(2 of 6)
Despite a costly five-year military campaign, an armed rebellion among the Muslim Moros in Mindanao and Sulu has been contained but not suppressed. In other rural regions, the smaller Maoist New Peoples Army is growing in size. Marauding bands of N.P.A. guerrillas frequently harass army patrols and sometimes even occupy isolated villages for several days at a time. Few Filipinos, and even fewer knowledgeable Western observers, are convinced that the country is on the verge of becoming another Iran. But many fear that in the long run the confluence of injustice and bloodshed could threaten the Marcos regime and lead to revolution. Jaime Cardinal Sin, the country's spiritual leader as Archbishop of Manila, has clearly indicated his fears for the future if democracy is not restored. "The greatest punishment that God could give any country is civil war." he said recently. "That's what I want to avoid—civil war."
To the dismay of the U.S. and such other Asian allies as Japan and South Korea, Marcos has shown no sign that he is willing to ease up. Last week, in a major policy speech for his 62nd birthday, Marcos defiantly declared that he had no intention of lifting the martial law imposed in 1972. This decision, though not unexpected, came as a blow to both opposition leaders and Western diplomats, who have been privately urging the President to restore democratic rule before it is too late. It also did not augur well for observances of the seventh anniversary of martial law in many areas of the Philippines this week.
The potential for another U.S. strategic disaster in the Philippines has not been lost on policymakers in Washington. One highly classified diplomatic cable, circulated among the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, recently assessed the political prospects of key U.S. allies in the Far East. Its conclusion: while South Korea and Thailand face internal political threats that could lead to acceptable changes in their current governments, the Philippines faces a threat that could overturn the system of government itself. The worry in Washington is that even Marcos' non-Communist opposition, though still largely fragmented, is deepening and becoming more radical. The longer the President clings to a brand of autocracy that he calls "constitutional authoritarianism," it is feared, the more he could radicalize the opposition and thus pave the way for a neutralist or even leftist reorientation of the Philippines' traditionally pro-American stance.
That prospect is upsetting to the Carter Administration, and not just because of this country's abiding, almost sentimental "special relationship" with its former colony.* Washington is concerned about preserving the Philippines as its main military springboard in the Far East. In return for $500 million in military assistance over the next five years, the U.S. by treaty has "unhampered use" of the huge (97 sq. mi.) naval facility at Subic Bay and Clark Air Force Base on Luzon. Those installations face Indochina across the South China Sea. They played an important role in the Viet Nam War, and have acquired renewed geopolitical importance as the only counterweight to the Soviet Union's progressive military build-up in the Pacific, especially in Viet Nam.