Repeated exercises gradually convert informal access into guaranteed crisis-use rights

Evidence

The Filipino security analyst Herbert Docena explains, “U.S. military strategists consider these training exercises as a way of securing on-again, off-again, but continuous access to the country where they are training.” He quotes former Pacific Command commander Admiral Thomas Fargo as saying, “Access over time can develop into habitual use of certain facilities by deployed U.S. forces with the eventual goal of being guaranteed use in a crisis, or permission to pre-position logistics stocks and other critical material in strategic forward locations.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 985

Categorization

• DEFINE: Fargo’s quote effectively defines the lily-pad mechanism: how exercise-based access escalates into semi-permanent basing rights.
• QUESTION: When was the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement signed, and has it been renewed or expanded since?
• XREF: connects to: Service generosity expands in crisis periods and contracts in quiescence. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1309