ENTER THE ECONOMIC HITMEN

This level of development—especially the capacity to free the nation from dependence on the international oil and raw materials cartels—was not to be tolerated by the international financial institutions. The contrived oil shortages of the 1970s left the Philippines, like all non-oil-producing nations, with huge debts. This was followed by the 20%-plus interest rates imposed by U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker in 1979, which doubled and tripled the debts of most Third World nations within a few years.

In 1981, Marcos lifted martial law. Also in that year, he attended the North-South Summit in Cancun, Mexico, organized by Mexican President José López Portillo (see accompanying article) where he spoke out for a "new world economic order," and denounced the destructive "conditionalities" imposed by the IMF in exchange for financial assistance in a crisis. Then, in September 1981, Marcos pushed through the Philippine Congress nearly $4 billion worth of priority infrastructure projects, including irrigation, drainage and flood control programs, highways, telecommunications, and airports.

This was answered in 1982 (the year George Shultz became Secretary of State) by an IMF report which attacked Marcos's projects, demanding debt payment instead: "In the Philippines situation, restraint on public investment could be an effective instrument for securing an improvement in the current account deficit." IMF Director Jacques Delarosière lectured that the country had set "unrealistic growth targets," while the World Bank denounced the Marcos government for supporting national industries.

These "softening up" raids were not adequate to control the Marcos government. Shultz visited Manila in the Summer of 1983, overseeing another 20% devaluation of the Philippine peso, thus further increasing the costs of financing the already-illegitimate foreign debt.

The full-scale assault began in the Fall of 1983, with the murder of Benigno Aquino. Aquino, an opposition leader whom Marcos had allowed to leave prison in order to get medical treatment in the United States (despite facing a death sentence for murder and subversion), chose to return to the Philippines in August 1983 after three years in the United States. He was gunned down as he emerged from his plane in Manila.

Although the actual conspirators were never officially discovered, the assassination was immediately blamed on Marcos, and the economic hit men called in the "jackals" (as Perkins called those whose job was to depose or even kill world leaders who resisted the demands of the economic hit men like himself). In the Philippines, Shultz and Wolfowitz doubled as economic hit men and jackals.

As to Aquino's view of the pending threat to his life, he had been asked by the U.S. magazine Mother Jones in January 1983, while contemplating his return to the Philippines: "What do you think Marcos will do?" Aquino replied: "He will keep me alive, because he knows the moment I die, I am a martyr, like Martin Luther King, and he wouldn't want that. Another possibility, he lets me out, and the communists knock me off. They blame Marcos. They have a martyr and they have eliminated a stumbling block." Aquino also understood the actual cause of the economic disaster striking the Philippines: "If you made me President of the Philippines today, my friend, in six months I would be smelling like horseshit. Because there is nothing I can do. I cannot provide employment. I cannot bring prices down."

Within two months of the assassination, the remaining credit lines to the Philippines were drastically cut, and another 21% devaluation was imposed. The nation was bankrupt. Finally, on Oct. 15, 1983, Marcos was allowed to declare a moratorium on the unpayable debt, but only on condition that the big projects he had backed to modernize the nation be scrapped, while many of the industries supported by the state were turned over to domestic and international vultures (this was done under the guise of accusing the owners of these industries of being corrupt "cronies" of Marcos).

The LaRouche movement, meanwhile, was sponsoring conferences in Bangkok, Thailand, one in October 1983, and another in October 1984, on the subject of the proposal authored by Lyndon LaRouche for "Development of the Pacific and Indian Ocean Basins." Philippines Deputy Foreign Minister Pacifico Castro attended the 1984 Conference, speaking on "Regional Economic Cooperation and Security," joined by government and business leaders from across the region. The conferences proposed such "Great Projects" as the Kra Canal in Thailand, and the physical transformation of Asia, as the driving force behind a new world economic order.