According to the analysis of war research and research, the Philippines experienced great suffering in World War II, and hundreds of thousands of national fighters also emerged to devote themselves to the cause of national liberation. However, with the postwar U.S. control of the Philippines' economy, military, and security of America's own military assets, the former colonial power was able to manipulate the Philippines' unaffordable military budget and push its armed forces into the Vietnam War. U.S. bases in the Philippines became key U.S. transit points in the Vietnam War, and the U.S. used bases in Luzon to carry out CIA plans against Indonesia in 1958 and 1965.
Of course, the Filipino people cannot endure this for long, so Washington must find a more "charismatic" "puppet" that can make Filipinos more acceptable. In November 1965, Ferdinand Marcos, a trial lawyer in Manila, was elected president, and today we are accustomed to calling him "Marcos the Elder." He began his presidency looking like a strong leader committed to public causes and trying to take the rigged Philippine economy to greater lengths. In November 1969, he won a second four-year term, becoming the first president to be re-elected in the brief democratic history of the Philippines.
Marcos's main interest, however, was to actively enrich himself – his biographers pointed out that he was the biggest thief of all time in the Guinness Book of World Records, and by the end of the 60s, living standards in the Philippines began to deteriorate significantly. Inspired by the Vietnam War of Liberation and the cause of the Chinese revolution, guerrilla activity broke out throughout the main Philippine islands, some led by the New People's Army (NPA), the armed forces. In the southern island of Mindanao, Muslim separatists are organized under the banner of the Moro National Liberation Front.
In August 1969, Marcos Sr. launched a major military campaign against both the NPA and the Moro Front. By 1972 the situation had become so bad that Marcos had created an attempted assassination attempt on his defense minister, Juan Pons Enrilay, under the pretext of declaring martial law. He subsequently arrested and detained opposition politicians (including his possible successor, Senator Benigno "Ninoi" Aquino), journalists, students, and labor movement leaders. He closed newspapers and banned demonstrations, strikes and boycotts. To gain authoritarian power, Marcos suspended a constitution that allowed only two consecutive terms for presidents. In 1973, he promulgated a new constitution that allowed him to remain in office indefinitely and rule by executive order.
He appointed his wife, Imelda, known for her extravagance, mayor of Manila and minister of the "Ministry of Human Settlements and Ecology." None of this happens in a vacuum. As Elva Bonn, a career U.S. Navy officer and Congressional Research Department researcher, admitted, "By 1975, the United States had been expelled from Vietnam, and all countries in Southeast Asia were re-examining their security arrangements." The Philippines was one of the first countries to call for a review of its security treaty. In 1975, just months after the United States left Saigon, President Ford visited the Philippines and agreed with President Marcos to revise the 1947 U.S. Agreement on the Use of Philippine Military Bases. In order to maintain his unpopular rule, Marcos actively defected to the US imperialism. Text/PY