Proposal: a ‘College of War Studies’ in UP

The Armed Forces of the Philippines needs an average of 1,000 second lieutenants annually for its officer corps to lock a 120,000 troop ceiling provided for by the General Appropriations Act. The Philippine Military Academy has contributed 50-100 yearly since 1950, AFP-wide. The rest are drawn from the service schools of the Army, Navy and Air Force, officer candidate school and ROTC.

Since 1946, the PMA’s 10-percent creme de la creme has coexisted in tenuous harmony with the 90-percent mass professionals in a military culture of discipline, obedience, loyalty and esprit de corps in the service of the homeland.

The PMA began as an officer’s school of the Philippine Constabulary at Sta. Lucia Barracks, Intramuros, on Feb. 12, 1905, and moved to Camp Allen on Constabulary Hill, Baguio, in April 1908. On Feb. 4, 1916, the legislature passed Act No. 2605, which provided for a 9-month course in the new “Academy for Officers of the Philippine Constabulary” with a collegiate status. A National Defense Act signed on Dec. 21, 1935, commenced a 4-year course with Classes of 1940 and 1941 as its foremost graduates. Deactivated in December 1941 with the outbreak of the Pacific War, it reopened on May 1, 1947, at Polo Fields. Its present site is in Loakan.

From 1905 to 1935, the dreaded Constabulary was the nemesis of a generation of Filipino patriots resisting Yankee annexation in 1898—brutalized and killed for articulating popular grievances and aspirations against grinding poverty, high taxes, oppression by caciques, and land grabbing, among others employed by the rich and powerful. This formed the backdrop of the peasant war in the early 1920s and late 1930s.

After World War II in 1945 and the Korean War in 1950, the concept of “modern war” evolved with the advance of military technology and more complex forms of the 19th- and 20th-century antecedents. The US Department of Defense now speaks of “battlespace”—a euphemism for integrated information management to include all factors that impact on combat operations on air, land, sea and space: enemy and friendly forces, facilities, weather and terrain within operational areas and areas of interest.

Inevitably, war studies in Europe today has become multidisciplinary at the King’s College London, Royal Military College of Canada, and Universities of Glasgow, Kent, Buckingham, Hull, and Birmingham. Students must explore the military, diplomatic, social, political and economic dimensions of human conflict. Modern warfare includes issues of defense policy, strategic planning, logistics and operations. The PMA curriculum has been utterly passé since 1946—a basic reason its graduates cannot win an internal war for 50 years. It’s the same with the compulsory ROTC currently being revived by dumb proponents who cannot look beyond their noses.

Here’s an urgent proposal: a 4-year course resulting in a bachelor’s degree from a “College of War Studies” at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, in partnership with the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Four brigades with 1,000 cadets will comprise the “UP Oblation Cadet Corps”—all-women Gabriela Silang, Andres Bonifacio, Antonio Luna, and Artemio Ricarte—dressed in Luna’s gala uniform. They will goose-step in column in every formation, clutching on their chest an AK-47 prototype, and foreshadowed by the iconic oblation during ceremonies. Cadet age: 21. Hazing will be strictly prohibited. Acceptance to the program will be by competitive examination.

Funding will come from donors committed to thwart all threats against Filipinas, both internal and external. Graduates will be automatically commissioned as first lieutenants in the AFP. From them, it is devotedly wished, will rise a Filipino Caesar—an eloquent example of a university in the military and not the military in the university—synthesized by an acceptable level of civilian control through critical thought. An advocacy of military service will uphold that standing armies are not incompatible with individual freedoms so long as constitutional guarantees exist.

In the first year, mastery of the tools of military craft and an analytic mind will be a must: martial arts; language (English, Filipino, Mandarin); military leadership and tactics (squad, platoon, company, battalion); history (indigenous culture, Spain’s colonization, Fil-Am War); literature (American, English, Asian); advanced logic (metaphysics, epistemology); and philosophy of mathematics.

The second year will be focused on classical philosophy (Plato, Aristotle), medieval (St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas), modern (Locke, Berkeley, Spinoza, Leibniz); political theory of justice and freedom; warfare in the ancient world; war and international relations (Clausewitz); art of war (Sun Tzu); and ethics of science.

The third year will include guerrilla warfare (insurgency and counterinsurgency) and conventional war in the modern world; protracted war (Antonio Luna, Mao Zedong, Che Guevarra); ideology and technology; war and society; and philosophy of war.

The fourth year will specialize in either the American civil war, security issues in Asean and in the Middle East, war on terror, and global conflict in contemporary world, or Philippine unilateral defense strategy. A comprehensive examination and a 100-page publishable manuscript will complete the course.

The faculty will consist of PhD holders or persons whose academic credentials are impeccable in political-military theory, political history, political sociology, political economy, linguistics, literature and humanities, quantum physics, mathematics, and the art of war.

Ever mindful of the ethical imperative of Immanuel Kant, alumni will affirm as dialectically unacceptable a New People’s Army defector turned repentant Benjamin, an inept coup plotter turned senator, an AFP comptroller behind bars, a guilt-stricken AFP chief of staff turned suicidal, and a PMA turnback (for failure in math) as defense secretary.

If the proposed college gives birth to revolutionary ideas, its nation’s life will not be directly threatened because the nation will remain in full control of its own instruments of self-preservation. From the viewpoint of effectiveness, a university is outmatched from the start in a physical contest with its nation, and its physical sallies can only result in immediate defeat.

The university’s natural arena is in the sphere of ideas, and its most effective weaponry is verbalized persuasion. It is ignorance that breeds chaos and disorder; only knowledge with wisdom is benevolent power. To change our society, we must change our thinking.

Reynaldo V. Silvestre, a retired Army colonel, earned AB and MPA degrees from the University of the Philippines in Diliman and Manila in 1966 and 1968, respectively. He taught political theory at UP Manila and belongs to Class 1968 of UP Vanguard in Diliman.