SHOWDOWN IN THE PHILIPPINES

...The terms of the World Bank farm loan, designed to provide the Philippines with quick cash for fertilizer and other urgent agricultural needs, were not tough enough to satisfy the Treasury's demands for belt-tightening...

...To destroy that illusion by throwing America's full backing to Marcos is to speed up the revolutionary process and to plunge into an inevitably deepening military commitment on the part of the United States...

...The policy planners hope for a peaceful transfer of power to a parliamentary system grounded in the pro-U.S...

...When Representative Stephen Solarz, the New York Democrat who heads the House subcommittee on Asian and Pacific affairs, proposed recently that U.S...

...The plan is closely patterned on the one recently carried out in El Salvador: early retirement and forced exile of corrupt and inefficient officers...

...Reagan has fewer qualms than John Kennedy had about dealing with a brutal despot, and the Pentagon's plans for a counterinsurgency campaign in the Philippines are likely to carry the day against the State Department's political alternatives...

...forces in the Pacific (CINCPAC) wields more clout than the U.S...

...But even before Reagan gave Marcos his public stamp of approval, the State Department planners had been at odds with other departments of the Government, including the Treasury and the Pentagon...

...The implications for the Philippines— and, ultimately, for America—are far-reaching...

...use of U.S...

...In an appearance before the Solarz subcommittee last October, Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage spelled out a number of specific recommendations for the Philippine forces, testifying that "we need more troop rotation, so troops don't stay in one place for long periods of time, which is bad for morale...

...bases in his country for the last eighteen years...

...Last September, the Treasury voted to block a $ 150 million World Bank agricultural loan to the Philippines...

...Some officers favored the political approach, the source added, but most simply felt that Marcos should not be cut off from all the U.S...

...To reward Marcos for his loyalty, CINCPAC and the Pentagon have vigorously opposed Congressional efforts to reduce aid to the Philippines as punishment for the regime's persistent violations of human rights...

...In many countries, including the Philippines, the commander in chief of U.S...

...promotion based on merit rather than longevity...

...it would rather preserve an illusion of Philippine sovereignty...

...Walden Bello, a Filipino citizen, is co-author of "Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines...

...military command, however, feared that political reforms would have "destabilizing effects," and preferred to deal with Diem as a known quantity...

...That a Democratic member of Congress should be more supportive than the President of State Department policy is unusual but not unique in Ronald Reagan's Washington...

...When Ver took a leave of absence in October after being implicated in the Aquino assassination by the official investigating commission, Defense Department experts watched with quiet satisfaction...

...If the State Department finds itself in frequent conflict with the Pentagon on policy toward the Philippines, it can point with pride to its cooperative relationship with the key Congressional figure in this area, Representative Solarz...

...Under Marcos, on the other hand, the Pentagon hopes to fashion the Philippine military into an effective counterinsur-gency force...

...Iowever, the State Department's efforts don't generate much enthusiasm at the Pentagon...

...installations—Clark Air Force Base and the naval facility at Subic Bay...

...policymakers see Ver's replacement, General Fidel Ramos, a West Point graduate, as a professional soldier who can rally and place into positions of influence other pro-U.S...

...interests...

...Government—particularly the State Department—was genuinely committed to opening up the government in Manila...

...Rather, it points to a perception shared by many liberals and "pragmatic" conservatives in Washington: that generous economic aid, combined with political pressure to ease repression and curb corruption, can stave off revolution in the Philippines, preserve U.S...

...The U.S...

...military help he needed to remain in power...

...That perception was shattered last October 21 when President Reagan declared, in his last televised debate with Walter Mondale, that he would not countenance "throwing [Marcos] to the wolves and then facing the communist power in the Pacific...

...While the Treasury has been trying to restrict the flow of foreign aid funds to Manila, the State Department has been opening the gates...

...He has made it a point to stay on cordial terms with Pacific Command, the powerful military headquarters based in Honolulu...

...The Pentagon's support for Marcos should come as no surprise...

...Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, reflecting the demands of private business and particularly of the large international banks, wants the Philippine government to impose stricter austerity so that it will be able to sustain interest payments on a foreign debt totaling almost $30 billion...

...This became evident soon after an interagency task force was set up within the U.S...

...He wrote "Our Men in Manila" in the March 1984 issue of The Progressive...

...The State Department, however, views such overt interventionist prescriptions with distinct misgivings...

...This is not to suggest that Solarz, a liberal Democrat, is merely an instrument of the State Department...

...The State Department, on the other hand, argued that denial of the agricultural loan would have "destabilizing effects"— would interfere, that is, with State's efforts to promote a gradual loosening of Mar-cos's stranglehold on power and impede an orderly transition toward more power-sharing between the Marcos faction and the elite opposition...

...pressure for limited reforms, with or without Marcos, would not head off eventual polarization and revolution, but it could postpone the upheaval by fostering an illusion of parliamentary democracy satisfactory to key sectors of the middle class...

...The Defense Department apparently has its own agenda," said one participant who shared the State Department's view that Marcos should be nudged toward accommodation...

...The internal upheavals that threaten to end the reign of Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos also jeopardize two huge U.S...

...The conflict was finally resolved by the Vietnamese military coup that overthrew Diem...

...After repeated but unsuccessful efforts to persuade Diem to reform his regime, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency decided he would have to be deposed...

...interests in the Philippines regardless of the fate that may await Marcos...

...military assistance to Marcos be cut from $85 million to $25 million in fiscal 1985, the State Department mounted only token opposition, but the Pentagon generated enough pressure to get some of the funds restored...

...advisers" to restructure military units and train them for antiguerrilla warfare...

...ambassador...

...Some elements of the Philippine opposition even came to believe that the U.S...

...Assistant Secretary of State John Monjo tried to soften the impact of blatant Pentagon meddling by stating, "We must respect national sensitivities while pursuing our concerns...

...military involvement in Central America, the stage is being set for potentially massive intervention in another arena—the Philippines...

...In an attempt to put some teeth into State's campaign for "reform" in Manila, Solarz enlisted a bipartisan consensus behind a successful House resolution calling for a "thorough, independent, and impartial investigation of the Aquino assassination" and "genuine, free, and fair elections" to the Philippine national assembly...

...Government more than a year ago to deal with the consequences of the Aquino assassination...

...Despite an occasional display of rhetorical Yankee-damning, the Filipino dictator has been a staunch guardian of the U.S...

...This package of U.S...

...military professionals...

...Though Washington assigns prime strategic importance to those bases, confusion and dissension have marked the Reagan Administration's reactions to the crisis...

...aid totaling almost $ 1 billion, combined with more than $ 1 billion in loans from the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, Japan, and the Common Market nations, has kept the hard-pressed Philippine economy from going under in the past year...

...bases, and maintain American hegemony...

...In the period following the August 1983 assassination of Marcos's principal rival, Benigno Aquino, there was a widespread impression that the Reagan Administration was slowly but deliberately putting some distance between itself and the discredited Marcos regime...

...Financial pressure of the sort demanded by the bankers is likely to lead to political turmoil at a time when political legitimacy needs reinforcing, State Department officials believe...

...Unlike the South Vietnamese dictator, Marcos is likely to retain power, at least for a while...

...But we can help them overcome their difficulties...

...While it is appropriate for us to express our deep beliefs in the democratic process, it is finally up to the Filipinos to support their government...

...Many U.S...

...It accelerated the disbursement of $50 million earmarked for the Philippines under the foreign aid appropriation for fiscal 1984, and it arranged for some $925 million in credit lines from the Export-Import Bank and the Commodity Credit Corporation of the Department of Agriculture...

...elite and the urban middle class...

...History offers a disquieting parallel: the bureaucratic infighting that raged for more than two years within the Kennedy Administration over the fate of Ngo Dinh Diem, the South Vietnamese dictator...

...military strategists regard Marcos not only as a trusted friend but also as the only significant obstacle to the rising revolutionary movement whose most menacing wing, the New People's Army, now operates in fifty-six of the country's seventy-three provinces...

...The view in the Pentagon is that if Marcos's monopoly on power were ended, the Philippine military—now totally under his domination— would swiftly fall into quarreling factions incapable of resisting the guerrillas...

...military planners apparently regard General Fabian Ver, the chief of the Philippine armed forces, and his coterie of "political" generals as liabilities when it comes to carrying out the Pentagon's plans...

...Moreover, once begun, the political reform process could run out of control and bring nationalists and leftists to positions of significant influence from which they could threaten U.S...

...they saw Ver's embarrassment as the first major breakthrough in their effort to assume direct supervision of the Philippine military's new role...

...Reagan's remark pulled the rug out from under State Department "pragmatists" who had hoped to find a way of protecting U.S...

...With respect to the Philippines, as in some other foreign policy areas, Reagan tends to act like the board chairman of a corporation whose subdivisions work at cross-purposes...

...The State Department's experts believe that by ensuring a degree of economic stability, they can build a bulwark of political stability that will hold back the revolutionary tide in the Philippines...

...But gradually the policy options favored by the Pentagon are pushing to the fore...