“Nationalism is nourished by a sense of history.

It is of its essence to know profoundly the past, so that

we may be in completer openness with the men who made that history and in intimate communion with
their thoughts, their deed, and their noble lives”

- Claro M. Recto, Jr.

The Philippines hosted the first joint military exercises with the United States under the
administration of President Rodrigo Duterte. According to the U.S. embassy, the humanitarian and civic
assistance portion of the exercise includes engineering projects to improve local infrastructure and
health engagements to exchange medical best practices. While field training during the exercise includes
small arms and artillery live-fire. On Oct. 11, 2016, Philippine and US marines decided to cut short their
joint military exercises. The Philippine president says he will not abrogate a defense treaty with the
United States but is questioning its importance and that of joint combat exercises, which he says only
benefit America. President Rodrigo Duterte criticized the United States and his country's engagement
with the American military in a speech Tuesday as Philippine marines and their American counterparts
ended combat drills a day early.

In order to analyse or assess this current issue or situation, let us take the political thoughts of
Diokno and Tañada on nationalism. As stated by Tañada (1965), We have been living by illusions for such
a long time that we seem not to have noticed the changing realities of our time. We belong to neither
the advanced capitalist countries nor socialist camps. Our thinking and behavior, however, belie our real
status - that we are a developing nation. He elaborated on his book entitled The Myths We Live By
(1965) that because we have refused to recognize our real status, we have not only resisted,we have
even abetted foreign economic domination. We have been deluded into thinking that this is the correct
road, because we are so anxious to establish affinity with an advanced power and because we believe
any other road is unwise. On the myth of special relations, for so many years we have been acting as if
we were special favorites of America. We feel especially privileged because we have "special
relations" with America and America has a special place for us in her heart. Yet, this is not so; he also
even wonder if it has been so. Let us remind ourselves of the bitter start of the American intrusion into
our shores. Similarly, America's attitude towards Philippine independence followed the dictates of her
own self-interest. her recognition of our independence became possible only as a result of the
confluence of forces in America and these included the dairy industries, the sugar interests, American
labor, etc., which wanted to deprive us of our preferred position in the American market because we
were competing with their own interests. Parity was imposed in exchange for war damage
payments. Free trade was moreover guaranteed for a definite period. What did those signify? The
perpetuation of our colonial-type economy and the stifling relations with America are being invoked to
give Americans more rights than Filipinos themselves in the case of retail trade nationalizations and to
demand the continuation of rights acquired under parity after 1974.

Under parity, we have alienated huge tracts of our national patrimony to American corporations. Under
parity, we have imported billions of pesos worth of duty-free American goods and exported to the
United States less than a third in value of our export commodities. the influx of American goods
prevented industrialization. Professor George Taylor has observed: " it has to be admitted that the U.S.
set up for its citizens monopolistic advantages. Through the American Chamber of Commerce and
through the American Embassy, the Americans can bring pressure to bear on a weak government and in
some instances, this pressure may well make it more difficult for that government to carry out its own
reform." On Diokno, it must be noted that he believed that for whatever reason, be it one's nurturing,
genes or self-knowledge or a combination of all these, a rare and exemplary one becomes a hero. And
we hear and read about individuals who have lived as heroes, that is, nationalistic individuals who
fought for the betterment of the common tao, who were, as we would love to reminisce: decent human
beings, decent public officials or politicians, leader-statesmen, with character, courage and
integrity. Therefore, all of these ideas by these 2 Filipino political thinkers greatly manifested and
applied on the act done by our President Duterte. In my opinion, even though there is a presence of
mutual agreement between the parties, we must not lose the identity we have as Filipinos and protect
our nation as much as we can. It is not all about pride or what but it is all about who we are as the
descendants of the Philippines. We are responsible to protect our nation, I am not saying that we must
not refuse the help of the other countries most specially during war, I am just only emphasizing that our
actions have consequences we do not know who our friends are because maybe one day we, the
Filipinos, may suddenly wake up that we are being colonized “again” by those nations who are helping
us.