PH and US: who needs whom more?

As one of America’s closest allies, the Philippines has long provided U.S. forces with a strategic staging ground for its operations within the Pacific region, but for as long as this partnership has existed, Filipinos have repeatedly called into question its end of the bargain.

These days, it is common to hear patriotic rhetoric once again from nationalists who argue that Filipinos are somehow in a state of subservience to the U.S. and that this dependence has hurt the country’s progress—despite the fact that for many decades now, no one has actually been in charge of the Philippines except the Filipino people.

Arguably, if the U.S. had an actual stranglehold on the Philippines, their two most important military bases would not have been so easily extricated from the country in 1991.

Read Part I of this series: “Moving on from America’s dark past in PH”

While it seems at odds with a strictly patriotic stance, embracing present-day economic and military partnerships with the U.S. is not, as suggested by some, quite the same as bowing to a former colonial master—even one with a dark history of oppression.

Rather, these alliances were forged as strategic arrangements made by a fully independent Filipino nation seeking to complement its strengths and address its weaknesses.

Sovereignty is not for sale

With its military presence in the Philippines drastically reduced after 1992, military operations with the U.S. were facilitated through arrangements such as the Visiting Forces Agreement of 1999 and its supplemental Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement of 2014, which allows the use of specific Philippine military bases by U.S. forces.  Overarching these was the original Mutual Defense Treaty signed in 1951 which, to this day, guarantees that the U.S. and the Philippines would support each other if attacked by an external party.

Nationalists argue that by participating in defense treaties with the U.S., and by hosting its military, the Philippines is allowing the U.S. to encroach on national sovereignty and perhaps dictate policy.

But the reality is that that the U.S. has the same collective defense arrangements with other countries—a lot of countries.  There’s Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Japan, and South Korea. There’s France, Spain, the UK and 25 other European NATO countries.  And there are over 20 South American Rio Treaty nations as well.  That’s well over 50 countries in total with mutual defense treaties signed with the U.S.—and all of them have their national sovereignty intact, last I checked.

Moreover, the U.S. maintains nearly 800 military bases in over 70 countries and territories.  Compared with the mere 600 U.S. personnel that were in the Philippines in 2015 to help combat the Abu Sayyaff militant group, the U.S. has maintained a far larger presence in other countries.

U.S. overseas deployments currently include 48,000 personnel across 109 bases in Japan; 40,000 troops in 179 bases in Germany; 28,000 soldiers in 85 bases in South Korea; and 12,000 troops in Italy—just to name a few.  To believe that all these nations have in any way sold off their freedoms to become puppets of the U.S. would be foolhardy.

The fact of the matter is that these agreements have had advantages for all parties.  And for the Philippines, there is quite a bit to gain. Defense treaties have helped maintain the sovereignty of participant nations successfully over the last half-century, during which no treaty nation of the U.S. has ever fallen to an external aggressor.

A very big brother

There are assertions by anti-American groups that the U.S. benefits far more from the military alliance with the Philippines.

But the U.S. is no ordinary ally.  The U.S. spends as much on its military might as the next 14 countries combined—a whopping $597 billion in 2015, dwarfing even China’s $146 billion defense budget and Russia’s $66 billion military expenditure.

By comparison, the Philippine military is spending roughly $2.8 billion in 2016, small even when compared with Singapore’s budget of $10.2 billion or Thailand’s $8.2 billion budget.

Unlike Lee Kwan Yew’s four-year mission of rapid industrialization and military modernization before British bases were vacated from Singapore in 1971 (a move he opposed), no such bolstering of Philippine military defense capabilities was made at a similar scale when U.S. military bases were forced out of Subic and Clark in 1991. And it is likely that neither ample funds nor an achievable timeframe is available to scale up military capabilities should the Philippines decide to immediately abrogate defense treaties and agreements with the U.S.—its sole defense partner.

Some present dangers are clear. Despite recent, seemingly conciliatory gestures, China has made it no secret that it plans to enforce its territorial claims on almost the entire South China Sea. China has already claimed and held resource-rich Philippine territory, and has fortified its positions by building military installations around contested areas. In addition, there is also the constant threat of terror organizations in the southern Philippines breaking out and gaining ground.

For the Philippines to be left with an anemic military, and with no mutual defense treaties with powerful allies, there will remain little to bargain with at a time of conflict.  A doctrine of appeasement—a policy of giving in to a foreign aggressor’s demands in order to avoid conflict—can only work for so long, at least until there is nothing left to give.

Foreign aid is not for beggars

The U.S. is one of the largest foreign aid donors to the Philippines. Nationalists argue that there are strings attached despite the fact that aid to the Philippines is not being awarded under conditions stipulating control over national interests, nor has the threat of rescinding aid historically been used as a tool of manipulation.

Such a scenario is even more unlikely when aid to other nations is considered.  In 2014, the Philippines was a recipient of $240 million in military and economic aid from the U.S. In that same year, Israel, Egypt and Pakistan received $6 billion, $2.8 billion, and $1.2 billion respectively.  Obviously, America was under no illusion that these particular countries would hand over control in exchange for aid.

Which brings up another important point.  Foreign aid—at least the kind issued by the U.S. Department of State—is not distributed as a reward for historical alliances, nor is the actual amount a measure of friendship.

Many nationalists are irked, for example, that Pakistan, historically an anti-U.S. state, receives more of this type of aid than the Philippines, claiming that the U.S. is forsaking a brother for an enemy.  It seems unfair until one understands that these aid dollars are investments in regional security and stability, which explains why hotbeds of conflict such as Egypt, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are funded so dearly.   The Philippines by comparison has been more stable; less of a flashpoint in the global war against Islamic extremism.

Receiving economic and military aid from the U.S. should not paint a picture of the Philippines as a mendicant nation, as some have suggested. Over 100 countries receive this type of aid from the U.S. annually, and it is doubtful that these nations view themselves as beggars. That list includes China, who in 2014, received $12.3 million in economic aid from the U.S. for health and social services.

Humanitarian aid, on the other hand, might be a better yardstick for determining who a country’s true friends are.  According to the Philippine Foreign Aid Transparency Hub, out of all donations received (not just pledged) from foreign nations after Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda devastated the countryside, over $113 million came from the UK, $85 million from the U.S. (the top two donor countries), and $63 million from Japan.  China and Russia on the other hand, combined for just 1.7% of the American donation alone.

The ties that bind

The idea of breaking bonds with a past colonial oppressor to build a proud, independent nation has been a rallying cry used by anti-American groups to stir up nationalistic sentiments.

But today, the idea of Filipino subservience to the U.S. seems to exist only within the national psyche, where an overwhelmingly positive bias toward American culture and materialism was cultivated through many generations of media consumption, and continues to be part of Filipino norms.

Another type of affinity, albeit a healthier one, is likely to continue however. As the third largest English speaking country in the world, the Philippines maintains very close ties with over 3.5 million Filipinos living in the U.S.—the second largest Asian population in America. In 2015 alone, these Filipino-Americans sent $10.5 billion to their families in the Philippines. Funds from the U.S. are the largest source of Filipino Overseas Foreign Worker remittances and make up nearly half of the $25 billion worldwide total. These OFW remittances represent a very critical 1/10th of the entire Philippine economy.

Many other economic ties exist. The IT and Business Process Management industry, a critical growth sector in the Philippines, employed 1.2 million Filipinos and generated $22 billion in revenues in 2015 —representing almost another tenth of the GDP. Estimates show that fully 77% of this industry comes from U.S.-based businesses.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the U.S. is the 3^rd largest trading partner and the biggest consumer of Philippine exports after Japan, spending $9 billion on Philippine goods in 2015.

If that is not enough, the U.S. is also the biggest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Philippines ($4.6 billion in 2012), and the U.S. is the Philippines second largest source of tourists, with 780,000 Americans having visited the country in 2015 alone.

Where do we go from here?

All this lends credence to the fact that, in recent history, the choice of the Philippines to remain aligned with the U.S. did not result from coercion or a con; the choice was a vote of confidence made by Filipinos and Americans toward like-minded countries whose ideologies they shared: including a deep love for democracy and freedom from oppression—Ideologies that are sorely lacking within the alternative Chinese and Russian spheres of influence.

Much was made recently about the U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of the Philippines. But national sovereignty is never risked by receiving opinions from external parties. It is the right of Philippine leaders to accept or disregard such statements at will. Nations cannot exist in isolation; a global community cannot survive without dialogue.

Despite maintaining a robust economic relationship with the U.S., unconditionally receiving aid, and continuing to augment its national safety through fair collective defense agreements, the Philippines is still free to chart its own path in all matters, independently, and irrespective of its alliances.

Any move to part ways with the U.S. economically or militarily will certainly have outsized consequences. Outcomes that might easily reverse the Philippines’ recent record GDP growth, and derail the country’s bid to end its very long tenure within the Third World.

But the decision to remain America’s closest ally in the region should continue to be a choice based on a thorough value assessment, uncolored by past biases, whether these be resentment or favoritism. Filipinos can only hope that their leadership will choose the right path using logic and reason—not by applying historical grievances or past prejudices—but by considering a more salient, present-day reality for the good of the people.