The Hawaii National Guard’s top officer was in the Philippines last week meeting with military officials in the country.
On Tuesday, Maj. Gen. Stephen Logan met with Pablo M. Lorenzo, the Philippine Department of National Defense’s Undersecretary for Civil, Veterans, and Reserve at Camp Aguinaldo in Manila.
In a news release, the Philippine military said that “recognizing the shared challenges of their archipelagic geographies, both parties expressed interest in further enhancing cooperation in disaster preparedness and response, leveraging each other’s resources and expertise to build more resilient communities.”
On Wednesday, Logan also visited the Philippine Air Force’s 205th Tactical Helicopter Wing. In a media release, the Philippine Air Force said that the visit was aimed at deepening cooperation and engagement between the Hawaii National Guard and the Philippine air force.
The Hawaii National Guard has a partnership with the Philippine military through the National Guard’s State Partnership Program, which pairs state National Guards around the U.S. with foreign militaries for training exchanges. This year marks 25 years since Hawaii began its partnership with the Philippines.
The visit comes as active-duty troops based in Hawaii are wrapping deployments where they participated in various exercises that they have been conducting in the Philippines over the last three months, including Exercise Balikan, Exercise Salaknib and Exercise Kamandag. U.S. military commanders in Hawaii increasingly see the Philippines as both a key ally and prime operating location to support operations in the western Pacific amid tensions with China.
The Philippines has in recent years found itself embroiled in a bitter dispute with China over territorial and navigation rights at sea. They both claim several disputed islands and reefs in the South China Sea, a busy waterway that more than a third of all international trade moves through.
The Chinese military has built bases on several of them, and Chinese vessels have increasingly attacked Filipino fishermen by ramming their boats and spraying them with high-power water cannons.
The increasing engagement of the U.S. military in the Philippines has been fiercely criticized by several activist groups in Hawaii. The Hawai‘i Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines has charged that the U.S. military’s involvement is escalating tensions and is pushing the Philippines into a confrontation with China, and called on the U.S. and other countries to end support for the Philippine military.
When the National Guard was considering potential partners for the Philippines, Hawaii stood out because of its sizable Filipino population. Many soldiers and airmen in the Hawaii National Guard are of Filipino descent and can speak different languages and dialects used across the country.
The Hawaii National Guard also has a relationship with the Indonesian military through the State Partnership Program that began under Gov. Linda Lingle, who in 2001 was involved in training members of the Indonesian government as they adapted to democratic civilian rule after decades under the bloody dictatorship of a military officer known only as Suharto.
Officials in Indonesia credited the partnership for improving the way the country responds to volcanic eruptions. In 2010, Hawaii National Guardsmen worked with both civilian and military leaders in Indonesia on a simulation of an eruption that officials said paid off when Indonesia’s Mount Merapi volcano erupted in 2010, killing 353 people.
Source: The Garden Island