ABSTRACT
The year 1946 was very ironic in US-Philippine relations. Long before World War II, Washington had lost faith in the strategic importance of the Philippines.1 But in 1946, just as the US relinquished its Philippine colony, that faith bounced back with a vengeance. The presumed threat of global communism turned this geopolitical backwater into a vital forward base, profoundly affecting American attitudes toward Philippine domestic affairs. To control those affairs in the absence of formal colonial oversight would require a new form of intervention: the neocolonial puppet state. This has been Washington’s strategy of choice for guilt-free political subversion ever since.2
