By Dzirhan Mahadzir
The notion that Malaysia may offer the U.S. Navy a base for surveillance aircraft is laughable.
There’s been a fair amount of reports on U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert’s supposed remarks that Malaysia is offering a base in east Malaysia for U.S. Navy P-8s. Despite the U.S. Navy clarifying his remarks and claiming he’d been quoted out of a context, the “base offer” was too good a story for the U.S. media to pass on. Unfortunately, many of the reports miss the dynamics of how U.S.-Malaysia military cooperation actually works, as anyone familiar with Malaysian security policy would find the notion of Malaysia allowing the United States to regularly stage surveillance missions from its airbases laughable.
The fact is, except under the ambit of the Five Power Defense Arrangement, all of Malaysia’s foreign military cooperation activities must be agreed to on a case-by-case basis. That is, at a minimum, the United States would have to ask for Malaysia’s approval for every deployment. It might be hard for anyone outside of defense circles in Malaysia to accept, but Malaysia’s military cooperation activities are conducted on an ad-hoc basis and often based on opportunities provided by a deployment that takes place close to or in the vicinity of Malaysia.
For instance, last year when the U.S.S. Boxer was transiting through the Malacca Straits with no engagement activity or exercises with Malaysia planned, the United States offered to fly Malaysian military and defense officials via V-22 Ospreys to the ship to see U.S. Marines’ capabilities onboard and engage in briefings and discussions, an offer which Malaysia accepted. Similarly, in June last year, when the French LPD F.N.S. Tonnerre was on a deployment tour in the region, France put in a request to Malaysia’s Joint Force Headquarters (JFHQ) for an amphibious landing exercise but JFHQ declined, saying it was tied up with the ongoing CARAT 2013 exercise with the United States. It did refer the French to the Malaysian Army Headquarters who could accommodate the request.
These two examples illustrate that Malaysia’s military cooperation activities with other countries are often on an ad-hoc basis, rather than occurring as part of a highly formalized arrangement. As Malaysia wishes to preserve its ambit of neutrality, any activity has to be offered in such a manner so that Malaysia can decide whether to allow it based on its own merits and whether the timing is suitable – for example, requests during Ramadan or the Eid Fitri celebration period are typically denied.
Read the full story at The Diplomat