The Resentment at the Heart of Today’s Philippine-U.S. Tensions
Through many decades the consciousness, the cultural and immigration-pattern links, the economic relations, and most other international connections from people of the Philippines have been dominated by ties to the United States. This has good and bad ramifications, as we’ll see, but it’s been a central part of the modern Philippine experience.
Through the past few years, the Philippines’ ties with China have become increasingly strained, largely because of China’s expanded ambitions in the neighboring seas. When an international tribunal ruled against some of China’s maritime claims this summer, the lawsuit had been brought by the Philippines.
That is why it qualified as big news, though barely noted in the campaign-season chaos of America, that last week the firebrand Trump-counterpart Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte struck a trade-and-diplomatic deal with China. In doing so, while shaking hands with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing, Duterte said, “In this venue, your honors, in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States.”
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As Malcolm Cook has argued at the invaluable Australian site The Interpreter, Duterte’s thumb-nosed stance toward the United States is causing some concern back home. (Of course there are much graver reasons for concern, domestic and worldwide, about his policies.) But as Trefor Moss pointed out in the WSJ this weekend, Duterte’s attitude may be an extreme version of the long-standing Philippine stance of attachment-and-resentment towards its onetime colonial master, the United States.
This is all by way of re-introducing an Atlantic piece I did nearly 30 years ago, after traveling in the Philippines at the time when Ferdinand Marcos was deposed and Corazon Aquino become the new vessel of the country’s hopes. It was called “A Damaged Culture”; it caused a lot of reaction, both positive and very, very negative, in the Philippines in succeeding years; and I think it still has some bearing on the next stage in Filipino-American-Chinese interactions. You can see the 1987 piece here. (And here is a brief update from 2009, about a return visit in Manila with one of the heroes of my article, the eminent Filipino writer F. Sionil Jose.)
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While I’m at it, here are two other reading-list items about the Chinese part of this relationship.
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This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
