A DIPLOMATIC DILEMMA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303540017-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 11, 2010
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: October 27, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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WASHINGTON POST
ARTICLE APHJ1RED 27 October 1985
ON PAGE H J
A Diplomatic Di'
lemma
Philippine Crisis Bedevils United States
I
David B. Ottaway
Washington poet staff Writer
The Philippine crisis bedeviling
the United States presents the
threat of a geopolitical catastrophe
in the Far East for which American
diplomacy has no ready antidote.
The Reagan administration,
haunted by the prospect of an Iran-
ian-style diplomatic debacle, is de-
bating whether to keep prodding
NEWS
ANALYSIS
President Ferdinand
Marcos to make sub-
stantial reforms
or to
,
begin distancing the United States
from him in hopes of preserving
the U.S. Position in the Philippines
for the long term.
The debate inside the adminis-
tration is strongly influenced by
intelligence reports that Marcos is
gravely ill and probably has no bet-
ter than a 50 percent chance of
living until the next Philippine elec-
tions, scheduled for 1987.
For now, the United States is re-
lying on diplomatic persuasion,
epitomized by the recent mission
of Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.) to Ma-
nila in an effort to persuade Mar-
cos to mend his ways before his
country collapses beneath a grow-
ing communist insurgency.
But this is a temporizing tactic.
The main unresolved issue, offi-
cials say, is whether to continue
trying to nudge, cajole and squeeze
Marcos toward meaningful reforms
or to give up on him. The latter
course would, in effect, aid non-
communist domestic opponents
trying to oust Marcos in favor of a
government that could more effec-
tively fight the growing communist
51:;flrgency on the island republic.
The debate within the adminis-
tration is mirrored in Congress,
where views are just as divided,
mostly along partisan lines. Rep.
Gerald B. Solomon (R-N.Y.), a close
friend of Marcos, argues that aban-
doning Marcos could provoke what
his critics say they are trying to
avoid for the United States.
"We have to be very careful
about pulling the rug out from un-
der Marcos," he said. "We tried to
do it in Iran with the shah on human
rights. Had we been a little more
patient with the shah, maybe we
wouldn't have the same situation
we have today in Iran."
Many Democrats, on the other
hand, ar e t at the time has come
for a dramatic break with Marcos
and the administration's tactic of
"quiet t omac , because "the
negative trends are moving faster
than the positive ones," as Reo.
f' Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), a mem-
ber of the House Select Committee
on Intelligence, puts it.
"Gradualism isn't going to work.
We ave to loo t at reasonable, con-
structive alternatives to the Marcos
regime-a moderate, noncommu-
nist regime," he said.
Marcos suffers from an often in-
curable. recurring sickness known
as "systemic lupus erythematosus,"
according to intelligence and con-
gressional sources. The disease af-
fects the cell structure of the body
and attacks organs , articular) the
ki neys. Marcos has survived three
debilitating bouts, the latest from
November to March. He may have
had a kidney transplant, although he
has vehemently denied it.
Each time, Marcos has recov-
ered-but each time to "a lower
plateau," according to one U.S. of-
ficial. During his "downs," he is al-
most incapacitated, said the official,
who asserted that Marcos is "hardly
able to operate his government.'
A congressional source who has
investigated Marcos' health said the
Philippine leader has virtually de-
stroyed his presidency as a func-
tioning institution and has taken to
ruling mainly by "capricious de-
cree." This source said Marcos may
die within six months.
"The best course [for U.S. policy]
is to let nature take its course," the
source said.
To what degree Marcos' illness is
the driving concern behind the Rea-
gan
administration's sudden activ-
ism toward the Philippines is un-
clear. There also have been recent
U.S. intelligence reports that the
spreading communist insurgency
le by the New People's Arm is
lea mg the country stea ily toward
"catastrophe."
The nightmare frightening ad-
ministration policymakers is the
possibility of a strategic reversal in
the balance of power in the Pacific if
the United States loses its two big-
gest bases abroad, Clark Air Force
Base and Subic Bay Naval Base,
both in the Philippines, and the So-
viet Union takes them over-pre-
cisely the fate of the former U.S.
base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.
Calls for the United States to get
out of Clark and Subic are coming
from noncommunist quarters in the
Philippines as well as from the com-
munist insurgents. U.S. officials
fear that the bases will become
identified with Marcos, making it all
but impossible for any successor
government in the Philippines, even
an anticommunist one, to allow the
United States to keep them after
Marcos is gone.
Parallels between Marcos and
the late shah of Iran haunt this ad-
ministration debate. "Everybody
has a fear of Iran and what it did to
the Carter administration," said one
administration official. "It may not
go the way Iran went, but it could
go just as sour."
The Carter administration tried
to deny it had a problem in Iran un-
til both the shah and the U.S. po-
sition in Iran were too far gone to
salvage. That experience has had a
powerful impact on the Reagan ad-
ministration, which openly acknowl-
edged long in advance of the de-
nouement that it has a potential
foreign policy disaster on its hands.
"The Philippines has been on the
president's horizon ever since
1983," said one official, referring to
the murder of opposition leader
Benigno S. Aquino on Aug. 21 of
that year, an event that set off the
first alarms in the White House and
led to a Reagan refusal to meet with
Marcos ever since.
U.S. foreign policy analysts in
and out of the administration agree
that the U.S. dilemma today over
how to handle Marcos differs in
many ways from the Carter admin-
istration's Iranian problem.
Continued
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Marcos' position in Philippine
history and society is different from
what the shah's was in Iran. Inter-
nal conditions of the two countries
are also vastly different, and there
is no Philippine equivalent of the
Islamic fundamentalism that stirred
the Iranian masses.
But there do seem to be three
clear similarities.
Both countries were, at the mo-
ment of crisis, crucial to U.S. geo-
political interests in a key region of
the globe. And Marcos demon-
strates a stubborn refusal to appre-
ciate the seriousness of his situation
similar to the shah's-a stubborn-
ness that hardens whenever Mar-
cos is pressed to make reforms that
risk loosening his tight grip on pow-
er.
The Marcos message that "all is
under control" was repeated to
Laxalt last week in Manila. Marcos
reportedly asked whether his re-
gime had "an image problem" in the
United States, and needed a good
public relations firm in Washington
to set things right.
This same message was brought
to Washington this week by his act-
ing foreign minister, Pacifico A.
Castro, who said in an interview
Monday, "We are doing all the re-
forms necessary and called for by
our people."
U.S. "experts" misperceived what
was unfolding in South Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos, Castro said,
suggesting that the same misper-
ception is affecting U.S. policy in
the Philippines. "It could be we are
going through the same syndrome,"
he said.
A third similarity between the
cases is the terminal illness of the
leader. The Carter administration,
however, did not realize that the
shah suffered from serious cancer.
According to Gary Sick, the Nation-
al Security Council expert on Iran
during the Carter administration,
the misbegotten belief that the shah
was in good health was important to
the administration's decision to
keep supporting him.
"We know Marcos is going to
pass on in a relatively short time.
The question is how to position
yourself. That is the real difference
[that] affects the whole underlying
philosophy of how you deal with the
situation," Sick said.
Another difference between the
two cases, according to Sick, is the
initial responses of the two admin-
istrations to their respective crises.
During the past year, he noted,
there has been a steady stream of
high-ranking U.S. officials and
members of Congress to Manila
bringing messages of deep concern
or even blunt statements of U.S.
displeasure with Marcos' perform-
ance.
Not so in U.S. dealings with the
shah. As late as November 1978,
just three months before his final
flight from Tehran, President Jim-
my Carter's national security affairs
adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was
phoning the shah, encouraging him
"to toughen up" his stand against
the opposition with the assurance
that "we are prepared to back you
whatever you do," Sick said.
The effectiveness of the Reagan
administration's full-court diplomat-
ic press on Marcos is unclear. Ev-
eryone seems to agree some re-
forms are taking place, But, as one
U.S. official involved in the process
said, "It's a struggle every step of
the way."
Some administration analysts say
they feel that there is a "reasonable
chance" of achieving the current
U.S. goal of free and fair local elec-
tions next May, followed by a pres-
idential contest in 1987 when a
Philippine vice president also
will be chosen. Others are dis-
tinctly gloomy about such pros-
pects.
As one administration official
put it, "We can't make major pro-
gress before a new government is
in place."
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