Nationalism is nourished by a sense of history.

It is of its essence to know

profoundly the past, so that we may be in completer openness with the men who
made that history and in intimate communion with their thoughts, their deed, and
their noble lives
-

Claro M. Recto, Jr.

The Philippines hosted the first joint military exercises with the United States
under the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte. According to the U.S.
embassy, the humanitarian and civic assistance portion of the exercise includes
engineering projects to improve local infrastructure and health engagements to
exchange medical best practices. While field training during the exercise includes
small arms and artillery live-fire. On Oct. 11, 2016, Philippine and US marines
decided to cut short their joint military exercises. The Philippine president says he
will not abrogate a defense treaty with the United States but is questioning its
importance and that of joint combat exercises, which he says only benefit America.
President Rodrigo Duterte criticized the United States and his country's engagement
with the American military in a speech Tuesday as Philippine marines and their
American counterparts ended combat drills a day early.
In order to analyse or assess this current issue or situation, let us take the
political thoughts of Diokno and Taada on nationalism. As stated by Taada (1965),
We have been living by illusions for such a long time that we seem not to have
noticed the changing realities of our time. We belong to neither the advanced
capitalist countries nor socialist camps. Our thinking and behavior, however, belie
our real status - that we are a developing nation. He elaborated on his book entitled
The Myths We Live By (1965) that because we have refused to recognize our real
status, we have not only resisted,we have even abetted foreign economic
domination. We have been deluded into thinking that this is the correct road,
because we are so anxious to establish affinity with an advanced power and
because we believe any other road is unwise. On the myth of special relations, for
so many years we have been acting as if we were special favorites of America. We
feel especially privileged because we have "special relations" with America and
America has a special place for us in her heart. Yet, this is not so; he also even
wonder if it has been so. Let us remind ourselves of the bitter start of the American
intrusion into our shores. Similarly, America's attitude towards Philippine
independence followed the dictates of her own self-interest. her recognition
of our independence became possible only as a result of the confluence of forces in
America and these included the dairy industries, the sugar interests, American
labor, etc., which wanted to deprive us of our preferred position in the American
market because we were competing with their own interests. Parity was imposed
in exchange for war damage payments. Free trade was moreover
guaranteed for a definite period. What did those signify? The perpetuation of

our colonial-type economy and the stifling relations with America are being invoked
to give Americans more rights than Filipinos themselves in the case of retail trade
nationalizations and to demand the continuation of rights acquired under parity
after 1974.
Under parity, we have alienated huge tracts of our national patrimony to American
corporations. Under parity, we have imported billions of pesos worth of duty-free
American goods and exported to the United States less than a third in value of our
export commodities. the influx of American goods prevented
industrialization. Professor George Taylor has observed: " it has to be admitted
that the U.S. set up for its citizens monopolistic advantages. Through the American
Chamber of Commerce and through the American Embassy, the Americans can
bring pressure to bear on a weak government and in some instances, this pressure
may well make it more difficult for that government to carry out its own reform." On
Diokno, it must be noted that he believed that for whatever reason, be it one's
nurturing, genes or self-knowledge or a combination of all these, a rare and
exemplary one becomes a hero. And we hear and read about individuals who have
lived as heroes, that is, nationalistic individuals who fought for the betterment of
the common tao, who were, as we would love to reminisce: decent human beings,
decent public officials or politicians, leader-statesmen, with character, courage and
integrity. Therefore, all of these ideas by these 2 Filipino political thinkers greatly
manifested and applied on the act done by our President Duterte. In my opinion,
even though there is a presence of mutual agreement between the parties, we must
not lose the identity we have as Filipinos and protect our nation as much as we can.
It is not all about pride or what but it is all about who we are as the descendants of
the Philippines. We are responsible to protect our nation, I am not saying that we
must not refuse the help of the other countries most specially during war, I am just
only emphasizing that our actions have consequences we do not know who our
friends are because maybe one day we, the Filipinos, may suddenly wake up that
we are being colonized again by those nations who are helping us.