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The Pivot: Neoconservatives, the Philippines, and the Democracy Agenda

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The Reagan Administration, the Cold War, and the Transition to Democracy Promotion

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Abstract

This chapter locates the origins of the post-Cold War neoconservative democracy agenda in Reagan administration policy toward the Philippines. Neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz concluded the repressive Marcos dictatorship fueled the rise of communism in the archipelago. They played a key role in shifting Reagan administration policy from support for authoritarianism toward encouragement for democratic reform. In so doing, the neoconservatives had articulated and implemented a new foreign policy vision that posited democratization as the best inoculant against instability and claimed to cohere realism and idealism. By excavating the contingent, contested articulation of the neoconservative democracy agenda in the Reagan administration, this chapter reveals the period as a key turning point in the history of US democracy promotion.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    George McGovern, ‘Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida,’ July 14, 1972, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25967.

  2. 2.

    See Norman Podhoretz, ‘The Present Danger,’ Commentary 69, no. 3 (March 1980): 27–40.

  3. 3.

    Joshua Muravchik, Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America’s Destiny (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1991), 6.

  4. 4.

    Justin Vaïsse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 138, 220.

  5. 5.

    Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 74–81.

  6. 6.

    Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 46.

  7. 7.

    The novelty of neoconservatives’ ideas about the interrelationship between democracy and security is dubious. President Woodrow Wilson, asking Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, argued that international peace required domestic liberty. Thus, both Wilson and the neoconservatives worked to bridge the gap between idealism and realism. But neoconservatives most often cited Wilson as a point of departure, contrasting his naïve idealism with their realism. While the neoconservative democracy agenda and Wilsonianism share many similarities, the neoconservatives’ views emerged out of distinct historical circumstances: the policy debates of the 1970s and 1980s.

  8. 8.

    Paul Wolfowitz, ‘Statesmanship in the New Century,’ in Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, eds. Robert Kagan and William Kristol (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2000), 319–320.

  9. 9.

    Kirkpatrick was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger and the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, two prominent neoconservative organizations.

  10. 10.

    Jeane Kirkpatrick, ‘Dictatorships and Double Standards,’ Commentary 68, no. 5 (November 1979): 34–5.

  11. 11.

    Kirkpatrick, ‘Dictatorships and Double Standards,’ 37–45.

  12. 12.

    Letter, Ronald Reagan to Jeane Kirkpatrick, December 12, 1979, Correspondence Unit—Constituent File—Kirkpatrick—Kirsch (1980), Box 669, Correspondence Unit, Ronald Reagan Campaign Papers, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

  13. 13.

    David S. Broder, ‘GOP Has Key to Success, but Door Stays Locked,’ Los Angeles Times, June 9, 1980.

  14. 14.

    Bernard Gwertzman, ‘Haig Favors Stand against Violations of Rights Abroad: Calls Soviet Primary Threat,’ New York Times, April 21, 1981; ‘Excerpts from Haig’s Speech on Human Rights and Foreign Policy,’ New York Times, April 21, 1981.

  15. 15.

    Ronald Reagan, ‘Excerpts from an Interview with Walter Cronkite of CBS News,’ March 3, 1981, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=43497.

  16. 16.

    Edward Schumacher, ‘Reagan’s Rights Policy Called Weak in 4 Latin Nations,’ New York Times, April 17, 1983.

  17. 17.

    Tamar Jacoby, ‘The Reagan Turnaround on Human Rights,’ Foreign Affairs 64, no. 5 (Summer 1986): 1066–1086, esp. 1068–9.

  18. 18.

    ‘Excerpts From State Department Memo on Human Rights,’ New York Times, November 5, 1981.

  19. 19.

    The broader story of American culpability in Marcos’s misrule in the Philippines is documented in Raymond Bonner, Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy (New York: Times Books, 1987); Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989); and H.W. Brands, Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

  20. 20.

    Bonner, Waltzing with a Dictator, 70–3.

  21. 21.

    George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), 618.

  22. 22.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, January 16, 1981, The Philippines: U.S. Policy during the Marcos Years (hereafter Philippines Collection), Digital National Security Archive (hereafter DNSA).

  23. 23.

    Cable, Secretary of State to East Asian and Pacific Diplomatic Posts, January 16, 1981, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  24. 24.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, June 17, 1981, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  25. 25.

    Department of State Memorandum, ‘Your Visit to Manila, June 29 – July 2,’ Walter J. Stoessel to Vice President Bush, June 1981, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  26. 26.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to USICA, June 30, 1981, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  27. 27.

    Ronald Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, Volume I: January 1981–October 1985, ed. Douglas Brinkley (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 154.

  28. 28.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, September 23, 1982, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  29. 29.

    Department of State Memorandum, ‘State Visit of President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines, September 15–20, 1982,’ September 1, 1982, Philippines Collection, DNSA; Briefing Memorandum, Paul Wolfowitz to George Shultz, ‘Your Meeting with the Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, June 25,’ June 8, 1983, Ibid.

  30. 30.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, April 23, 1983, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  31. 31.

    Robert Shaplen, ‘A Reporter at Large: From Marcos to Aquino,’ The New Yorker, August 25, 1986, 65.

  32. 32.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, April 6, 1983, Philippines Collection, DNSA; Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, April 14, 1983, Ibid.

  33. 33.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, May 27, 1983, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  34. 34.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, September 21, 1983, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  35. 35.

    U.S. Department of State, ‘Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1983: The Philippines’ (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984).

  36. 36.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, June 9, 1984, Philippines Collection, DNSA. A more accurate estimate is 20,000. See Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 192.

  37. 37.

    Antony J. Blinken, ‘My Place is in the Philippines,’ Harvard Crimson, September 21, 1983; Karnow, In Our Image, 389–403.

  38. 38.

    ‘Marcos Foe Slain as He Goes Home from Exile in U.S.,’ New York Times, August 22, 1983.

  39. 39.

    Karnow, In Our Image, 389, 403–406; and Brands, Bound to Empire, 324–325.

  40. 40.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, September 20, 1983, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  41. 41.

    ‘Debate Between the President and Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale in Kansas City, Missouri,’ October 21, 1984, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=39296.

  42. 42.

    ‘Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-Seventh Congress, Second Session on Nomination of Paul D. Wolfowitz, of the District of Columbia, to be Assistant Secretary of State, East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Department of State, December 9, 1982’ (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), 12–13.

  43. 43.

    Central Intelligence Agency, ‘The Philippines: Growing Economic and Internal Security Problems,’ September 30, 1982, Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B01072R000300170009-0.pdf.

  44. 44.

    Steve Coll, ‘Paul Wolfowitz, Devising U.S. Policy in a Turbulent Time,’ Washington Post, February 7, 1986.

  45. 45.

    Paul Wolfowitz, ‘Asian Democracy and American Interests,’ The Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/asian-democracy-and-american-interests.

  46. 46.

    Cable, Embassy Singapore to Secretary of State, April 15, 1983, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  47. 47.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, June 9, 1984, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  48. 48.

    Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 610, 613.

  49. 49.

    The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, ‘Salvaging’ Democracy: Human Rights in the Philippines (United States: Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 1985).

  50. 50.

    Peter Hellman, ‘The Hawk: On the Battlefront in Brooklyn with Ex-Antiwar Activist Congressman Stephen Solarz,’ New York Magazine, February 18, 1991, 42–45. Solarz was emblematic of the democracy agenda’s ability to win liberal adherents, and he would remain an ally of the neoconservatives and eventually become an impassioned advocate of the invasion of Iraq. Wolfowitz wrote after the congressman’s death that Solarz “understood that idealism and realism actually go together.” See Douglas J. Martin, ‘Stephen J. Solarz, Former N.Y. Congressman, Dies at 70,’ The New York Times, November 29, 2010.

  51. 51.

    National Security Decision Directive Number 163: United States Policy toward the Philippines, February 20, 1985, National Security Decision Directives—Reagan Administration, Federation of American Scientists, https://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-163.pdf.

  52. 52.

    Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 615.

  53. 53.

    Jeane Kirkpatrick, ‘Marcos and the Purists,’ Washington Post, December 16, 1985.

  54. 54.

    Michael Ledeen, ‘How to Support the Democratic Revolution,’ Commentary 79, no. 3 (March 1985): 43–46.

  55. 55.

    Paul Wolfowitz, ‘U.S. Encourages Constructive Change in the Philippines,’ Wall Street Journal, April 15, 1985.

  56. 56.

    Paul Wolfowitz, ‘Current Policy No. 760: Developments in the Philippines,’ October 30, 1985 (Washington, DC: United States Department of State Bureau of Public Affairs, 1985).

  57. 57.

    Paul Laxalt, ‘My Conversations with Ferdinand Marcos,’ Policy Review 37 (Summer 1986): 4.

  58. 58.

    Interview with Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, February 24, 2003, Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mfdip.2010bos01.

  59. 59.

    Seth Mydans, ‘Aquino Says if She Is Elected Marcos Faces a Murder Trial,’ New York Times, December 16, 1985; ‘Excerpts from Aquino Interview on Candidacy,’ New York Times, December 16, 1985.

  60. 60.

    Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 617.

  61. 61.

    Bonner, Waltzing with a Dictator, 396–7.

  62. 62.

    Cable, Secretary of State to Embassy Manila, December 28, 1985, Philippines Collection, DNSA. The United States would fund NAMFREL through the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), which had operated under the umbrella group of the National Endowment for Democracy since 1983.

  63. 63.

    Memorandum, Paul Wolfowitz to George Shultz, ‘Briefing the President: The Philippines Post Presidential Election Strategy,’ February 10, 1986, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  64. 64.

    Cable, Embassy Manila to Secretary of State, February 19, 1986, Philippines Collection, DNSA.

  65. 65.

    Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 628.

  66. 66.

    National Security Decision Directive Number 215: Philippines, National Security Decision Directives—Reagan Administration, Federation of American Scientists, https://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-215.pdf.

  67. 67.

    ‘Statement by Principal Deputy Press Secretary Speakes on the Internal Situation in the Philippines,’ February 24, 1986, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=36908. The narrative in the two previous paragraphs is based on Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 632–637; and Karnow, In Our Image, 418–422. Both accounts are themselves based primarily on the notes that Charles Hill took during the meetings. (Karnow also conducted interviews with anonymous sources.) I have verified much of the information and analysis in a phone interview and in email correspondence with Hill. Charles Hill, author’s telephone interview, March 8, 2013; Charles Hill, email to author, February 27, 2013.

  68. 68.

    Laxalt, ‘My Conversations with Marcos,’ 4–5.

  69. 69.

    Jeane Kirkpatrick, ‘Magellan’s Fate in the Philippines,’ Washington Post, February 10, 1986; Henry Kissinger, ‘What Next When U.S. Intervenes?’ Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1986.

  70. 70.

    Irving Kristol, ‘What Now for U.S. Client States?’ Wall Street Journal, March 3, 1986.

  71. 71.

    Irving Kristol, ‘In Search of Our National Interest,’ Wall Street Journal, June 7, 1990.

  72. 72.

    Charles Krauthammer, ‘Intervening for Democracy,’ Washington Post, February 4, 1986.

  73. 73.

    Robert Kagan, ‘Global Mission,’ Commentary 92, no. 2 (August 1991): 54–56.

  74. 74.

    Podhoretz also said he would probably vote for Bush over Clinton, but he would do so “not only with no pleasure, but with great distaste.” See Fred Barnes, ‘They’re Back: Neocons for Clinton,’ The New Republic, August 3, 1992, 12–14.

  75. 75.

    Memo, Peter Rosenblatt to Michael Mandelbaum, July 7, 1992, Folder 1: Clinton Administration Campaign File—Coalition for a Democratic Majority, Box 11, Anthony Lake Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter LOC).

  76. 76.

    Bill Clinton, ‘Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in New York,’ July 16, 1992, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25958.

  77. 77.

    Bill Clinton: A Leader for America in the Post-Cold War Era, August 4, 1992, Folder 1: Clinton Administration Campaign File—Coalition for a Democratic Majority, Box 11, Anthony Lake Papers, LOC.

  78. 78.

    Memo, Samuel Huntington to Will Marshall, ‘Notes on a Speech on Democratization as a Goal of U.S. Foreign Policy,’ June 17, 1992, Folder 11: Clinton Administration Campaign File—Democracy Speech, Box 11, Anthony Lake Papers, LOC; Memo, Sandy Berger to Will Marshall, ‘Richard Schifter Draft on Democracy,’ June 6, 1992, ibid.; Memo, Penn Kemble to Sandy Berger, Anthony Lake, Michael Mandelbaum, Nancy Soderberg, Will Marshall, and Mike Chapman, ‘Democracy Speech,’ August 11, 1992, ibid.

  79. 79.

    Memo, Mike Chapman to Tony Lake, Michael Mandelbaum, Sandy Berger, Will Marshall, and Nancy Soderberg, ‘Concept for Clinton Speech on Democracy,’ July 1, 1992, Folder 12: Clinton Administration Campaign File—Democracy Speech, Box 11, Anthony Lake Papers, LOC.

  80. 80.

    Bill Clinton, ‘American Foreign Policy and the Democratic Ideal,’ Orbis 37, no. 4 (Fall 1993): 651–661.

  81. 81.

    See Vaïsse, Neoconservatism, 217–219.

  82. 82.

    Robert Kagan and William Kristol, ‘Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,’ Foreign Affairs 75, no. 4 (July/August 1996): 27–28.

  83. 83.

    Statement of Principles, Project for a New American Century, June 3, 1997, http://www.rrojasdatabank.info/pfpc/PNAC%2D%2D-statement%20of%20principles.pdf.

  84. 84.

    Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’ The National Interest (Summer 1989): 3–18.

  85. 85.

    Vaïsse, Neoconservatism, 138, 221–224.

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  1. Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, USA

    Mattias Fibiger

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  1. Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Robert Pee

  2. Institute for History, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    William Michael Schmidli

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Fibiger, M. (2019). The Pivot: Neoconservatives, the Philippines, and the Democracy Agenda. In: Pee, R., Schmidli, W. (eds) The Reagan Administration, the Cold War, and the Transition to Democracy Promotion. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96382-2_10

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