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Philippines Relations with Asian Neighbors
For decades the Philippines was an active proponent of
regionalism. In 1954 it joined Australia, Britain, France, New
Zealand, Pakistan, Thailand, and the United States in the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization against the perceived threat
from the Chinese and Indochinese communist regimes. This alliance
was phased out in 1977.
Manila's quest for regional cooperation received a
significant boost in the 1965-66 period, when bilateral problems
between Indonesia and Malaysia that had been known as the
confrontation--until then the main obstacle to regionalism in
Southeast Asia--gave way to neighborliness. In August 1967 the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations was formed by Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand to pursue
economic, social, cultural, and technical cooperation.
The Philippines was also party to a multilateral dispute over
ownership of the Kalayaan Islands, as Filipinos call some of the
Spratlys, a scattered group of atolls west of the Philippine
island of Palawan and east of Vietnam, also claimed in toto or
partially by China, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam
(see External Defense
, ch. 5). Tomas Clomas, a Manila lawyer, visited the
islands in 1956, claimed them for himself, named them Kalayaan
(Freedomland), then asked the Philippine government to make them
a protectorate. Philippine troops were sent to the Kalayaans in
1968. All parties to the dispute were interested in possible
offshore oil around the islands. The law of the sea grants to any
country that receives international recognition of a claim to
even a rock sticking out of the water exclusive economic rights
to all resources, including oil, within a 200-nautical-mile
radius of that point. Manila regularly tried to extract from the
United States a declaration that it would defend the Philippines'
claim to the Kalayaans as part of the Mutual Defense Treaty
between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States of
America, but the United States just as regularly refused so to
interpret that treaty.
Aquino broke the tradition that a Philippine president's
first overseas trip was to Washington. She visited Jakarta and
Singapore in August 1986. Indonesian president Soeharto promised
not to aid Muslim separatists in Mindanao but cautioned Aquino
not to attempt reconciliation with communist insurgents.
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew echoed Soeharto's
warning. Both leaders encouraged the Philippines to find a way to
extend United States base rights. Although the governments
espoused differing world views, the Philippines has had few
disputes with Indonesia or Singapore, and relations remained
neighborly in the early 1990s. The Philippines enjoyed a
cooperative relationship with Thailand. The two countries in 1991
had no disputes and many common interests, including a history of
security cooperation with the United States.
Data as of June 1991
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