‘It is to that last world war that I think we should look if we are to try to seek lessons that may be applicable to the situation we find ourselves in today…’
IT’S Philippine Independence Day once again, our 126th. But on the 126th as on the 1st Independence Day celebration, there are clouds on the horizon that make some people question whether we indeed are independent or even deserve to be so.
The clouds on the horizon during the time of Aguinaldo were clouds arising from the clash of two powers: the fading colonial might of Espana against the rising power of the United States. Caught in between were our islands and our “ragtag” forces that were clearly no match, pound for pound, against the firepower of Spain, and much more of the United States.
And no match indeed: while pockets of resistance against the Americans replacing the Spaniards as our new masters developed and arose in parts of the country, eventually with the last resistance led by Miguel Malvar in Batangas and Simeon Ola in Albay giving up arms.
No talk about independence would materialize again until 1946.
Of course, in 1946 the Americans ceremoniously lowered their flag at the Luneta and saw the Philippine tricolor raised, alone, atop the flagpole. Yet the American presence was very palpable: in business, in culture, and, of course, in the presence of three major military bases in Sangley, Clark and Subic. It took Mt. Pinatubo to finally end the presence of US bases in the Philippines in 1991, which marked, for many, the start of “real” independence.
Ironically, the departure of US troops from the Philippines created a power vacuum in the region; within a decade, that vacuum was being filled by a new regional power, China.
It is now the clash of interests of the old power and the new, emerging one that is producing clouds over the horizon of Philippine independence.
Both China and the Philippines today are in a way products of the last world war. That war provided the Chinese people an opportunity not only to be rid of the many colonial shackles imposed on a weak Chinese state by Japan and Western nations, and it was World War 2 that became the trigger for America relinquishing its hold on the Philippine islands as a colony.
It is to that last world war that I think we should look if we are to try to seek lessons that may be applicable to the situation we find ourselves in today, and one that I think stands out is this:
A nation cannot correct historical injustices inflicted on it when it was still weak, by itself inflicting historical injustices on its weaker neighbors now that it is already powerful.
This is the path through which the Third Reich led Germany to utter ruin, as eager as Hitler was to avenge the humiliation of World War 1.
The question is: do we learn from history?
