Mission in search of a vision

The Constitution requires national service. In the past, this was primarily considered to be military service. Two decades ago, an alternative, civilian service, was provided.

As it stands, the choice between military or civilian service — some students still opt for the military option, with many more opting for the civilian alternative — far likely represents a more rational use of resources. The level of enthusiasm, if not commitment, is probably higher in both cases. The real question is whether both could benefit from further reforms to more wholly achieve their purpose, which is the same — to render service to the State.

If we had a national civilian service conducted with imagination and vision, no slum would be spared a cleanup, or when you think of it, no shoreline or river system would be littered or clogged with garbage. There would be no need to make periodic calls for volunteers to pack relief goods in the aftermath of typhoons. And if one considers that, from the start, the basis of national service for national defense envisioned citizen-soldiers not only being called in times of war, but also responding to calamities in times of peace, then there is a natural and sensible convergence of both civilian and military service in times of public need.

If we had a military service option that was attractive to students, you might also discover that the trends toward an increasingly aging military, and shrinking class sizes in institutions like the Philippine Military Academy, could be reversed. Military service is increasingly becoming complex, requiring better-educated and highly skilled soldiers and officers. This requires, in turn, not just a substantial investment in training, but also continuing training. It thus demands a long-term career commitment from those who enlist and receive commissions, which suggests reviewing everything from the retirement age in the military to the size of the services, if the country is to afford a realistic defense.

This logically raises the question of whether the reserves of the Armed Forces are organized and managed in an optimal manner. The idea that every able-bodied man or woman should be automatically considered part of the reserve force is no longer viable after the option of civilian service was introduced.

Setting aside the hostility in certain quarters to the very idea of compulsory service to the State (nondebatable, as constitutionally mandated), or the resistance of some to the whole idea of recognizing the legitimacy of our Armed Forces and its mission of national defense, the debate about reintroducing ROTC seems based on the wrong assumptions from the start. Here, the opinions of two generals, both of whom were products of West Point and who actually saw service in the field during World War II, are crucial, to my mind.

The first two opinions come from Gen. Vicente Lim, the first Filipino graduate of West Point and who headed the ROTC program in Letran College. In a letter to his sons on March 28, 1939, he shared with them the three fundamentals on which he felt the armed services should be based: First, citizenship training; second, physical development; third, education along military lines. Crucially, he felt that the Army had no business meddling in the first and second. On May 6, 1939, he further told his sons, “I still believe the training of the youth really belongs to the homes, the churches, the schools and other institutions, like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.”

Lim was responding to a serious confrontation between Douglas MacArthur, then military adviser to the Philippine government, and Filipino officials and soldiers. A little over a month after Lim wrote to his sons, another Filipino graduate of West Point, Gen. Fidel Segundo, recorded a confrontation on the topic between the president of the Philippines, MacArthur and the Filipino generals.

Questioned on his scheme of decentralizing military training, MacArthur defended his plan by arguing “that the scattered cadres were decided upon in order to develop nationalism in the various localities.” Segundo records what followed: The president, he wrote, “stopped him short by saying that the development of nationalism among the people is a political phase of the national defense and not a military phase, and as the political head of the nation, he is charged with this mission and [that] MacArthur [should] confine himself strictly to the military phase. He told MacArthur that in his national defense planning he should disregard political influences. The president himself will face the legislature and the people [on] such subject[s].”

In fact, if one refers to Commonwealth Act No. 1, which established our modern-day Armed Forces and laid down the defense policies of the country, and which is still in force, the focus and intent of the law is the creation and maintenance of an effective force for territorial defense, and not the inculcation of civic or other virtues. What military service teaches is obedience and skill in the use of arms. It seems more logical, not to mention more in keeping with the cardinal principle of civilian supremacy over the military (which is also enshrined in the Constitution), that good citizenship and a civic sense should already be characteristics of the individual before military training (or civilian service). To expect it to be drilled into people even as they’re learning military discipline is counterintuitive, if not downright counterproductive.

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