U.S. About-Face Is Culmination of a Lengthy Trend

When President Reagan called on Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos to resign Monday, it represented, as one senior Administration official said, “a spectacular evolution of policy in just 14 days.”

It was only two weeks ago that Reagan called for reconciliation in the Philippines--in effect, asking opposition candidate Corazon Aquino to offer support to a reelected Marcos. By Monday, Reagan was offering a virtual endorsement of the aims of a military mutiny.

The abrupt change in the U.S. position came only when policy-makers concluded that the Philippine president could not hold onto power much longer.

But the about-face was also the culmination of a much longer trend. A consensus had developed within the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy over the last several years that Marcos could not govern indefinitely by the autocratic methods that he had used for much of his 20-year tenure.

At first, the United States urged him to reform his own regime politically, militarily and economically. In effect, the Administration wanted Marcos to prepare for an orderly transition to the post-Marcos era and it believed that this could be done with the least amount of instability if Marcos did it himself.

U.S. officials were reluctant to push Marcos too hard initially because they had only limited confidence in the leaders of non-Communist opposition groups and because they did not want to play into the hands of the Communist New People’s Army.

‘Snap’ Election

Late last year, Marcos sought to defuse U.S. criticism by calling a “snap” presidential election for Feb. 7. There is no doubt that he expected to win the election with ease, thus quieting his U.S. critics. Most Administration strategists apparently also expected a Marcos victory and were prepared to continue cooperating with him, although probably while pressing for reforms.

The first U.S. response to the election came Feb. 10, when Reagan called for reconciliation between the opposing sides in the bitter election contest. Although the agonizingly slow vote count was far from complete at that point, White House officials, talking privately, left little doubt that they expected Marcos to be declared the ultimate winner and that they hoped Aquino would agree to cooperate with the Marcos government.

The next day, the White House issued a carefully crafted statement correctly noting that the vote count was not yet complete. The statement also said that the election was “flawed by reports of fraud, which we take seriously, and by violence.”

Press Conference

Later that same day, however, Reagan answered two questions at a nationally televised press conference in a way that both the Marcos and Aquino camps interpreted as backing for Marcos.

Asked about charges of electoral fraud, Reagan said: “It could have been that all of that was occurring on both sides.” And when asked if the United States considered its bases in the Philippines to be more important than “standing up for democracy there,” his reply stressed the strategic importance of the bases without even mentioning Philippine democracy.

Congressional sources said later that Reagan was virtually alone among leaders of his Administration in leaning toward Marcos. The sources said that other officials, including Secretary of State George P. Shultz, said the United States should get ready to support Aquino if conditions seemed to demand it.

During the days following the press conference, the White House issued a series of increasingly pointed statements blaming the Marcos government for election fraud and warning of a cutoff in U.S. military aid if Marcos ordered the army to move against the opposition.

Cheating Denounced

And when Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Lt. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos quit the Marcos government Saturday, denouncing the cheating in the election, and barricaded themselves in the Defense Ministry, the White House lined up openly with the opposition.

It was not clear what the United States could do if Marcos rejects the clear call for his resignation. One State Department official said that the use of U.S. military force is out of the question, “which is why we are urging a peaceful resolution to the crisis.”

Marcos himself raised the stakes in his election gamble by urging the United States to send an official “observer” delegation to certify that the election was free and fair.

Although some Democrats, among them House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dante B. Fascell of Florida, refused to join the delegation because they did not want to contribute to “legitimizing” the expected Marcos victory, a bipartisan group headed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) left for Manila.

But instead of putting a stamp of approval on Marcos’ reelection, the observers returned to the United States convinced that Aquino would have won if the count had been conducted fairly. Lugar became an outspoken advocate of U.S. support for Aquino.

Early in the Reagan Administration, support for Marcos seemed to be absolute. Vice President George Bush heaped praise on Marcos during a visit to Manila in 1981, and Marcos was welcomed to Washington during a state visit the next year.

Administration disenchantment with Marcos began with the assassination of opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., Corazon Aquino’s husband, in August, 1983. That fall, after massive demonstrations against the regime, Reagan canceled a scheduled visit to Manila.

Michael H. Armacost, then the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, called for a fair judicial inquiry into the murder and urged broader democratic reforms. Although there was an underlying assumption that Marcos would remain in command, Armacost said in December, 1983: “Powerful and able leaders need the discipline and they need the competition of a democratic system and a free press.”

Ver Retirement Sought

Pentagon officials also began privately lobbying for U.S. pressure on Marcos to force Gen. Fabian C. Ver to retire as chief of staff of the armed forces. Ver had been implicated in the Benigno Aquino murder, and although he was acquitted of charges that he planned it, the Americans’ main complaint was that his crony-ridden general staff was incapable of running an effective war against the New People’s Army.

By November, 1984, the State Department had concluded that the Aquino assassination “destroyed most of the political credibility the . . . Marcos government enjoyed,” according to an internal memorandum.

But Administration officials still believed that there was no alternative to working with Marcos. The memorandum said: “While President Marcos at this stage is part of the problem, he is also necessarily part of the solution. We need to be able to work with him and to try to influence him through a well-orchestrated policy of incentives and disincentives to set the stage for peaceful and eventual transition to a successor government whenever that takes place.”

The Administration apparently concluded that Corazon Aquino was a viable alternative to Marcos only very recently, probably after the election.

One U.S. official said that special envoy Philip C. Habib, sent to Manila by Reagan after the election, formed an opinion that Aquino was “a tough lady, a stubborn lady, in the positive sense of that word.”