Why the protectorate survives

Abstract

Within days of each other in late May 1999, two events occurred in Asia that marked the closing of the window of opportunity known as the “Post‐Cold‐War Era:” the Japanese Diet's final passage of new defense guidelines with Washington and the Philippine Senate's approval of a “Visiting Forces Agreement” (VFA) with the United States. The two developments are charged with significance. The new U.S.‐Japan Cooperation Guidelines explicitly commit Japanese logistical support for U.S. military operations responding to “emergency in areas surrounding Japan,” a shift from the previously worded “emergency in Japan.” With no geographic definition of the word “surrounding,” this discreetly articulated ambiguity was left broad, imprecise, and open to aggressive interpretation. The VFA, by providing a legal framework governing in‐country relations between American troops and the Philippine government, allows the reintroduc‐tion of large numbers of U.S. military forces into the country for indefinite periods. Seven years earlier, the very same Philippine Senate refused to renew the lease on the U.S. military bases—an act that was then seen as the most dramatic manifestation of the region's desire to move toward a new system of security following the collapse of the Soviet Union.