[News] America's Indefensible Alliance With The Philippines

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-ramiro-duterte-philippines_us_5a8f3c57e4b01e9e56b9cae1 



  America's Indefensible Alliance With The Philippines

By Rhonda Ramiro and Azadeh Shahshahani - February 23, 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The burgeoning alliance between President Donald Trump 
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/donald-trump> and Philippine 
President Rodrigo Duterte 
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/rodrigo-duterte> appears destined 
to become the 21stcentury version of the Ronald Reagan-Ferdinand Marcos 
alliance.

That union in the 1980s allowed the Marcos dictatorship to last 14 
years, despite Marcos’ notoriety for murdering 
<http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/54a/062.html>over 3,000 people as 
well as jailing 70,000 and torturing 34,000 of his political rivals and 
other innocent people. Reagan stood by his Filipino ally to the bitter 
end, even granting Marcos asylum in Hawaii when it became clear that 
“people power” would soon topple the unsustainable dictatorship. 
According to Reagan, granting a haven to Marcos and 90 of his family 
members and close associates was “in the best interests 
<https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R000504860019-2.pdf>” 
of U.S.-Filipino relations. Those interests included a network of some 
of the largest U.S. military bases in the world at the time.

Such die-hard support for a brutal dictator was immoral back then.

Knowing the legacy of trauma that the Marcos dictatorship inflicted on 
the Filipino people and the country as a whole makes supporting the 
admittedly fascist 
<https://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/-Duterte-Admits-Fascism-Vows-Defeat-of-Communist-Terrorists-and-Crackdown-on-Left-20171121-0038.html>upstart 
dictator Duterte completely unjustifiable today.

When Reagan took power in 1980, Marcos had already been ruling the 
Philippines under martial law for eight years, with the full support of 
former Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter. 
Reagan’s support for an additional six years meant Marcos and his 
military could rack up more human rights abuses with impunity.

Today, Duterte is well on track to surpass the body count of his 
self-proclaimed idol. An estimated 
<http://www.karapatan.org/Karapatan%E2%80%99s+Statement+on+International+Human+Rights+Day+2017>13,000 
people have been killed in the war on drugs; 113 activists have been 
killed under the U.S.-designed counterinsurgency program of the 
Philippine government; and more than 400,000 people have been forcibly 
displaced due to the Philippine military’s aerial bombing of Marawi City 
and nearby communities of indigenous people throughout the southern 
island of Mindanao, under the guise of the war on terrorism. At the rate 
Duterte is going, this could mean the murder of 52,000 more people over 
the remainder of his six-year term.

    The Philippines is home to 100 million people, the majority of whom
    are dirt poor, largely due to 119 years of U.S. policy toward the
    country. 

For his part, Trump has bluntly stated his interest in the Philippines. 
“It is a strategic location ― the most strategic location. And, if you 
look at it, it’s called the most prime piece of real estate from a 
military standpoint,” Trump said 
<https://nypost.com/2017/11/14/trump-offered-to-turn-over-fugitive-never-talked-human-rights-duterte-spokesman/> 
during his visit to the Philippines in November. No need to mince words: 
for the U.S., the Philippines remains, as it has always been, an 
essential cog in the U.S. war machine.

Never mind that today the Philippines is home to 100 million people, the 
majority of whom are dirt poor, largely due to 119 years of U.S. policy 
toward the country. With no sustainable domestic industry to speak of 
and an economy grossly dependent on exports in large part because of the 
colonial legacy left behind by first Spain and then the U.S., the 
Philippines under Marcos began to systematically export its people 
<http://ibon.org/2016/05/anyare-economic-decline-since-marcos/> to work 
in foreign countries — and send remittances home to keep the Philippine 
economy afloat. Today, poverty is so severe that nearly 6,000 Filipinos 
leave the country every single day 
<http://ibon.org/2017/07/dutertenomics-lost-cause/>in search of work; 
the Philippine economy would collapse were it not for $27 billion in 
remittances 
<http://business.inquirer.net/233394/ofw-remittances-5-5-2-3b-may> these 
migrant workers send home annually.

At the turn of the 20thcentury, the U.S. acquired the Philippines as a 
colony and relinquished the country only after World War II, when 
dependable local puppet leaders could be installed and economic and 
military treaties cementing the Philippines to U.S. interests could be 
imposed. These include patently unequal military agreements 
<https://internationalpeoplestribunaldotorg.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/international-peoples-tribunal-ipt-2015-final-verdict.pdf> that 
tie the Philippines to the whims of U.S. imperial ambitions: the Mutual 
Defense Treaty, Mutual Logistics Support Agreement, Visiting Forces 
Agreement and, most recently, the Enhanced Defense Cooperation 
Agreement. These agreements grant the U.S. military expansive access to 
military facilities, land, water and airspace in the Philippines for an 
indeterminate length of time under the guise of “mutual benefit.” 
Conveniently, the U.S. military presence has been focused in 
resource-rich regions of the Philippines, facilitating land-grabbing and 
extraction of the country’s natural wealth by multinational corporations.

Challenges to the constitutionality of the agreements have been brought 
to the Philippine Supreme Court repeatedly as the Filipino masses have 
staunchly protested U.S. military presence and operations on Philippine 
territory for decades. After all, they have experienced the brunt of the 
violence against women and children, toxic waste, forced displacement 
from land and other crimes committed by the U.S. military.

For the U.S. in the 1970s and ’80s, propping up the Marcos regime served 
the purpose of securing its military stronghold in the Pacific 
<https://philpeacecenter.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/us-imperialism-and-the-role-of-overseas-bases-in-us-geopolitical-strategy/>as 
the Cold War approached its climax. Neighboring Vietnam had resoundingly 
defeated the imperialist American invaders just a few years earlier. The 
U.S. and Soviet Union were engaged in a nuclear arms race.

Today, Trump needs Duterte and the Philippines to remain a dependable 
ally for U.S. imperial interests in the Asia Pacific 
<http://ibon.org/2014/04/in-crisis-why-the-us-is-pivoting-to-asia-pacific/>region. 
Trump’s current brinkmanship with North Korea means that the threat of 
nuclear war looms large. Trump has named China repeatedly as one of the 
biggest rivals to U.S. economic superiority in not only the region but 
the world. China, the Philippines and neighboring countries dispute 
territorial control of the waters and islands in the South China/West 
Philippine Sea, which contains vast petrochemical and gas deposits, rich 
marine biodiversity, and sea lanes that facilitate much of the global 
trade and shipping for the entire region.

In January, the U.S. Defense Department announced it had launched the 
counterterrorism mission “Pacific Eagle: Philippines 
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-military-escalates-war-efforts-in-the-philippines-1516357801?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=2>,” 
which is designated as an Overseas Contingency Operation, thereby making 
it eligible for exemptions from spending limits. The operation will only 
strengthen the Duterte regime as it continues to crack down on 
vulnerable minority populations.

The 1 percent may agree with Trump that it is in the best interests of 
/their/America to continue supporting Duterte. The rest of us should not 
be complicit in the slaughter.

Last week, the International Criminal Court officially opened a 
preliminary investigation 
<http://www.jurist.org/paperchase/2018/02/icc-to-probe-possible-human-rights-violations-in-the-philippines.php>into 
allegations of state-sanctioned killings and other human rights 
violations committed by the Philippine National Police under the 
direction of Duterte.

Now, U.S. lawmakers should join others in the international community 
and stop enabling Trump’s agenda in the Asia Pacific to be propped up by 
the rising body count of Filipinos killed under Duterte’s war on drugs 
and war on terrorism. Funding for Duterte’s death squads in the form of 
U.S. Foreign Military Financing aid to the Philippine military and 
police should be struck altogether from future U.S. budget allocations.

Congress should go a step further and study the effect of such 
agreements between the U.S. and the Philippines, such as the Mutual 
Defense Treaty, Visiting Forces Agreement and Enhanced Defense 
Cooperation Agreement. These provide the basis for continued support to 
the Philippine military in the first place, even when these same state 
security forces are implicated in the majority of extrajudicial killings 
and other human rights violations. Moreover, these agreements have been 
used to shield the U.S. military 
<http://www.humanrightsphilippines.net/campaigns/end-the-visiting-forces-agreement/>and 
its personnel from accountability for crimes committed in Philippine 
territory, essentially subordinating Philippine sovereignty to U.S. 
military interests. Is that really any different from Reagan’s 
justification for his granting of asylum to a murderous dictator?

Can the U.S. depart from over 100 years of colonial treatment of the 
Philippines and instead deploy a framework of mutual respect, mutual 
benefit and respect for national sovereignty? Absent this, we should 
expect to birth more puppet presidents and dictators in the Philippines.

/Rhonda Ramiro is the vice chair of BAYAN-USA, an alliance of 20 
Filipino organizations in the U.S. Azadeh Shahshahani (@ashahshahani) is 
legal and advocacy director at Project South and a past president of the 
National Lawyers Guild/.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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