BOUND BY WAR

MIT history professor Capozzola writes that events in Cuba provoked America’s declaration of war on Spain in 1898. Few paid attention to its Asian colonies until the U.S. Asiatic Squadron, led by George Dewey, annihilated the Spanish fleet off its Philippines colony. American officials believed that an imperial power such as Britain or Germany would certainly take over if America didn’t. There followed a nasty war in which American forces (and locally recruited units) suppressed the Filipino independence movement. Capozzola notes that the American promise of eventual independence was sincere, and the colonial administration set up a local political infrastructure. This was done on the cheap, however, so Filipinos who benefited most serviced Americans or came to the U.S. Racist immigration laws in the U.S. banned Asians, but the Philippines, as a colony, was an exception. Readers can skim the author’s account of World War II, which is largely unedifying. At the time, most Filipinos gave survival priority over resistance. Guerrilla activity slowly grew, but rival groups often fought each other, and many were little better than bandits. The most efficient, the Hukbalahap, were communists. At the end of the war, the Philippines was a devastated nation with no Marshall Plan to rebuild it. As a final insult, Congress, in an economic move, denied Filipino soldiers the GI Bill of Rights. The U.S. granted independence in 1946; supported Manuel Roxas, the collaborationist president under Japanese occupation who won the first presidency; and signed a pact granting 23 military bases free from local criminal laws and taxes. Capozzola convincingly argues that the nation remains a quasi-colony, impoverished and ill-governed. Its leaders understood that America favored nations threatened by communism and, later, terrorism. Even today, it hosts America’s “largest counterterrorist deployment outside of Afghanistan.” U.S. presidents have spoken highly of several despotic kleptocrats, led by Ferdinand Marcos. Today’s Rodrigo Duterte, a violent figure, is favored by Donald Trump.

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