ABSTRACT
Compared to the fall of the shah of Iran, the removal of President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines in 1985-1986 was widely greeted as a success for US policy. American interests in the Philippines during the Cold War years were strategic, diplomatic, and economic. The latter were initially secured by the law granting independence, which included preferential trade arrangements between the United States and the Philippines. Ferdinand E. Marcos, a native of Ilocos Norte in the northern Philippines, came from a relatively comfortable and politically well-connected family background. The US government, through the defense attache at the Manila embassy, discouraged an early coup without discouraging the notion of some eventual military action. A rebellion against colonial rule in the 1890s culminated in 1898 in an attack on the Spanish garrison in Manila by forces led by Emilio Aguinaldo. On February 11, Reagan agreed to the sending of Ambassador Philip Habib to the Philippines to assess the situation.
