I have never been to the United States, but in many ways I feel as if I have. In some respects, I feel I know more about it than I do about many other societies. I cannot speak for all Filipinos, but this does not feel like an uncommon condition among us. We have watched that country on our screens, scrolled past it in our social media feeds, read about it in our books and textbooks, seen it in theaters, heard about it in our classrooms, and internalized its cultural nuances, its traits, habits, and rhythms more deeply than those of any other society. This observation is neither surprising nor original. Our country has a long history of nationalism and resistance to colonial rule, and yet we proved largely unable to resist the seduction of American power, the allure of its culture, its films, its literature, its music, its theater, its art. It is a contradiction we are still forced to reckon with, and one whose consequences for our future as a nation remain largely unseen.
Equally powerful is the suspicion with which we have come to regard the rising power in our Asian backyard, China. We have rightly viewed many of its government’s actions as violations of our maritime claims in that body of water they call the South China Sea and we now call the West Philippine Sea. We have raised alarms over provocations, harassment, and bullying. Yet our suspicion is not mere strategy. It has always been a cultural reflex, a truism seldom questioned in mainstream discourse, one shaped in no small measure by an American perspective that casts the Chinese as the irredeemable Other, as people with alien values, as a civilization we neither admire nor wish to emulate. This despite achieving the level of industrial growth and cultural modernity equal to the West. To them (and to many of us), they are always communists, despite present evidence to the contrary. They are godless (because, maybe, Buddha is not our God). They melt their elders into vetsin. Their political system is denounced as authoritarian and undemocratic, criticisms that may hold truth, but which also has uneasy parallels with the authoritarian turn and democratic failures of US and the many other Western societies we admire.
That the American dream, the US model we have so long aspired to, now reveals itself more starkly than at any other point in its history as a structure riddled with contradictions does not seem to matter. Recent surveys, if they are to be believed, place Filipino trust in the United States in the eighties, percentage-wise. Trust in China, one assumes, lingers far below. Military officials, most notably Coast Guard spokesperson Cmdr. Jay Tarriela, who has taken on the mantle of chief patriot of the West Philippine Sea, along with senators such as Risa Hontiveros and Kiko Pangilinan, have repeatedly invoked, rightly, our sovereignty and territorial integrity, principles that must be defended at all costs. Retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, beyond any call of duty, has offered his expertise and emerged as a leading voice on the issue, though he too has often emphasized the need for US support in defending our claims. And yet we have heard little, if anything, from these same voices with equal urgency or passion about what could be considered a deeper and more enduring violation of sovereignty: the constant presence of American troops, weapons, and materiel on our soil under agreements like the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.
The United States’ long record of intervention beyond its borders, interventions that have led to catastrophic consequences and the deaths of millions of civilians, is not hyperbole. From the Philippine-American War to Vietnam, from Iraq to Afghanistan, from its support for coups and dictatorships to its backing of Israel’s war in Gaza, the historical record is extensive and well documented. Yet this history appears to weigh lightly on the eighty-plus percent of Filipinos who express trust in the United States. Nor does it seem to matter, in our public discourse, that the United States has been the principal architect and champion of the neoliberal economic order that has deepened inequality worldwide, concentrating wealth in the hands of a few while leaving vast populations in poverty.
It is entirely possible to resist Chinese incursions without surrendering one’s sovereignty to the United States. Vietnam, which also disputes China’s claims in the South China Sea, offers one such example, a country that confronts Beijing while maintaining strategic independence from Washington. And yet this possibility seems absent from our own foreign policy imagination. As it becomes clearer by the day that the two great powers are on a collision course, the Philippines appears willing to stand in the middle, even as American actions around the world provide Beijing with ready justification for its own aggression. Meanwhile, our leaders, and much of our public, seem either unaware of this trajectory or unwilling to confront it.
God bless America. Gong Hei Fa Choi.
