With Strings Attached: Philippines as U.S. neocolony
By Marianne Zen Therese De Jesus
For several decades, the United States has long been parading as an ally of every country, including the Philippines. High-ranking US government officials meet other countries’ state leaders in a series of engagements where they vow to bolster ties in the guise of lending helping hands through humanitarian assistance, foreign aid, and protection in adversity.
In just six months since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took the helm, both US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Philippines on the pretext of improving bilateral relations amid the challenge the Indo-Pacific, where the Philippines belongs to, is facing.
But history is a testament that courtesy calls of state leaders are just “the tip of the iceberg” that is their agenda. Visits such as that of Blinken and Harris signal its long-standing commitment to perpetuate its imperialist interests in the region at a time when a new puppet has been installed eager to kowtow to his masters.
Legalizing subservience
It was a tumultuous time for a country that has long been subjugated by powers-that-be. While the people were searching the path toward independence, colonial masters allied with bureaucrat elites built bridges that would lay the groundwork for the roots of subservience of the Philippines to the United States.
The Philippine-American Military Bases Agreement (MBA) and the Philippine-American Military Assistance Agreement (MAA) were signed to cement the U.S. position in the region. And in 1951, a big leap in the Philippines’ relationship with the U.S. materialized when Washington and Manila formally ratified the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) that would serve as an accord for both parties to support each other if either of them were to be attacked by another country.
At a cursory glance, this may seem like a triumph to Philippine security. Being coddled by a world power at a time of immense struggle and economic devastation in the country entails a fleck of certainty in the economy and military, but behind the grins of two heads of state signing the treaty lies the real intent of the global power and Filipino elites. This would set the bedrock of the Philippines’ dependency on the U.S.
Through the MBA, the presence of American troops became more rampant as the Philippine government allowed 23 military bases in the country, including the Clark Air Force Base in Pampanga and the naval installation in Subic Bay in Zambales, for 99 years.
Stark provisions of the 29-article MBA include the prohibition of the Philippine government from granting bases with other countries without U.S. affirmation and the permission to recruit Filipinos to the U.S. Army.
Such clauses blatantly disregard the autonomy of the Philippines to decide on its own territorial jurisdiction. The granting of permission to the U.S. only allows them to internally operate in the country despite the massive protest from the Filipino masses for the Western forces to leave the Philippines after the Second World War.
The MBA, due to its unequal provisions, was then reviewed and changed from 99 years to 25 years of the lease. In 1992, the MBA was terminated and the bases were turned over to the Philippine government.
While the agreement lapsed in 1992, the Philippine government once again showed its docility to the Western forces when it ratified the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) in 1999. To aggravate the bilateral ties, the Mutual Logistic Support Agreement (MLSA), an agreement responsible for providing the supplies and services was penned in 2002. Both agreements have paved the way for the presence of U.S. troops in the lands of the Philippines and engage in joint military exercises.
The ratification of these treaties struck a blow against the Filipinos’ interests. Persistence of their presence only paves the way for the country to be a scapegoat and entangled in the chains of global wars perpetrated by the US.
Proxy war pawn
The U.S. emerged as a world power after the Second World War. It tries to maintain its hegemony in the postwar era by establishing bases in different countries making them a geostrategic pawn.
If we are to go back to the height of the Cold War, the MDT became the weapon of the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense consisting of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
The U.S., on many occasions, trampled on Philippine diplomatic affairs to dangle its tentacles. Filipino troops were sent to Korea in the 1950s in an attempt by the U.S. to intervene in the Korean War. Despite the Philippines not being directly affected by the Korean War, Filipino legislators sent Filipino troops to show sincerity to the pact that it entered into, which in return the U.S. Congress added $30 million for military aid to the Philippines and other countries in the Indo-Pacific region.
In the 1960s, the U.S. once again compelled the Macapagal administration to send troops to Vietnam to fight against the Vietnamese liberators. The same accord was repeatedly weaponized by the U.S. in its intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan to serve its own geopolitical interest. Time and again, the U.S. undermines Philippine diplomatic relations and security.
The U.S.’s influence has been shaken by the turn of the 21st century. For most of history, it is a western country that dominated the narrative of being the world superpower but China’s economy has put east Asia in the limelight.
It was 2008 when the new American president was elected. Barack Obama pictured himself as the “first Pacific President” and postured the need for more American presence, may it be in economic and military, in the Pacific after years of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama, being at the helm, made a massive shift in the U.S. foreign policy as it employed the ‘Pivot to Asia’ in the Indo-Pacific region. Also in the same region lies the world’s second-largest economy that threatened the assertion of the U.S. in the region.
Under the ‘Pivot to Asia’ strategy, the U.S. made bilateral talks with the nations in the region to assert its primacy by acting as an ally and reaffirming America’s vital position in the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
Tactical to this strategy is the territorial dispute of littoral states over various conflicting claims in the South China Sea. Keeping the waters for commercial activities is a must despite the gradual build-up of China’s military bases, but realpolitik says otherwise. In China’s bid to counter the US, it has recalibrated its military, economic, and diplomatic agenda in the region which further escalated the tensions in the region.
In the Philippines, the changing environment gave green light to then President Benigno Noynoy Aquino to expand its alliance with the United States through the penning of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) in 2014. In other words, the agreement with the US made the Philippines more vulnerable in the region due to US aggression.
Short-term modernization programs and increased military assistance from the US, with a soaring amount from US$45 million in 2013 to US$153 million in 2016 were given to the Philippine government, in the name of making the Philippines a pawn in the proxy war the US has catalyzed.
Losers in the war
Within the political arena in the Philippines, as it had its recent elections in May 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden was the first to take his hat off to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. even before the final announcement of his victory. Despite the heavy fines of the U.S. court in 1995 because of gross human rights violations under his father’s regime, Marcos Jr. was granted immunity once he assumed the presidency. As expected, Marcos Jr. openly stated his support for the mutual defense treaty with the US. The picture only becomes more vivid why the Harris-Biden administration turns a blind eye to the very reason why Marcos Jr. could not set his feet in the U.S.
U.S. geopolitical strategies from Obama’s term until the current Biden-Harris administration are no different from one another. The specifics of each agreement may be disparate but the goal has always been clear: the US is waging wars to maintain itself as a hegemon.
Until today, the US strengthened its “Pivot to Asia ‘’ policy as it sees China as an imperialist rival. The recent trips of Blinken and Harris in the Philippines set the scene for rebuilding U.S. military bases in Basa Air Base in Pampanga, Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, Lumbia Air Base in Cagayan de Oro City, Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base in Cebu, and Antonio Bautista Air Base in Palawan, near the Kalayaan Group of Islands.
The positioning of the Antonio Bautista Air Base in the disputed territories signals U.S. military assertion in the region to contain China’s expansion, and prepare for possible direct or indirect imperialist wars.
In Harris’ trip to Palawan, she once again echoed the longstanding theatrics of Washington — that they are present to rally around with their foes but their words ring hollow because it is them that pushes Filipinos on the brink.
Continuous ties with the U.S. has only led Filipinos to be dragged into proxy wars. The murder of Jennifer Laude, the 2005 Subic rape case, and other untold narratives of gross human rights violations committed by the military themselves remain in the backseat under regimes that are fixated on foreign military financing.
In the end, it is the Filipinos who bear the brunt of unfair bilateral agreements and a turbulent international political environment manipulated by the hegemonic U.S.
With the Philippine foreign policy retaining its status of stagnation during Marcos’s presidency, it must be recognized that the roots of subservience run deep in early Philippine-U.S. relations and have ensured that this subservience manifests itself in times of conflict facing the Western power.
It is high time the government heeds the calls of the people. It must reposition itself not as a pawn in a sick game the U.S. is playing. The Philippines has been a U.S. colony long enough.
This article was published in The Manila Collegian’s November 2022 Issue
