A Realistic Foreign Policy For The Philippines - Renato Constantino PDF

V I N T A G E R E C T O : Selected & Edited by Renato Constantino
A Realistic Foreign
Policy for the Philippines
This speech was delivered in commemoration of President Quezon's 78th birthday.
Recto took advantage of the occasion to air his views on foreign policy. He was already
on a collision course with President Magsaysay and he had announced his intention to
run for President.
Though outdated in many parts, this speech shows Recto breaking away from the
mold of the traditional Filipino politician, ever mindful of American power to make or
break political careers. Here Recto is explicit in his criticisms of our political, economic
and military relationships with the United States. No presidential candidate in the history
of Philippine politics (then and since) has been as courageous as Recto in the
articulation of what were considered unorthodox, if not subversive ideas on the state of
the nation and of the world. Many of Recto's descriptions of his period are applicable to
our time and many of the present dissident views are refinements of theses delineated in
this piece written three decades ago. A month later, he delivered before the same
audience his economic views in a speech entitled "A Realistic Economic Policy for the
Philippines."
Speech delivered before the "Y" Men's Club on August 1956 on the occasion of Quezon's
78th birth anniversary.
WE ARE PRIVILEGED TO COMMEMORATE TONIGHT THE BIRTHDAY

anniversary of a great Filipino leader, and I am complimented that you should choose me
as your guestspeaker for the occasion.
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Quezon, a Realist
Your election of the subject of my talk: "A Realistic Foreign Policy for the
Philippines," is a fitting tribute to Quezon's memory. Because if we are once more to
examine Quezon's political philosophy we shall find that realism was the most
outstanding characteristic of his entire career as a statesman and a politician.
I wonder if Quezon had ever read William James. I am rather inclined to think that he
had not. But whether he had or not he was politically a pragmatist. Many a contemporary
of that dynamic leader believed that he was just an opportunist, a sensitive weathercock
that veered with every change of opinion I once called him, in Spanish, in one of our
debates, "viento de los cuatro cuadrantes," he was proAmerican in early morning and
antiAmerican in late afternoon, and while his battlecry against his political adversaries
like the "Federales" and the "Progresistas" was "immediate" independence, he would
accept the "Fairchild bill" which provided for independence after a 25year transition
period. But, in justice to Quezon, what seemed to his opponents opportunism or
fickleness in his political behavior was no more than his philosophy of realism which in
him was purely intuitive, devoid of any set rules or principles. He was unbeatable
because he was a realist, because he had his feet planted on solid ground. Osmeña,
Roxas, Sumulong, who became his opponents at one time or another and were men of no
lesser intellects and capabilities, could not dislodge him from his position of power and
leadership, theorists that they were. Even the National Assembly, through appropriate
constitutional amendment, shortly before the expiry of his sixyear presidential term, had
to accommodate him for two more years in power, and when he was a war refugee in
Washington in 1941 the American Congress extended his term further, without any color
of legality, until the termination of the war, to the chagrin and exasperation of Vice
President Osmeña. He always had his way, that great empiricist, until his confinement in
Saranac where he was soon to face the greatest of all realities – death.
One of the chronic infirmities of the national character with particular regard to
FilipinoAmerican relations is our naiveté. Americans and some of our countrymen of
convenient persuasion have been fostering it to the former's delight and the latter's profit.
It is my firm belief, however, that such relationship would stand on a sounder basis if we,
in earnestness and sincerity, appraise its realities against the realities of the world and
adjust our conduct to our findings.
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But as we can not effect a radical change overnight, let us be realists at least for this
evening; tomorrow we may resume, if still so compelled by force of habit, our
daydreaming as we go about the many and varied cares of our lives.
The Need to Be Realists
To be realists we must free our minds from our habits of complacency and the foolish
illusion that we play a big role in the international game of politics as if we were
ourselves a great power, and that our national leaders can talk of war with as much
bravado as Dulles, Eden, Bulganin, or Nasser who, after all, has the Suez Canal, the
Middle East oil and the whole Arab world to back it up.
To be realists we must cease believing that there is such a thing as altruism among
nations, because, as that great realist George Washington counseled the American people
in his political last will and testament known as Farewell Address: "It is folly in one
nation to look for disinterested favors from another: it must pay with a portion of its
independence for whatever it may accept under that character; and by such acceptance it
may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet
of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error
than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which
experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard. "
To be a realist is to subscribe to the proposition that in a world where the nationstate
system still prevails every state takes care of its own national interests, and it is the
responsibility of the government to determine what those interests are, specially those of
lasting nature, and to adopt and carry out the necessary policies towards safeguarding
them, sacrificing if necessary the more transitory interests, as, for instance, temporary
trade advantages, in the same way that the good strategist fore goes a battle to win the
war.
Myth of Altruism
To be a realist is to accept the fact that it is to serve her own selfinterest and to
safeguard her security as a nation and her position as a world leader, and only
incidentally for our protection, that America has built up her imposing military and
diplomatic establishments in our country, and it is only in that sense that the words
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"common defense," "mutual security" and "partnership" must be understood.
As the realist Quezon said as early as 1935: "Let no one be so naive as to think that
any nation will ever fight for the Philippines unless it is to that nation's own interest to do
so... If and when a nation does fight for us, she will not do it just for love."
In one of the addresses I delivered in the course of the Senate debate on the Formosa
question a year ago, and also in answer to interpellations on the floor, I made the
following statements which, in my humble opinion, have not lost their validity:
America will defend Formosa and the Philippines according to her own selfinterest
and not for considerations of friendship or altruism. America has made repeated
announcements of her true motives, and we should not be naive enough to assume that
the fortunes of the Philippines will influence her course of action in this area.
If America decides to abandon Southeast Asia, and consequently the Philippines, in
the interest of her own security, she will do so even if we beg her on our knees to stay.
For the present, all that we can hope for is that America, in defending her own security
and selfinterest and her position in the Pacific as a world leader will incidentally find it
necessary to defend us. But we should not be ingenuous to the extent of believing that we
are the beloved people of America, and that even if her own selfinterest and security are
not involved she will come to us in the nation's hour of need. It is about time we make
what Mr. Dulles calls an "agonizing reappraisal" of the true character of Philippine
American relations.
SENATOR PERALTA. Sir, you made that serious statement that the United States
will defend the Philippines only if her selfinterest demands it.
SENATOR RECTO. That is correct, because that has been announced time and
again by highly placed American officials. A few quotations will suffice. President
Eisenhower said in his message: "In the Western Pacific a situation is developing in the
Formosa Straits that seriously imperils the peace and our security."
Senator George, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the U. S.
Senate, said recently on the Formosa question: "Chiang and the American public should
be aware that we (Americans) will not become active parties to landing Chiang on the
mainland. Whatever we (Americans) do (regarding the Formosa situation) will be solely
a defensive movement in our own selfinterest. "
Last year, on April 1954, to be exact, President Eisenhower gave the warning on the
frightful consequences of the loss of IndoChina because of the resulting loss of raw
materials to the United States: "... The Communists would gain control over millions and
millions of people, potential slave laborers and potential cannon fodder. Equally
important, they would gain vast natural resources which the free world desperately needs
tin, rubber, and tungsten. " A few days later President Eisenhower renewed his warning,
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saying: "The loss of IndoChina would set off the loss of Burma, of Thailand, of the
Malay Peninsula and Indonesia. This would not only multiply the disadvantages the U. S.
would suffer through loss of materials, or sources of materials, but it would involve
millions and millions of the people, and would create a new geographical position."
* * *
That is why I believe that ... sentimentalism and emotionalism should not be allowed
to play a part in the consideration of matters affecting international relations. After all, in
formulating their policies the Americans are just being faithful to their traditions. We
must therefore take Washington's last message to his countrymen, "We will choose war
or peace as our selfinterest guided by justice shall counsel," as an irrevocable postulate
and norm of American foreign policy. The United States will fight for us, for Formosa,
for Japan, for the world, only if its own selfinterest shall require it.
SENATOR PERALTA. Therefore your main argument is that inasmuch as you
doubt that the United States will fight a war unless it is in her own selfinterest, the
Philippines should take a cautious attitude.
SENATOR RECTO. Exactly, because Secretary Acheson five years ago, speaking
for the Government of the United States, said that Formosa and the Philippines were
definitely outside the defense perimeter of the United States in the Pacific.
Mr. Dulles was, at that time, a troubleshooter for the State Department and made no
comment on Acheson's announced policy on America's perimeter of security. When the
Republicans took over and Dulles became Secretary of State, he reversed Acheson. As a
result, Formosa and the Philippines, and all Southeast Asia, for that matter, are now
found again within said perimeter. The American elections next November will tell what
America's Southeast Asia policy will be in the next four years.
The subject of my talk, which is of your own choosing, implies that we do have a
foreign policy of some sort, but that it suffers from lack of realism.
The Philippines as Genuine Protectorate
We must admit, if we are true realists, that we have no foreign policy at all to speak
of. What we have been calling our. foreign policy is nothing more than the habit we had
formed while still a Commonwealth and carried over even after our independence was
proclaimed by America ten years ago, of allowing her to shape and regulate our every
policy and following blindly her lead in international relations. You may call that a
foreign policy but only in the sense that it is entirely foreign or alien to the concept of a
genuinely independent state, formulated and implemented as it is by the American State
Department through the Philippine Embassy in Washington and the American Embassy
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in Manila. Our relations with those countries where we have established diplomatic
missions, like England, France, Spain, Italy, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Argentina,
and Mexico, are governed by instructions and injunctions issuing from the same source.
For all practical purposes the Philippine Embassy in Washington is but the
"Philippine desk" in the State Department, and the American Embassy in Manila is,
rather than a diplomatic mission, a virtual extension of the State Department, assisted by
Admirals and Generals commanding naval and military bases, and by JUSMAG, the
Pentagon's general overseer of our military establishments, which has made its pressure
felt even in the matter of promotion of top officers in our armed services.
Our treaties, bilateral or multilateral, with the United States, like the socalled Mutual
Defense Treaty, the San Francisco Peace Treaty, and the SEATO, were drafted and
written by the American State Department to the last comma and dotted lines on which
our representatives, pretentiously called plenipotentiaries, affixed their signatures. The
entire national territory is littered with American military bases over which the Philippine
flag does not fly and within which our Constitution and laws do not operate, and where
our own citizens are not permitted to extract minerals in spite of express stipulations in
the Bases Agreement acknowledging that right.
That great Filipino thinker and statesman, Senator Juan Sumulong, said on the dawn
of the Philippine Commonwealth that, "in planning to establish permanent naval bases
here the United States was planning to establish an American protectorate." Quezon
expressed his implied agreement when, answering Sumulong, he reassured our people
saying, "I am against American protectorate because I am for full and complete
independence; independence that is not complete is no independence except in name."
Our foreign trade and our natural resources and public utilities are partly governed by
an Act of the U. S. Congress, the Bell Act, and its later version, the LaurelLangley
Agreement, and our peso is inextricably tied up with the American dollar. In the face of
all this national defense and foreign relations and foreign trade in the hands of an alien
power and with that strange tendency we have so successfully developed to think that
we cannot survive as a nation without alien care and protection, I wonder if there can be
any honest doubt that we are, not in name but in point of fact, a genuine protectorate, and
therefore, without any foreign policy of our own, one that would have only the national
interest as purpose and guide in our international relations.
After what I have said there would seem to be no further need for elaborating on my
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subject since the conditions necessary for building up a foreign policy, whether realistic
or otherwise, do not exist, and will not exist for some time, certainly not during the
lifetime of the generation to which I belong. However, for what it may be worth, I shall
give my views on what should be a realistic foreign policy for the Philippines if in some
distant future we should become courageous enough to establish its indispensable
predicate independence discerning and judicious enough to formulate the policy and
bold enough to carry it out.
Realities in the World Situation
World realities ten or eleven years ago (19451956) were radically different from
those of today. The same is true of the realities in the Philippines then and now.
To better appreciate the meaning of present world realities we must analyze them in
their changing process from world cooperation to antagonism and cold war among the
powers that fought together the totalitarian enemy and were still allies on the morrow of
their victory in the last war; and again from the tensions of th cold war to a state of
comparative tranquility featured by competitive but peaceful coexistence, with perhaps
some degree of political understanding. '
The period of cooperation which ended in 1945 soon after the organization of the
United Nations was represented by Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam. The succeeding period,
that of antagonism, and cold war, started with the ByrnesBevin Doctrine in August 1945
when the United States and Britain challenged for the first time the Soviet position in
East Europe, a challenge which evoked no little fear and much disquietude and
apprehension in Moscow. The third period which eased, though not necessarily ended,
ten years of cold war tension, began in Bandung in April 1955, developed in Geneva in
July of the same year, and is continuing at present as may be seen in the Soviets' new
approach to the problems of world peace which has provoked a variety of reactions in the
free world and among the neutral countries particularly in Asia. It is most significant in
this respect that this same trend has become manifest even in the religious field,
considering the generally acknowledged godlessness of the Communists. Only a week
ago the central committee of the World Council of Churches met in Hungary, a
Communist territory. There Were in attendance ninety Committee men, and over three
hundred delegates and observers, including those from Red China, Czechoslovakia,
Romania and Poland. It was reportedly announced at that conference that the Russian
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Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate would arrange some time next winter a conference with
representatives of the World Council.
At the time the war ended in Europe the United States was about to perfect the
newest and the most revolutionary weapon yet to be known the atomic bomb. It was
testexploded in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, two days before Potsdam,
and dropped on Hiroshima on August 5. It was the result of five years of secret intensive
research and work to which only few officials besides Roosevelt were privy. Had
Roosevelt survived his term the cold war might have been avoided or at least postponed
till the end of his tenure.
The atomic bomb caught the American people psychologically unprepared. The
feelings of one with a monopoly on the most fearful weapon could well be imagined.
Churchill, thenrelegated to the Loyal Opposition but still the leader of England, seizing
the psychological opportunity thus presented spoke before the Westminster College, at
Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, President Truman himself introducing the speaker to
the audience, a unique distinction Churchill acknowledged. The occasion was the
conferment of an honorary degree on Churchill, but it may well have been for the purpose
he had in mind, for the stage was so prepared as if for the whole world to take notice of
the transcendental performance. In his speech the British statesman called for an Anglo
American partnership in a holy crusade against communism. His words, as probably so
intended, intensified the cold war. Soon some American leaders were calling for a
"preventive war." Chiang Kaishek, thinking it was his chance, immediately threw
overboard his agreement with the Communists which had been laboriously brought into
being through the efforts of General Marshall. But he acted too soon. His timing was
poor. In less than four years he had to take refuge in Formosa.
A year later the Marshall Plan was born. As a move to counter the dangerous inroads
of the Communists in West Europe, it was successful. In France and Italy the
Communists were dropped from the cabinet. But as the Western European countries were
rehabilitated and enabled to expand their industrial facilities, not only were they restored
to prosperity, but they began to compete with the United States in the export of
manufactured goods and found themselves more and more inclined to be independent of
American policies.
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The Nuclear Stalemate
As Roosevelt must have known, and as atomic scientists like Oppenheimer, who
directed the project that wrought the atomic bomb, also knew, it was simply impossible to
maintain a monopoly on the Abomb. Its production by other countries was only a matter
of time, since the theories of atoms were already known to scientists in the advanced
industrialized countries, and only the final details remained to be solved. Oppenheimer
allowed eighteen months for others to solve the engineering problem, but Soviet
espionage must have accelerated its solution for the Communists. Molotov announced a
year later that the United States no longer had monopoly on the bomb. In late 1949
Truman admitted that Russia had exploded her own atomic bomb.
The cold war polarized the world. Two powers were raised to a new category of
Super Powers or Giant Powers. The NATO was established in 1949 in order to stem and
roll back the Communist tide in Europe. In that setting America found herself
shouldering an unusually large share of the responsibility for galvanizing and
maintaining the Atlantic Alliance, and aiding her followers in Asia. Her military budget
increased, and so did the foreign aid grants since many nations tried to cash in on their
military commitments to the United States. But even before an adequate force could be
organized for the objectives set forth other elements in the complex world situation were
already at work undermining the efficacy of NATO as a purely military alliance.
The years from 1948 to 1951, inclusive, were critical years. Joseph Alsop, well
known for his accuracy as a reporter and commentator, said the United States had three
years of comfortable military superiority. The "preventive war" school of thought was
active during those years. Even the late President Quirino, while still Secretary of Foreign
Affairs, predicted in April 1948 with more boldness than accuracy that World War III
would start before Christmas of that year. It seems that the calculations of his informants
had been based on the expected victory of Dewey over Truman in November of that year
and on the hope and in the belief that the "preventive war" faction in the Republican party
had a decisive voice in its high councils. But Truman won and one of his first public acts
was to scotch the idea of a preventive war saying that a war to prevent a war was war
itself and the United States was opposed to it.
But as late as 1951 the United States had been thought of as militarily
unchallengeable. MacArthur wanted to push the Korean war beyond the Yalu saying
"there is no substitute for victory." Whatever one might say of MacArthur, who
unceremoniously rejected the Philippines' bid to participate in the Japanese surrender
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ceremonies, one cannot deny that he is an American patriot, a politicomilitary strategist,
and, for that reason, an imperialist. He urged American control of East Asia in order to
save the states of the Pacific coast from attack in case of war, and spoke of the vast
Pacific Ocean as a desirable American lake. He had always stood for American power,
basking in the glorious sight of the American eagle spreading its vast wings over the
whole world just as Churchill had stood for the British Empire saying that he had not
been made Prime Minister to preside over its dissolution.
But in 1953 it was apparent that things had changed. Among the leaders of the
Western World, Churchill as in the past was the first to recognize the fastchanging
situation. In mid1952 he flew to Washington bringing with him the three chiefs of
Britain's Armed Services who unanimously reported on the disturbing growth of the
Soviet air power. Before the American elections of 1952, a committee of scientists from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, appointed by Truman to evaluate the
capability of the Soviet Air Force, submitted its report. The document, known as the
Project Lincoln Report, spoke of Russia's capability within two years to devastate the
United States, with emphasis on the use of the word "devastate" in its dictionary
meaning, i. e., to cripple to such an extent as to destroy the ability to resist. In the summer
of 1953 President Eisenhower decided on "Operations Candor" which were to begin in
early October, and in which he and his cabinet were to make a series of public addresses
to acquaint the American people with the new situation. Later he dropped the project and
opted to speak on "AtomsforPeace" before the United Nations General Assembly on
December 8, 1953.
The hydrogen bomb and the intercontinental bombers to carry and deliver it were
added to the arsenals of the Giant Powers. The intercontinental ballistic missile with a
nuclear warhead is already an actuality or soon will be. A nuclear stalemate confronted
the Giant Powers. The Geneva Summit Conference in July 1955 was only the official,
public and joint acknowledgment by the highest representatives of the four Powers the
United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union that such a stalemate existed; and
each solemnly committed his nation to desist from attacking the other.
The truth is that the military stalemate had begun before that. Two years earlier,
Churchill, the British realist, whose consuming obsession was to prevent at all cost the
liquidation of the British Empire, urged a Summit Conference. His counterpart in
imperialism in the United States, Douglas MacArthur, who in early 1951 had urged
expanding the Korean war at the risk of touching off a global war, because there was, he
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said, no substitute for victory, changed his tone radically four years later. In his Los
Angeles birthday speech on January 26, 1955 he said that the United States should "now
proclaim our readiness to abolish war in concert with the great powers of the world." He
rejected preparedness or collective security as the path to peace or security. Modern war,
he said, "was no longer a weapon of adventure; it was a Frankenstein monster to destroy
both sides." "Abolition of war" he added "was no longer a mere universal wish but a
universal necessity. If you lose you are annihilated. If you win, you stand only to lose. It
is double suicide." He charged both the United States and Russia of being guilty of an
illusion that the other wanted to attack. Both, he said, were wrong. Rejecting the idea of
collective security, he declared: "The divisive interests of allies always tend towards
separation rather than unity." Pursuing his ideas in this regard MacArthur warned
recently against heavy reliance on alliances. He blamed the loss of Asia on the
recklessness of the State Department. For their part the Asian leaders who promoted the
Bandung Conference took notice of the military stalemate and assumed that peace was
inevitable, anticipating its recognition by the Big Powers in a Summit Conference.
National Interest and the World Situation
Against this background of realities, what then is our national interest? Above all, it
is to survive as a people and as a nation. It is, therefore, against our national interest that a
nuclear war, which would mean the suicide of the whole human race, should break out,
and we should scrupulously avoid provoking one with our fits of indiscretion and
irresponsibility. In any nuclear war, according to a recent testimony of General James
Gavin, U.S. Army Research Chief, before the U.S. Senate Armed Services
Subcommittee, the deadly radiation resulting from a nuclear bomb dropped on Russia
can, depending on the wind, reach as far as Japan and the Philippines and extend well
back into Western Europe, and the United States cannot avoid causing hundreds of
millions of deaths even to her allies. On the other hand, according to the same officer,
such a bomb dropped on any part of the United States would kill and maim seventy
million people. Of course, if it is dropped on any American Military base in the
Philippines, say Clark Field, Subic, or Sangley Point, we are totally liquidated, and
America's ultimate victory would serve us nothing. Promises of "I shall return" are
meaningless after a nuclear attack. Dr. Taylor, Chief of Division of Atomic Radiation
Physics in the U.S. Bureau of Standards, later said that General Gavin's revelation was an
understatement of the situation. Senator Mansfield warned that, as a result of General
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Gavin's testimony, many committed nations may well shift toward neutrality.
Myth of Invincibility
A ranking official of our Executive Department recently declared: "To think that our
defenses would be invincible without the presence of military bases here would be to
indulge in an illusion." Here is a glaring example of unrealistic thinking which
unfortunately prevails in Army circles. It assumes that the objective of our defense
program is to make our defenses invincible. Such an objective is overambitious. In fact,
it is not of this world. Even the United States, a Giant Power, is not brash enough to
think, let alone talk, of "invincible" defenses. On the contrary, the President of the United
States has recently explained that in view of the presentday events armaments are no
longer for the purpose of waging a war, much less of winning a war, but only for
deterring war. That is why he speaks of war today as "unthinkable," adding that it is not
material if the U.S. Air Force is second best, provided it is strong enough to deter.
General Earle Partridge, Air Force Commander of the United States, in his testimony
before the U.S. Senate, said that the United States will have difficulty in shooting Russian
bombers because they fly so high, and that the United States has no interceptors that
could deal with Bison's (Russia's longrange jet bombers) if they flew at maximum
altitude. Secretary of Defense Wilson conceded that Russia is outstripping the United
States in the production of longrange heavy bombers. On the matter of civilian defense
the Chairman of the Civilian Defense Committee of the American Municipal Association,
in one of the government reports heard by the American House Committee investigating
civilian preparedness for war, said: "The nation is in no position to sustain an attack of
nuclear weapons. It could be so reduced to a chaotic condition relatively soon which
would be of such a magnitude as to preclude the possibility of the U.S. defeating an
aggressor:"
Now, if the United States itself does not have "invincible" defenses, and none of its
leaders claims that it does, how could we imagine, much less translate that imagining into
reckless talk, that we must and will have such "invincible" defenses because of American
protection? The objective of an "invincible" defense is a dream that is beyond the shadow
of realization nowadays, and is, therefore, completely idle and unrealistic.
U.S. Protection and Existing Treaties
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But are we truly protected? Do we have that feeling of security in American

protection enjoyed by the North Atlantic nations and the republics of the Western
Hemisphere under the provisions of NATO and the Rio Pact? Any realist will answer in
the negative. In the USPI Mutual Defense Treaty there are no stipulations similar to
those appearing in NATO and the Rio Pact, that "an attack on any of" those nations and
republics "is an attack on the United States, in which event the United States will assist
the party or parties so attacked by taking forthwith action as it deems necessary,
including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the party or
parties so attacked." Instead, the United States will in our case merely follow its
constitutional processes and whether it will ultimately come to our defense or leave us to
our fate will depend on the result of such processes. It has been claimed, to appease our
hurt feelings in this regard, that America is no less committed to the defense of the
Philippines than to that of the Atlantic nations and the countries of the Western
Hemisphere, irrespective of the wording of existing treaties; but the question can never be
answered satisfactorily why our treaty is worded differently if America's intention and
purpose are the same in either case, and why the USPI Mutual Defense Treaty, having
been drafted and signed subsequent to NATO and the Rio Pact, did not include the
automatic defense stipulations contained in the two last mentioned treaties. I suggest that
the reason for the difference is, that America does not consider the security of the
Philippines as vital to her national security as the security of the Atlantic nations and her
sister republics in the Western Hemisphere. So it may be surmised that in the event of
another global war, which will be nuclear, the defense of the Latin American republics
and the Atlantic nations will come first in America's overall table of priorities, and the
Philippines last, if at all. Yet the first country from which the first nuclear bombs against
the enemy will be delivered, and for that matter will be also the first to receive the
devastating impact of the enemy's nuclear bombs, for the defense and security of the
Atlantic nations and the Western Hemisphere, is the Philippines. Any realist should know
that. In fact, history records that Bataan and Corregidor fought a sacrificial rearguard
action to save Australia and win the last war.
Japan and America's Commitment
Even a former enemy, Japan, now America's most trusted ally in Asia, has been the
recipient of better guaranties of protection. In her defense treaty with Japan, America has
undertaken "to maintain peace and security in the Japan area until such United Nations
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arrangements or such individual or collective security disposition shall have been devised
as will satisfactorily provide for the maintenance by the United Nations or otherwise of
international peace and security in the Japan area." This commitment of America in favor
of Japan, which is a guarantee of protection substantially as good and valid as the one she
has afforded to the NATO and Rio Pact nations, has been denied to the Philippines.
But even granting that our Mutual Defense Treaty affords us a certain measure of
protection, such protection is intended exclusively against a communist attack, certainly
not against an attack from any other source, for instance Japan, now an ally of the United
States.
America has been, of late, rebuilding or helping rebuild Japan as her principal ally in
Asia. It is interesting to note in this connection South Korea's reaction to America's plan
of reconstructing Japan's leadership in Asia. The New York Times, of September 27,
1955, commented that South Korean Ambassador to Washington You Chan Yan "feared
that the United States and Japan may reach some sort of secret understanding to make
Japan dominant in Asia "once more" and quoted the ambassador as saying: "South Korea
would go under the Communists rather than allow Japan to occupy us again." For a South
Korean Ambassador to Washington those were certainly strong words.
At present Japan's home defense force consists of 150,000 men, to be increased,
according to plans, to 200,000 by the end of 1958, with 90 per cent of the total consisting
of ground troops. A defensive air force and navy is expected to be completed within six
years.
Press dispatches bearing on the conversations held last year between Secretary Dulles
and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu in Washington are, however, to the effect that "the
American counterproposal calls for a Japanese ground force of 350,000 men, organized
in ten trained divisions in about three years, and a Japanese manned air force of 1,300
planes by 1960." The idea behind the plan, according to Pentagon officials, was that the
"U.S. wants Japan to play the military role of a major partner in the defense of the
Western Pacific." Or, as Walter Lippmann declared about the same time, commenting on
those conversations in Washington between Foreign Minister Shigemitsu and Secretary
Dulles, "no settlement in East Asia can be permanent in which Japan does not participate
as a principal power."
In the course of a speech I delivered in the Senate in 1952 against the ratification of
the San Francisco Peace Treaty, I said, and forgive me for quoting myself:
14
It is now evident that the grand design of American strategy is to make Japan the
leader of the AntiCommunist forces in Asia, because the Japanese are said to be the only
people in this region with the necessary military background, technical skill, numbers,
discipline, and industrial potential to meet the exigencies of modern war. But are we to
believe that a victorious Japan, having fought her way back to predominance in Asia
fighting side by side with America, will even respect our "territorial integrity or political
independence"? Do the Americans themselves imagine that a victorious Japan, having
won America's battles in Asia, and having been restored to her former position as a first
class power, will not seize the opportunity of finally bringing to realization her dreams of
Asian domination?
Is it our invidious fate, if I may ask, to become either a Communist Chinese province
or a Japanese prefecture? Are those the only alternatives that the future has in store for
us?
The Philippine Situation
Now, let us take a look at the peculiar realities of the Philippine situation. Our
colonial economy, being an agricultural, exportimport, aliendominated one, is
necessarily poor. Since the time economic imperialism was developed, that is, since the
time the domestic markets of the developing capitalist industrial countries became glutted
and the need for outside markets for their surplus arose, nations with agricultural
economies were absorbed by the industrial nations to become agricultural adjuncts of
the latter's industrial economies. Being agricultural we do not manufacture most of the
finished or manufactured goods that we need for our consumption, and therefore we have
to import them. Being agricultural we must export, in order to pay for our imports, solely
or mostly raw materials. Our own postwar experience reveals that as years go by we
have to export more units of our raw products to pay for a given unit of the manufactured
products that we import. Thus, no matter how much harder and longer we work to
produce more raw material exports, we are always on the losing end in our foreign trade.
That is the fate of all agricultural economies today. Being agricultural and being poor,
and being a people suffering from a colonial mentality, our economy is susceptible to
alien economic infiltration, penetration or invasion. Before the war, alien ownership of
production and exchange facilities in important sectors of our economy was acquired
mostly by resident aliens through investment from accumulated profits made in our own
country. After the war, alien ownership and control of our economy, were considerably
15
increased through foreign, mostly American, private direct investments. The extent of
combined alien ownership and control in our economy has reached dangerous
proportions. As of 1938, according to the Report of the Joint USPI Finance Commission
of 1947, about 1/4 of the national wealth was already owned by aliens.
In the military sphere, what is the reality in the Philippines? In a' polarized world of
Giant Powers we can be described as totally unarmed. Without weapons of war our
soldiers are just civilians in uniform. We cannot have military strength until we can
provide ourselves with the weapons of war, and we can not manufacture them or expect
to manufacture them as long as we remain agricultural. The result is that whoever we
depend on for arms necessarily is in a position to dictate to us why, when, how and
against whom the arms are to be used. Thus we are deprived of the sovereign right to
determine who shall be our enemy or our friend, or our ally, whom to fight, whom to
fight for, and when to be neutral, with whom to trade or to exchange diplomats, and, in
the words of Washington's Farewell Address, when "to choose peace or war as our
interest, guided by justice, shall counsel."
Protection Means Dictation
In the early part of this speech I declared that we are a protectorate. I am not alone in
that belief. American newspapers, in moments of carelessness but quite appropriately,
have described us as a "military protectorate." One who accepts protection from another
submits itself to dictation, with no one to protect him from his protector. The galling and
humiliating incidents in military and naval bases in our country are only minor but
inevitable consequences of our special relationship with the United States. It may be
added here that under such a relationship we can ill talk of national security, because the
relationship of protector and protected necessarily means dictation, and as Professor
Lasswell, of Yale, author of National Security and Individual Freedom (1950), aptly said:
"The distinctive meaning of national security is freedom from foreign dictation. "
From this description of our economic and military realities the political reality
becomes obvious. Many of us believe that we are "independent". We are often
complimented by our big "partner" in the "special relationship" that we are independent.
But he behaves and acts towards us in a manner that indicates quite the contrary. He
imposed upon us ten years ago the Bell Trade Agreement, together with parity. After nine
years of opposition and agitation against the Trade Agreement, he finally consented to
16
revise it, but parity has remained nay, it has been extended to all fields of economic
endeavor far beyond its original scope in 1946 which was confined to the ownership
and exploitation of natural resources and public utilities. No other independent country in
the world except ours has granted parity rights to the citizens of another.
He also exacted from us leases of our lands for military bases, which can be
expanded at his will and, so it is contended, without the consent of Congress, for a period
and under terms that are wholly repugnant to the concept of sovereignty. A 99year lease
is, in reality, and even in law, tantamount to a lease in perpetuity and therefore a virtual
transfer of ownership. Exterritoriality was last known in China during the Western
Powers' scramble for "spheres of influence" and "foreign concessions." A perpetual lease
of large strategic areas of the national territory, with an option to expand the areas leased,
means permanent military occupation and detracts from the proper behavior of the lessee
who is bound to recognize and respect the independence and sovereignty of the lessor.
The term of the lease of bases in Saudi Arabia is 5 years. In Spain, where her laws and
courts of justice operate fully and her flag flies alone over the American bases which she
herself commands, it is 10 years. That it should be 99 years with complete exterritoriality
in our case clearly derogates our vaunted independence and sovereignty.
A distinguished member of the American Panel in the current negotiations for the
revision of the Bases Agreement declared at the opening session of the conference: ". . .
Some have contended that this Agreement should be like others which exist between the
United States and other nations where U.S. bases are located."
The American negotiator does not deny that there are provisions in our bases
agreement with the U.S. that are onerous to us, such as the 99year lease, the
exterritoriality and unilateral command, but he argues, in an attempt to justify said
onerous stipulations, that the Agreement is "the result of more than half a century of trust,
confidence and mutual interest . . . to a unique degree," and that "there is no parallel in
this relationship between the United States and any other country;" thus clearly
insinuating, to avoid impolite directness, that during that halfcentury period we had been
a colony of the United States, and that our "independence" is an American grant
bestowed by proclamation of the American President, and not something we have
ourselves declared and conquered by force of arms, like the American independence and
other peoples" independence, but simply the product of American generosity. The
unmistakable insinuation in the American negotiator's opening remarks is that it is
unthinkable for us to expect that our agreements with the United States should be placed
17
in the same category as those concluded between America and other independent
countries which do not owe their independence to her liberality and, consequently, are in
a position to demand terms of equality in their dealings with her.
The American negotiator spoke further of the mutuality which the Mutual Defense
Treaty, like the Bases Agreement, "exemplifies." The American negotiator must have
thought that considering that we are not in a position to come to America's defense if she
is attacked, we should not lay claim to stipulations similar to those appearing in NATO
and the Rio Pact, such as the automatic guaranty clause. In other words, what the
American negotiator calls "a degree of mutuality" is nothing but a thinlyveiled way of
saying "beggars can't be choosers," in which he and his countrymen, according to him,
take a deep sense of pride. But in truth there is nothing "mutual" in this treaty except the
word "mutual" in the title.
Protectorate or Independence?
Now, how are we going to face these realities? Shall we remain a protectorate or
shall we endeavor further to win our independence? Shall we barter away our right to be
masters of our national destiny for a delusive sense of national security? Shall we
continue begging for our daily bread or shall we work and sweat for a permanent
economic security? Shall the national territory continue to be a patchwork of foreign
military installations enjoying full exterritorial rights and constituting a permanent
military occupancy, while the national government groans under a bureaucracy topheavy
with foreign advisers who work primarily, as is to be expected, in the interest of their
country? Shall a foreign embassy and a foreign military echelon continue to exercise
control over our foreign relations and national defense?
The choice, of course, lies with the people. But I may venture to suggest that if we
choose to remain a protectorate, because we have been too habitually dependent, too lazy
to work harder and too craven to stand up for our rights and to face the future, we may as
well make the most of a bad situation and let our protectors assume the complete
financial burden of our external security :and our external relations as if we were under
the regime of the Jones Law, so that the one third of the total government revenue that is
at present being appropriated for the armed services and the foreign service can be put to
better use such as ameliorating the condition of our masses and promoting the economic
security of all. our people, which, after all, is the best safeguard against Communism. A
18
constabulary force will suffice to take care of the internal public order, as in the days of
General Bandholtz and General Crame, capturing the Huk couriers, who, after capture,
are automatically "promoted" to Commanders by their captors, the kidnappers, the hold
uppers, and other law violators. After all, if what our Army pundits say is true that the
local Communist struggle has moved to the parliamentary and legal stage, then it should
be those who are experts in these fields who should do the fighting for the government
and not the military.
I repeat that we should profit to the limit, materially at least, within the present
protectorate setup. That is realism, pure and simple. Formosa, and South Korea and
South Vietnam, receive annually the lion's share in economic and military aid from the
United States, and none of them is more of a protectorate than we are ourselves. Why
should we be discriminated against?
But if our people's decision is, as I hope it is, for independence and national dignity
with all their attendant hardships, perils and sacrifices, then blessed be they because they
shall come in God's good time into the full fruition of that great heritage that is theirs
under His providence. §
19

A Realistic Foreign Policy For The Philippines - Renato Constantino PDF

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V I N T A G E R E C T O : Selected & Edited by Renato Constantino

WE ARE PRIVILEGED TO COMMEMORATE TONIGHT THE BIRTHDAY

But are we truly protected? Do we have that feeling of security in American

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