The two developments were charged with significance. The VFA, by providing a legal framework governing in-country relations between American troops and the Philippine government, allows the reintroduction of large numbers of US military forces into the country indefinitely. Taken together, these developments were, in fact, a confession of the historic failure on the part of both Europeans and Asians to build up regional multilateral systems to ensure the peace. More important, the ARF, while not calling for the dismantling of the system of US military bases, sought to supplant the use or the threat of the use of force with diplomacy within a multilateral framework as the chief mechanism for resolving regional conflicts. But even if the economies of the region had not collapsed, the ARF or any other aspiring system of multilateral security would still have faced a steep uphill struggle.
China is one reason.
Instead of embracing a program of arms reduction, withdrawal of military bases, and collective security, China sought to pursue its security via realpolitik of the most calculating kind. Indeed, Chinese behavior in the Spratlys practically drove the Philippine Senate to embrace the VFA with the United States, notwithstanding the lack of any explicit assurance by Washington that it would intervene on the side of the Philippines in the event of a conflict. Beijing's byzantine realpolitik also undermined the emergence of a more benign security system in Northeast Asia. China's standing up for the withdrawal of foreign bases as part of the development of a multilateral security system could have placed US unilateralism in a more exposed position. Instead, the Chinese followed a policy of encouraging the maintenance of the network of US military bases in South Korea, Japan, and Okinawa to contain what they considered the greater danger of an independent, remilitarized Japan.