How can we abandon something that was never there to begin with?
They kicked us out in 1992...they know the treaty details full well...maybe you guys don't...
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Subic Bay...talk about abandonment.
Philippines Orders U.S. to Leave Strategic Navy Base at Subic Bay - NYTimes.com
"The Philippines told the United States today that it must withdraw from the Subic Bay naval base by the end of 1992, ending a vast American military presence that began with the capture of the islands from Spain in 1898.
The decision, which resulted from an impasse in negotiations, follows a year of intense talks between the countries on the fate of American bases in the Philippines. The announcement also comes just three days before President Bush begins a 12-day Asian tour.
The shutdown of the sprawling Subic Bay base, together with the closing of Clark Air Base after a volcanic eruption this year,
amounts to the biggest reduction to date in the United States military presence in the western Pacific.
The 60,000-acre Subic base is the Navy's principal supply and ship-repair installation in the region. U.S. to Look for New Sites
Although it is theoretically possible that a new agreement could be hammered out, Administration officials in Washington said that they considered this unlikely, and that they would accelerate the pullout and the search for alternative sites in the Pacific.
American and Philippine officials reached tentative agreement last summer on a treaty that would have extended the lease on the naval base for at least another decade in exchange for $203 million in annual aid. But the Philippine Senate rejected the treaty in September after an impassioned debate in which the American military presence was assailed as a vestige of colonialism and an affront to Philippine sovereignty.
The United States never increased its offer, but opened negotiations on a three-year phased withdrawal in the hope that the lease could be extended after a new government is elected in the Philippines in May.
The negotiations stumbled, officials said, over the United States' reluctance to commit itself to a firm schedule for removing troops and equipment and to guarantee that no nuclear weapons would pass through the base. Though President Bush has said that tactical nuclear weapons will be removed from surface warships, it is assumed that many of the ships that pass through the port are armed with them now.
But over the past month it has become clear in any case that the American military was reconciled to losing the base, and saw little use in dragging out the process. By the middle of 1993, most of the American personnel and much of the movable equipment would have been moved elsewhere, at a cost of billions of dollars, and sending them back would have probably proved prohibitively expensive.
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Once it begins, it is an irreversible process," a senior American official said today. "The bottom line is that we are gone."
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This started the whole decline of the US in Asia.
