U.S. Bases in the Philippines
INTRODUCTION
The longest relationship between the United States of America and a Southeast Asian country has been the US military involvement in the Philippines. For almost a century, the US military had use of two major bases in the Philippines, Clark Air Force Base, and Subic Naval Station. It took a strong anti-nuclear, anti-imperialist mass movement and a majority vote in the Philippine Senate to finally end the long US military occupation.
The 1991 US military withdrawal from the Philippines was expected to cause a "power vacuum" that would have adverse economic and political effects on the former US colony. Was this really the case in the Philippines? Did the U.S. pull out cause economic havoc and wide spread political unrest or was the Philippine government able to compensate for this great economic and security loss?
This paper will examine how the American Military presence influenced the politics and economy of the Philippines and what affect the eventual withdrawal had on the country. It will also examine what the Philippine government has done to compensate for the power vacuum caused by the US Base closures. Though I will rely primarily on outside sources, I will also present my own observations having lived in the former base area (Central Luzon) for two years (1994-1996) immediately following the U.S. base withdrawal.
Historical Background to US Bases
After the United States "liberated" the Philippines from Spanish rule, Subic Bay was designated as principal US naval station in the Philippines in 1901. A naval base was constructed and became operational in 1907. It became the largest training facility for the US Marines prior to World War I. In 1902, Fort Stotsenberg...
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...ippine government is plagued with the problem of internal strife against the countless rebel groups dissatisfied with the current political agenda that appears to only benefit the political elite. The great economic growth has had minimal effect on the masses of Filipino poor who flock to these groups for redemption. In addition, the Armed Forces of the Philippines have proven to be too ill equipped and trained to deal with both the internal and eternal threats to their country. In light of this, I feel the Philippines would do well to consider agreements such as the VFA that would allow the U.S. Military to aid them while keeping Philippine soil free of U.S. Bases. If such a compromise cannot be reached there is certainly the option of building better relations with neighboring South East Asian nations, an option that, in the past, has not been fully addressed.
Dear fellow senators: Yesterday, February 6, 1899 was a big day in United States history; we decided as a nation to annex the Philippines. The Philippines is an island country in Southeast Asia, and was independent until 1565 when the Spanish colonized the islands. I have one question for you, my fellow senators, should the U.S. have annexed the Philippines? The United States should have annexed the Philippines for three reasons: our duty to spread the values of democracy overseas, the Filipinos natural inability to govern themselves, and saving the Philippines from the tyranny of Spain or other European countries. The first reason the United States should have annexed the Philippines is because it is our duty as a country to spread the values of democracy overseas.
In my opinion The United States ordeal with Annexing the Philippines and the idea that we had of going into war with them was great mistake and should have been avoided. The Filipinos and Americans were deadlocked in war with each other. This all became a controversy with the two nations in 1898 when the Treaty of Paris between Spain and the United Stated ceded all seven thousand islands of the Philippine archipelago to the United States, for just a mere twenty-million dollars. Congress had approved the treaty with Spain, by February of 1899. Mckinley was on the verge of calling for the annexation of the Philippines which brought on a bloody two year struggle. In my opinion the United States was the cause of all of this because of three different reasons, for one our government would not...
United States of America. U.S. Department of State. Office of the Historian. The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Mar. 2014
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This article is a quantitative level 2 comparative retrospective investigation which is a lesser quality random control trial (RCT). The sample selection consisted of was graduates from the years of 2005 to 2007; they were from a small private 2-year associate degree nursing program. The total population yielded 308 nursing students that passed their NCLEX-RN the first time and 91 students that failed the first time. However, to obtain the equal number of nurses from
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