Message for Manila

With the political, economic and security climate in the Philippines steadily worsening, President Reagan this week sent a personal emissary to President Ferdinand E. Marcos with a message expressing deepening American concerns. From all appearances Reagan’s close friend Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.), might just as well have stayed home. Marcos’ response to his mission, according to a presidential palace spokesman, was yet another bland assurance that everything is under control. The more pointed response from the pro-Marcos press was to tell the United States to keep its nose out of the Philippines’ affairs.

That’s one course that can be adopted, but only if Washington is prepared to see the mounting instability that has been the product of Marcos’ rule reach a point of disaster for his country and of major strategic loss for the United States.

What’s happening in the Philippines does deeply affect the United States, and for very good reasons. One has to do with the democratic legacy that Americans tried to leave behind when they gave independence to their one-time colony. Under Marcos’s strong-man rule, that inheritance of free institutions has been largely suppressed. This has helped greatly to encourage a Communist-led insurgency that U.S. policy-makers now seriously fear could in time succeed. Such a victory would spell the end of the major U.S. air and naval bases in the Philippines that are vital to the defense of the western Pacific.

Marcos pooh-poohs U.S. intelligence estimates that the insurgency is growing in both strength and popular support. The evidence, though, is unmistakable. The New People’s Army is now active in more areas than ever before and, says Assistant Secretary of State Paul D. Wolfowitz, seems to have seized the battlefield initiative. Its progress has been actively aided by government forces that are often both poorly led and indiscriminately destructive in their operations. Meanwhile, the Marcos family and its friends stand accused of spinning a widening web of corruption that has alienated a growing proportion of the public and brought the nation close to economic collapse.

What does the United States want from Marcos? It wants a liberalized election law that would give the democratic opposition a fair chance to win power. It wants more professional leadership in the armed forces. It wants an end to the corruption and cronyism that have become the hallmarks of Marcos’ 20 years of rule. That’s a big order. There is no reason to think it will be filled. There is every reason to think that in its absence, the Philippines will continue to slide toward chaos and self-destruction.