Friday, November 02, 2007 Editorials: Improved RP-US relations
NOT since the late ‘80s when the Philippine Senate abrogated the US-RP military bases agreement has the United States come out more openly with economic and military aid for the Philippines.
The US military bases---the Subic Bay naval base and the Clark air force base in Tarlac---once symbolized US military presence in the Pacific.
Both were in the Philippines since the ‘30s.
Thus, the Senate “voting” out of the country these military installations in 1988 greatly eroded the US and the Philippines’ social, political, and economic ties.
It hurt American pride deeply and the backlash was reduced US economic and military assistance to the Philippines and the tightening of entry of Filipinos into the US.
In Cebu, the US consulate closed.
Cold treatment
The report from Washington that the US Senate had voted to “dramatically increase...military and economic aid to Manila to $60 million next year” should therefore be taken in the light of an improving American diplomatic attitude towards the Philippines.
This is in contrast with the cold treatment the Philippines got from the US for two decades.
Despite efforts on the part of the Philippines to rekindle diplomatic ties with the US within that period, American military and economic assistance remained a measly $46 million.
Wider perspective
Thus the reported increase in assistance would signify more the return of warm ties rather than as a political “vote of confidence in the Arroyo government.”
Meaning, it should be viewed in a wider perspective involving the imperatives of US global defense strategy and not on US praise of the “Arroyo government’s sustained efforts to combat international terrorism and address the issue of unexplained killings in the country.”
But it could be true, as claimed by Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno, that the increased Foreign Military Fund and Economic Support Funds of $30 million each would result in a “major setback for local left-wing organizations and their overseas allies.”
These groups have mounted a vicious anti-Philippine government lobby in the US Congress and elsewhere to prod US lawmakers to cut American aid to our country.
Kinship
Indeed, the increase in US financial assistance to the Philippines will be viewed as significant if considered within the context of a restored kinship lost many years ago in the maze of conflicting politics.
