Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (New Perspectives in Southeast Asian Studies)

This great book is huge fun, and is really informative about Philippine politics. It goes beyond the author's famous earlier work `An Anarchy of Families', which put flesh on the now- prevailing view that the fundamental structure of Philippine politics is `bossism', with political strongmen's empires and family fortunes being built regionally on the basis of `guns, goons and gold'.McCoy here suggests that Philippine politics is now permeated at national level by `narco-politics' and protection money, linking national politicians and a crooked police and criminals in a Chicago-like demi-world of violence and criminality, which all too often erupts in very open scandals to amaze and disgust the public.Scandals interest McCoy. He notes that scandals are of surprisingly little interest to most historians, perhaps because the impact of a scandal depends on the emergence of a previously unknown fact, ignorance of which the historian can hardly pretend to. Thus the historian may miss the fact that the sheer surprise impact of scandals is often a key driver of politics. The Philippines' US-style court system, rambunctious press, extensive NGO community, all amplify the importance of scandal.McCoy shows how the Philippine Constabulary's apparatus of investigation, illegal arrest, and torture, began to be built almost as soon as the U.S. conquered the Philippines. The Constabulary `went bad' almost from the beginning, with its powers used in partisan battles between American players, but were expanded during the long struggle against the communist insurgency. McCoy shows how information extracted through police work, torture, and wiretapping have become key commodities in Philippine politics, and how the heart of government became strongly influenced by an alliance between politicians and senior policemen feeding off an underworld of gambling and drugs, to fund political empires, pay voters, and build personal fortunes. The scandals that surface in police investigations are often less than half the story, and what is really going on behind the scenes is much more worrying than the story that the public sees. What is released into the public arena is less a 'coming clean' than another form of power-play.As the police themselves became criminalized, policemen have bent the political system to their will, to the extent of almost taking it over. There are many stories well-told by McCoy that illustrate this, but none is more hair-raising than the story of an ex-policeman turned politician, who now sits in the Senate, called Panfilio Lacson.McCoy does justice to what journalist Conrado de Quiros (quoted by McCoy) calls `this magical realist country'. Yet his methods are simple. Do the research. Lay on fact after fact. And let the story tell itself (in Philippine terms the "Sheila Coronel method" of political story-telling).I can't imagine that anyone, Filipino or foreign, won't come away better informed about the leading personalities in Philippine politics after reading this. McCoy connects the dots. You will never think about president Corazon Aquino, or president Fidel V Ramos, or presidential candidate Panfilio Lacson in the same way ever again.

Policing Americas Empire is a colossal contribution to historical literature as McCoy provides a heavily researched (a decade spent on this project), wide-ranging analysis of security and police force presence inside the Philippines (1898 to present day). Policing Americas Empire is a scholarly historical document concerning the United States pacification of the Philippines and its experimentation thereof. This pacification birthed the rise of a colossal police state which was the mechanics and infrastructure which, in 1946, the United States handed to back to the political powers of the archipelago.Since Filipino independence, "Policing Americas Empire" shows the commence of a deeply troubled, failed democratic process, submerged in state terror and criminal syndicate. Each chapter of 'Policing Americas Empire' illuminates an advancement of the incremental onslaught of a police state and its accompanying levels of profound corruption. This literature illustrates broad implication for the repercussion of Americas colonial choices; using these in outlining how and why the health of civil liberties across the world has begun a battle with a spreading distopia and repressive totalitarian trend. McCoy properly reveals the struggles of the modern day world, from a narrative of the water washed borders of the Filipino islands. This is an authoritative account of US development of its colonial properties and how American dominion functioned to deeply affect international realpolitik for the coming centuries.

What a terrific book. McCoy manages to merge rigorous historical research, insightful analysis, comprehensive summaries and overviews, and good story-telling in this master study of the modern Philippines.The book is focused on the critical position of policing in Philippines society, as conveyed in the title. In the first chapter, McCoy discusses and justifies a focus on policing: he discusses the often overlooked but still important matters of policing and scandal in any general society, why policing (and scandal) maintains an uncharacteristically central role in Filipino society, and how the Filipino history is also crucial for an understanding of US history - in summary: empire affects both the colony and the imperial country.When recounting a historical event, McCoy tells the story in an entertaining yet neutral manner. Perhaps, since truth is stranger than friction, he is aided by the sheer absurdity often inherent in scandals and instances of blackmailing, bribery, and general corruption; but nevertheless I found many parts of the book to be quite amusing. Another great aspect of this book if the "Conclusion" section at the end of each chapter: as this subsection title suggests, McCoy concludes each chapter by giving a rough summary of the history covered in that chapter, and he describes how and why these events connect to the larger themes mentioned above - policing, government legitimacy, and the consequences of imperial conquest.Again, McCoy does a particularly excellent job of making connections between specific historical events (often police scandals), and larger historical and political questions. In particular, in Chapter 9, McCoy breaks from the Philippines temporarily to discuss policing in the US in the period of approximately 1905 - 1975. He illustrates how policing innovations in the US in fact have roots in the US policing of the Philippines - a historical aspect of US society that is by no means common knowledge. He also describes (in 9 and in other chapters), how the Philippines continues to be a testing ground for new US police and military strategies, and how US innovations in the Philippines are still filtering back into the US. Several aspects of recent history and current events (Iraq, Afghanistan, and the so-called War on Terror) are also analyzed from the viewpoint of surveillance advancements on the fringes of empire finding their way back to the US mainland.Highly recommended.

took me 7 months to finish. Well written and for me I couldn’t read this book fast. I had to take the book slow because of the amount of info and how technical and complex the writing is. But i never wanted to put the book down and I learned a lot. I would read it again.

That the Philippines as a colonial outpost is still sustained today as a neocolonial satellite by the US.

This is a fascinating account laying out the importance of unintended consequences of imperial behaviour. All who advocate regime change interventions should be made to read this book.