The Senate’s foreign policy challenge

The Senate has a strategic role to play in the crafting of foreign policy. Aside from its high-profile public investigations “in aid of legislation,” the Senate can effectively make or break the Philippine state’s position on a wide range of internationally focused economic, political and security questions. This is due to the chamber’s uniquely assigned constitutional role: It is the only government body with the legal authority to concur in or ratify any and all binding bilateral and multilateral treaties and/or agreements entered into by the government.

In practice, however, the ritual of the majority of senators—past and present—is to silently question yet loudly accept a dogma that fundamentally frames the Philippines’ external relations standpoint. Thus, the basic attitude of Philippine foreign policy is to always bow to the global dictates of the United States and to never oppose its self-serving policy impositions on us.

This is the case no matter how severely harmful these prescriptions may be and which regularly violate Philippine sovereignty and endanger the lives of the Filipino masses in the long run. And because our foreign policy logic is stuck in a neo-Cold War syndrome, our traditional political elites cannot seem to conduct Philippine diplomacy beyond a 20th-century mindset.

Sadly for us, from July 4, 1946, until the present, the Senate only once delivered a majority vote against America’s strategic interests. Combined with the support of a strong anti-US-bases mass movement at the time, 12 senators finally abrogated the RP-US Military Bases Agreement on Sept. 16, 1991. But since then, this ultra-rare behavior has never been repeated in the Senate.

It is a damning truism for almost seven decades now that most Filipino traditional politicians seek a Senate seat in order to use it as an eventual springboard into Malacañang.  Within this latter political context, newly-elected senators are often overtaken by the “I fear the White House” syndrome upon entering the halls of the Senate; they then proceed to shut up on key PH-US issues and concerns.  And this “trapo” disorder, which affects many of our senators, can yet worsen and mutate over time into the “I must win Malacañang with US support” disease.

Hence, most senators tend to lose their strategic focus quite rapidly, because they no longer see the need to provide any type of independent leadership for their people anymore. This is one major factor why our senators cannot seem to appreciate the formal powers of sovereignty which the Senate officially still wields, and that is vested within their collective leadership. Partly because they are not guided by any sovereign perspective linked to a progressive foreign policy agenda, many senators lack a broad world view on the changing international system. And thus, they readily lose sight of any positive potential which the Philippines can yet contribute to the greater welfare of the global order today.

The disappointing political deterioration of the Senate is clearly rooted in the backward and underdeveloped national structures and processes of the Philippine capitalist system itself. Almost the entire Philippine state’s economic-political-security setup is directly plugged into, and fully dependent on, a global capitalist system dominated by a bloc of imperialist powers led by the United States.

Indeed, the current international terrain is a shifting landscape of complex and complicated dynamics. Many of the important issues affecting the global environment (i.e., neoliberal globalization, international terrorism, regional peace and security, wars of aggression, struggles for democratic freedoms and human rights, climate change, etc.) are constantly pressing on and altering our domestic milieu.  Unfortunately, their total effects largely tend to distort and negate our national economic goals and social developmental priorities.

Because these global issues gravely impact upon us all, we are now compelled to pursue an alternative foreign policy framework in response to external challenges. Thus, a new external relations agenda should be truly independent, progressively sovereign, democratically cooperative, and internationalist in character. This blend of principles should help advance a more liberating and nonchauvinistic foreign policy paradigm for our people amid the current international conflicts and regional tensions buffeting our country.

Decisively, today’s highly fluid international environment should push a new generation of senators to urgently and swiftly cochart a path to independently lead our country through a multifaceted mix of global forces. The urgency of formulating a forward-looking foreign policy as a frontline weapon to protect our people’s collective interests from potential external threats and dangers cannot be overstated. It should also advance a set of internationalist solidarity initiatives to help guide the world’s oppressed majority toward a humanity-oriented global project that is rights-based, people-centered, and socially-just.

This is the direct challenge facing what will be the new Senate after the May 9 elections.

Rasti Delizo is an international affairs analyst and presently the political affairs coordinator of the socialist labor center Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino.