It’s complicated

The complicated colonial nature of our history is reflected in our Independence Day celebrations.

Today we remember that Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed Philippine independence 117 years ago—but we cannot say that today is our 117th Independence Day. Between 1901 and 1946, the Americans and then the Japanese exercised sovereign control over the country. Our exercise of independence, in other words, does not span a total of 117 years but, taken together, only about 72 years.

The complications are reflected in the proclamation of Philippine independence itself.

It is a curious document: The language is ornate Spanish, the format that of a routine legal document (“Before me”); the arguments are a mix of recent events (“the unjust execution of Rizal and others”) and settled history (“Governor Miguel Lopez de Legazpi … continuing the course followed by his predecessor Ferdinand Magellan”). And then there are the geopolitical assumptions, which are uncomfortably practical and, as it turns out, naive: “Under the protection of the Powerful and Humanitarian Nation, the United States of America, we do hereby proclaim and declare solemnly in the name and by the authority of the people of these Philippine islands, That they are and have the right to be free and independent …”

Less than a month before the proclamation was read, Aguinaldo had returned to the Philippines from his Hong Kong exile on board an American vessel; a few weeks before his return, the American Navy had broadcast news of its controversial rout of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. The protection offered by the expansionist Americans seemed very real.

But Apolinario Mabini, who first met Aguinaldo a few hours after the proclamation was read, found the text of the independence proclamation problematic. The argument is familiar even today; the United States has its own national interests to pursue; sometimes these may coincide with our own, and sometimes, as events proved a mere seven months after the proclamation was read, they conflict. In December 1898, the United States bought the Philippines from Spain, and in February 1899, under a pretext, the Powerful and Humanitarian Nation in Aguinaldo’s imagining turned against his army and the people he represented.

Fast forward to today.

Nothing concentrates the public mind like a Manny Pacquiao fight—or an unmistakable external threat. China’s brusque and increasingly aggressive conduct in parts of the West Philippine Sea have focused national attention on what is perceived to be a pattern of Chinese attacks on, and a series of instigations against, Philippine sovereignty. Now there seems to be a change in attitude among many Filipinos: A general sense of frustration and anxiety over Chinese bullying has given way to a sense of anger and outraged patriotism over Chinese expansionism.

No one wants to go to war against China; our people-to-people ties are too numerous and too direct, our position relative to the new superpower is too vulnerable. But there is popular support for even closer military cooperation with the United States, and there will be similar goodwill toward any defense partnership with Japan or Australia or South Korea or any other country which can help the Philippines achieve a credible military posture, simply because China’s provocations insult our intelligence, the accumulated evidence, even history itself.

But practical considerations require the Philippines to enter into these agreements, such as a possible status of forces treaty with Japan, with 21st-century realism, not 19th-century naiveté. For now and for the next several years, perhaps, the United States and Japan may share our view of Chinese maritime and territorial ambitions. But they have interests of their own; the world’s three biggest economies have a lot more in common with each other than either the United States or Japan has with the Philippines.

We must strike the right balance, between challenging China’s expansionist claims with the support of allied nations like the United States and Japan, and embracing US and Japanese objectives as our own. It’s complicated, but that is the price of true independence.