| Title | : | Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0299234142 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780299234140 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 672 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2009 |
| Awards | : | George McT. Kahin Prize (2011) |
But security techniques bred in the tropical hothouse of colonial rule were not contained, McCoy shows, at this remote periphery of American power. Migrating homeward through both personnel and policies, these innovations helped shape a new federal security apparatus during World War I. Once established under the pressures of wartime mobilization, this distinctively American system of public-private surveillance persisted in various forms for the next fifty years, as an omnipresent, sub rosa matrix that honeycombed U.S. society with active informers, secretive civilian organizations, and government counterintelligence agencies. In each succeeding global crisis, this covert nexus expanded its domestic operations, producing new contraventions of civil liberties—from the harassment of labor activists and ethnic communities during World War I, to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, all the way to the secret blacklisting of suspected communists during the Cold War.
“With a breathtaking sweep of archival research, McCoy shows how repressive techniques developed in the colonial Philippines migrated back to the United States for use against people of color, aliens, and really any heterodox challenge to American power. This book proves Mark Twain’s adage that you cannot have an empire abroad and a republic at home.”—Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago
“This book lays the Philippine body politic on the examination table to reveal the disease that lies within—crime, clandestine policing, and political scandal. But McCoy also draws the line from Manila to Baghdad, arguing that the seeds of controversial counterinsurgency tactics used in Iraq were sown in the anti-guerrilla operations in the Philippines. His arguments are forceful.”—Sheila S. Coronel, Columbia University “Conclusively, McCoy’s Policing America’s Empire is an impressive historical piece of research that appeals not only to Southeast Asianists but also to those interested in examining the historical embedding and institutional ontogenesis of post-colonial states’ police power apparatuses and their apparently inherent propensity to implement illiberal practices of surveillance and repression.”—Salvador Santino F. Regilme, Jr., Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs
“McCoy’s remarkable book . . . does justice both to its author’s deep knowledge of Philippine history as well as to his rare expertise in unmasking the seamy undersides of state power.”—POLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review
Winner, George McT. Kahin Prize, Southeast Asian Council of the Association for Asian Studies
Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State Reviews
-
This book details the history of US colonial policing and US-sponsored counterinsurgency in the Philippines and how this shaped the police state in the US, proving Aime Cesaire's sharp insight on the colonial roots of fascism: "Before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples."
-
McCoy frames this book as a revelation of how the United States’ imperial adventures abroad have brought back to its soils a pernicious police and surveillance apparatus, with a particular focus on the development of these in the Philippines. Underlying all of this is the irony that in the name of spreading democracy and civilization to foreign nations, over the past century the U.S. has created, perpetuated, and mastered the exact same mechanisms that have continued to undermine democracy around the world to this day. Under this lens I think that this ambitious tome falls short of its lofty goals, but it provides a lot of useful information when approached in a manner different from its proposed intentions: as a history of the development of the Philippines’ police state and its rampant criminality. In this sense it’s an absolutely essential read.
The book is split into two halves: the first follows the development of U.S. Colonial Police from the end of the 19th century up to 1935 and the second follows Manuel Quezon’s Commonwealth government up to the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the 2000s. Each administration is exposed for its connections to the criminal underworld and how these were weaponized in order to maintain their political power. Reading the book one observes just how embedded U.S.-funded and trained police and military might have been in the Philippines’ history, a lot of which (especially for the first decades of occupation) was completely new to me and felt like information uniquely unearthed and exposed through decades of meticulous research. McCoy weaves it all into a consistent grand narrative that is a genuine marvel to behold.
The research is at its most impressive in the first half, with McCoy scavenging through thousands of declassified primary source materials to reveal Manila’s sordid underbelly that reads as if straight out of a ‘40s pulp noir. However, as the book progresses and approaches the present day, more and more of its citations are reduced to newspaper clippings from the Philippine Daily Inquirer. There’s nothing wrong with that on its own and I still learned a lot from these sections of the book, but noticing how the information was sourced made me feel like McCoy’s authoritative voice should have sounded less certain about its conclusions. Nevertheless, it’s greatly piqued my interest in the post-Marcos administrations, particularly that of Fidel V. Ramos and Joseph Estrada.
I also felt like the book doesn’t stick its landing in making the broader argument that the Philippine scenario directly affected how the United States is policed today, or how it has been done in other countries that have had direct American intervention such as Vietnam and Iraq. It doesn’t seem to me that McCoy is wrong in claiming that its roots can be observed in the Philippine case, but it never felt like this was all concretely tied together. In order to complete the argument I think a third section of the book would have been needed to solidify those connections even further.
What’s most concerning is the knowledge that America’s empire extends much further beyond the Philippines and reaches every corner of the globe. This book can therefore probably be remade and reformulated everywhere the United States has had a history of C.I.A. and military intervention. The bigger story is much broader than the Philippine case and collecting these histories will be a gargantuan task for the next generation of historians around the world following McCoy’s example here.
Policing America’s Empire is still an incredibly informative book that has changed the way I’ve been thinking about the Philippines and the many problems that continue to afflict it. It’s especially impressive just how much of this research breaks new ground for future studies of the country. It’s original, brave, and iconoclastic. Thank you, Professor McCoy. The example is inspiring. -
McCoy reminds us of Max Weber’s definition of the state: “A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory.” The modern state had moved from extreme physical punishment (political control through terror) to social control which was developed in the lab environment of the Philippines. There, future President William Howard Taft created a secret police force “for extralegal action” and enacted the strictest libel and sedition laws on the planet there, including one year in jail for merely advocating the independence of the Philippines. Pacification required a permanent garrison of 47,000 troops (18,000 of which were U.S. Army) to subjugate six million impoverished Filipinos. The clear brutality led Mark Twain to write, “Trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home.” Colonial veterans came home to turn the same lens on America, seeing it’s ethnic communities not as fellow citizens but as internal colonies requiring coercive controls.” The U.S. realized the potential of the Philippine control information system sent to the mainland. Just as the Philippines system developed and relied on a matrix of informers, so then did the American Protective League, created in 1917 to ‘honeycomb’ American society. The lesson learned by military occupations from Burma in 1880’s on had been: “forced demobilization of a defeated army without conciliation or compensation may well be the key factor in promoting protracted resistance.” With Saddam’s defeated army, we ignored that lesson to terrible consequences. However, earlier in the Philippines in 1901, U.S. General Arthur MacArthur did it right and gave surrendering Aguinaldo an immediate pardon and gave his other veterans roles in the government and police force. In return the US could control the Philippines (originally wanted as coaling stations) for the better part of a century creating and refining the surveillance system that would be brought back to the United States to use against its own citizens (which is McCoy’s thesis). After Independence was achieved in 1946, massive US bases were kept there for another 50 years. Under President Marcos (1966-1986), 3,257 are killed, 35,000 are tortured, and 70,000 arrested. Marcos loses legitimacy and is replaced by Corazon Aquino. Aquino sells out the people by “stifling the legal struggle for land distribution” and launching an anti-communist campaign to secure deep American funding “for raw repression”. Arroyo follows Aquino next in power and has “gunned down seven hundred prominent political activists in broad daylight assassinations.” This hell hole for activists can thank the U.S. government for 100 years of meddling and leaving it in tatters (Ah, tatters - think the U.S. with Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, etc.). Alfred McCoy once again brilliantly exposes another facet of American Foreign Policy gone very wrong…
-
McCoy provides a remarkably detailed and coherent account of how the US empire designed, deployed and innovated the essential framework for our current hegemonic security apparatus around the world.
-
Would strongly recommend for anyone interested in civil liberties challenges.
-
Read my review of Policing America's Empire on Rapid Transmission:
https://rapidtransmission.blogspot.co...
