In shaping its foreign policy the Philippines is primarily

moved by three considerations: first, national security;

second, economic stability; and third, political and cultural
relations with the free world. These considerations are equal
to each other in importance and they receive varied attention
only because of the difference in urgency and in the time,
effort and financing required for their implementation.
Expressed in more detail, these three considerations provide
the objectives and the methods of our policy: first, the
strengthening of our national security by suppressing
subversion from within and building strength against attacks
from without through participation in collective security
arrangements with other free nations; second, the utilization
of the machinery of our foreign relations for the promotion of
our foreign trade and economic coöperation in order to
strengthen our domestic economy and to contribute our share
to the economic development of a free world; and third, the
development of our political and cultural relations with
countries of the free world with particular emphasis on our
relations with our Asian neighbors through our membership
in the United Nations and by participation in regional
conferences, such as the Manila Conference of 1954 (SEATO)
and the Asian-African Conference in Bandung (1955).
For decades the Philippines was an active proponent of
regionalism. In 1954 it joined Australia, Britain, France, New
Zealand, Pakistan, Thailand, and the United States in the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization against the perceived
threat from the Chinese and Indochinese communist regimes.
This alliance was phased out in 1977.
Manila's quest for regional cooperation received a significant
boost in the 1965-66 period, when bilateral problems between
Indonesia and Malaysia that had been known as the
confrontation--until then the main obstacle to regionalism in
Southeast Asia--gave way to neighborliness. In August 1967
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations was formed by
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand
to pursue economic, social, cultural, and technical
cooperation.
The Philippines was also party to a multilateral dispute over
ownership of the Kalayaan Islands, as Filipinos call some of
the Spratlys, a scattered group of atolls west of the Philippine
island of Palawan and east of Vietnam, also claimed in toto or
partially by China, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Tomas
Clomas, a Manila lawyer, visited the islands in 1956, claimed
them for himself, named them Kalayaan (Freedomland), then
asked the Philippine government to make them a
protectorate. Philippine troops were sent to the Kalayaans in
1968. All parties to the dispute were interested in possible
offshore oil around the islands. The law of the sea grants to
any country that receives international recognition of a claim
to even a rock sticking out of the water exclusive economic
rights to all resources, including oil, within a 200-nautical-
mile radius of that point. Manila regularly tried to extract
from the United States a declaration that it would defend the
Philippines' claim to the Kalayaans as part of the Mutual
Defense Treaty between the Republic of the Philippines and
the United States of America, but the United States just as
regularly refused so to interpret that treaty.
Aquino broke the tradition that a Philippine president's first
overseas trip was to Washington. She visited Jakarta and
Singapore in August 1986. Indonesian president Soeharto
promised not to aid Muslim separatists in Mindanao but
cautioned Aquino not to attempt reconciliation with
communist insurgents. Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan
Yew echoed Soeharto's warning. Both leaders encouraged the
Philippines to find a way to extend United States base rights.
Although the governments espoused differing world views, the
Philippines has had few disputes with Indonesia or Singapore,
and relations remained neighborly in the early 1990s. The
Philippines enjoyed a cooperative relationship with Thailand.
The two countries in 1991 had no disputes and many common
interests, including a history of security cooperation with the
United States.