{"id":19712,"date":"2013-11-24T15:27:09","date_gmt":"2013-11-24T20:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=19712"},"modified":"2013-11-24T15:27:09","modified_gmt":"2013-11-24T20:27:09","slug":"is-the-us-exploiting-typhoon-suffering-to-win-military-bases-in-the-philippines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2013\/11\/is-the-us-exploiting-typhoon-suffering-to-win-military-bases-in-the-philippines\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the US Exploiting Typhoon Suffering to Win Military Bases in the Philippines?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hires_131118-M-ZZ999-002c-e1384976543935\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by\u00a0John Glaser<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Last week<\/span>\u00a0I wrote<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0about the potential for the Obama administration\u2019s Asia-Pivot strategy to inflame anti-colonialist sentiment. I lamented that Washington tries simply to get around this popular opposition to the military surge in East Asia instead of acknowledging that people don\u2019t like to be occupied by foreign militaries.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cynically, the U.S. has exploited the suffering of the typhoon in the Philippines in order to gain leverage in negotiations with Manila over increased U.S. military presence there. The relief operations performed by U.S. forces are seen as helping to \u201clubricate\u201d the deal for basing rights, which are one piece of a broader plan to contain a rising China.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to<\/span>\u00a0Robert Farley at\u00a0The Diplomat<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span>, the process of \u201cestablishing forward U.S. bases in the Philippines\u2026has moved slowly, largely because of domestic concerns in Manila about a military U.S. presence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFortunately for U.S. strategic interests (if not the victims of the storm),\u201d Farley writes, \u201cthe<\/span>\u00a0U.S. Navy\u2019s support<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0in the<\/span>\u00a0aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0may win sufficient goodwill to overcome local opposition to a renewed U.S. military role.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That is as plain an example of exploitation as you\u2019re going to get. The fact that Filipinos hesitate to welcome the U.S. back onto permanent bases, after kicking us out at the end of the Cold War, should not be belittled. The 1899-1902 U.S. war and occupation of the Philippines was a vicious colonial experiment waged for cynical geopolitical interests. Inclusive estimates that account for excess deaths related to the war say there were as many as<\/span>\u00a01 million casualties<\/span><\/a><\/span>. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were locked up in concentration camps, where poor conditions and disease<\/span>\u00a0killed thousands<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

El<\/span>\u00a0account of U.S.\u00a0Corporal Sam Gillis<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0provides a vivid insight into what the occupation was like:\u00a0\u201cWe make everyone get into his house by seven p.m., and we only tell a man once. If he refuses we shoot him. We killed over 300 natives the first night. They tried to set the town on fire. If they fire a shot from the house we burn the house down and every house near it, and shoot the natives, so they are pretty quiet in town now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as the U.S. is now trying to cloak their interventionism in the guise of humanitarian causes, the 1899 intervention was of course described in the loveliest of terms. The leader of the nationalist movement in the Philippines who declared independence from the Spanish, Emilio Aguinaldo, received a letter from U.S. General Thomas Anderson<\/span>\u00a0that read<\/span><\/a><\/span>,\u201d General Anderson wishes you to inform your people that we are here for their good\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

President William McKinley<\/span>\u00a0insisted<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0the U.S. was just trying to liberate the Philippines: \u201cNo imperial designs lurk in the American mind,\u201d he said, but it was \u201cnot a good time for the liberator to submit important questions concerning liberty and government to the liberated while they are engaged in shooting down their rescuers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The legacy of that imperial war persisted over the decades until the U.S. was finally kicked out of the Philippines in the early 1990\u2032s. The only reason the U.S. is interested in increasing military presence in the Philippines is to threaten and thus contain China. Never mind the fact that China doesn\u2019t actually pose a threat to Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n

It should go without saying that it is unacceptable for the U.S. to cynically use the quick military relief operations response to \u201clubricate\u201d a deal that benefits U.S. foreign policy interests.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fuente<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0John Glaser Last week\u00a0I wrote\u00a0about the potential for the Obama administration\u2019s Asia-Pivot strategy to inflame anti-colonialist sentiment. I lamented that Washington tries simply to get..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,189,97],"tags":[228,229,197,226,261,227,347],"class_list":["post-19712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-us-military","category-us-news","tag-colonialism","tag-economic-exploitation","tag-imperialism","tag-imperialist-war","tag-philippines","tag-racist-oppression","tag-workers-struggle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/hires_131118-m-zz999-002c-e1384976543935.jpg?fit=580%2C386&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}