COMMENTARY / EXCERPTS : Democracy Triumphs--What Went Right?

If his own overbearing arrogance accounted for much of Ferdinand Marcos’ miscalculation, there is at least one thing to be said in mitigation of this otherwise unpitiable figure. The signals he was getting from the U.S. government at critical moments in the recent Reagan years were, to put it mildly, mixed. Yet one more time, we were treated to the familiar spectacle of an Administration with a President and a few, true-believing cohorts speaking one way,with a heavy ideological content and a pretty simplified world view, while the much-maligned professionals struggled with complex realities.

Ronald Reagan arrived at the White House with a deep affinity for the Philippine president, martial law and all. What was Marcos to make of it, if not that he had a pretty sweeping license to practice autocracy? What was he to think, in November, 1983, after the assassination of Aquino and with a heavy cloud of complicity hanging over his government, when Reagan apologized almost abjectly for passing up the Philippines on an Asian tour later in the month. “I want you to know that I have always had confidence in your ability to handle things,” Reagan wrote in his personal note. “Our friendship for you remains as warm and firm as ever.”

By October, 1984, four out of five members of a commission appointed by Marcos himself had traced the Aquino assassination plot up the chain of command to the armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Fabian Ver. Even Reagan, in his foreign-policy debate with Walter Mondale, conceded, “There are things there in the Philippines that do not look good to us from the standpoint right now of human rights.” But the only alternative, he added, is “throwing (the Philippines) to the wolves and then facing the communist power in the Pacific.” What was Marcos to think, even after the State Department took the unusual step of issuing a statement to the effect that the President really didn’t mean what he said.

Even after the flagrant fraudulence of the Marcos “election,” Reagan averted his gaze by widening it to include the possibility of fraud “on both sides.” You could hardly blame Marcos for requiring confirmation that a statement issued in the name of the U.S. government, urging him to step aside, actually represented the views of his old friend in the White House.

To the extent that the United States contributed positively to the outcome, it was mostly owing to the positions taken by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and to the counsel he got from experienced old hands in Washington and in Manila.