Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the 1995 Asia Lecture, Asia-Australia Institute on the State Visit to Australia
[Delivered at the Sheraton Hotel, Sydney, August 18, 1995]
The Philippines
in the Asia-Pacific
APPEARING BEFORE this same forum in October 1991, Foreign Minister Gareth Evans produced a suitable epigraph for my own talk here this evening when he said:
“This [Asia-Pacific region] is where we live, must survive strategically and economically, and find a place and role if we are to develop our full potential as a nation.”
These words might well be said of the Philippines also.
We Filipinos too had once set ourselves apart from our neighbors—glorying in our imagined distinctiveness as “the only Christian nation” and as “democracy’s showcase” in Asia-Pacific.
Our role in the region
We too had sought our self-image in “alliances with the distant great and powerful.”
The U.S. Seventh Fleet’s sailing away from Subic Bay on November 24, 1992, ended an era during which—for 421 uninterrupted years—there had been no single day that foreign troops were not based on Philippine soil.
Today, like Australia, we have found a place and a role in Asia-Pacific. Economically, politically, culturally and historically we Filipinos have finally “returned home.”
We now identify primarily with ASEAN—and we have made our relationships in Asia-Pacific the cornerstone of our foreign policy.
Since my election in middle 1992, I have—in carrying out this goal—visited every East Asian country except North Korea, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. And this first visit to Australia by an incumbent President of the Philippines reciprocates—belatedly—the visits of three Australian Prime Ministers over the 49 years since our governments exchanged diplomatic recognition.
(On a personal basis, Mrs. Ramos and I are repatriating our Australian son-in-law, who is here with us tonight.)
Theme statement
My country’s concept of its place—and role—in Asia-Pacific and my people’s vision of our future—this is my topic before this distinguished forum tonight.
I am acutely aware that a spate of troubles up to end 1992 caused our neighbors and friends some anxiety and concern.
I am pleased to tell you that now in the middle of my six-year term, we have been able to put our house in order—and restored our economy to the path of growth.
And we are developing as a working democracy—not as an arrogant example for other peoples to follow, but because history has so shaped our political culture that any other way will not so easily work for us.
In a word, we Filipinos are ready once again to play a more active role in regional cooperation—and to account for ourselves more significantly in the world.
OUR MUTUAL SECURITY IN ASIA-PACIFIC
Let me begin with the subject closest to your own interests: our mutual security in Asia-Pacific.
In our security concerns, there is some convergence of views between our two countries. Like you, we believe that security has many dimensions: it involves not only the military but the economy, diplomacy and politics as well; and economic growth and interdependence, in the context of the new world trading regime, by themselves promote regional stability.
Our respective defense staffs may dismiss this belief as naive. But, over these past two decades, we have seen how economic progress, together with human development, can make countries not only richer but safer.
We have seen how the force of arms—which has for so long arbitrated relationships between nations—can give way to the more benign regime of mutual benefit. In fact, for the richest and most settled portions of the globe—the democracies of Western Europe and the Americas—war has become outmoded as an instrument of competition.
Of course, where there has been little or no growth, and even less development—as in many parts of unhappy Africa—the “condition of man” still is “a condition of war of everyone against everyone.”
Asia-Pacific between peace and turmoil
I would locate most of Asia-Pacific today in the “zone of peace,” with some areas still in a “zone of turmoil.”
Not all peoples in Asia-Pacific have entirely escaped poverty, the fear of violence or the reach of arbitrary governments.
Nor have our leaders resolved the contradiction between the interdependence required by the regional economy and the narrow, old-fashioned nationalism that some see as necessary for binding together their plural societies.
But the vigorous growth and meshing together of our economies—and the slow but, to me, inevitable homogenization of our politics—these enable us to hope the time will soon come when our Asia-Pacific countries, too, enter the zones of peace—when our mutual security will depend not so much anymore on arms and alliances as on peaceful commerce and integration in the Asia-Pacific community.
In one crucial way, the Philippine concept of national security must differ from your own. In much of Southeast Asia, the Philippines included, internal weaknesses in the form of poverty and social inequity must still be overcome.
During the Cold War period, these weaknesses—because they breed urban unrest, insurgency and separatism—had been even more dangerous for the Philippines than any outside threat.
An honorable peace to all our dissidents
This is why one of the first things my Government did—when it took office in mid-1992—was to offer an honorable peace settlement to our military mutineers, Communist insurgents and Muslim secessionists.
And that is why we define national security more in terms of political stability, economic development and social cohesion.
Only now—with the bipolar superpower balance replaced by an even less stable configuration of big-power relationships—only now—with our economies growing steadily—only now do we in Southeast Asia have the leisure to rethink our security concerns.
And nowhere is this rethinking going on more seriously than in my country—where, until China encroached on Mischief Reef in our Kalayaan (or “Freedom”) group of islands, we had believed, mistakenly, the post-Cold War regional environment would give us the breathing spell to deal with our problems at home more effectively.
Role of the great powers
The regional environment remains unsettled because the four big powers have yet to clarify their interests and intentions. A balance has yet to be established among the United States, China, Japan and Russia in Asia-Pacific.
The lingering ideological enmities in the Korean peninsula—still in the wintry grip of the Cold War—could alter the entire security equation in our region.
China’s intentions in the South China Sea and its commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea—how a new Russia will evolve from the ideological ruins of the Soviet Union and how Japan can turn into a truly self-reliant nation in defense matters—these too remain unclear.
There is an inherent anomaly—similar to the old Allied effort to keep apart the two Germanys—in today’s Japan remaining a strategic client of the United States. This can only fan an unhealthy kind of nationalism in a nation acutely aware of its political uniqueness and economic power—increasing the danger that their bitter disputes over trade would spill over into their security relationship.
Perhaps it is time its friends, like us, encouraged Japan to take on a political role in the world compatible with its economic power.
Like Australia, the Philippines supports—within the context of reforms necessary in the United Nations system after 50 years of its existence—Japan’s bid for a permanent seat in the Security Council.
We see this as enhancing its full integration into the world community. And we are reasonably confident Japan’s political role will be exercised on the side of peace-—which Japan needs more than any other great power, because of its worldwide trade and investments; its lack of natural resources, and its extreme vulnerability to nuclear conflict.
Integrating China into the Asia-Pacific community
China’s rapidly expanding economy—the World Bank says it might become the globe’s biggest in 25 years—will unavoidably create serious political and military pressures upon all of Asia, especially Asia-Pacific—even assuming that Beijing made no effort to build its capability to project power beyond its self-proclaimed borders.
How China exercises its political and military clout must concern us all—and none more so than we Southeast Asians, who are its closest neighbors.
(The opposite possibility—of China’s economic failure—is, if anything, even more alarming.)
The allies in Western Europe solved a roughly similar problem by integrating postwar Germany into a European Union. So must we endeavor to integrate China into the Asia-Pacific community—economically through APEC and politically through the ASEAN Regional Forum—if we are to have enduring regional stability.
But, for the moment, uncertainty characterizes regional security. And, understandably, the smaller states are ensuring themselves against these uncertainties by increasing their defense capabilities—a recourse that has led to outside perceptions of an arms buildup in the region.
The U.S.: returning to isolationism?
The most immediate of these anxieties is the widespread fear that the United States will revert to isolationism—which has characterized America’s foreign policy throughout most of its history.
But the tilt of its population away from its Atlantic Coast, the influx of Asian migrants and the weight of its Asia-Pacific economic interests have made the United States more and more an Asia-Pacific player. Thus it must regard as a direct threat to its own interests the military domination by a single power of our part of the world.
Since 1898 the United States had located its western strategic frontiers in the Philippines. But now as before the tyranny of distance—the expanse of the vast Pacific—separates it from the rest of the field in Asia.
For this reason, “forward deployment” must remain the core of its political and security strategy in all of Asia and the Pacific Rim.
Forward deployment will not merely enable the United States to effectively deter an East Asian conflict (and intervene in potential flash points well beyond). It also supports the strategic tradeoff Washington proposes—which is that East Asia embrace the United States as an economic partner—to ensure its continued strong influence in the security environment of Asia-Pacific.
We of the Philippines have no problems with this proposition—that East Asians show to Americans that the United States can share in Asia-Pacific prosperity—since we do not regard economic competition as a game of winner-take-all nor a zero-sum contest. On the other hand, our view is that a win-win situation can ensue, with long-term benefits for all.
The issue of prepositioning
On the issue of prepositioning American matériel, no large ASEAN country has offered forward-basing arrangements to the U.S.—although anxiety over the withdrawal of the U.S. military from the Philippines had been widespread when this took place in 1992.
Singapore alone hosts some U.S. naval facilities, but both Malaysia and Thailand have refused Washington’s proposals for prepositioning.
In my view, this caution arises partly from a lesson remembered from the colonial period. Every Southeast Asian culture has a variant of the Malay proverb, “When elephants fight, the mousedeer between them is killed.”
But it also results from an appreciation of the opportunity that the post-Cold War security environment now gives Southeast Asia—to become the nuclear-free “zone of peace, freedom and neutrality” that ASEAN envisions.
Under this reasoning, the dismantling of land-based American naval and air forces removes a potential provocation to ASEAN’s giant neighbor—and invites China to live-and-let-live with its Southeast Asian neighbors. Meanwhile, even the reduced U.S. military deployments close to the ASEAN region are a counterweight enough to keep regional security and stability in balance.
Many strategic thinkers and analysts say that, if Beijing should continue encroaching on the South China Sea, then this happening might accelerate deeper security cooperation among the Southeast Asian countries—and between them and the United States (and Japan as well).
A Chinese mellowing on Mischief Reef
But, for the moment, the ASEAN countries are betting that interdependence and mutual benefit can preempt the rise of old-fashioned political antagonisms.
This optimism is confirmed by our own Philippine diplomats—who discerned a Chinese mellowing over their territorial claims on the South China Sea at the yearly ASEAN get-together in Brunei Darussalam in late July.
The Spratlys remain the most volatile issue in Southeast Asia, now that we have put the Cambodian problem behind us. Nearly a quarter of the world’s maritime freight passes through this disputed island group—and to which the Philippine mainland is the closest among the claimants.
Chinese officials continue to insist on their country’s “indisputable sovereignty.”
But they now declare their country’s readiness to approach territorial disputes and maritime rights and interests on the basis of international law—including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea—and that the issue could be discussed in China’s meetings with ASEAN, consistent with the 1992 Manila ASEAN Declaration.
Only last week, in Manila, Philippine and Chinese senior officials agreed on a code of conduct in the South China Sea—pledging both sides to resolve territorial disputes peacefully and without the use or threat of force.
Both countries also agreed to cooperate—bilaterally and eventually with others concerned—to protect the marine environment; engage in antipiracy, marine research, search and rescue operations; and other such measures, which would not only advance the welfare of all but also build confidence among the claimants.
We both made a special commitment to the conservation of marine resources and the freedom of safety and navigation.
We both agreed to convene expert meetings to discuss the legal bases of our respective claims to sovereignty and also to explore modes of cooperation in fisheries and other productive endeavors.
Role of the middle powers
Although the Philippines continues to insist that Chinese personnel and semipermanent structures have no business being on Mischief Reef—and the Chinese continue to assert their right to be there—our two sides agreed to continue discussing that specific situation—particularly within the context of our proposed cooperative activities.
Certainly the atmosphere, at least, is better than what it was six months ago.
We have suggested to the Chinese to consider the value of both bilateral and multilateral talks—with the other claimants and within the ASEAN Regional Forum—seeing that one-on-one dialogues and group discussions support each other in resolving disputes of this sort.
And we agree, as you do, that our best approach to China is not by “containing” it in the Cold War manner but by drawing it into the network of collaboration that links our own countries—by our having a special care for its culture—and by showing the Chinese people what they can gain by working harmoniously with their neighbors in Asia-Pacific.
Let me now turn to the role of the middle powers in Asia-Pacific.
Australia and the ASEAN states have shown that the middle powers need not be passive spectators—nor mousedeer—at the interplay among the great powers in the region.
We have both shown that those of us in the middle can be active and significant players—if not in economic and military might, then in the power of ideas and in the area of moral persuasion.
We of ASEAN acknowledge the quality of Australia’s initiatives in the former Indochinese states and in APEC itself; and Australia’s role in setting up the ASEAN Regional Forum.
By strengthening our own linkages and pooling our own talents, capabilities and resources, we can have a strong voice in crafting the future of Asia-Pacific.
In every regional council, we must speak for moderation, fair play and mutual respect.
And cohesive action begins with a recognition of the community of our strategic interests.
This recognition that the middle powers must band together impelled Vietnam to join ASEAN last month. We now expect Laos and Cambodia to join our grouping formally within two years—and recent events in Myanmar enable us to hope ASEAN can complete uniting the natural cluster of 10 Southeast Asian countries by the year 2000.
Doing things in the ASEAN way
ASEAN’s negotiating principles of consultation and consensus—of musjawarah and mufakat—have already become the recognized standard operating procedures for both APEC and the ASEAN Regional Forum.
In deciding to build political trust first—rather than coming to grips immediately with specific disputes—in working slowly, incrementally and informally but steadily—keeping in mind that the process of reaching an agreement is important in itself—both APEC and the ASEAN Regional Forum have gained a flexibility and continuity absent from, say, the European Community.
This kind of decision making is inevitably slow, subtle and indirect—but I myself believe it produces agreements that are unforced, nonconfrontational, virtually self-policing and enduring.
Prospects for cooperation in APEC
APEC and the ASEAN Regional Forum complement each other perfectly.
If APEC is to realize its potentials, our countries must first of all keep the peace among ourselves. Any explosion of violence—in any part of Asia-Pacific—will burst the bubble of stability that keeps its “economic miracle” going.
Alternatively, even if the military balance holds, it will be easy for unrestrained economic competition to degenerate into beggar-my-neighbor policies; for greed and speculation to ruin our interconnected markets.
The two groupings together ensure the continuing presence and forward engagement of the United States in the region. They can help defuse the Washington-Tokyo trade conflict, integrate China more expeditiously into the Asia-Pacific economy, and create a role for Japan as a stabilizing force in Asia-Pacific.
AUTHORITARIANISM AND DEMOCRACY IN EAST ASIA
Let me now turn to the question of authoritarianism and democracy in our region.
Asia-Pacific’s vibrant growth and its arrival at centerstage have attracted widespread interest and concern. Everywhere I traveled in Western Europe during the past ten months, thoughtful Europeans asked me:
Will Asia-Pacific develop in a way different from that of the West?
Is there an Asia-Pacific mode of democracy different from that of the West?
And (as we Asians assert with increasing self-confidence) does the West really have anything to learn from Asia-Pacific?
Let me try some short answers to these probing questions—which I know are also being asked here—before I finish up with an update for you on what my Government is trying to do at home.
Giving ordinary people a stake in development
My own view is that Asia-Pacific’s growth is unique—not because it was organized by authoritarian governments but because it gives ordinary people a stake in their country’s development.
To me, it is not growth rates that the Asia-Pacific’s economies have attained that are impressive. Other developing countries—the best example is Brazil under authoritarian rule between 1932 and 1979—have grown as much and for as sustained periods.
What to me is impressive about our region’s growth is the way our countries involve the masses of our peoples in the collective effort to eradicate mass poverty, ease income inequality and encourage initiatives for greater political liberalization.
By the World Bank’s estimate, mass poverty declined during the period between 1970 and 1990 from 35 percent to only 10 percent in East Asia overall—despite a 40 percent increase in the region’s population over those 20 years.
Of course, there are those who insist the developing countries of Asia are not going to be modernized following the methods of the West. There are those who insist Asians will prefer to be ruled by authoritarians who make the economy grow rather than by democrats who can’t say “no” to special interests.
But this kind of cultural relativism is being refuted by middle-class activism from Beijing to Yangon to Manila. Almost everywhere in our region, people are giving up their comfort and tranquility—and sometimes staking their liberty—in the belief that there is something more to life than an unending spiral of individual gratification.
I am inclined to agree with the political economist Francis Fukuyama, who argues that “as society becomes richer and more secure, people become free to seek nonmaterial goals like recognition of their status and political participation.”
Is there an Asian mode of democracy?
To the question: “Is there an Asian mode of democracy?” I would reply that any government limits its effectiveness by putting its people into a straitjacket—wherever it is practiced.
All complex societies—whether of the East or West—are best ruled increasingly by conciliation and consensus—if society is to become both free and orderly.
And to the extent that countries accept these methods of political rule, then to that extent will their political cultures eventually converge.
The differences between them arise from the civic values that specific cultures prize—and also from the self-conscious efforts that Asia’s late modernizers are making, to avoid the mistakes the earlier modernizers in the West had made—for instance, in failing to restrain the egotism of individualist capitalism, and in allowing family ties to deteriorate.
To the extent that Asia-Pacific states are able to mitigate these failings, then the rest of the world has something valuable to learn from them.
To me, what matters most is that we develop some tolerance for differing realities: that we all become less quick to measure other peoples by the political standards we set for ourselves.
Our own trials in the Philippines—which, as you know, included a long spell of strongman rule from late 1972 until early 1986—have persuaded us to modernize the “hard way”—accepting the so-called restraints and handicaps of a democratic system which other East Asian governments need not accept.
Developing as a democracy
It is easy to belittle our representative system—but ordinary Filipinos do put their faith in it. Our kind of democracy might still be miles away from Westminster’s, but our political system already passes the “bottom-line test” for democracy. We can change our rulers according to a constitutional electoral process, without recourse to violence and bloodshed. The rule of law and the sanctity of human rights are enshrined in Filipino culture and the Constitution.
Because we mistakenly tried to protect our industries from foreign competition three or four decades ago, now we know we must enter the mainstream of global commerce. While we mistakenly equated political nationalism with economic self-sufficiency in the past, now we realize we must take part in the vigorous life of the Asia-Pacific economy.
Now we are aware our sustainable development largely depends on our faith in ourselves, the competitiveness of our industries and the productivity of our people.
We are reforming our economy—just as you are doing here in Australia—to spur its competitiveness and strengthen our export industries.
We started by removing the barriers—erected over these past 40-45 years—against foreign investment and multinational industry. And we are leveling the playing field of enterprise by dismantling the cartels and monopolies that had dominated the closed economy.
We have deregulated telecommunications, air, sea and land transport—and privatized many of our public corporations.
Most recently we opened up banking—which had been closed to non-Filipinos since 1948—and the insurance industry. Among the first ten international banks from Europe, America and East Asia that have been allowed to operate branch banks is your own ANZ Banking Group.
Opening up the Philippine economy
Just before coming here, I approved a tariff reduction program that accelerates our economy’s outward orientation. And I have asked our legislature to repeal the last remaining laws—some enacted almost half a century ago—that still restrain economic growth and penalize Filipino consumers.
Social reform we have made the centerpiece of Government’s agenda—so we can fight poverty more effectively and pull out the root causes of dissidence and criminality.
Structural reforms are now taking hold because they result from a new spirit of cooperation between the Presidency and Congress. A year ago, my party entered into an unprecedented coalition with the main Opposition grouping—unprecedented indeed in terms of our presidential system and political culture.
Our coalition partners and we agree that neither stubborn courage nor ideological loyalty is the democratic reformer’s greatest virtue.
In the Philippine context, it is the combination of creative problem-solving, creative determination and creative patience that works. It is the willingness to settle (in the meantime) for limited political goals that counts, while continuing to focus on a shared vision of a higher quality of life. This is the comparative edge we have been able to forge to win the future.
TOWARD A COMMUNITY OF ASIAN NATIONS
Finally, let me tell you about “SEA 10″— Southeast Asia’s impulse to unification, now that the ending of the Cold War has given it command of its own fortunes. More and more of our thinkers agree that none of our ten countries can stand up separately to the intense competition of the global economy and the power politics that might yet embroil the Asia-Pacific of the future.
Only unification gives us a fighting chance to face outside pressures and to shape our future according to our collective aspirations. Some form of closer political association may therefore be our logical next step, once our immediate goal of SEA-10 is put together.
But moving toward that higher unity will still take all the political will, all the collective sense of purpose, all the idealism of Southeast Asia’s leaders. And the reason for this is that our countries will not benefit equally from unification at the start. This venture, therefore, will succeed only if, from the beginning, all our countries adopt as their own the interests of Southeast Asia as a whole.
Regionism—the alternative to anarchy
This idea—that there is a regionist motive higher than the national interest—we all need to cultivate if we are to find an alternative to the anarchy of the nation-state system; if our Asia Pacific community is to deal successfully with problems that are incapable of national solutions.
Take the protection of the environment and the wise use of natural resources. Because environmental protection is a public good which, once available, benefits everyone—individual countries will have no incentive to expend the resources needed to ensure it—unless we all begin to cultivate—in the regional community—the kind of civic responsibility that we inculcate among our own peoples.
And economic interdependence—if it results only in development unequally distributed and enjoyed—will merely sharpen the differences between our haves and have-not states—and generate the very instability we seek to avoid.
For 500 years Asia-Pacific was a region that things were done to or done against. Now it is making its own history—and imprinting its works in the annals of mankind.
The centenary of Australia’s own nationhood follows closely that of our own 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Philippine Independence in 1998. And we are pleased to note how determined Australia’s leaders are to locate this country in the East Asian hemisphere or what I would prefer to call (because it is the more comprehensive yet more precise definition) “Asia-Pacific.”
Let us—two peoples together—work to ensure that the dynamic regional history we and the others have started to create transcends the blood and bitterness of the past—and brings us to a luminous time of peace and plenty that will endure a hundred times a hundred years.