The Emergence of Filipino Technocrats as Cold War “Pawns”

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the rise of Filipino technocrats in the context of the Cold War. Because of the fear of a communist takeover of newly independent yet vulnerable agrarian societies, the USA emphasised economic modernisation, also conceived as a means to defeat communism. Promoting free market liberalism, the Bretton Woods institutions played a critical role in supporting US-sponsored modernisation. In promoting a modernisation agenda, the US administrations needed technocrats, steeped in US ways of management and free market ideology. For the Philippines, this involved local training and education and graduate study in US colleges. This provided the state with reliable managers and provided the technocrats with the expertise to serve local and multinational corporations. The political value of the technocrats was demonstrated when they led key economic agencies during the pre-martial law Marcos administration. When Marcos declared martial law in 1972, he retained the technocrats who then facilitated intensified development assistance by the Bretton Woods institutions as part of the US’s Cold War strategy. This scheme, however, failed to stem the growth of the communist insurgency due to the failure of economic policies to address poverty and underdevelopment, uncontrolled crony capitalism and the regime’s repression. An anti-dictatorship movement burgeoned and ultimately led to the ouster of Marcos and the technocrats.

KEYWORDS:

• Cold War
• Philippines
• technocracy
• Bretton Woods system
• international financial institutions
• Ferdinand Marcos

Acknowledgments

This article draws and expounds on the Cold War sections of Tadem (2019). The interviews conducted with the technocrats cited in this article are from the research project on “Economic Policymaking and the Philippine Development Experience, 1960–1985: An Oral History Project,” co-coordinated by Yutaka Katayama of Kobe University and Cayetano Paderanga, Jr. of the University of the Philippines School of Economics and of which the author was a team member. The research project was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, April 2007–March 2010.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This section draws from Tadem (2015a) See also Tadem (2012; 2013).

2. Some, like the Asia Foundation, were officially “quasi-nongovernmental organizations,” in this case, founded, funded and directed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA 2000).

3. The Commonwealth government was established in 1935, providing greater autonomy in a transitional stage towards political independence in 1946 (Constantino and Constantino 1978, 4).

4. Counterinsurgency in the Philippines also built on the earlier efforts to defeat the Huk Rebellion and the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) using clandestine operations and psychological warfare developed with the support of the CIA’s Edward Lansdale (see Pomeroy 1974, ch. 4; Kerkvliet 1977; Greenberg 1987).