Episode 42. The Philippines and the US: The Ties that Bind with Captain Gus Gusentine and Ambassador Harry Thomas

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:13] Our podcast brings together senior US diplomats and senior US military leaders in conversations about their partnerships and how they tackle some of our toughest national security problems. You can find all our podcasts and more information at the generalambassador.org. My name is Ambassador Deborah McCarthy. I'm the producer and host of the series. Today we will talk about our diplomatic and military engagement with the Philippines, a country with long historical ties to the United States. Our guests are Ambassador Harry Thomas, the former US ambassador to the Philippines from 2010 to 2013, and Captain Gus Gusentine, who commanded the US Joint Special Operations Task Force in the Philippines from 2010 to 2011. Ambassador Thomas is a senior Kissinger fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute. A native of New York City. Over a 34 year Foreign Service career, he represented the United States abroad as ambassador, not only to the Philippines, but also to Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. We first met when he was the State Department's executive secretary and special assistant to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Ambassador Thomas also served as the Director General of the US Diplomatic Service and at the White House as the Director for South Asia. Captain Gusentine is a 28 year veteran of the United States Navy. A native of Illinois, he served in over 30 countries, working closely with foreign officials, US ambassadors and the US interagency.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:01:49] Captain Gusentine was also a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group and led a cyber assessment team on the Joint Staff. He is now the course director for the US Special Operations Command, Strategic Leaders Course and a Woodrow Wilson visiting fellow with the Council of Independent Colleges. Ambassador Thomas, Captain Gusentine, welcome to our podcast. I want to extend a special thank you to both of you for joining us via Zoom for this episode in which we'll talk about US security interests in the Philippines. I thought I'd start with a little background to orient our listeners. We have a long and deep relationship with the Philippines. There are more than 4 million Americans of Filipino descent and an estimated 350,000 American citizens live in the Philippines. The American Cemetery in Manila is the largest US military cemetery outside of the United States. Filipino Americans also serve in large numbers in the US military. The Philippines has been a partner in Southeast Asia for many years. We have a mutual defense agreement that dates from 1951 and have signed various agreements since. But there are also challenges in the relationship, including the country's geography, its poverty, the level of corruption and the issue of extrajudicial killings. Ambassador Thomas, Captain Gustine, how did you go about establishing your relationship when you arrived in country in order to carry out your missions?

Capt. Gusentine: [00:03:20] I was previously operations officer at Special Operations Command Pacific there in Hawaii, which had authority for special operations in the Pacific and Asia. I first arrived in Manila and began to make contacts there. And Ambassador Thomas, of course, being not new to his duties, but certainly new to the embassy there that year knew President Aquino new Chief of Defence General David. We had one done an orientation when I first arrived in Zamboanga and then immediately flew up to Manila to begin our introductions with the embassy. And I think one of the things that started our relationship went off to a great start, but also my relationship with the Filipinos and with the country team, was Ambassador Thomas's reception of me as both a commander, a fellow American, in service to the country and in support of the Philippines. He offered and conferred on me his endorsement and my credibility. My ability to have influence in meetings really started with how I was received by Ambassador Thomas. The initial introduction was key.

Amb. Thomas: [00:04:27] One of the things that made it work well was the fact that we had a representative at USAID. The deputy was assigned to the embassy, stayed there was a liaison, was a difficult job, and that Gus used to fly up every week to participate in the country team. And then the Philippines had a new government. You know, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you do not. Aquino's uncle had been the first Filipino to go to my college and he was a congressman and he introduced me. And Aquino had lived in Boston when his father was an exile, and his sister went to a rival school that helped. And then the secretary of defense. Guzman, his best friend, was a retired American military and Foreign Service officer. Bob Dance, who they had gone to PMA together and bonded because they were one of the few Protestants there and they maintained friendships over those years. And Bob told Guzman that was a good guy. So these things help. You know, you don't always get that fortunate as well as social relationships afterwards, in the evenings, you know, when Gus would come up, there was a favorite cigar bar that we'd go to. You're laughing, but we invite a lot of people to this place, so you have to do all of those things, as you know, from your leadership.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:05:56] Well I wanted to ask in terms of your mission, Captain, the task force was set up to help train members of the Philippine armed forces and as I gather, also the police to fight Islamic militants. These included the local Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Jemaah Islamiyah, which was responsible for the Bali bombings, and Abu Sayyaf, which had ties to al Qaeda. Both of you, starting with you, Captain, can you describe what kind of threats these groups pose to the United States and how did the threats shape your mission?

Capt. Gusentine: [00:06:30] Jemaah Islamiyah was a regional group headquartered out of Indonesia, but running through the region and had begun to work closely with Abu Sayyaf in southern Philippines, in the islands of Mindanao in the south. They posed local threats, which we have American interests. We have Americans there. Kidnaps for ransom were pretty rampant. So that was always a concern. Lots of terrorists, a lot of Filipino Americans moving back and forth. So that provided local threats from Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf. The fact that they maintained through those acts of violence that provided a launching pad for instability and violent extremism throughout the region, which, again, is in the American interest to have stability in Asia, and especially at the time, as we had talked before about the American pivot to Asia, instability in that region was very unwelcome to that. But they provided the launching pad for the 1993 bombings in the World Trade Center and then Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef, of course, to prepare their plans for 9/11. And so it became a safe haven. It became a place of refuge for them to do things globally. And so I think both local threats to US interests, threats to our Philippine partners, of course, and then a regional safe haven to launch global attacks, I think is both a threat to US interests.

Amb. Thomas: [00:07:47] We have to take our listeners back. 1903 to 1905 General Pershing, then Captain Black Jack Pershing, really was extremely successful in his heart's mind, but also strength in the northern part of Mindanao. And while others tried only the gun which failed. After he left, whether it was under many Americans when they were a colony of Filipinos, it was indifference from the center to the plight of Mindanao, where you have rough terrain, so you have weak governance, high corruption, indifference. So you're going to have these things. And in the early 60s, when Marcos took over, he promised some Mindanao Muslims they were going to fight Indonesia. But then they found out they were fighting other Muslims and there was a rebellion and executions. So these things don't happen in a vacuum and they don't happen overnight. But what we see around the world is weak governance, corruption, rough terrain. And then Gus's team is not expected to come in and solve that problem, but help the Filipinos. And to his credit, President Aquino was trying to seek agreements to give them autonomy, which years later did not work out, but not for a lack of trying. Others in the international community are partners, which we supported from the outside the Malaysians, the Indonesians who did not want war. But these things take time and it evolved where you had many different groups, not one, not just Abu Sayyaf or Moro Islamic Liberation Front, but offshoots. And those people had this belief that they should submit to the Kafirs and the term of deception until they could take over an Islamic state. And then you had others that wanted autonomy and others independence and others to become part of the Philippines. So it was an extremely complex area in Mindanao. And then you had the New People's Army, who the Communists. And can you.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:09:45] Describe a little bit the terrain in which you worked these issues? Because again, it's a chain of islands spread out poverty levels that are extreme in certain areas, making people more ripe for recruitment.

Capt. Gusentine: [00:09:57] In Mindanao, in the southern Philippines, which was close to Malaysia, close to Indonesia, we had three primary islands. But as Ambassador Thomas mentioned, Islam came to the region in 1380. Early in my tour, I said, Look, we have to understand how we got here. How did we get to a safe haven of extremism? And then we started looking at the history and all those layers of history never leave. All that influence is still there. When I first arrived, we flew out to the most extreme southern island Tawi-tawi, which I understand in local dialogue, means far, far away, which might be the furthest point from Manila. We flew to the airport, we got out, we took off to leave the airport and there was a large billboard that had the previous president's picture still on it. And so it was just a real indication of the lack of governance and the lack of the ability for the government to create cohesive national identity across all those islands. And so history had to play in this geography. Has it play in this geography of an archipelago, not unlike the valleys in Afghanistan, the valleys in Afghanistan. Every valley has its own personality that has its own ways of doing business as its own strongman. Same thing in the islands. The lack of a national identity, a lack of governance. You see started to attenuate. And then in 1989, al Qaeda disperses and they come to three places, mostly Afghanistan and East Africa, and they come to Southeast Asia and to Philippines. And that starts another chain of events that leads up to the conditions that I think we walked into in 2010.

Amb. Thomas: [00:11:31] I really admire the fact that Gus and his team considered the unique history of not only the Philippines and Mindanao, but they also considered something else that's extremely important that we can never forget. What are the capabilities of the Philippine government, judiciary, their military, their police? And in Mindanao, it wasn't always the highest. It wasn't always the best. And then you had the added history of Umar Patek, you know, one of the Bali bombers. He trained there in the Mujahideen camp, married a Filipino. Remember, he was caught in Abbottabad about a week before Osama bin Laden went to glory. You have all of that. They don't consider those borders. We do. And then you had in the early 60s, the Filipinos decided to export their poor to Mindanao. So they started sending Catholics and Protestants down to Mindanao, taking land that Muslims consider theirs. So you're not going to solve this or take care of this overnight.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:12:37] The Philippines is one of the highest recipients of US foreign assistance in Southeast Asia, and normally this assistance is channeled through the embassy, through USAID. I gather the task force also got involved in humanitarian assistance. How did that work within the mission? And then in particular areas.

Amb. Thomas: [00:12:57] Because of the poverty, because of the influence of Filipino Americans, because of the need for assistance, Philippines is always done extremely well in foreign aid. The thing that worked so well, Gus's team is down in Mindanao. 60% of USAID assistance was in Mindanao. It was dangerous. So we had to rely on Gus's team to work with to see how effective their products were and their assistance was and monitoring and going in. So you had to have that work. Well, it was extremely challenging, but that was one of the other ways we were able to become closer.

Capt. Gusentine: [00:13:39] The overall tone that the Ambassador put out extremely important, especially when the military's in partnership working under the American identity of the embassy. He would always say one team, one fight. The unity of effort between our Joint Special Operations Task force, located mostly in the South and the embassy. He wanted alignment, and he helped foster a wonderful relationship between the task force and USAID to the effect that we put in place a combined strategy with USAID. As far as humanitarian assistance. And this let me put that in context. The military has some capacity for humanitarian assistance and some capacity for development. But really, we do improvements, small scale infrastructure. We do point improvements of things. We alleviate human suffering at the point of suffering. But USAID has the expertise and the capacity and then the long enduring presence to develop and establish systems. And when the systems get in place, those are the things that can really change the conditions. And so we provided, of course, in practice security bubble for them to come down, plan, coordinate with the local Filipino governments. Under Ambassador Thomas's leadership, that relationship really came together. He saw that as vital, and we did, too, after, you know, we had gotten to know each other. We did place our deputy commander up in Manila in the embassy. They restarted the Mindanao Working Group. That was fantastic because that was a biweekly meeting. All the parts of the embassy team came together and basically. Under the mission strategy for the Philippines.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:15] Well, know that our Congress on occasion would try to hold back assistance because of the issue of extrajudicial killings. Over the years, human rights groups have accused Philippine security forces of carrying out extrajudicial killings of civilians. Can you talk a little bit about what the situation was like when you were there and how did you work to ensure that the US mission was working with the right people in the military and the police?

Capt. Gusentine: [00:15:43] A big part of our ability to be in any measure successful was trust and legitimacy that required us to be careful about illicit activities either conducted by or condoned by the government. So we again, we have our own information sources and we have our own relationships in the South. But getting input from the ambassador, from the country team, getting input from the Philippine government up in Manila was critical. And I remember one time when the MILF, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which was active at the time I was there, had made some overtures to some of our guys about meeting and that sort of thing. That was not part of our mission at all.

Amb. Thomas: [00:16:24] Obviously, we oppose extrajudicial killings, and we support human rights and democracy. And President Aquino's father had been killed by Marcos and his forces, and he was very much a nationalist in the best way. And Gloria Arroyo was detained under him for corruption and human rights violations.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:16:46] She was the previous president.

Amb. Thomas: [00:16:48] Yeah, but this is the challenge now. She's peaker of the House. So this goes to the point of making effective and sustained change in developing nations. It's not always easy. Before I got there, you had the Maguindanao massacre where, you know, a tribal group executed many journalists. The Philippines for years was the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. And then some people, like Senator Ping Lacson, who at that time was a former Army general who had successfully tamed parts of the New People's Army with assistance from the United States, was seen as a hero. Then he engaged in extrajudicial killings, and we saw him as a bad guy. But he's a senator today. So you can't examine these things in a vacuum. And over time, people have different values. We are very lucky, however, that that time we had Senator McCain, Senator Lieberman, Senator McCain's father and grandfather were heroes in the Philippines. His mother and aunt were well known. And Senator Inouye was also a hero. There was a medal of Honor winner who visited and talked about the travails he went through because, you know, we lost three times as many men in the Philippines. We did anyplace else in the Pacific theater during the war, and the Filipinos were part of our army. So you had all of these challenges. But it's important that we pointed out the importance of human rights, counter human trafficking, these things. But there are no virgins here. And these extremist groups, the insurgent groups benefited so much from kidnappings, rape, trafficking, pillaging, the old saying the oppressed become the oppressors was never more true than in Mindanao.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:18:30] Well, I want to turn now to the issue of China and the Philippines. China slowly has taken greater control over access to some disputed land in the South China Sea, including areas claimed by the Philippines. I understand why you were both there. In 2011. The Chinese naval forces harassed Philippine fishing and oil exploration vessels and also erected structures near the island of Palawan. Can you talk a little bit about this relationship with China and what it was like when you were there and the Philippines?

Amb. Thomas: [00:19:04] When we left Clark Air Force Base and the Philippines did not renew our lease in Subic and we moved to Singapore. At that time, the Chinese started doing encroachment and that was a good ten, 15 years before Gus and I got there. So again, these things take time, but this particular incident was almost an accident of history. The North Koreans were going to fire a nuclear bomb test. The Philippines sent their largest ship in their navy, which was a 40 year old Coast Guard cutter that we had sent them to patrol in this area. There were Chinese fishing ships. There were Frenchmen who were digging for gold and with approval of the head of the National Museum and against the wishes of the French ambassador, And they were all together when this was going on. And they called May Day and the Chinese fishing vessels called May Day. And there you have a standoff. Assistant Secretary Campbell, who was the author of later of the Manila Declaration, worked with Chinese counterparts in Washington, New York, as did our ambassador in Beijing try to get the Chinese to depart. They said they would, but they did not on time. Filipinos did. And the Chinese have gone back and forth and increased the structures. What I admire about the Filipinos, though, is they took this to the UN, you know, their adherence to Land of the Sea Treaty. They won in the UN, and it shows how important it is the international treaties and international law. Now China is inheritant to the law of the sea and they lost. And they're showing that they don't have respect for this. One of the things that was really good under Secretary Clinton, President Obama was the shift to Asia, 60% of our assets there. And that included the string of Pearls strategy where Korea, Japan, all the way down to Australia, New Zealand, our military assets were there, but also we're trying to increase trade. We were not trying to be hegemons. We wanted to increase trade, multilateral, bilateral trade, employment opportunities.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:21:16] That's what we launched the Trans-Pacific Partnership discussions. Yes.

Amb. Thomas: [00:21:21] Which is now defunct. But that was extremely important because these countries benefit tremendously from trade, as do we. And we're seeing that today with the disruption in supply lines and the danger of over-dependence on one nation.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:21:35] The current president, President Duterte, has continued to encourage Chinese investment, though disputes over territory continue. But he announced this past February that the Philippines was revoking the Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States and 180 day countdown for the US to leave has begun. What are the implications for the United States and our ability to project in this part of the world as a result?

Amb. Thomas: [00:22:02] Well, I think he did that in reaction to his former police chief, now Senator Bato, who was denied visas because of accusations, credible accusations of extrajudicial killing. So that is where we were standing up to our values. President Duterte has I'm sure he's very serious about this, but that has not passed through the Senate yet. It does have to go through the Philippine Senate. And on top of it, the Philippine military is very much opposed to that. They see the value in the visiting forces agreement and the mutual defense treaty. They also see that our bilateral military assistance, even under Duterte, has gone up each year and they would lose that. You know, think the Philippines is like many countries with China and Philippines has Fujian province in the south. Many Filipinos come from there. The China, you know, they had a tortured history. Chinese could not become citizens of the Philippines until the 70 seconds. They were not considered Christians for that reason. And now they're doing very well in the business community. That said, like most countries in this part of the world, they don't want to have to choose between the US and China. They want to have excellent relationships with both. And that's where it's incumbent upon the United States to make ourselves the partner of choice by all of the things that we offer, but also being the one to stand up for human rights, democracy and oppose human trafficking and extrajudicial killings. Duterte has made many outrageous claims and statements. There's a lot of bluster there. We have to see where we're going to go. But they will not be able to make up that military assistance that they could lose.

Capt. Gusentine: [00:23:44] And I think there's, again, historical precedent to say that that's a poor decision for the Filipinos because our countries are inextricably linked. There's just too much of a relationship there to think about ever severing those kind of large, substantial and mutually beneficial ties, as.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:23:59] Well as our military assistance continues, the task force that you commanded wrapped up in 2015, and it was considered a model. Would you say it wrapped up because it was mission accomplished or were the assets needed elsewhere?

Capt. Gusentine: [00:24:14] You have to think about these things like you might a garden, the garden is plowed and planted and the water is in place and the seeds are in the ground. The sun is shining. I think we're mission accomplished here. And you walk away and then six weeks later you come back and what do you have? You don't have a garden. Entropy happens. And I think that's something we fail to realize in our national efforts. And I think there's value in saying, yes, our mission had culminated in the model that we had in place. There was no way to advance it. What we were accomplishing at the time was displacement. We were displacing a lot of illicit activity by having this bubble of security in the south and allowing the embassy, of course, to really do its job. That was displacement. If we could have afforded it, we probably would have stayed there. If the political authority had said, hey, that's a good thing. However, I do think at the time I was there in 2010 to 11, in 2015, when they finally withdrew the mission. I think the force was tired. Ice was just coming on strong. There were other demands on the force. That was just a decision that needed to be made. I will say that I think there's a new model out there that some young aspiring Foreign Service officers are going to take up as a project. How do we plant a garden and actually transition it? How do we keep it going? How do we actually change conditions that are sustainable in concert with both our national powers, the embassy, of course, and the military? Mission accomplished. But I think conditions have not changed enough that they reverted back to the conditions that were set before, and that was a regional safe haven for illicit activities and violent extremism. And again, entropy happens. We have the next Filipino insurgent group in the south, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom fighters. This is now emerged. And so you see this notion of displacement. Yes, culmination. Yes, a good time to push soldiers to other places. But that left a vacuum.

Amb. Thomas: [00:26:09] I would agree, Deborah. And I just want to say that when Duterte became president in Mindanao and Marawi, that's where these ISIS backed insurgents took over and the Philippine military took a couple of months to defeat them with massive assistance from the United States. But remember, this group spent six months deploying caches of arms in schools, hospitals, homes allowed by the local government. And this had happened in 2013 in Zamboanga, where Gus had been based. The same thing happened where these people were able to cache arms, almost took over the city. The US backed their troops through the training to defeat them. Again, it comes back to weak governance and until that is solved, we're going to be just where Captain Black Jack Pershing was in 1903. I don't know if Duterte sees the value, but I think the Philippine military and Philippine people understand the importance of our whole of government approach to helping them.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:27:14] Well, I wanted to ask a sort of a wrap up question. We've had a long succession of career US ambassadors to the Philippines, like in the military, some of our very best have been assigned to that country. Do you think this tradition of sending career diplomats to posts such as the Philippines is a tradition that is important to uphold?

Amb. Thomas: [00:27:36] I do. When you think of Ambassadors Wisner and Negroponte and now Song Kim, my dear friend Kristie Kenney, they all excelled in the Philippines and they all knew how to work the interagency community. Several had opportunities to work at the National Security Council. They respected the other institutions. They brought experience and understanding that you do not get overnight. And that doesn't mean that somebody from the outside would not bring a different perspective and access to the White House and the president that we may not already have. But those relationships that we're able to build over a career and understanding was extremely important to us. Right now. The Philippines ambassador, Babe Romualdez is a good guy. But the importance, when you think about Babe, is that he was a friend of Negroponte and Tom and Kristie and myself. So when he comes here, he comes here with credibility and we're able to help him through the Philippine Association.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:28:42] Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you for taking the time doing this virtually in this new era and contributing to the knowledge of that close relationship and most importantly, contributing to the knowledge of how our senior military leaders and our senior diplomats work together to advance US interests overseas. This has been a new episode in the series. The General and the Ambassador, A Conversation. Thank you for listening. The series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy with the generous support of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. You can find the podcast on all major sites and on our website, GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.Org. We welcome input and suggestions on the series. Please let us know your thoughts via General.Ambassador.podcast@gmail.com.