When the Philippines Slammed the Door on History

On September 16, 1991, the Philippine Senate voted to reject the renewal of the U.S.–Philippines Bases Agreement. The decision was celebrated as a triumph of sovereignty, a casting off of colonial chains at Subic and Clark. Thirty-three years later, however, the reckoning is less triumphant and far more sobering. What was billed as “independence” may in fact have been one of the costliest mistakes in modern Philippine history.

The Economic Price was Immediate 

Tens of thousands lost their jobs when Clark and Subic shut down. Local businesses—from jeepney drivers to factory suppliers—collapsed overnight. The U.S. was prepared to inject billions in rent, aid, and infrastructure upgrades. Instead, the Philippines got empty runways, rusting hangars, and the slow conversion of Subic into an industrial park that only partly made up for the devastation. The promise of progress was exchanged for economic dislocation.

The Security Price Was Even Steeper

By closing the bases, the Philippines also closed the door to one of its strongest deterrents. Within four years, China seized Mischief Reef in the Spratlys, exploiting the power vacuum. Our underfunded armed forces, still flying Vietnam-era helicopters and sailing World War II ships, had nothing with which to push back. The symbolism of nationalism had cost us the substance of security.

Geopolitically, the Philippines Surrendered its Leverage

For nearly a century, the country was the United States’ most strategic outpost in Asia. By rejecting the bases, we forced Washington to pivot to Singapore, Thailand, and Australia. The Philippines—sitting at the very throat of the South China Sea—was suddenly reduced to a bystander in a game it once anchored. 

We traded centrality for irrelevance, only to beg for a return through the Visiting Forces Agreement in 1999 and Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2014. By then, Beijing’s artificial islands were already rising from the sea.

The Sovereignty Argument, in Hindsight, Rings Hollow. 

Other nations host U.S. bases on their soil without being reduced to colonial wards. Japan has allowed tens of thousands of American troops on Okinawa for decades, yet remains the world’s third-largest economy and an unmistakably sovereign power. South Korea, with nearly 30,000 U.S. troops stationed there, has grown from war-torn ruin into a technological and cultural giant. 

Even Germany, the beating heart of the European Union, hosts over 35,000 American personnel, yet dictates EU policy from Berlin, not Washington. These countries demonstrate that sovereignty is not weakened but rather strengthened when backed by credible security guarantees.

By contrast, the Philippines chose to conflate nationalism with isolation, waving the flag as the bases shut down. The result was a hollow sovereignty: we kept the symbols but lost the substance. A nation is not less sovereign because it has allies; it is less sovereign when it cannot defend its own seas, cannot secure its own resources, and cannot guarantee prosperity for its own people.

"Magnificent 12"

Looking back, the Senate’s “Magnificent 12” voted with their hearts, but perhaps not with their heads. Sovereignty is precious, but sovereignty without security and prosperity is a hollow boast. A country may wave its flag, but a flag cannot stop missiles nor feed the jobless.

Today, as Chinese coast guard vessels train their water cannons on our resupply missions to Ayungin Shoal, the irony is brutal: we are once again calling on the United States, pleading for joint patrols, security guarantees, and a return of the very presence we once expelled.

In 1991, we told the Americans to leave. Now, in the shadow of a rising China, we realize too late: it was not the Americans we had evicted, but our own future.

The Limits of Sison’s Theory : Why the Communist Movement in the Philippines is Stagnating

 Introduction

Jose Maria Sison, founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), provided the ideological backbone of the communist insurgency in the country. His writings, anchored in "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought", laid down the framework for “national-democratic revolution” as the only valid path to Philippine liberation. 

For a time, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, his ideas galvanized cadres and mobilized thousands. Yet over the decades, the movement has declined, fragmented, and stagnated, and is arguably headed to an ignominous end. While state repression played its part, much of the blame also lies in theoretical errors and Sison’s failure to understand the Philippine context in all its complexity.

Sison’s writings reveal a striking rigidity that ignores the evolving realities of Philippine society. He often insisted on a fixed narrative of unending systemic crisis, while the political system repeatedly showed its capacity to absorb shocks through reforms, elections, and elite realignments. This disconnect between his predictions and lived reality gradually eroded the credibility of his ideological framework.

Moreover, the communist movement under his leadership became increasingly isolated from the everyday aspirations of Filipinos, who sought stability and upward mobility in pragmatic, legal, and economic avenues rather than revolution. 

The introduction of new industries, the opportunities of overseas work, and the cultural resilience of the people highlighted the widening gap between theoretical expectation and social reality. This gap ultimately set the stage for the movement’s decline.

1. Misreading the “Ruling System”

Sison argued that the “ruling system” in the Philippines was in a state of “chronic and ever-worsening crisis” that could only end through revolutionary overthrow. This prediction turned out to be flawed:

- The Philippine state, though weak and plagued with corruption, was never in an unresolvable crisis. It proved resilient, adapting through reforms, elections, elite realignments, and international support.

- Institutions bent without breaking; transitions of power (from Marcos to Aquino, then to subsequent administrations) showed that the system could absorb shocks rather than collapse outright.

- This misdiagnosis blinded the movement to the reality that the state’s survival mechanisms were more robust than Sison’s theory allowed.

2. Underestimating Filipino Resilience

Sison’s framework assumed that worsening economic hardship would automatically radicalize the masses and drive them into revolution. He underestimated the cultural and historical resiliency of the Filipino people:

- Filipinos developed creative ways to survive economic downturns — from "diskarte" and informal side jobs and "rackets", to migration abroad, to "ukay-ukay" clothes, to "pagpag" food, to community sharing, and to extended family support.

- Rather than collapsing into revolutionary desperation, many found ways to adapt. While Sison’s framework assumed hardship would radicalize the masses, in practice these adaptive strategies — which some Marxist analyses might label as distractions from class struggle — functioned as genuine survival mechanisms that prevented widespread revolutionary ferment.

3. Failure to Anticipate Structural Economic Shifts

Sison’s writings treated the Philippine economy as permanently “semi-feudal, semi-colonial,” destined to decay. But this analysis failed to anticipate major structural shifts:

- Rise of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs): Labor migration provided millions of families with incomes that softened the blows of local poverty, diffusing revolutionary discontent.

- Boom of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry: From the early 2000s, BPO became a multi-billion-dollar sector, employing hundreds of thousands and providing upward mobility for educated youth.

These developments undercut Sison’s insistence that Philippine society was trapped in semi-feudal stagnation. They revealed a dynamic economy capable of producing new opportunities — an element his static framework did not account for.

4. Disconnection from the Filipino Psyche

Perhaps the most serious flaw was Sison’s estrangement from his own people’s mindset:

- His expectation that Filipinos would embrace the rigors of a protracted people’s war overlooked the fact that many preferred nonviolent, legal, and pragmatic routes to change.

- He underestimated the Filipino capacity to endure hardship with hope, humor, and pragmatism. What he read as passivity was, in reality, a form of resilience and optimism that blunted revolutionary fervor.

- By not truly understanding the Filipino character—adaptive, inventive, and often more interested in improving life through migration, education, or entrepreneurship—Sison overestimated the mass appeal of armed struggle.

5. Consequences of Theoretical Rigidity

Because of these blind spots, the CPP under Sison’s guidance:

- Continued to wage armed struggle even when it had lost strategic resonance.

- Boycotted the 1986 Snap Election, a blunder that forever cast the CPP as a pathetic spectator to the nation’s greatest democratic triumph. 

- Grew increasingly irrelevant to younger generations who saw opportunities in education, overseas work, and BPOs rather than revolution.

Conclusion

Jose Maria Sison’s genius was in crystallizing discontent into a revolutionary framework in 1968, but his tragedy was in failing to update that framework to match Philippine realities. By misjudging the ruling system’s adaptability, underestimating Filipino resilience, ignoring structural economic shifts like OFWs and BPOs, and misunderstanding the Filipino psyche itself, Sison locked the movement into a strategy that no longer fit its terrain. The result was fragmentation, irrelevance, and decline.

The lessons from this failure extend beyond the CPP. They underscore the importance of grounding political theory in a nuanced understanding of national culture, economy, and historical trajectory. Revolutions cannot succeed if they impose borrowed frameworks that misread the people’s actual conditions and capacities.

Ultimately, Sison’s story highlights the limitations of ideological rigidity in a rapidly changing world. While his contributions to Philippine radical thought remain undeniable, his inability to evolve left the movement trapped in outdated strategies. A truly transformative politics must remain open, adaptive, and attuned to the resilience and ingenuity of the Filipino people.

In the end, Sison knew Marx, Lenin, and Mao, but he did not know the Filipino people — their creativity, endurance, and pragmatic pursuit of survival and progress. It was this gap, more than any government counterinsurgency program, that has ensured the defeat of the communist movement in the Philippines.

When Diplomacy Looks to the Sky

 MacArthur’s Theater of Surrender

On September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, representatives from the Empire of Japan and from the Allied nations signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, bringing World War II to an official end. The moment was solemn, legalistic, and historic. 

But General Douglas MacArthur was not content with signatures alone. As the ink dried, the sky filled with the thunder of nearly a thousand American aircraft—B-29 bombers and carrier planes in majestic formation. MacArthur later explained that this was not a victory parade. It was a warning. If Japan failed to honor the terms of surrender, the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be repeated many times over.

It was theater, yes, but theater with teeth. The Japanese delegates had just bowed to a document; now they bowed, in effect, to the spectacle above their heads. Power had spoken, not in words but in wings.

Alaska 2025: The Choreography of Power

Eighty years later, the setting could not have been more different, yet the logic was eerily familiar. On August 15, 2025, at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson in Alaska, Donald Trump welcomed Vladimir Putin for a high-stakes summit. As the two leaders strode down a red carpet—itself lined with F-22 Raptors, the most advanced air-superiority fighters in the world—the air suddenly cracked open. A B-2 stealth bomber swept overhead, flanked by sleek F-35 escorts. The timing was flawless. It was not a coincidence. It was choreography.

Much like MacArthur’s sky parade over Tokyo Bay, the Alaskan flyover was no ceremonial flourish. It was a calculated message. The B-2 is not just another aircraft; it is a nuclear-capable ghost, designed to slip past defenses and deliver devastation anywhere on earth. To have it roar over the tarmac as Trump and Putin met was to remind the Russian leader that beneath the handshakes and photo-ops stood a vast arsenal—silent, watchful, and ready.

Spectacle as Substance

The parallels are instructive. MacArthur’s flyover was about closure, sealing the surrender of a defeated nation. Trump’s was about opening, setting the tone for talks with a rival who was anything but defeated. One sought to hammer in finality; the other to establish leverage. Yet both moments reveal the same truth: in diplomacy, spectacle can be as decisive as substance.

Because airpower is more than a weapon. It is a symbol. When hundreds of bombers filled the skies in 1945, they told Japan: "You are finished." When the B-2 glided over Alaska in 2025, it told Putin, "Do not mistake diplomacy for weakness." Both moments turned the sky into a stage, where power was not theorized but enacted.

Two Audiences, Two Messages

But here’s the irony. These displays are never aimed only at the adversary. They are also for the home audience. Americans in 1945 needed to see Japan’s defeat made real, tangible, in smoke and steel. Americans in 2025 needed reassurance that their president still commanded the most advanced arsenal in the world. The flyovers served a dual purpose: to awe abroad and to reassure at home.

The Risks of Brinkmanship

And yet, as with all theater, there is risk. Spectacle stabilizes but also provokes. A bomber in the sky can deter, but it can also inflame. MacArthur’s flyover underscored American dominance at the end of a total war. Trump’s, by contrast, played out in a world still very much in contest, where Putin could interpret the gesture as insult as easily as deterrence. Brinkmanship thrives on this ambiguity. That is its essence: keeping the adversary unsure whether the show of force is a mere show or the prelude to something worse.

Power Seen Is Power Believed

The lesson is that power, to be credible, must be seen. This is why states invest in parades, flyovers, and carefully staged demonstrations of might. It is not only about what they can do but also about what others believe they will do. In that sense, MacArthur in Tokyo Bay and Trump in Alaska were not just military leaders or presidents. They were playwrights, scripting the skies, making contrails into sentences and formations into punctuation.

The world took notice. The Japanese in 1945 knew they could not backslide. Putin in 2025 knew he was not arriving as an equal partner. And Americans watching both moments knew, at least for a time, that their nation’s power was real, visible, and unchallengeable.

Trump’s Realist Aim

The truth is sobering: once bombers fill the sky, their shadow never disappears. Every flyover revives the possibility of conflict, even as it claims to prevent one. Diplomacy may start at the table, but it always unfolds beneath the shadow of airpower.

Trump, after all, is no naïve idealist. A realist to the core, he could not have expected to squeeze a neat ceasefire from Vladimir Putin simply by sharing a table and a pot of coffee in Alaska. The B-2 overflight, the carpet lined with Raptors, the choreography of power—all of it suggested he aimed higher, or at least deeper. 

Perhaps his true calculation was not to coax peace but to instill unease; not to settle the war in Ukraine but to unsettle the man waging it. A ceasefire might have been the obvious prize. But intimidation, the kind that makes an adversary second-guess every move long after the summit is over—that is the subtler, sharper trophy. 

And maybe that was Trump’s intention all along: not merely to end a war, but to remind Putin that, in the theater of power, he was still only a guest on America’s stage.

America’s Shadow: Were Our Best Years Under Its Tutelage?

It is a vexing, even slightly impolite, and even ridicule-inviting question: did the Philippines achieve its finest hours not in the fire of post-independence nation-building, but under the watchful eye of another flag? And in those first twenty years of freedom, namely 1946 to 1966, did we shine precisely because the hands steering the ship had been trained during colonial times?

The American Legacy

The American period — 1898 to 1946 — did not merely build roads and bridges; it built classrooms, courtrooms, and a bureaucratic spine. The Thomasites brought not only English primers but also a gospel of civic order and procedural governance.

By the time the Commonwealth came, a generation of Filipinos could run a ministry, argue in court, or conduct a symphony — all in a language that gave them instant access to the world stage.

A Flourishing in the Arts

Consider the arts. Our finest artists of the 20th century — Fernando Amorsolo, whose sunlit rural landscapes still shape our idea of the Filipino countryside, and Guillermo Tolentino, who sculpted the iconic Bonifacio and Rizal monuments — were all educated by American teachers at the University of the Philippines.

And the University itself? Founded in 1908 by the Americans, UP became the nation’s premier training ground for leaders in government, industry, culture, and science. In classrooms built on American blueprints, under professors steeped in U.S. academic traditions, a generation emerged that could match global standards.

The Early Republic’s Momentum

The first two post-independence decades felt like the natural fruit of that planting. The peso was strong, the civil service relatively clean, the military disciplined, and the Philippine national basketball team fared well in international competitions. 

Leaders like Elpidio Quirino, Ramon Magsaysay, and Carlos Garcia — schooled in institutions patterned after Washington rather than Madrid — carried themselves with the confidence of men who had studied at the knee of the world’s most powerful republic.

The Decline After Independence

And yet—the counterpoint is insistent. These institutions, for all their polish, were not grown from our soil but transplanted wholesale.

Without the American gardener’s regular pruning and watering, they began to wilt. As U.S. influence waned—though still faintly felt after July 4, 1946—the Philippines entered a slow but steady strategic decline. By the late 1960s, the professional ethos in politics and governance had begun to erode, as if the system had been running on the leftover energy of a colonial battery.

A Historical What-If: The Path of Statehood

Here, a controversial thought intrudes: might the Philippines have fared better as a U.S. state?

The idea is not entirely fanciful. In 1900, some Americans entertained it, and a few Filipino leaders quietly favored it. Statehood could have meant a strong federal framework to discipline and rein in the corrosive tendencies of our political culture. 

Federal law, courts, and institutions might have imposed a sturdier spine of accountability and meritocracy, preventing corruption, dynasties, and patronage from eating away at the system from within.

US Markets

Economically, the Philippines would have enjoyed unrestricted access to U.S. markets and federal development funds. Filipino workers would have been covered by the social safety nets of the world’s richest republic.

But the trade-off would have been profound: Filipino identity blurred into a shared American-Filipino consciousness, and independence as an ideal sacrificed on the altar of stability and integration.

Statehood remains one of history’s most intriguing “what-ifs” — a path not taken, but one that still haunts debates about discipline, governance, and the destiny of nations caught between pride and pragmatism.

Culture in Contest

Culture, too, was a contested ground. The American period gave us professionalized journalism, symphonies, and modernist poetry — but in Americanized forms that sometimes pushed aside indigenous languages, rhythms, and idioms.

Was it flourishing, or was it mimicry dressed in fine tailoring?

The Tragedy of Borrowed Light

So we circle back to the question, still unsatisfied. Perhaps our “best years” were not wholly ours — but neither were they wholly alien. The American era and its immediate aftermath were a peculiar alchemy of imported discipline and local ambition, of a young nation still basking in the glow of its tutor.

The challenge — one that perhaps remains unmet — was to take those gains and make them wholly Filipino, resilient without the umbilical cord.

Forging Our Flame

In the end, the most vexing truth is this: our brightest light in the modern era came from a lamp we did not build, but one we carried for a while with surprising grace. Yet lamps burn out, and borrowed light fades.

The real question—the one that should haunt our nights — is whether, after a century of shadows, we are at last ready to kindle a flame that is truly ours.

To conclude, our brightest light in the modern era came from a lamp we did not build, but one we carried for a while with surprising grace. Yet lamps burn out, and borrowed light fades. 

The paradox of Philippine history is not that our finest triumphs were shaped by American hands, but that we never built lasting greatness with our own. The challenge now is whether we can step out of the shadow and ignite a light that will endure as ours alone—a light that, once kindled, might yet shine brighter than any we have ever known.