Philippines should cease from being America's proxy nation: Philippine academics

Philippine academics and analysts lauded on Wednesday the decision of President Rodrigo Duterte to pursue an independent foreign policy by standing up and declaring that the Philippines should cease from being America's "proxy nation".

In a forum to assess Duterte's foreign policy, the analysts and scholars stressed the need to review the Mutual Defense Treaty that the U.S. and the Philippines signed in 1951 and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) that Washington and Manila inked in 2014.

Retired Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus, an author, said that EDCA promotes the national interest of the U.S. in the region. Former Senator Francisco Tatad, for his part, said that the Philippines should have re-negotiated the 1951 treaty as the treaty, which was crafted during the Cold War has become irrelevant under the post-Cold War era.

Political analyst and author Adolfo Paglinawan said EDCA is a "forward deployment of the U.S. pivot of its military presence to the Asia-Pacific," making the Philippines a proxy nation.

"EDCA was precisely the U.S.'s way of extending the legitimacy of its presence in our neck of woods, because first it has no business being around in our region that is more than 200 miles away for its nearest shores," he said.

In the same forum, Paglinawan also reputed the statement of university professor Renato de Castro who cited a survey of the Pulse Asia Research Inc. released on Jan. 27 that "there is disconnect between the administration's effort to come out with an independent foreign policy vis-a-vis the sentiment of the Filipino people."

"However, what seems to be the only disconnect is in the survey itself," Paglinawan said, adding that De Castro was biased in his interpretation of the nationwide survey that out of 1,200 adults, 84 percent agreed that the county should uphold its rights in the disputed region in the South China Sea.

Paglinawan pointed out that the same Pulse Asia poll also asked respondents whether "the Philippines should explore security or defense cooperation with China and Russian than the United States" and it found 47 percent (12 percent "very much agree," 35 percent "agree") of Filipinos are open with pivoting diplomatic ties to China and Russia, with 34 percent undecided and only 18 percent disagreeing.

Paglinawan said De Castro was using a survey commissioned by a private think tank being ran by former Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, who is known to be a pro-American diplomat. He initiated to bring the sea dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration based in the Hague, which is neither permanent nor a court at all and has nothing to do with the United Nations.

Clearly, Paglinawan said that De Castro deliberately committed some facts to defend the so-called "rules-based" foreign policy of the former Aquino administration that eschewed the Philippine position to support its subservience to American interest in pushing for EDCA. Endit