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The Philippine View: Bases Equal Imperialism

By Pen Guerrera

From Liberation

Everything had been set in March. Malacanag had announced that Cory Aquino would be leaving for Paris in July, then for Moscow later in the year. All of a sudden, in mid-April, the Palance announced that Aquino was canceling her date with the Soviets. Instead, she was going to the U.S. before the year's end.

A week later Aquino herself confirmed speculations about the reason for the sudden chang of plans. In an interview with news reporters, she said: "Yes, I think it is safe to assume that by the end of the year, talks (about the U.S. military bases' future) will be started."

The two sudden announcements made clear that the U.S. intended to exact a commitment from Aquino to allow the U.S. military bases to stay in the Philippines beyond 1991. By agreeing to go to Washington, Aquino showed that she was not averse to making such a commitment.

Aquino's trip to the U.S. gave lie to her "open options" policy on the bases. For its part, the U.s. government openly battled for early negotiations to extend the treaty. Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus has admitted that even during the 1988 review of the Military Bases Agreement (MBA), the U.S. had been pressuring the Philippine government into setting an early date for renegotiating a new treaty.

As happened in the 1988 talks between Manglapus and U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz, the 1989 negotiations again were held in secrecy in Washington, away from the scrutiny of the Filipino people.

Aquino has repeatedly said that the interest and welfare of the Filipino people would be the "paramount" consideration in any government decision on the bases. And yet, Aquino, since coming to power, has never made a categorical position against the continued presence of the U.S. bases. This, despite the fact that the bases are indeed, anathema to Philippine interest.

Nationalists and other progressive elements have time and again explained why the bases should go: The mere presence of the bases proves that the U.S. government could ram anything they want down our throats. At the same time, the bases provide the U.S. with the military clout to ensure this.

Clark and Subic [U.S. Air Force and Naval bases] are more than just remnants of our painful colonial past. They are actually guns, bombs, warheads and nuclear missiles aimed at the Filipino people and all other peoples of the Asia-Pacific region. These weapons of death are ready to be fired the moment Washington decides on a policy of direct intervention or aggression against any country in the region.

For all Philippine governments since 1946, the bases have been a prime factor in decision-making. The presence of the bases of Philippine soil is an indication that the country does not enjoy genuine freedom, independence and sovereignty.

Through the untiring efforts of anti-bases activists, an increasing number of Filipinos are realizing the negative implications of the bases' continued to stay. Even conservatives at the Ateneo de Manila have released the results of a survey conducted early this year showing that since August 1988, the number of Filipinos who are in favor of an indefinite retention of the bases beyond 1991 has dropped from 58% to 40%.

Apart from the survey, the nationalist fervor that went with the anti-Marcos dictatorship struggle in the last decade has made it more and more untenable for the U.S. government and its local puppets like Aquino to "rule in the old way." This explains shy Aquino has taken an "open options" policy on the bases, instead of categorically stating that she is for their retention.

In fact, both Manglapus and Aquino have been forced to take a very cautious approach to the issue. "The talks (this year) would be exploratory and would determine whether it would be worthwhile to enter into any formal negotiation," Manglapus has been quoted as saying. Aquino, for her part, simply skirts the issue: "We do not know how these talks would finally end up," she has said. "Maybe it could end up in a new agreement and then the treaty will have to be ratified by the Senate. But what I have announced so far is that we will talk and we will see how these talks will finally end."

In truth, a decision from the Philippine government at least one year prior to the MBA's termination in September 1991 is sufficient to determine the fate of the bases. If Aquino were really intent on ending the bases treaty in the interest of national sovereignty, there would be no need for further talks.

One actor that is expected to play a key role in deciding the fate of the bases is the Senate, whose approval is needed to ratify any international treaty entered into by Aquino. From all indications, Aquino will likely evade final responsibility for the bases and toss the issue to the Senate, the same way she left Congress to make the difficult decisions on the land reform law.

There is a lot of hope among the people that the Senate would not ratify a pro-bases treaty. After all, the 23-member chamber has passed the antinuclear bill which bans the entry of nuclear weapons in Philippine territory including U.S. bases.

However, with only two senators—Wigberto Tanada and Joseph Estrada—declaring an uncompromising position against the bases, pinning one's hopes on the Senate would seem foolhardy.

Sens. Butz Aquino and Leticia Shahani, on the other hand, have taken positions as dubious as the President's "open options." The bases will have to go, they say—but not too soon. It is the same line espoused by the rightist Defense Secretary Fidel Ramos. Critics of this position point out, however, that the government could adopt a policy of gradually phasing out the bases without the necessity of having a new treaty ratified.

Others have espoused the more blatantly dubious position taken by Vice President Salvdor Laurel and other former pro-Marcos politicians in the Nacionalista Party (NP): They want to call a referendum to "let the people decide" the fate of the bases. Marcos' former defense secretary Juan Ponce Enrile, a key figure in the NP, has made political capital out of Aquino's wishy-washy position, saying that his was nothing but a "face-saving act." But even he has never worked to dismantle the bases in the two decades that he was in a position to do so.

As for the suggestion to call a referendum, Filipinos experience with elections shows that referenda results could always be rigged. With all the resources a the command of the Aquino government and the U.S. it would also be wishful thinking to expect that they would not launch a massive, systematic propaganda drive in favor of the bases to win the votes of the largely uninformed and unpoliticized millions.

The National Democratic Front has taken the uncompromising position that no foreign military bases must be allowed on Philippine soil at any time. It is also willing to declare a unilateral ceasefire if Aquino makes a categorical declaration that the bases treaty would not be renewed, open the way for talks towards a peaceful settlement of the 20-year-old civil war.

For the revolutionary forces, the removal of the U.S. bases is a prerequisite to lasting peace in the Philippines. The bases are also key obstructions to the real economic recovery desired by our people; such a recovery could be possible only if the bases no longer stand in the way of our country's assertions of political and economic sovereignty.

But Aquino has chosen to ignore the NDF's peace overtures and to go to Washington instead. The pretext is that she would lobby for more foreign investments and support for the $10 billion Philippine Aid Plan other known as the Multilateral Aid Initiative (MAI). In reality, the mainly U.S. sponsored MAI is a form of economic blackmail on the Aquino government, which is in desperate financial straits. U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, one of the principal authors of the MAI, has gone on record saying that "the MAI security implications for the U.S. last October," he said, "we signed a two-year base review agreement providing for short-term stability in our security ties and additional resources to the Philippines. Progress in the MAI will build on this agreement."

With Aquino's obsequiousness to U.S. imperialism already reaching disgusting proportions, a decision in favor of the bases' retention is a foregone conclusion. So confident is U.S. imperialism about the inevitable extension of the MBA that when U.S. ambassador Nicholas Platt was asked in a recent interview with Clark Air Base's Far East Network, what he thought about the coming negotiations, he took a deep breath, smiled, and said: "We've always succeeded before and that gives me confidence we will succeed again." Such smugness, no doubt, derives from U.S. imperialism's firm hold on this government's purse strings and on its puppet Cory Aquino.

[This article, written over the name of Pen Gurrera, appeared in the May/June 1989 issue of LIBERATION, a publication of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.]