PH-US pact bad copy of Bulgarian, Romanian treaties

The “Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement” (EDCA) that President Aquino entered into with the United States was copied, very badly, however, from the military treaties the US entered into with two Balkan countries, Romania in 2005 and Bulgaria in 2006. That was during the height of the America’s Global War on Terrror and when these countries were trying very hard to prove that they would be good European Union members. (Both joined the EU in 2007.)

Drawing lessons from its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, during which its supply lines were dangerously thinly stretched, the US transformed these Balkan countries’ military bases as its “forward operating sites” (FOS), as Pentagon jargon puts it, for conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe (such as the Bosnian war)—without the huge costs required by permanent bases.