is an early childhood educator and community organizer for migrant justice and the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP).