WI: USA partitions the Philippines

[SinghKing]

A WI scenario which came to mind after considering the British Partition of India IOTL- WI the USA had decided to try and resolve the issue of religious sectarianism in the Philippines by implementing a two-nation solution, partitioning OTL's Philippines in TTL's equivalent to the Treaty of Manila, and granting independence to both the Republic of the Philippines and the Bangsamoro Republic (encompassing the Mindanao Island group, consisting of the seven provinces in the US Department of Mindanao and Sulu and the province of Lanao) at the same time (in either 1946 or '47). How much would this alter the socio-political and diplomatic landscape of the region?

 

[Driftless]

Would there have been any political support within the larger Philippines, or the US for such a move? That level of change would be really politically significant for both countries and culturally huge for the Philippines.

 

[SinghKing]

Would there have been any political support within the larger Philippines, or the US for such a move? That level of change would be really politically significant for both countries and culturally huge for the Philippines.

Well, there certainly would have been support among the Moro people- who'd just fought the Japanese out of the region themselves, and who were already nominally independent immediately after the end of WW2. And such support could have been built up from an earlier POD- say, the Muslim Filipino population forming their own contemporary equivalent of the All-India Muslim League at the conclusion of the Moro Rebellion, giving them an organisational framework for their proposed fledgling nation. Or just the USA opportunistically splitting the region off, in order to stake their own territorial claim on the territories in North Borneo- with the American commanders negotiating a different 'Carpenter Agreement' with Sultan Jamalul Kiram, in which he cedes his rights of sovereignty over the territory of North Borneo to the USA as well, in exchange for gaining proportionate representation in the Insular Government for his own administration and the Moro people in general (as opposed to OTL, where the Moro never gained any representation in the Philippine Assembly at all).