This Time We’re Just Lucky : Philippine Triumph Doesn’t Prove Perfection of U.S. Policy

In the best televised docudrama in recent times, Ferdinand E. Marcos has been written out of the script. For its part, the Reagan Administration has moved smoothly alongside the Philippines’ new leading lady. The United States is spared the embarrassment of going down with another SS Lost Cause. Indeed, we may be seeing a new style in American actions in messy Third World matters.

As so often happens, “lessons” will now be learned and applied to other situations. Yet, as with all lessons, some will be valid and some will take us off in wrong directions.

One valid lesson is that, on occasion, it helps for Washington to make policy backstage instead of in the limelight. While public battles raged over Angola, Nicaragua and U.S.-Soviet relations, U.S. policy toward the Philippines faded in and out of Americans’ consciousness.

Even more miraculous, it proved possible for U.S. attitudes to be shaped without a crippling dose of ideology, of left or right. It helped that senior policy-makers at the State Department are thoroughly imbued with things Filipino. Several of State’s senior officials have direct experience with the islands, as opposed to relative lack of experience with, say, Soviet or politico-military issues. In foreign policy as elsewhere, decent knowledge of the subject can be a wonderful thing.

Another valid lesson emerged in the role of Congress. Getting the right messages through when dealing with ambiguous foreign-policy problems is never easy. And messages have to flow both between the White House and Capitol Hill and from Washington to foreign capitals.

It helped that a close friend of President Reagan, Nevada’s Sen. Paul Laxalt, was twice an emissary to Marcos. It helped that statements by the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard G. Lugar, resonated with those of Rep. Stephen J. Solarz, vocal Democratic leader on the issue. The Philippines narrowly escaped becoming wrapped in partisan purity.

It is risky, however, to argue that the management of Marcos sets the standard for future American actions. Nor, legend to the contrary, is it clear that the United States has always been on the side of the bad guys and is now on the side of the good.

In Cuba the United States did support the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. But few Americans remember that the victory of Fidel Castro in 1959 had strong U.S. support, both public and private. It was so widespread in the media that, after Castro turned to the Soviet Union, a satirical poster appeared, mimicking an ad campaign then current: With Castro’s photo, the caption said, “I got my job through the New York Times.”

Today, in debates over Nicaragua, we are reminded of the many years of U.S. support for the regime of Anastasio Somoza. Yet the Administration of Jimmy Carter was instrumental in hastening Somoza’s end--late, perhaps, but finally.

In Argentina the Reagan Administration supported the repressive military regime against human-rights activists, only to see democracy emerge, almost by accident, because of the Falklands war.

In 1963 the United States turned a blind eye to the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, only to wish later that it had never happened.

Successive U.S. administrations acquiesced in Haiti’s rule by the Duvalier family before Washington finally gave it a gentle push and an airlift to exile.

Most notable, perhaps, was the fall of the Shah of Iran. A few commentators have argued that the United States never should have helped to overthrow the nationalist regime of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Iran might have had its revolution then and spared both itselfand the rest of us what is happening now. Others have argued that the Carter Administration did not act quickly enough to clear the Peacock Throne for some better, if unknown, alternative. Yet most of the criticism of Carter’s performance in Iran has centered on the charge that he put too much, not too little, emphasis on human rights. Because of what came afterward in the person of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Carter has been seen as too ready to accept the downfall of a good friend of America. These comments ignore the blood that would have been on American hands if we had tried to stem what now looks like the natural course of history.

In brief, the lesson of what has now happened in the Philippines is that there may be no single lesson.

In some cases the United States may be best served by keeping its hands off. In other situations Americans may profit from helping to pull the props out from under failing regimes, and to do so early rather than late. On yet other occasions it might be best to continue supporting troubled leaders who either reflect Western democratic values or help to preserve key American interests.

It is clear that what happens in nations of the Third World will intrude more, not less, on the policy of the United States. More, not fewer, nations will go through the stresses of modernization, the traumas of a hostile world. In most cases what we do or refrain from doing will not matter very much.

In the end it was the people of the Philippines who took the decisive steps, and, from our point of view, they may yet make a hash of things. But we had better learn the facts about each situation as it comes and adapt our actions to its unique details. No universal rules of thumb can substitute for particular knowledge.