3/12/2023 0 Comments Philippine coinageThe geography was in their favor too: the Philippines was composed of 7,000 islands (with a population of over seven million). They had experience fighting this kind of conflict against the Spanish in 1896-1897. The Filipino forces were better able to fight an insurgency than a conventional fight. According to Brian Linn, his strategy was to protract the conflict until the US Army “broke down from disease and exhaustion or the American public demanded a withdrawal.” The Filipinos hoped the anti-imperialist candidate, William Jennings Bryan, would win the 1900 presidential election and demand a US withdrawal from the Philippines. By mid-November 1899, Aguinaldo sought refuge in the hills and called on his forces to turn from conventional to guerrilla warfare. Hostilities broke out on 4 February 1899 the US Army defeated the Filipino forces in a number of running engagements. McKinley subsequently notified the secretary of war on 21 December that he wanted to administer the Philippines. On 10 December 1898, the Spanish-American War was concluded when Madrid and Washington agreed to the Treaty of Paris, which gave the Philippines to the US in exchange for $20 million. Both sides did not want to make a move until negotiations between Spain and the US in Paris were concluded. Aguinaldo and his supporters hoped those Americans opposed to colonizing the Philippines would win out. The McKinley administration increasingly leaned toward making the Philippines a colony, despite a strong anti-imperialist movement in the US. Tensions continued into the fall as both the US Army and Filipino forces worked to avoid a conflict. Aguinaldo’s men returned to their trenches and began their own “peaceful” siege of the city, except this time the Americans were the ones in Manila being besieged. US forces subsequently attacked Manila on 13 August and took the city without Filipino help, although the Filipinos did seize some of Manilla’s suburbs. The Spanish in Manila made an agreement with US forces to surrender the city after providing only token resistance to reaffirm Spanish honor. US forces arrived to besiege Manila and tensions immediately increased between the US forces and Aguinaldo’s forces. Philippine rebels under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo declared independence on 12 June and began attacking Spanish forces throughout the archipelago. The US had been active in the Philippines since Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay in May 1898. On 10 December 1898, Spain signed the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish-American War and ceded the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam to the United States. This trend, unfortunately, continues to the present day as FM 3-24 excludes the numerous insights gathered from a close examination of the Philippine campaign, thus preventing them from being part of Army counterinsurgency doctrine. This decision ensured that Army officers and soldiers were not exposed to the Philippine lessons learned and that these experiences were eventually forgotten. The Army, however, failed to place these lessons into doctrine after 1902 because of its long tradition of relegating insurgent warfare to the fringes of military art and science. These lessons learned are the importance of small-unit leadership the need for small-unit operations and mobility the importance of local troops the need for an effective intelligence apparatus and the significance of degrading the insurgent shadow government infrastructure. The key tactical lessons learned during the Philippines experience are as relevant today as they were in 1902. One of these discounted experiences was the US Army’s counterinsurgency campaign in the Philippines in 1899-1902, which is regarded by many as one of the US Army’s most successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Surprisingly, the FM 3-24 team chose to not utilize the vast numbers of US experiences in counterinsurgency, which date back well over 100 years. FM 3-24’s writing team used counterinsurgency literature from European anti-colonial struggles to form FM 3-24’s foundation. Field Manual (FM) 3-24 Counterinsurgency (Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5) was well received by a military that has called for an updated counterinsurgency doctrine since at least 2003. In December 2006, the US Army and Marine Corps published their new counterinsurgency doctrine manual to much fanfare.
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