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What's at Stake
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10042 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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4 / 1986 |
1,820 Words |
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Neil C. Livingstone
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The success enjoyed by the Reagan administration in providing for a smooth transition of power in the Philippines and Haiti is in stark contrast to the failures of the Carter administration in Iran and Nicaragua, where radical anti-American forces took over and are the source of continuing problems for the United States. Eager to deny Reagan all the credit, former Carter-era policymakers are already calling the Philippines a triumph of bipartisanship and pointing out the reasons that the situation there was so much less complex than the one faced by Carter in Iran. According to Carter's assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, Richard Holbrooke, a viable democratic alternative existed to Marcos, whereas in Iran there was no choice between the strongman and the radicals. Holbrooke's contention certainly can be challenged, since the Iranian military, with appropriate U.S. encouragement and backing, could have played the same constructive role in bringing about a change in Iran as occurred in the Philippines, and do so before the radicals were at the gate.
Holbrooke is more on target when describing television's role in increasing "the immediacy of the Philippines crisis in the United States and the sense that the United States had a stake in its outcome." Indeed, while the collapse of a friendly government in Iran, and its replacement with one that was openly hostile to American interests were a severe blow to U.S. foreign policy, it is nothing compared to the trauma that would flow from the "loss" of the Philippines. The U.S. stake in the Philippines is well-documented and goes back to the period when the Philippines was a U.S. commonwealth and the chief outpost of American power in the Pacific.
Maintaining Commitments
"The first group of islands in the world," observed Arnold Toynbee of the Philippines, "its strategic position is unexcelled by that of any other position on the globe." Comprised of some 7,100 islands, the Philippine archipelago is a major gateway to Asia and proximate to some of the most heavily traveled sea-lanes on earth, including the eastern approaches to the Straits of Malacca. The Philippines represent what Admiral John S. McGain Jr. once called "our farthest forward outpost, our last dam, our front-line trenches and were we to lose the Philippines, our next fall back would be Guam, then Honolulu, and then the State of California.' As the United States withdrew from Vietnam, U.S. military installations in the Philippines took on vastly new importance. Subic Bay Naval Base has been described as one of the finest deep-water ports in the world and boasts huge dry-docking and naval support facilities. Similarly, Clark air base is one of the largest and most modern air bases available to the United States. Along with a number of smaller installations in the Philippines, Subic Bay and Clark are critical to the maintenance of American commitments in the eastern Pacific and key elements in the lose girdle of alliances and bases that encircle the Soviet union. Relocating the bases to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean or some other site would cost as much as $8 billion and represent a severe setback for the United States.
Strategic Implications
Contemporary Soviet strategy is aimed at keeping U.S. military forces as far as possible from its borders and competing effectively with the West for control of strategic resources, straits, and populations. During the era of
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