We abandoned our independent foreign policy

Since President Duterte took office, he has been claiming that he is pursuing an “independent foreign policy.” The sad part is that we had an independent foreign policy, until the start of his administration. How we got to this mess may be traced to the often quoted commencement speech of then Sen. Claro M. Recto titled “Our Mendicant Foreign Policy.”

In that speech Recto said: “In the parliament of the United Nations, it is no more difficult to predict that the Philippines will vote with the American Union, than the Ukraine will vote with the Soviet Union. (Author’s note: The Ukraine was then part of the USSR.) American policy has found no more eloquent spokesman or zealous advocate and Russian policy no louder critic or more resourceful opponent than the Philippines. Americans may disagree with their own foreign policy, but it has no better supporters than the Filipinos.”

That statement of Recto is false. We have differed with the United States on issues vital to our national interest. Four months after Recto’s speech at the University of the Philippines on April 17, 1951, America convened the San Francisco Conference to conclude a peace treaty with Japan. It explicitly stated that Japan shall not be required to pay reparations. Japan was then being set up as a bulwark against communism.

We took exception to the US position and insisted that Japan must pay us reparations. We did not sign a treaty with Japan until 1956, with a reparations provision. Thus, we did not kowtow to the United States on an issue vital to our national interest, and won.

The repeated claims that our vote in the United Nations mimics the US vote is the worst misrepresentation of our foreign policy. The UN was formed at the start of the Cold War. The initial split in the UN is termed the East-West conflict, with the East representing the communist countries and the West representing countries outside the Soviet bloc. In the 1960s, a new split developed and was termed the North/South split. The North comprises the industrialized western countries, while the South is composed of Third World countries. This is mainly an economic dispute.

Thus, in East/West disputes, we vote with what is termed the “Western Alliance.” It is logical because we had the Hukbalahap insurgency. However, in the North/South disputes, we always vote with the developing nations against the United States; we have been doing this since 1964 in Unctad I, Geneva.

Critics of our foreign policy have cited our Mutual Defense Treaty with America as an indication of our lack of an independent foreign policy. This is another misrepresentation. A policy of nonalliance is a policy of neutrality. There are only three neutral countries now: Sweden, Switzerland and Finland. A neutral foreign policy is expensive. The three neutral countries cite their own state-of-the-art Leopard II main battle tanks and F-18 Hornets and Gripen jets in their arsenal. We cannot afford such an arsenal.

A country can have alliances with other nations, but it can still have an independent foreign policy so long as it can take initiatives to safeguard its national interest. Thus, England and France are members of Nato, but they have an independent foreign policy because they can assert their sovereign rights when necessary. Our foreign policy thus meets the standard of an independent foreign policy: We are in alliance with America, but we have stood up for our rights against US policy when it concerns our vital national interest.

When a country cannot assert issues concerning its national interest, it does not have an independent foreign policy. During the Cold War, Rumania could not claim Moldova, although its population is majority Rumanian. It was a satellite state of the USSR. We are now in the same boat—a satellite state of China. By his admission, Mr. Duterte discussed the West Philippine Sea dispute with China’s Xi Jinping. In typical bully fashion, Xi told him in effect to shut up or get clobbered. The sad part is, he meekly complied. That is satellite diplomacy, not an independent foreign policy.

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Hermenegildo C. Cruz was Philippine ambassador to the United Nations in 1984-1986.