How did the Filipinos lose the Philippine-American War?

Question

The Americans were fighting a war thousands of miles away from their country, against the Filipinos who just won a war of independence against Spain. Change the Filipinos to Vietnamese and Spain to France and this would sound like the Vietnam War. What went wrong with the Filipino war effort?

Answer 1

You make an astute correlation between The Philippine-American War and the Vietnam War. In both wars the U.S. faced an enemy with popular civilian support and consequently relied heavily on ruthless pacification or counter-insurgency tactics to separate the people from the insurgents.

Initially, the Philippine war of independence against Spain was won through military aid from the U. S (specifically after Commodore George Dewey destroyed the remanence of the Spanish Pacific fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay on March 1, 1898.) The U.S. did not meet much resistance and in fact paid Spain 20 million dollars in anticipation of seizing the country as a strategic outpost of its growing empire in Asia. After declaring independence from Spain, the Filipinos, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, wrote their own constitution and developed their own government.

However, the United States did not recognize the Philippines as formal nation state and instead declared the newly liberated country a “protectorate,” and formally annexed the nascent Philippine republic. Aguinaldo led an uprising beginning on May 19, but his army was easily outmatched by the powerful U.S. military. The rebels retreated into the jungles of the archipelago and began a campaign of Guerrilla warfare. The U.S. was unable to carry out a successful “regular” war against the guerrilla insurgency who were innately familiar with the terrain and dense jungle cover of their homeland and who had developed a resilient support network among the people.

Consequently, The U.S. military engaged in the first instance of irregular warfare (also known as counterinsurgency warfare or low intensity warfare) in the 20th century. Like the Vietnam War, U.S. counter insurgency warfare relied on non-military solutions—mainly, targeting civilian populations. The U. S engaged in brutal pacification campaigns designed to crush the widespread support of by separating the civilian populations into concentration camps known as “concentration zones.” This, ironically, was the same tactic used by the Spanish against the Cuban insurgents. The brutality of Spain’s pacification policy known as Reconcentrado shocked the American people and was used by the Yellow Press to inflame pro-war hysteria in the United States.

Counter-insurgency tactics employed by the U.S. military relied on a variety of “irregular” tactics such as punishing those who helped the resistance through imprisonment, torture and mass executions; denying entire populations access to food and war; rewarding those who cooperated; installing a local dictatorship and relying on the support of Filipino informants and scouts to wrest the insurgents from their hidden jungle encampments. The war lasted 3 years (1899-1902.) At wars end it is estimated that over 4,000 U.S. and 20,000 Filipino insurgents were killed (not including the civilian casualties and the decimation of the archipelago’s economy and infrastructure.)