Table Of ContentAid Imperium
weiser center for emerging democracies
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Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post–Cold War
Southeast Asia
Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr.
Opposing Democracy in the Digital Age: The Yellow Shirts in Thailand
Aim Sinpeng
Normalizing Corruption: Failures of Accountability in Ukraine
Erik S. Herron
Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability: Duration, Financial Control, and Institutions
Victor C. Shih, Editor
Electoral Reform and the Fate of New Democracies: Lessons from the Indonesian Case
Sarah Shair-Rosenfield
Campaigns and Voters in Developing Democracies: Argentina in Comparative Perspective
Noam Lupu, Virginia Oliveros, and Luis Schiumerini, Editors
AID IMPERIUM
United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights
in Post– Cold War Southeast Asia
Salvador Santino Fulo Regilme Jr.
University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
Copyright © 2021 by Salvador Santino Fulo Regilme Jr.
All rights reserved
For questions or permissions, please contact [email protected]
Published in the United States of America by the
University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid- free paper
First published November 2021
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication data has been applied for.
ISBN 978- 0- 472- 13278- 2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978- 0- 472- 12950- 8 (e- book)
Cover illustration: Unsplash.com / USGS
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Illustrations xi
Abbreviations xiii
ONE Introduction 1
TWO United States Aid Imperium and Human Rights 21
THREE Human Rights Renaissance in the Philippines, 1990s 46
FOUR From the War on Terror to the Crisis in
Arroyo’s Strong Republic 71
FIVE Overcoming the Human Rights Crisis:
Reforms under Obama and Aquino 105
SIX Human Rights Renaissance in Thailand, 1990s 136
SEVEN From the War on Terror to Thaksin’s War on
Drugs and Dark Influences 172
EIGHT Conclusion: Patterns and Possibilities—
Foreign Aid and Human Rights 217
vi Contents
Appendix 235
Notes 237
Bibliography 241
About the Author 285
Index 287
Digital materials related to this title can be found on
the Fulcrum platform via the following citable URL:
https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12036762
Acknowledgments
This book had a long journey. My passion for human rights emerged from
my undergraduate philosophy thesis about the universality of human rights
vis- à- vis the East Asian values debate. My realizations about the practi-
cal significance of human rights inspired me to shift from philosophy to
political science as I pursued graduate studies in Europe and the United
States. In the mid-2 000s, my brief stint as a civilian intelligence analyst for
the Philippine government allowed me to see the contestations faced by
political leaders as they deploy state violence toward their citizens. Those
lived experiences, along with the realization that millions of people world-
wide die annually from state violence, motivated me to write about physi-
cal integrity rights in the era of a transnational security crisis.
There is a long list of wonderful people to be thankful for, but unfor-
tunately, far too many to acknowledge here. I could not have written this
work without the support and advice of my mentor, Lora Anne Viola, an
exemplar of intellectualism and generosity, and I thank her for her unwav-
ering support, patience, and feedback. Susan Hyde provided valuable
advice and warmly welcomed me during my time at Yale. Thomas Risse
also supported my research in his capacity as my dissertation commit-
tee member. Moreover, I benefited from the advice and insights of many
scholars, including Roland Czada, Ben Cashore, Julia Adams, Andreas
Schedler, Ellen M. Immergut, Shannon Blanton, Margit Mayer, Emilie
Hafner- Burton, Stathis Kalyvas, Claudia Derichs, Olivia Rutazibwa, Shi-
rin Saeidi, Alejandro Portocarrero-E sguerra, Mark Thompson, Francisco
Magno, Trinidad Osteria, Carolina Hernandez, Rainer Baumann, Katja
viii Acknowledgments
Freistein, Volker Heins, Lee Jones, Jeff Bridoux, Inderjeet Parmar, Nuno
Monteiro, Alex Debs, Peter Barberis, Marian Döhler, Stephen Brown,
Andreas Ufen, Frank Gadinger, Tobias Debiel, Ben Freeman, Jong Mal-
abed, David Seaman, Ralf Kleinfeld, Christian Lammert, Boris Vormann,
and Markus Kienscherf. Laura Sjoberg and Hitomi Koyama provided
some very helpful publication advice, and I am grateful for their wisdom.
My research was made possible by the funding from the German Fed-
eral and State Governments’ DFG Excellence Initiative Scholarship, the
Fox International Fellowship at Yale University, the Center for Global
Cooperation Research’s Käte Hamburger Fellowship funded by the Ger-
man Federal Ministry for Education and Research, and the Leiden Insti-
tute for History’s sabbatical grant. I am also indebted to the staff and the
administration of the Free University of Berlin’s Graduate School of North
American Studies (Gabi Bodmeier and David Bosold), the Macmillan Cen-
ter for Area and International Studies at Yale (Julia Muravnik), and the
De La Salle University’s Robredo Institute for institutional support. This
project benefited from the support staff and excellent resources of the Ster-
ling Memorial Library, Center for Science and Social Science Information,
and the Law School Library of Yale University. In Southeast Asia, I thank
Jesus Macalinao and Henpritz Montalvo for their assistance in collecting
hundreds of newspaper articles and primary documents. In Leiden, I thank
Elif Polat for the excellent research assistance.
Several friends and colleagues provided moral support, advice, and
feedback. I thank Curd Knüpfer, James Parisot, Philipp Reick, Evan
Rodriguez, Wolfgang Gründinger, Winnie Chen, Lionel Beehner, Will
Nomikos, Suparna Chaudhry, Marc Venhaus, Julian Gruin, Carina van
de Wetering, Flavio Prol, Elise Roumeàs, Amrita Nandy, Stefan Thierse,
Aaron Bartells- Swindells, Shawn Fraistat, Michael Weintraub, and
Michael Blaakman. I also thank so many friends beyond academia for their
moral support— including Stefan Evers, Johann-Sebastian Saile (formerly
Diemann), Sebastian Bockrath, Sean Cornell, Chris King, Gregor Hintler,
Rita Cucio, Peter Baum, Carmina Untalan, Seiko Mimaki, Haruko Satoh,
Shaila Safaee Chalkasra, friends from the De La Salle Debate Society, my
friends from my MA cohort at the University of Osnabrück, as well as my
PhD cohort at the Free University of Berlin.
At the University of Michigan Press, I thank Elizabeth Demers and her
team, including Haley Winkle, for their feedback, enthusiasm, and support
for this project. The publication of this research would not be possible
without the editorial guidance of Elizabeth Demers. I also thank Kevin
Rennells and John Raymond for the excellent copyediting. I am grateful
to the anonymous reviewers for the University of Michigan Press, Rutgers
Acknowledgments ix
University Press, and Manchester University Press for their constructive
suggestions. Roger Haydon, Lisa Banning, and Peter Agree provided some
helpful editorial advice during the preliminary stages of manuscript devel-
opment, and I thank Rob Byron and Jon de Peyer for commissioning the
reviews at Manchester.
I thank the organizers and participants of the following events and
institutions for the opportunity to present my work and for the construc-
tive suggestions: 2011 BISA US Foreign Policy Conference at the Univer-
sity of Oxford; MIT- Harvard- Yale Workshop on Political Violence; Man-
chester Metropolitan University’s Politics Workshop; Heidelberg Spring
Academy in American Studies; the Free University of Berlin’s Kennedy
Institute Politics Workshop; Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Compara-
tive Politics Colloquium; De La Salle University; International Studies
Association Conference in Providence (2013) and Toronto (2014); Uni-
versity of London’s Institute for the Study of the Americas; Fox Fellow-
ship Research Seminar; Yale International Relations’ Student Workshop;
Graduate School of North American Studies Graduate Conference 2013;
Yale IPE Student Workshop; FoJuS Conference in Hannover; Whitney
Center in Connecticut; and the International Institute of Social Studies in
The Hague.
An earlier version of chapter 7 appeared as an open-a ccess peer-
reviewed article: S. S. F. Regilme, “Does US Foreign Aid Undermine
Human Rights? The ‘Thaksinification’ of the War on Terror Discourses
and the Human Rights Crisis in Thailand, 2001 to 2006,” Human Rights
Review 19 (1) (2018): 73– 95. I thank Steven Roper, Human Rights Review’s
editor, for permission to republish a revised version of that article. Chapter
2 was inspired by my earlier work on Colombia and US foreign aid: S. S. F.
Regilme, “A Human Rights Tragedy: Strategic Localization of US Foreign
Policy in Colombia,” International Relations 32 (3) (2018): 343– 65. I thank
William Bain, coeditor of International Relations, for allowing me to reuse
some of the passages in that article.
Words alone could not express my deepest gratitude to my father, Cesar,
my mother, Annie, and my sister, Nica. I thank my dearest Anh Loan, my
amazing wife, for her unwavering support and kindness that allowed me
to remain optimistic amid life’s cruelties. I dedicate this book to all human
rights victims who suffered from all forms of state violence.
All errors in this work are my own.
Salvador Santino Fulo Regilme Jr.
Lansingerland, The Netherlands
January 30, 2021
