AN EVOLVING NEW DIPLOMACY

President Ferdinand E. Marcos

Speech delivered before the University of the Philippines Alumni Association,
Philippine Plaza Hotel, 11 December 1976

I have always utilized this forum for foreign policy speeches. I am told that the foreign
observers in our country, as well as those abroad, monitor every UP alumni homecoming. Because
they say: “ If the President goes there, he will deliver a speech on foreign policy.”
Well, let us keep them honest and talk about foreign policy.
The association, our association, represents much of what is vital in the traditions of our
university, and we reflect in our respective work and roles, as you can see with all the reward
here, the things that we do in our society, its seminal relation to our national life. Everyone has a
contribution to make, and the university is proud that perhaps more than any other educational
institution, the University of the Philippines has contributed to the growth of the nation- state we
call the Philippines.
Of course, every institute of learning affirms this special bond with that society, yet for
the University of the Philippines, we are perhaps right regarding it is a profound commitment.
There is no greater proof of this than the role of the university in the development of Philippine
nationalism, in crystallizing our vision and idea of ourselves and the almost obsessive and
continuing interest of the University and its alumni in national affairs.
To address you, therefore, and to utilize this forum, is to address oneself to this unique
tradition, and I should like, if I may, to speak therefore of current questions on foreign policy and
their relevance to national development.
Foreign policy has been brought to the forefront of national events again, first because
of the visit of the First Lady to Libya on what is marked by all diplomatic circles throughout the
world as a sudden turnabout and unexpected development. Her conversation with the Chairman
of the Revolutionary Command Council of Libya, Colonel Khaddafy, having achieved a
breakthrough in our previously uneventful relationship, must be given their own importance in
the light of the national integration that we seek in the Southern Philippines.
We have two agreements: One for the establishment of diplomatic relations, and the
other for the establishment of cultural and economic cooperation’s. We also must be give
importance to the events that we have seen in our front pages and in media which pertain to
military bases of the United States in the Philippines.
We are reviewing and reassessing not only the military bases agreement but the two
other military agreements which, if you will remember, are the Military Assistance Pact and the
Mutual Defense Pact. On these negotiations is promised the full realization of our sovereign
status, as well as the readjustment of our perspective on one of the oldest friendships we have
with any nation in the world.