Freedom Incorporated: Anticommunism and Philippine Independence in the Age of Decolonization

In Freedom Incorporated, a readable and engaging book, Colleen Woods argues that U.S. imperial exceptionalism in the post–World War II period had a healthy “entanglement” or symbiosis with Cold War anti-Communist ideology and policies. Using the Philippines as a case study, Woods highlights how the United States formally “freed” the Philippines from colonial rule but in reality continued to exercise significant power and influence in the country. U.S. and Filipino political elites worked closely together in an ideologically driven, global standoff against Communism and suppressed local insurgencies in the name of this effort. The United States wielded extensive influence in the Philippines and used the country as both an ideological justification and a practical asset to expand U.S. influence in other countries in the region (in the name of anti-Communism). Meanwhile, many Filipinos suffered human rights abuses at the hands of regimes backed by the United States. Neither the...