The Philippines and ASEAN: Options for Aquino

Abstract

Since February 1986 the world has closely watched President Corazon Aquino's Philippines. Quite naturally most of the attention has been focused on the domestic struggle to institutionalize people power both administratively and in the process of creating a new constitution. Observations on the foreign policy implications of the regime change have generally dealt with discussions of the future of the U.S. military base rights in the Philippines. While the U.S.-Philippines security relationship is important-some would even say vital-there is another set of interdependencies that deserves attention, the Philippines as one of the six state actors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Manila is slated to be the site of ASEAN's third summit meeting, now scheduled for December 1987. An examination of the Aquino government's international behavior in the ASEAN regional framework gives some insight into both continuities and discontinuities in Philippines foreign policy under Aquino, as well as illustrates some of the broader issues of the dynamics of regionalism in Southeast Asia.