Tanggapan ng Pangulo ng Pilipinas
(OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE PHILIPPINES)
November 1976
It looks like Sec. [Carlos] Romulo has bungled his mission of transmitting my decisions on the bases negotiations to Sec. [Henry] Kissinger or as the media puts it, “’negotiating” the bases treaty. Actually he has a conduit or channel of communication to Sec. Kissinger.
And has revealed our secret position in the negotiations to the press.
Kissinger has called off the negotiations apparently on a huff because of the Romulo statement that “he (Romulo) was being pressured by the U.S. into precipitately agreeing to the treaty on the basis of a billion dollars divided into equal portions of economic and military aid.”
The old man whom I have been keeping as Foreign Secretary because of his prestige in the international firms may have lost his value to the country.
I noted he was always afraid in the past of the media, sensitive to the most innocent criticism and inclined to give way to the Americans.
Our problem is I have no immediate replacement for him.
To the U.S. we can say:
We do not want your money. We have been pushed into this position of demanding rent. Initially we asked that you assure us we would be protected and helped if we are attacked either by an overt external aggression type of operations or as we expect a subversion-insurgency type of operations. But no such assurance has come from you.
On the contrary your policies make us fear a repetition of the Vietnam spectacle of your president promising help and the U.S. Congress not giving it.
You have shelved the previous [Richard] Nixon doctrine that you would help the Asian countries that are targets of insurgency operations specially by the communists—help them with arms and equipment.
You refused to help us in the Mindanao secessionist rebellion nor the Communist Party rebellion.
Your [William Stuart] Symington report and other statements show that there is no certainty of any kind of aid even if we are attacked.
You have insisted that no statement be made on nuclear weapons in the bases treaty.
No Official Gazette entry for this day.
So we must prepare to defend ourselves alone, now, while we still can. This is the reason for the rent.
My concern for future security still is Vietnam. It is the surrogate of the USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics] in Asia, especially Southeast Asia.
The United States will not be able to help us in case of a massive infiltrationsubversion type of threat to our stability that is either accompanied by small unit operations or leads to it, then insurrection and full-scale civil war. In all these four steps, the possible source of support for indigenous rebels would be Vietnam.
The Philippines will always attract subversion and possibly preemptive nuclear attacks because of the U.S. military bases.
And the U.S. could not help us in the Mindanao secessionist rebellion. We had to buy arms and ammo from Taipei, Singapore and Europe.
Even disregarding the military assistance pact which was a consideration for the military bases, the U.S. should pay rent for the bases which we could use to strengthen our armed forces.