Two senior U.S. officials went to Capitol Hill last week to tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the outlook for the Philippines and President Ferdinand Marcos. Their forecast: stormy weather ahead for both. Assistant Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz warned that the Philippines was heading toward "civil war on a massive scale." The pace of economic, political and military reform, added Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage, was "insufficient to arrest the growth of the (Communist) insurgency." The country could reach a "strategic stalemate" in as little as three years.
Two days later the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence sounded...