At the front lines

At the front lines

The statement of reassurance from US President Barack Obama was simple and straightforward. “One of our core principles is when our friends are in trouble, America helps,” he said at a news conference about a week after Supertyphoon “Yolanda” left a catastrophic trail in the Visayas. There is no question that the United States has certainly come to the Philippines’ aid; in fact, it was and remains the largest source of relief assistance in the two weeks since the typhoon made landfall.

The dexterous Osprey, the US military’s new workhorse, may be the most potent symbol of this indispensable American assistance. (The aircraft carrier USS George Washington may be another.) It is no small irony, however, that even as American diplomats and military officials emphasize how closely US military forces and aid organizations work with Philippine authorities, too many Filipinos don’t see any kind of meaningful Philippine participation at all.

The initial response of the Chinese government (a donation of $100,000, since increased by a magnitude) only served to sharpen the contrast with the robust American deployment of men and resources. As of last Friday, the US Agency for International Development estimated the total amount of US “humanitarian funding” to the Philippines at almost $52 million. The total, however, includes the cost of the US military’s relief operations—a number that was already at almost $22 million last Friday and which increases every day.

It will continue to increase, despite the departure of the George Washington after over a week of intense activity off the coast of Samar. The arrival of the dock landing ships USS Ashland and USS Germantown is a signal that the work is shifting from rescue and relief to recovery and rehabilitation; the two ships allow for more effective ship-to-shore transfer of resources.

As the United States proved in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, an overwhelming tragedy which killed hundreds of thousands of people, its military is second to none at this kind of work. But it is the first to stress that its forces coordinate with the local authority. The man in charge of American relief operations, Brig. Gen. Paul Kennedy, for instance, has been emphatic about the cooperation he has received from both the national government and the local government units.

A week after Yolanda, he criticized continuing media reports about alleged lawlessness in the most affected areas. He said: “All I have seen is a steady stream of the Philippine Army, the Philippine Navy, the local police [into the disaster zone]. All of these reports of the lawlessness and the security situation are degrading, I think they have an agenda.”

A day before that, he told NBC News he found the government had responded strongly to the crisis. Speaking of the other militaries already present in the disaster zone, and all coordinating with the Philippine government, he said: “We’ll get a handle on this, we think that we’ve seen signs of us turning a corner, certainly in local areas we’ve made a huge difference. We just need confidence from the people that are watching.”

It is possible, of course, that he was merely being diplomatic about the limitations of the government, but it is passing sad to see some Filipinos dismiss outright the possibility that he could, in fact, have been speaking the unvarnished truth.

From the brink

AT THE proverbial last minute, delegates to the 19th United Nations climate change conference in Warsaw managed to reach consensus on two key agreements, raising hopes around the world that it may still be possible to achieve an honest-to-goodness breakthrough treaty two years from now, in Paris.

Yesterday’s editorial had all but counted out the seriously compromised Warsaw talks; but exhausted delegates extended the negotiations by one more day, and at the end had agreed on two deals: one dealing with a new system for each country to propose reductions in its greenhouse gas emissions, and another with so-called loss and damage, a way for at-risk countries to recover the financial costs related to damage wrought by climate change.

To be sure, these are minimalist agreements; they do not guarantee that the 21st climate change conference in Paris will prove decisive. At the least, though, they make a breakthrough agreement possible. For that, they are decidedly welcome.