The Future of Philippine-American Relations

PLUS CA CHANGE, PLUS C'EST LA MEME CHOSE. Americans may reverse the clauses when they discuss their country's relationship with the Philippines for, while the fundamental problems remain, the relationship is changing greatly. At the time of the Japanese attack on the Philippines, the Commonwealth was completing the sixth year of the ten-and-a-half-year period which was to lead to independence on July 4, 1946. There were a few unsettled questions between the United States and the Philippines: for instance, trade relations after independence; the disposition of naval reservations and fueling stations in the islands, reserved by the United States during the transition period; and the possible neutralization of the Philippines by some form of international agreement. Provision for the orderly handling of these matters by the two countries had been made in the Independence Law. Within this framework, the emergence of a free Philippine nation within a few years was a foregone conclusion. Sporadic suggestions for a realistic re-examination of the independence question, and for consideration of dominion status for the Philippines, had won no popular support. Regardless of provisions yet to be made in the fields of economics and military security, a little country, which had been under foreign domination since the latter part of the sixteenth century, was to take its place in the family of independent nations. This scheduled evolution of a free state, unprecedented in the history of colonial rule was, a candle which threw its beam far over that part of the world. True, there were those, both within the United States and in other powerful countries, who felt that promise of independence was not an unqualified good deed. But in neighboring colonial areas, in India and in China, the prospect of independence from Western domination became more hopeful. If the United States could take so decisive a step, how could Great Britain and the Netherlands justify their failure to do so with regard to their own colonies? If the Filippinos were to attain their freedom, why could not the Indonesians be pre

Political science · History · Philippine History and Culture