A dilemma for nationalists

The new bases agreement between the United States and the Philippines under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement or EDCA needs to be clarified.

First, it is not a new agreement since the original EDCA was instituted in 2014. Second, the Philippines is not granting the US to build and maintain permanent military bases like Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base before. The agreement provides the granting of access to US forces to our country’s military bases. While this is short of a permanent base, EDCA allows US forces to pre-position equipment and rotate forces in Philippine military bases. This is important because the Philippine Senate blocked the extension of a bilateral military bases agreement in 1991, thereby forcing the Americans to leave and transfer Clark and Subic.

This extension of the 2014 EDCA has put many nationalists like me in a quandary on whether we should support the EDCA expansion and extension or oppose it.

For many nationalists, the opposition to any US presence in the Philippines has been an ideological foundation. Back in my college days as an activist in La Salle, one of the main agenda of rallies was to oppose the presence of the military presence of the United States in our country. I remember my first demonstration was outside the US embassy. In the succeeding years, even during the time of martial law, the anti-Marcos demonstrations were always coupled with protests against the presence of US bases.

In 1991, when the extension of the bases agreement was being deliberated in the Philippine Senate, then president Corazon Aquino declared that her administration’s policy was to support the extension. Out of loyalty since I was then a member of her Cabinet, I remained silent. However, my own personal opinion was to side with the nationalists in the Senate opposing the bases’ extension.

In my youth, I had always equated nationalism with being anti-American. This was, of course, the result of our struggle for independence from the shackles of American colonialism. My heroes then were Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo Tañada, who were the pillars of Philippine nationalism. Today, nationalism is one of those curious phenomena which has become blurrier and more confused. The world has become so radically different in some ways than when it was in my student days; and yet somehow, it has remained basically the same.

The dictionary states that nationalism is the “… advocacy of or support for the interests of one’s own nation.” This is the same definition that refers to the term patriotism.

According to Prof. David Bell of the Johns Hopkins University, nationalism especially refers to nations that have been deprived of their territories which rightly belong to them. This deprivation was the condition of the Philippines under its former colonizers Spain, Japan and the US. Today, however, it is China that has forcefully and illegally deprived the Philippines of some of its territories.

This is the nationalist’s dilemma for many Filipino nationalists. Ideally, the Philippines should remain neutral in the great power rivalry between China and the United States. The other ideal condition would be to make the Philippines capable of defending itself and its territories from any foreign intrusion. However, China has continued to build bases on Philippine territories and has therefore violated Philippine sovereignty.

Unfortunately, it is clear that the Philippines has been unable to prevent violations of Philippine territorial limits. It has not even been able to protect Filipino fishermen from legally pursuing their livelihood even in its sovereign waters.

The EDCA will make us part of the “island chain” composed of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand, and now including the Philippines. This is the alliance that is being consolidated by all those nations that are fearful of China’s aggression and expansionist ideology. There are obviously potential dangers in joining this alliance. It is believed that the expanded EDCA seeks to include four new bases in the Philippines. Two of these bases will be in the province of Cagayan, very near Taiwan. One of the bases will be the old Subic Naval Base; and the fourth will be on the island of Palawan facing the South China Sea. In the event of conflict with China over Taiwan, the Philippines will become a logistics center for the new Indo-Pacific alliance.

Faced with the choice of submitting to continued Chinese expansionism and aligning with the anti-China coalition, the Filipino nationalist must unfortunately look for the lesser evil until the country finally has the means to defend itself.

As the 18th century German philosopher Gottfried von Herder wrote: “Nationalist feeling comes as naturally to us as breathing.”

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