MANILA, Philippines — President-elect Donald Trump would be well-advised to make a trip here early in his administration to shore up Washington’s troubled alliance with one of the linchpins of its regional security network, says former President Fidel V. Ramos, an elder statesman among the Philippines’ political and military elite.
“I just hope, and please suggest it to him, that he makes an early visit,” Mr. Ramos told The Washington Times.
He suggested a Trump visit may be needed to neutralize President Rodrigo Duterte’s threats to downgrade the alliance in favor of deeper ties with China and Russia.
“This is already psychological warfare,” said Mr. Ramos, a 1940 West Point graduate who held the Philippine presidency through a tumultuous period in the 1990s after a surge of nationalist fervor expelled U.S. forces from the sprawling island nation.
The Obama administration has been trying to rebuild strategic connections, but nationalist sentiment is surging again with Mr. Duterte just as the U.S. tries to rally its East Asian allies to present a united front against a politically and economically surging China. The fiery populist outsider has repeatedly antagonized Washington — and President Obama personally — since taking office in June.
Mr. Ramos said the Philippine president is smart to explore fresh relations with Beijing and Moscow but stressed that it would be irresponsible to do so at the expense of Manila’s deep ties to Washington and the U.S. military.
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“We understand the same military traditions, the same military history in this part of the world,” said Mr. Ramos, who is known as the father of the Philippine army’s special forces. “We use the same caliber of weapons. We know the Russian and Chinese ammunition doesn’t fit into our guns.
“The Philippines and the U.S. must come together as we used to be,” he said.
In a wide-ranging interview on the 27th floor of a Manila high-rise where he oversees the Ramos Peace and Development Foundation, Mr. Ramos offered a sobering contrast to Mr. Duterte’s anti-U.S. rhetoric.
Some believe the Philippine president, a 71-year-old longtime provincial mayor, will change his tune with Donald Trump in the White House, but others fear a clash between the two largely untested leaders with a penchant for incendiary rhetoric and sharp policy swerves.
Mr. Ramos, who has been an outspoken supporter and virulent critic of Mr. Duterte, is the respected veteran who may have the influential voice. He has known Mr. Duterte for many years, and it was little surprise when he was appointed this fall to be a special envoy to China.
Mr. Ramos sought a diplomatic opening, but then Mr. Duterte made global headlines during a visit to Beijing in October when he announced a “separation” from the United States.
SEE ALSO: Donald Trump, Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte seek connection as China looms
A few days later, Mr. Ramos quit his envoy post. While he denied a direct rift with Mr. Duterte, he soon went public with his opposition to the Philippine president’s anti-U.S. rhetoric.
Mr. Ramos told The Times that he and other former high-level military officials have made it clear to Mr. Duterte that he should “maintain our military alliance with the U.S. and pursue not an independent foreign policy, but an interdependent foreign policy.”
The goal, he said, must be to forge “stronger and more consistent military alliances with the U.S. and others, including our friends in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia and Singapore.”
Long history
Mr. Ramos sought to downplay Mr. Duterte’s rhetorical posturing toward China and Russia. “The foreign policy is not written up,” he said, adding that the U.S.-Philippine alliance “cannot just be discarded on the say-so of Mr. Duterte.”
“You cannot just discard the good will and the cooperation that’s been built up,” Mr. Ramos said. “There is no way to separate the two anymore.”
The U.S. and the Philippines have a complex history dating back to 1898, when Spain ceded the archipelago to Washington. After quashing a native rebellion, the U.S. ran the Philippines essentially as a colony until the islands achieved independence in 1946.
Some 4 million Americans of Filipino ancestry live in the U.S., and more than 220,000 U.S. citizens — including tens of thousands of military veterans — are in the Philippines, according to the State Department.
A 2015 study by the Pew Research Center said the Philippines has the most pro-U.S. population of any country in the world. Basketball is Filipinos’ most popular sport, and it’s hard to spend a night in Manila without hearing American pop music.
But the relations have been sorely tested since September, when Mr. Duterte called Mr. Obama the “son of a whore” after the U.S. president pointed out human rights abuses tied to the Philippines’ war on drugs. The insult was followed by a series of confusing statements about China, Russia and the state of the treaty alliance with Washington.
When Millennium Challenge Corp. — a U.S. government assistance agency — announced last month that it would suspend aid to Manila over “concerns around the rule of law,” Mr. Duterte said the funding could be replaced easily by China.
“What do I need America for?” he told reporters. “They did not look at us kindly; we have this huge problem.”
Some say Mr. Duterte’s gripe with the U.S. is personal. “He’s never been accepted by the Americans,” said Renato Cruz de Castro, a policy analyst at De La Salle University in Manila.
Mr. de Castro said the grudge stems partly from Mr. Duterte’s first marriage to a woman with close U.S. family ties.
Mr. Duterte was married for 25 years to Elizabeth Zimmerman, whom he has publicly described as the “descendent of an American Jew.”
“His father-in-law never accepted him,” Mr. de Castro said.
’Trump Tower’ in Manila
It remains to be seen how the Trump administration will approach the situation. The U.S. president-elect and his staff were tight-lipped after a phone call with Mr. Duterte in December, but the Philippine leader said afterward that he got such a strong vote of support from Mr. Trump that he “felt like a saint” when the phone call ended.
In a speech shortly after their conversation, Mr. Duterte said Mr. Trump praised him for his crackdown on illegal drugs.
“You are doing good; go ahead,” Mr. Duterte said the American president-elect told him.
Mr. Ramos, meanwhile, suggested that Mr. Duterte seeks to play ball on a level Mr. Trump can understand. He noted that, even before the U.S. election, Mr. Duterte named Manila property developer Jose Antonio to serve as special trade envoy to Washington.
Mr. Antonio’s company, Century Properties Group, is overseeing the construction of a 57-story Trump Tower luxury apartment building in the Philippine capital.
Although Mr. Trump’s connection to the project is limited to the licensing of his name to it, a posting on Century’s website quotes the U.S. president-elect as saying: “I’ve always loved the Philippines. I think it’s just a special place and Manila is one of Asia’s most spectacular cities. I know that this project will be second to none.”
Mr. Antonio did not respond to a request by The Times for comment.
The former Philippine president said he hopes Mr. Trump and Mr. Duterte can work together toward demilitarizing tensions in Asia. The goal should be to “downscale defense spending,” he said. “Submarines, missiles, ICBMs and hydrogen bombs — what is it for? Let’s use the money to fight the universal enemies of poverty, hunger, water scarcity, climate change and pandemic disease.
“What happened during Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago — 140,000 people were killed in one night and the succeeding two weeks,” he said. “Now, 70 years later, the damage done by the one superbomb is 2,000 times more devastating.
“Let us gather all of these big bullies together to join in a combined task force to patrol the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean on both sides, to save life at sea,” Mr. Ramos said. “Let us save our money for preserving mankind’s longevity on earth.
“Instead of developing weapons of mass destruction,” he said, “let us develop weapons of mass uplift.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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