Visitor：Vincent K. Pollard

Vincent Pollard is a lecturer in the Asian Studies Program, an Affiliate Faculty with the Center for Philippine Studies and an Associate Member of the Center for Chinese Studies—all at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Having taught a wide variety of political science and research design classes in the UH System, he has intermittently served as assistant professor (temporary) in the Undergraduate Honors Program. Vincent Pollard uses the Tagalog (Filipino) language in his foreign policy research.

Conference Room: Rm. 1206, Department of History , Building of Arts, Minhang Campus(新校区人文大楼历史系1206)

2:00 -4:00 pm, June 3, Tuesday

U.S.-China Relations, 1961-1967:

Containment, Counterinsurgency, Regionalism, and the Origins of ASA and ASEAN

In the second decade of the Cold War, the People’s Republic of China was beginning to recover from the Great Leap Forward. Meanwhile, foreign ministers of the Federation of Malaya (later, Malaysia), the Republic of the Philippines and the Kingdom of Thailand formed the Association of South-east Asia (ASA) on 31 July 1961. Six years later, the phase of the Second Indochina War called “The American War” had expanded dramatically in Vietnam, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was engulfing China. Joined by Indonesia and Singapore (expelled from Malaysia in 1965) ASA’s three original members formed the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) during 5-8 August 1967.

 ASA was the first of a new type of intergovernmental organization in post-World War II Asia. That fact was overlooked in occasional comments in PRC government publications. Chinese commentary regarded ASA and ASEAN as extensions of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) which included not only the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan, but also Australia, New Zealand, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. In light of SEATO’s ineffectiveness as an anticommunist alliance, that commentary is ironic.

 But was there merit to PRC criticism of ASA and ASEAN? Does available governmental, journalistic, and archival evidence support the collective self-descriptions of ASA and ASEAN as simply unadorned, nonpolitical expressions of international “regional” cooperation? (This was mirrored by promotionalist journalism in the ASA and ASEAN countries, and in the United States.)

 A more textured picture begins to emerge in South East Asia’s English-language newspapers. Foreign ministers of the ASA and ASEAN governments and friendly editors, columnists and reporters told their readers that these organizations served three goals—domestic counterinsurgency anticommunism and even containment of China. During 1961-1967, these three perceived advantages of ASA and ASEAN were mirrored in U.S. media and public government documents. That interpretation is substantiated by once-secret documents from the administrations of U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) and Lyndon  B. Johnson (1963-1969). These were declassified at the request of researchers, including by Pollard.

 The presentation will conclude with suggestions for future researchers of China’s relations with ASA, ASEAN and the U.S. in Asia.

2:00 -4:00 pm, June 5, Thursday

Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Military Bases, Nationalist Foreign Policy Making

and Cold War Denouement at the 1986 Constitutional Commission of the Philippines

During the final decade of the Cold War, China’s opening up to the global economy changed Chinese society, its Asian neighbors, and PRC-US relations. Meanwhile, in a former American colony, Filipino nationalism responded effectively to rapidly changing domestic and international circumstances by frustrating the desires of U.S. military strategists during the administrations of Ronald W. Reagan (1981-1989) and George H. W. Bush 1989-1993) to extend the Military Bases Agreement. During June-October 1986, proceedings of the Constitutional Commission of the Philippines erupted as yet another venue for this struggle only four months after the ouster of President Ferdinand E. Marcos (1965-1986).

 President Corazon Aquino (1986-1992) appointed Constitutional Commissioners to write a new Konstitusyon. Most of them were self-respecting nationalists in some sense. However, a minority of commissioners labeled the Nationalist Bloc in secret U.S. Embassy cablegrams and in the Manila-centric news media set and successfully pursued an agenda for clarifying the notion of isang malayang patakarang panlabas, that is, “an independent foreign policy.”

 Concerned about challenges to her legitimacy, the U.S.-friendly president hesitated to undercut future Nationalist Bloc enthusiasm to campaign for the hoped-for new Konstitusyon. Indeed, the October 1986-February 1987 campaign to ratify the new constitution was understood, in part, to be a proxy referendum on whether Aquino should continue as President of the Philippines. Meanwhile, an intelligence failure led otherwise perceptive and energetic U.S. operatives to be caught off-balance by having underestimated the size of the Nationalist Bloc by half! Discovery of the Americans’ failure emerges from a close reading of cablegrams they sent to Washington from the U.S. Embassy’s Political Section on Rojas Boulevard. These cablegrams were declassified in response to a Freedom-of-Information request by Pollard during his dissertation research.

 Taking advantage of these opportunities, women’s organizations and anti-nuclear weapons coalitions in the Anti-Bases Movement, collaborated with Nationalist Bloc commissioners. Procedural and substantive language written into the draft Konstitusyon in 1986 gave substantive and procedural content to isang malayang patakarang panlabas. In the hands of elected Senators, these constitutional provisions ultimately prevented President Aquino and her pro-U.S. allies from having the Military Bases Agreement ratified on 16 September 1991.

 Claims and inferences in this paper are documented with primary and secondary public, private and once-secret research journalistic, video, interview and scholarly sources in the Philippines and the United States. The presentation will conclude with suggestions for future Chinese researchers of the PRC’s Cold War relations with the Philippines and the U.S.

 

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