The call for the abrogation of the VFA can prove to be a major leap in the continuing search for an independent foreign policy, however limited the opportunities it will offer. However limited the opportunities were, the dismantling of the U.S. military bases in 1992 led to the economic conversion of the former base locations and peripheral communities, drastically reduced U.S. military aid, moved the peace process with the armed Left and the Moro rebels several knots ahead, and the crafting of a development-oriented foreign policy. The withdrawal of the bases was, of course, a hard-fought gain of the historic anti-bases struggle of the Left and progressive opposition that ended with the equally landmark Senate rejection of the proposed bases renewal treaty.
But Fidel V. Ramos’s neo-liberal mindset led to the rehabilitation of the base areas in favor of foreign investors even as he refused to heed appeals from communities for justice for the atrocities and disease-causing toxic wastes left by the base operators.
The long-term global economic recession opens opportunities for the assertion of people-oriented economic blueprints. The decline of U.S. world hegemony that now suffers from “imperial overstretch” and the lethal blows of financial losses should provide a stimulus for restructuring the country’s neo-colonial relations with America as Filipinos continue to build the blocks of alternative democratic governance. No country in the developing world has ever reached progress and equal treatment without fighting for self-determination and choosing an independent foreign policy.
The next 15 years will be crucial. (Posted by (Bulatlat.com))
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End notes
(1) From controlling 50 percent of the global economy after World War II, U.S. economic power has steadily declined to 30 percent in the 1960s and just below 20 percent today.
(2) Harvey, “Why the U.S. stimulus package is bound to fail,’ January 2009. Harvey wrote, “A Brief History of Neoliberalism.”
(3) The U.S. is the world’s biggest debtor, at around $50 trillion a large part of it borrowed from China.
(4) “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World,” November 2008.
(5) Also being mulled is a new Bretton Woods system that aims to gather inter-state and institutional efforts to address the global financial crisis.
(6) CNAS, “Sustainable Security: Developing a Security Strategy for the Long Haul,” April 2008.
(7) CNAS, “Unfinished Business: U.S. Overseas Military Presence in the 21st Century, June 2008.
(8) Col. Edward Lansdale was a deep penetration CIA chief operative in the Philippines during the 1950’s and is claimed to be instrumental in elevating Defense Secretary Ramon Magsaysay as president (1953-1957).
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