Ideology vs. the national interest

The front pages of the newspapers showing Afghans crowding the airport of Kabul and fleeing the city in fear for their lives in the impending Taliban takeover brings back memories of Vietnamese fleeing from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

With Afghanistan, the Americans had spent trillions of dollars and sacrificed thousands of Americans trying to build a defense force of 300,000 men and a democratic government. After 20 years, Afghanistan had failed to defeat no more than just 75,000 Taliban fighters. From America’s point of view, it was time to leave. Afghanistan and Vietnam were big mistakes.

I recall my lectures in the United States sponsored by the American Council of Foreign Relations when I told them, if they only remembered the Philippine-American war in 1898, they would never have gone to Vietnam at all; it was Asian nationalism they were fighting in Vietnam, not communism. It wasn’t so much nationalism they were fighting in Afghanistan but tribalism, religion and the strength of a superior tribe taking over the country province by province with tyrannical will, exploiting the weakness of the other tribes, the low morale of its defense forces and massive corruption of government itself.

Earlier, the Soviets were unable to recreate Afghanistan. And let me add to this: when I visited Kabul in the 1950s, it was a peaceful city, the people all dressed in Western clothes. In appraising the United States and its foreign policy as motivated by its national interest, let us not forget that America is a nation created by revolution and by immigrants. Backed by ideology, its earliest foreign policy was interventionist. From the American Revolution against England is ringing Tom Paine’s declaration, “Show me a country where there is oppression and injustice, and that is my country.”

The Monroe doctrine made the world safe for democracy, and the Marshall Plan supports financial institutions that lend money to developing countries – all these form the foundation of American foreign policy which is now in contradiction to its national interest, its need to survive and prevail. Should America, in this period of decline, isolate itself from the troubled world and let these troubled countries themselves resolve their internal contradictions?

All that money spent in Afghanistan should have gone to other countries needing aid, countries just as poor but with the will to be free. Who can identify these countries?

Meanwhile, let us not forget that even in war or global crisis, there is a sector that profits. First, the military industrial complex – General Dwight Eisenhower had warned against this – which produces weapons and military technologies. And in a way, that country’s armed forces, with all its history and experience, is compared to an army that has never been exposed to the harsh conditions of actual combat, just like our Armed Forces learning firsthand the lessons of urban guerrilla war in the Marawi siege two years ago.

Even in this pandemic, there are those who profit – the manufacturers of vaccines and the corrupt officials in government in charge of the purchases and distributions. In this matter, the President is wrong in interfering with the Commission on Audit’s performing its job and finding billions of pesos not accounted for. Let the Senate continue its investigation.

In making these comments, I have tried to make the sharp distinction between ideology and the national interest. While both are closely entwined, there will come a time when the national interest overrides ideology. America’s “making the world safe for democracy” is a noble cause, an unquestionable ideology at a time when populist causes are on the march all around the world, a cause often led by leaders with dictatorial tendencies. It is not the primary interest of the United States to interfere with such regimes. It is the primary interest of the people themselves to protect their freedoms.

I say this to emphasize how important it is for us to strengthen our free institutions. Again, a demoralized military, a corrupt government and a people who could not unite to repel a guerilla movement driven by a heady mix of nationalism and religion – these are the reasons why Afghanistan fell. And for us, let me repeat our national purpose and interest: to build a just and sovereign nation and to work for what will also make us abolish poverty. This is what Afghanistan teaches us.

Meanwhile, we should not be too comfortable in the recent success of our Armed Forces in combating the New People’s Army. As I have already affirmed General Esperon’s warning, there will always be a continuing recruitment of the young into the Communist Party. This is a given not just in the Philippines but in other countries where there are communist parties. Poverty and perceived injustices are the main reasons for the conversion of the young, particularly the idealistic and patriotic. What we must prevent is their conversion into armed rebels, members of the New People’s Army fighting a “protracted war.” The action against the NPA must be waged in the very core of organized government, the barangay.

Since the beginning of peasant rebellions in the last century, our problem was not bad government but NO government. The absence of public service. This pandemic has given us this excellent chance to reverse this chronic condition. New infrastructure like roads, more school buildings, health care most of all, agricultural reforms. They cost billions too, but billions well spent.

It is with America that we have the closest relation. President Duterte says that if we weren’t an American colony, Japan wouldn’t have invaded us. Wrong! Japan invaded China and Southeast Asia in building its empire. But we cannot always depend on America despite our alliance with her.

On our own, no matter the cost, we must continue to modernize our Armed Forces, and revive the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). We must see to it that our youth (like those in Singapore) train in the military for a period of six months and, like in Israel, be called to active duty anytime.