By Diego Morra
This much should have been the call raised on June 12, when the country celebrated its largely fictive 128th independence day, fending off the continuous squatting of China in Panatag Shoal and the repeated subversion of the regime’s purported “independent” foreign policy by allowing American forces to stay in the country and permitting their warplanes, warships and missile batteries to be deployed as part of the US line of defense in the Pacific.
Independent foreign policy has a nice ring to it, considering that the Philippines was subjected to the oppressive rule of Spanish colonialism for more than 300 years, followed by American imperialism from 1898 to 1946, with control maintained through a slew of defense agreements that guaranteed the principal role of the US in making the Philippine military backward and dependent on American military might. With dozens of air and naval bases, the US guaranteed the expropriation of surplus and the repression of worker and peasant rights. There was no incentive to develop the defenses of the army of little brown brothers and the military bases agreement proved it with the 99-year “leases” of Philippine territory as forward bases.
The economy, contrary to the pious incantations of neoliberals and outright apologists of imperialists, suffered from parity rights, when US corporations enjoyed national treatment, which ended only in 1974. In fine, the US designed the Philippine political system for the benefit of Washington, the birds of prey that owned plantations, logging concessions, manufacturing enterprises, banks, mining firms and newspapers, and radio-TV stations. From 1898 to 1941, the US benefited from 43 years of political and economic monopoly.
Returning in 1945, the US maintained its stranglehold on politics and the economy through parity rights for the next 30 years, with US corporations losing their envied status only in 1974, the year when corrupt martial law bosses replaced the Americans. So, from 1898 to 1974, American overlords managed the entire socio-economic order for 78 years. That, practically, is an eternity that shaped the wayward direction of the country. Rudderless like the Bapor Tabo, the Philippines was a banana republic, with US power determining the limits of Philippine politics and economy. As many banana republics found out, Henry Kissinger was damn right. “To be an enemy of the US is dangerous. To be a friend of the US is fatal.” The same quip applies to China as well.
This reminds us of the never-ending debate between those who continue to oppose US imperialism and those who insist the country hold fast onto the coattails of Uncle Sam as the country’s defender, particularly now when the revanchist China insists on grabbing maritime territories like Panatag Shoal using the calligraphic jottings of a Kuomintang oceanographer in 1947 as the basis for an ambitious scheme to snatch practically all of South China Sea. Sadly, the Chinese narrative gets sustenance from pan de sal-eating Chinese trolls acting as jukeboxes every time coins are dropped into their ears.
This propaganda war between the Marcos Jr. administration and the Filipino trolls and their handlers is proof that, with filthy lucre in charge, the country’s interest can be sold down the cloaca or the sewer. In some animal species, the cloaca drains urine, becomes the orifice for sex and reproduction, as well as disposing of urine and excreta. Between 1898 and 2026 is 128 years, but one must deduct 78 years from the total to represent the number of years when US imperialism, the feudal lords and the compradors overdetermined the political and economic structures that doomed the country to underdevelopment and bankruptcy.
The principalia that profited from Spanish colonialism also provided the detachments that jettisoned the revolutionary cause and pledged allegiance to US imperialism. The country has an ample supply of Paternos, Buencaminos, Legardas and who worked for “peace” with the Spanish colonizers and later jumped to the American bandwagon of “peace” to promote their careers and their pockets. In the clash between the pocket and conscience, the former wins. Yet, overdetermination (Überdeterminierung in German), the philosopher Louis Althusser argued, is the interplay of forces in contradiction and can be interpreted dialectically as the clash of forces in a social formation that impact on how the ruling maintains its dominance. Thus, the ideological and repressive state apparatuses.
Nonetheless, resistance to American dictation to lawmakers in the Philippine Assembly and later on in the Senate (organized in 1916) sparked a nationalist revival, prompting Manuel L. Quezon to say: “I would rather have a country run like hell by Filipinos than a country run like heaven by Americans, because however bad Filipino government might be, we can always change it.” (Emphasis supplied). The complete quotation gives more meat to the Quezon maxim, and it is in that context that the country should stand on its own feet, act as a principled nation and shun the blandishments of the US and China. The Philippines was not responsible for China’s woes, or how Singapore became the hub of the opium trade targeting China, and consequently, China should act in a civilized manner abandoning its avarice for territory. Neither should the Philippines become a key player in pursuing US imperialist policy, a vassal to the *suzerain it had kicked out from overstaying military bases in 1991. #
= = = = =
WORD OF THE DAY: Suzerain – A dominant state or ruler that controls the foreign policy and international relations of a weaker, subordinate state (known as a vassal), while allowing that subordinate state to retain domestic autonomy and internal self-rule.