A few months back, I came across a tweet that read: “third world country pero mas malaki ang allocation ng budget sa militar kaysa sa DOH. only in the Philippines.” It was a stunning rebuke to the wastefulness of our government, if only it were true.
In the national budget for 2016, defense spending totaled Php 117.25 B, compared to the Department of Health’s Php 123.510 B. In all other years, the Department of National Defense received a bigger allocation than the Department of Health, but not by a relatively large margin.
This tweet seems to articulate a view that a lot of people hold about national defense: that spending for this sector is unimportant to the nation’s development and is of secondary significance to the primary responsibilities of the government, given the circumstances of being a developing nation.
On the contrary, it is precisely because we are a developing nation that we need a robust national defense program to defend our interests against more powerful agents in our midst. Our current military is paltry when compared to the enviable nations of Singapore and Vietnam; we rely extensively on the United States for assistance because we cannot fully develop our military capacities.
In Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific, the author Robert Kaplan talks about the inadequacies of our national defense in spite of comprehensive American support. “Imagine Iraq, nine decades hence, if the United States were still deeply involved with the problems there as a reigning outside power. That would be the Philippines,” he writes.
We are faced everywhere with existential threats simply because we are unable to project power and authority across our 7,107 islands. Our Armed Forces may be brave, but without the necessary technical and logistical support, they are helpless.
To be fair, national defense is a costly endeavor. It yields no explicit benefit to ordinary Filipinos other than the assurance of an abstract “sovereignty.” It becomes a hard political decision then to sell to the Filipino working 9-5 worrying everyday about how to put food on the table for his/her family.
The roots of the issue are rather complicated as well, due to the long history of using the Armed Forces as a tool of oppression under President Marcos. The history of the military with regards to human rights is not an optimistic one.
And yet, we must understand that the decision to invest in national defense is a necessary one.
The project of national defense is not merely about military hardware and physical strength. It is about ensuring the hopes and dreams of millions of Filipinos everywhere in this nation. In providing for a strong and robust national force, we are demonstrating to the world that the Philippines is a respectable nation in the world stage.
I understand that the Philippines has a long way to go in the way of defense. The government’s efforts to modernize the military have been fraught with setbacks and delays. Nevertheless, we must continue to persevere in our efforts, if only because this project is so vital to our progress as a nation.
In the final analysis, we ought to come to see national defense as a means to escape our own frail vulnerabilities. We ought to take charge of our destiny as our own masters. After all, there can be no tyrants where there are no slaves.
