Apparently, sovereignty is conditional. 

If the government’s double standards are any indication, it is that our foreign policy proclaims our independence from one foreign power and surrenders it to another. The recent finalization of more US involvement in Philippine military bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, as well as the proposal of a US-PH intelligence-sharing pact, is but one step to the total capture of the country to the whims of a foreign power.

Of course, the government has always justified this dependence by pointing out Chinese aggression in the West Philippine Sea (WPS). By disregarding the fact that housing US bases places the Philippines right at the center of China’s crosshairs, the government subscribes to the illusion that American military cooperation comes with no tangible harm to the country.

Nothing better highlights the false benevolence of the US military than the revelation by a Reuters report last month that the US ran an anti-vaccine disinformation campaign in the country at the height of the pandemic. 

The US military’s disinformation campaign worsened the distrust of vaccines that Filipinos already had before the pandemic. With the Dengvaxia debacle before and distrust toward China, the campaign only fueled the vaccine hesitancy that has possibly led to the needless deaths of some of the thousands of Filipinos during the pandemic. 

The Philippine government’s response? No action, no outcry, no diplomatic protest. A simple “Did you do it?” message was sent to the US embassy.

In any other country, reports that a foreign superpower negatively influenced its vaccine rollout at the height of a global pandemic would have its government up in arms. But only in the Philippines can the US get away with such an operation. 

We cannot continue acting like a country that would do such an operation can be trusted. And it cannot be government policy to rely on such a country to boost our defense. In fact, letting the US increase interoperability with our military threatens our own national security.

Chinese intrusion and aggression in the WPS cannot be countered by American encroachment on our soil. We must be resolute in protecting our sovereignty from any country – by the relentless pursuit of our arbitral award in international bodies, building a non-aligned coalition of countries that will form a true opposition to both US and China’s imperialism, and rejecting any intrusion by the US military in the country.

Protests against US presence in the country have been met with harassment by the state and skepticism from the general public. But in light of this operation, it is high time that Filipinos view the US not as an unwavering ally, but as another foreign power that does not have our country’s best interests at heart.

While Filipinos trust the US more than any other country, that trust was built through decades of continued US intrusion into the country’s sovereignty—a pattern that has continued through the Sinovac disinformation campaign and the increasing number of American bases in the country. Trust must be earned through mutual respect for territory and sovereignty, something that is nonexistent with both China and the US.

A hostile power cannot be countered by merely relying on another foreign power. True national security lies not in upgrading our military capabilities regardless of foreign intrusion, but in our willingness to stand up for our sovereignty, whomever the aggressor may be. We must be loud in our rejection of both Chinese aggression and US interference to secure our national security. ●

First published in the July 22, 2024 print edition of the Collegian.