Alliance Curse: How America Lost the Third World

7 The United States as Master Builder in the Philippines

7 The United States as Master Builder in the Philippines 86 Perhaps the best way to understand the limits of U.S. vision for promoting adaptive social change in developing Asia is to contrast U.S. experiences in South Vietnam and the Philippines. The Philippines is where U.S. policy planners had the most time to observe, plan, and act relative to other third world interventions. Virtually no outside interference had to be contended with. Competition with forces externally funded or provisioned by China or the Soviets was minimized by the American military presence on the islands. What remains of the U.S. vision is still highly visible today, as the bilateral relationship and the character of alliance orientations has changed very little since the end of the cold war. The Philippines was America’s clearest canvas on which to conceptualize and implement the U.S. view of social utility and developmental imperatives. It is here—where the population was essentially friendly, the elite was highly dependent, the common people uncritically accepted Hollywood images of the good life, and Jeffersonian ideals of political order are espoused by most political actors—that the U.S. style of campaigning has emotional resonance for the population and is imitated with little modification. Politicians kiss babies, generals think of themselves as walking in the footsteps of MacArthur. The names of American presidents and colonial administrators appear on street signs throughout the capital. Even in their self-constructed systems Filipinos use U.S. cultural antecedents. If there is anything limiting, short-sighted, or inappropriate in the application of the U.S. model of social and political gradualism and The problem of explaining to the American people and to friendly nations which are not sympathetic toward an authoritarian form of government why we support such governments becomes a matter of public relations, not policy. —U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960 The United States as Master Builder in the Philippines 87 spontaneous social regeneration, it is here, in the Philippines, that it will be most easily observable. The United States endorsed the independence of the Philippines on July 4, 1946, as a showcase of colonial benevolence and Asian democracy, and the end of the longest sustained U.S. effort at what is now called state building.“It was in the Philippines,” writes Gabriel Kolko,“that U.S. policies in the Third World, with their complex tensions and ambitions, rhetoric and interests, were revealed most clearly both in theory and practice.”1 From the beginning of the American occupation in 1901, U.S. policymakers had more than forty years in which to erect institutions that would transform the Philippines into the first functioning democracy in the postcolonial world (see table 7-1). Planners created a civil service bureaucracy, a system of free public education, civil courts, and a supreme court. The Philippine constitution protected basic property rights and provided for constraints on power, as well as the mechanisms for electoral participation. In a country with abundant natural resources, a relatively well-educated population, and ample foreign assistance, the devastation caused by World War II was not expected to bring development to a standstill. With the wartorn infrastructure earmarked for repair, Filipinos had reason to hope that their country would be a leader in Asia. In addition, the island nation enjoyed privileged trade access and U.S.-provided geopolitical security. Instead of becoming a beacon to others, however, the Philippines became a warning of the mismatch between GDP growth, social reforms, and democracy . The preferred model of development in East Asia during the cold war became that of the benevolent dictator who used distortionary taxation (in the form of subsidies or tariff protection) to finance productive public expenditures , including payments and benefits to politicians. In 1972 an ambitious leader, Ferdinand Marcos, claiming that the only way to grow was to emulate the authoritarian example of its neighbors in South Korea and Taiwan and Table 7-1. Historical Timeline of the Philippines, 1565–Present Spanish colony 1565–1898 Spanish-American War 1898–1901 American colony 1901–41 World War II and Japanese occupation 1941–45 Republic of the Philippines 1946–65 Marcos presidency 1965–72 Marcos dictatorship 1972–86 Return to democracy: Republic of the Philippines 1986–present The Economic Failure of Client Regimes 88 hoping to reproduce their success, trashed the constitutional model and declared martial law. Marcos announced that an...