The U.S. and The Philippines: Ethics of War and Tensions of American Empire

• In Event: The Emergence and Continuity of Colonialisms: Agency and Domination

Abstract

From the establishment of the U.S. colony of the Philippines at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, there exists a number of tensions of empire and ethics of war. First and foremost, notions of racial superiority framed Filipinos as incapable of self-governing and led to widespread atrocities by U.S. troops against Phillipine movement for independence led by Emilio Aguinaldo. These included jus in bello violations of concentration camps, civilian massacres, and use of the “water cure” or waterboarding. Some just war scholars attempt to dismiss these atrocities and hold up the Philippines as a quintessential case of the establishment of order, justice, and stability in line with the principles of jus post bellum – justice after war. A second tension arose at the outbreak of WWII, the Philippines was in the midst of a transition from a U.S. colony to U.S. commonwealth when it was invaded and occupied by the Japanese Imperial army. General MacArthur’s Battle of Manila in early 1945 represented indiscriminate warfare, which combined with Japanese massacres took the lives of well over 100,000 Filipinos. The tensions of a hidden U.S. empire were that Filipinos were not fully Americans nor fully independent. Thus, as fighting in the walled city Intramuros essentially razed the city to the ground through a violent shelling by the U.S. combined with a brutal Japanese retreat. Drawing upon extensive archival and historical research, this paper analyzes the tensions of American empire in killing its civilians to save its civilians. In this paper, we explore the tensions of American Empire in the ways in which the U.S. waged war against the Japanese in the Philippines. In order to protect civilian life, the U.S. initially attempted to limit aerial bombardment and indiscriminate shelling. However, that quickly changed and indiscriminate U.S. artillery fire, and tank shells razed Intramuros to the ground. Thus, the tensions explored in this paper are the prioritization of force protection over protecting (quasi-American) civilians against jus in bello ethics of due care. Although norms of civilian protection in war have evolved post-WWII, the Battle of Manila presents a unique case of American empire to examine the dilemmas of sacrificing your own subjects to liberate them from a competing empire.

Authors

• Mary Anne Mendoza, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

• John R Emery, University of Oklahoma