Veer Away from "Pax Americana"

The persistent belief that the world has become unipolar and that American hegemony since the fragmentation of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of the Brandenburg Gate and merger of East Germany with West Germany has become absolute has been reduced to smithereens, and Pax Americana can no longer hold sway in many parts of the world.

It is in this light that national interest dictates a novel and creative way of exploiting this situation, veering away from the coattails of Washington and using every diplomatic, political, cultural, economic and military means to advance the country’s interest.

Indeed, since 1986, when the Philippines had the golden chance to reduce its huge debt burden and selectively repudiate loans that had been fraudulent incurred, the country never took a closer analysis of its ties with the United States, preferring to regard it as Big Brother and maintaining its political, economic and military ties.

When the Senate voted to oust the US military bases in 1991, with a little help from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, the Philippines should, technically, have been plunged headlong into expanding its diplomatic work into getting better multilateral ties with big powers, from China, France, Germany, Japan and other countries belonging to the European Union (EU).

The dismantling of the US bases should have forced the national leadership to engaged these countries more fruitfully, broadening sources of military aid and equipment, junking in the process the onerous terms and dependency on US military culture and war technology.

Needless to say, the situation then presented the best opportunity to reassess the commitment to globalization, which opened the country’s market to cheap foreign subsidized goods and committed the national economy to liberalize the entry of investments in practically all departments-agriculture and manufacturing— while there’s failure to secure the same commitments from trading partners.

Much of the country’s woes emanate from government’s failure to chart an independent course, unlike Malaysia and Indonesia or even China, which saw its economy zooming by 10 percent annually after it initiated the Four Modernizations in the 1970’s during the latter
years of Mao Zedong’s rule, and the eventual liberalization on foreign investments under strict residency rules on capital and stiffer regulations on workers’ incomes and rights.

Malaysia and other Asian nations advanced on the basis of their policy of not relying on US suzerainty or patronage, with Kuala Lumpur implementing its preferential treatment of bumiputra capitalists (native-born) rather that pampering foreign businessmen and corporations. Malaysia also engaged Japan and other countries strategically, allowing a broader investment base, and forged ahead with its electronics industry and manufacturing sectors. It made hay out of palm oil while the Philippines practically castrated its coconut industry by not working hard enough to destroy the propaganda campaign against its main agricultural export product.

On the other hand, the EU has been charting its own course as the United States of Europe, and its position not to support the illegal invasion of Iraq merely echoed its dependence on Middle East oil and its policy of nurturing close ties with big oil producers, believing that it must not depend on oil gas and supplies from one source.

It has also maintained its policy of protecting the EU’s farmers, erecting qualitative restrictions to limit the entry of foreign agricultural products while boosting its manufacturing sector and entering into multilateral ties to make its financial capital venture deeper into newly industrializing countries.

The EU, China and other countries have maintained a tenuous relationship with the warmongering Bush clique in Washington and Houston and their position have spread them from the errors committed by Washington in Iraq, which have tied down more than 150,000 US troops and cost nearly 20 percent of the entire annual military budget of $400 billion.

This misadventure was not only a political debacle for George Bush Jr. and Dick Cheney and Halliburton. The mantra that the military-industrial complex would profit from the war and boost production has not come to pass. The miracle of the baby boomer economy after World War II and the end of the Vietnam War has not been repeated under the watch of ultra rightist Republican regime of Bush, who has been busy wrecking the budget and trade surpluses achieved by the eight-year Bill Clinton presidency.

With huge current deficit running into trillions of dollars and the willy-nilly policy of reducing taxes for the rich while penalizing workers by cutting welfare benefits, Bush now enjoys total condemnation.

As Bush wobbles under the weight of unpopularity and the rebellion caused by his much-maligned immigration control law, he has been reduced to a lame duck midway in his second four-year term as president. His rallying US citizens to combat “terrorism” worldwide gained sympathy only following the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

He flubbed the Iraq campaign and his incursion into Afghanistan, all because Bush lied, cheated and his accomplices stole their way to win huge reconstruction contracts in Iraq. He has been proven to be an inveterate liar after not a single shred of evidence turned up to show there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The only time Saddam Hussein dealt with the Al Qaeda was when he ordered his troops to crack down on them since they posed a clear and present danger to Baghdad. Bush lied about Hussein’s being the custodian of Osama Bin Laden.
Under this scenario, would the Philippines be in a better position to continue its subservience to Pax Americana, the nuclear blackmail and the iniquitous economic, trade and military ties with the United States?

The answer is a resounding “No.”

US initiatives worldwide point to the possibility that it would engage in a number of wars in the next few years. One monstrous adventure would require attacking Iran for its supposed nuclear program. Another is the dangerous play of threatening North Korea with an invasion, again for developing its nuclear program. Still another is the possible assault on Venezuela by US troops as Hugo Chavez shifts to the left along with four or five heads of state in Latin America. Washington does not want another Fidel Castro in its political lake under the Monroe Doctrine.
These wars would not produce a boom for the US economy, which is now the world’s biggest debtor. The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that the US economy has not generated greater employment nor more housing starts on account of growth produced by the war.

The main reason for this is that the US has shifted its manufacturing base to China and other countries and the share of industry has been reduced to only between 30 percent and 40 percent of annual gross national product (GNP). Like the United Kingdom which has a manufacturing sector that accounts for only one percent of GNP, the US has become an exporter of finance capital.

However, the US continues to play a big role in shaping the international division of labor and it has been responsible for the dismal under development of many Asian, Latin American and African countries that it had encouraged to venture in mass production of cash crops that enjoy little or no market at all.

Take the case of Mali, which was cajoled into producing cotton, promising that the country would enjoy a large market in the US. Mali has a surplus of cotton produced at much expense on inputs but could not compete with subsidized cotton produced in the U.S.

The same holds true for Mexico, which was also compelled to sign as member of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mexico thought that by acceding to the agreement, her workers would be preferred for employment in the U.S. Now, Mexico’s cheap labor has been used to produce garments and other goods consigned to the US market. It is now reaping the whirlwind as the US clamped down on Mexican immigrants and erected its own 579-km of double Barbed Wire Curtain along the border of Mexico.

For the Philippines, the US has imposed harsh standards on fruits and vegetables, fish and marine products and agricultural crops, dashing the dream of Filipino globalists that free trade would be the dawn of the golden era of Philippine agricultural exports.

If we are to examine closely the kind of trading arrangements that the US wants the Philippines to implement, we would eventually recognize it as nothing more than reconfigured Parity Rights that officially ended in 1974. It comes with a new tag and it is called globalization or free trade. It is not in any manner consistent with fair trade nor is similar with preferential treatment.
On the matter of investments, the US wants similar privileges and vested rights even if it requires constitutional amendments. In fact, the World Trade Organization (WTO), which works to promote US interest, wants all countries to amend their Constitutions to hew closely to the impositions of borderless trade.

Militarily, the US does not want the Philippines to conclude strategic defense alliances with other countries like China and Russia, nor would it countenance fairer treatment of investments from other nations.

In the main, the US wants the country to retain its neocolonial status, unfree to chart it’s own destiny and consigned to an economy that is largely semi-feudal, its manufacturing sector reduced to producing intermediate goods and not capital goods.

Today, the Philippines is being asked to open up some more to accommodate US investments and prolong the agony of the historical net decapitalization of the country. For far too long, the US took out more capital from this country than it had put in. US companies come in only to borrow local funds to boost their operations, remitting the same under ironclad guarantees by the Philippine government, and paying only minimal taxes since they are provided perks and practically national treatment.

For so many years, US funds also come in as hot money for portfolio investments, quick to come in and fly out since the government does not have any residency rule for such types of investments. In sum, these funds are used mainly not for industrial investments but only for stock market placements. They do not contribute much to generate employment and only pay a few pennies for the stock market killings they make.

Bush and his accomplices are busy trying to widen and deepen the penetration of its finance capital in the Middle East, and the only way to do this is through conquest, as what it did in Iraq and is now vainly trying to do in Iran, except that Iran would fight back and use its more than $60 billion in surplus to fight US forces. The only political and geographical consideration is that other nations would inevitably support Iran, even if it means battling US nuclear forces.

Washington also wants to make North Korea kneel but Pyongyang and Beijing are not ready to allow this. North Korea and China battled the US-led United Nations (UN) forces in the 1950s to a stalemate at the 38th Parallel and they are not ready to yield. One must remember that Russia also played a role in this by reportedly threatening to attack Europe should US tanks and planes penetrate North Korea.

With US now gripped with its own energy crisis and its turbulent economic crunch, the situation is not favorable for Pax Americana to wage war in several theaters any more than it could compel oil-producing nations independent of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to supply it with fuel.

Washington has lots much of its clout for believing that its power is limitless and that the nuclear blackmail would work all the time. Recent events point to its incapability to rule the planet.

The US is now lusting for a greater role in the Philippines as part of its new containment policy of China, which hosts hundreds of billions worth of US investments and now has a surplus of around $400 billion, exactly the total face value of all US dollars in circulation.
Manila has become important to US designs on China, particularly as the confrontational Bush administration is aching to create trouble in the special economic zones of China and subvert the rule of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

This is the context of US policy in the Philippines. It wants a regime that would be compliant and subservient to Washington’s interest. It is in the interest of the Filipino people to resist such policy and craft their own national destiny. To do so would show to the entire planet that the Philippines is not a client state of the US and neither is it a forward base for aggression in Asia.
We Filipinos should also be wary of our counter-terrorism policy. Despite the fear mongering of a few, claiming to be experts on counter-terrorism (or are they U.S. assets?), there are still patriots in our armed forces and law enforcement agencies who deny their allegations.

The media should stop the lies that if repeated several times could be believed as gospel truth.