Category: america

“special” relations

Will You Support the Global Protest vs China on May 11? asks gel santos relos:

Amidst rising tension between China and the Philippines, National Chair of the US Pinoys for Good Governance(USP4GG) Loida Nicolas Lewis called on Filipinos to organize rallies and demonstrations in front of China’s embassies and consulates throughout the world on May 11 to protest China’s recent aggressive encroachments on the Philippines’ Scarborough Shoal.

Lewis especially reached out to the Global Filipino Diaspora Council representing 12 million Filipinos in 220 countries throughout the world. The planned protest actions will take place in major cities like Washington DC, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Vancouver, Sydney, Singapore, Rome and Hongkong.

“The most important thing is that they see that the global community led by Filipinos is going to stand up to their bullying. They should be shamed for bullying a tiny country like the Philippines,” Lewis said on The Filipino Channel’s daily newscast “Balitang America” last week.

it does seems like the patriotic thing to do, assert our sovereignty over scarborough shoal and call out china for “bullying” our tiny country.  i can already see cnn and bbc and aljazeera covering these worldwide protests, complete with celebrities and ofws, tampok na naman tayo, pinoys of the world, unite!

of course it’s the right thing to do.  because if we don’t, who knows how much closer china’s claws will reach the next time.  better to stop them now by all means possible.

but please let’s not delude ourselves that we are stunning the world by standing up to beijing.  if anything, i would think the world is snickering at our david-vs-goliath dramatics, especially now that america has unequivocally declared its neutrality vis-a-vis PH-China disputes over the spratlys and scarborough.

The Philippines received standard assurances that the United States will help build its sea patrol capability, but with the caveat that the most powerful country in the world will not take sides in its ongoing territorial dispute in the West Philippine Sea — which even the US Secretary of State called by its internationally recognized name.

“While we do not take sides on the competing sovereignty claims to land features in the South China Sea, as a Pacific power we have a national interest in freedom of navigation, the maintenance of peace and stability, respect for international law, and the unimpeded, lawful commerce across our sea lanes,” Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said. 

now we know.  all america cares about is keeping those sea lanes open.  america doesn’t care that the rejection makes us look, and feel, like fools.  pinaasa tayo, e basted pala.  pumayag tayo sa “visiting forces” kasi kabalikat daw natin sila in security matters.  now these “visitors,” these guests, are quibbling and refusing to back us up over sea matters.  what kind of guests are these, medyo bastos, di ba?  and what kind of hosts are we, to tolerate such inappropriate politics?  medyo suckers, di ba?  kung overstaying bisita ‘yan sa bahay ko, at di pala maaasahan to sympathize with and protect my family’s interests, i would have no qualms about asking them to leave, mga walang utang na loob.

i know, i know, it’s not that simple, getting rid of america, even if we wanted to.  sana lang we become a little more critical of the “special” relationship.  it’s supposed to be good for us, but is it, really?

read gina apostol’s In the Philippines: Haunted by History

On the Philippine side … the relationship with America looms like Donald Barthelme’s balloon, a deep metaphysical discomfort arising from an inexplicable physical presence. In Barthelme’s story “The Balloon,” a huge glob inflates over Manhattan, affecting ordinary acts of puzzled citizens for no apparent reason. American involvement in Filipino affairs sometimes seems like that balloon, spurring fathomless dread. Bursts of anxiety over the bases’ return pop up every time America finds a new enemy.

… When George W. Bush declared his war on terror in 2001, many Filipinos wondered whether a new airport on Mindanao, where American soldiers had increased so-called training operations, was big enough to land an F-14. Nations see global affairs through amusingly paranoid lenses, but as Filipinos joke, just because one is paranoid doesn’t mean no one is out to plant a huge airstrip that might conveniently land a fighter jet.

When Raytheon, the defense contractor, repeatedly consulted with visiting American forces last year about making “dumb” bombs “smart,” and in February actual smart bombs fell on Mindanao, killing alleged jihadists from Malaysia and Singapore, editorials came up with a familiar specter. “Forward base,” one pundit said.

The bases haunt us because they emerged during a dreamspace, when we still believed in our capacity for revolution. America “friended” the Philippines during our 1896 war against Spain then “unfriended” us when it paid Spain $20 million dollars for the islands in 1899. The building of military installations began apace, in step with the trauma of our sense of betrayal.

… American policy has always benefited the Filipino elite — the Marcoses, the Macapagal-Arroyos and the current presidential family, the Cojuangco-Aquinos, are among the handful who have reaped a bonanza. The interests of the oligarchy are the ties that bind. Our spectral angst is not so immaterial: our dread is drenched in military dollars and haunted by civilian blood.

After Mr. Bush declared the Philippines “a major non-NATO ally,” his government gave the last president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid. Mrs. Macapagal Arroyo famously boasted in 2004 that she “inherited” United States military aid of “$1.9 million only” but that “our military support is now $400 million and still counting.” She crowed, “We are No. 1 in East Asia and No. 4 in the whole world.”

The State Department’s Human Rights Report notes that security forces under Mrs. Macapagal Arroyo’s rule were responsible for “arbitrary, unlawful, and extrajudicial killings, disappearances, physical and psychological abuses,” and that the Philippine National Police force was “the worst abuser of human rights.”

She is now under house arrest. And her Ampatuan allies on Mindanao are in jail for their roles in the brazen 2009 election massacre of 57 people, including about 30 journalists — digging pits with a government backhoe and gunning victims down point-blank. When the bodies were found, the backhoe was still running, spewing dirt from shallow graves. Corazon Aquino’s son, Noynoy, is now president, and Mr. Marcos’s old defense minister is the Senate president, prosecuting corruption in Mrs. Macapagal Arroyo’s government, whose military reaped the rewards of Mr. Bush’s “global war on terror.”

Raytheon’s smart bombs were sold under a confidential treaty and Mr. Aquino says that American troops “are here as advisers.” But hands are being wrung: when drones start dropping by, who will need a military base — or even a constitution? As psychiatrists say, repetition is the site of trauma. And in the Philippines recursion is our curse. Mount Pinatubo is still trembling.

Gina Apostol is the author of “The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata” and “Gun Dealers’ Daughter,” and an English teacher in Massachusetts.

china challenge 2

The bad news is that the Philippines remains trapped in the framework of “special relations” with America and is demonstrating the fact before the world. Hell, the bad news is that the Philippines remains an American stooge and takes pride in parading it before its neighbors.

In response to the crisis, Foreign Secretary Alberto del Rosario and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin are preparing to meet with their US counterparts Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta in Washington next week.

The Balikatan war exercises are also currently taking place here, and while that was planned long ago, Beijing is interpreting it to be a response to the crisis. “Anyone with clear eyes saw long ago that behind these drills is reflected a mentality that will lead the South China Sea issue down a fork in the road towards military confrontation,” said the People’s Liberation Army newspaper. US Ambassador Harry Thomas Jr.’s comment that the Balikatan exercises are about “working together in the spirit of the Mutual Defense Treaty” could not have helped to dispel it. The Mutual Defense Treaty calls on the United States and the Philippines to go to war if one or the other is attacked.

But in fact, the Mutual Defense Treaty is an exercise in stupidity. At the very least it’s useless. It’s completely one-sided, the Philippines being perfectly willing to go to war for the United States but the latter being unwilling to do so for the Philippines. Or indeed back us up in our territorial disputes with other countries. We were willing enough to go to war for America in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, but it was never willing to go to war for us over Sabah, or support our claims to it. It won’t go to war over the Spratly island group for us, or back up our claims to it.

At the very most, it cannot endear us to our Asian neighbors. Certainly, it cannot raise us in their esteem that we can espy one bully but not another, that we can see that China is trying to steal from us a group of tiny islands up north but not that America almost stole from us an entire chunk of territory down south. And will continue to try. God helps only those who help themselves. So do the other Asian countries.

Quite apart from that, it cannot earn for us much goodwill from them that we mean to embroil America in a confrontation with China. America may be a comforting presence to us, military and otherwise, but it is not so to our neighbors. Certainly, it is not so to Vietnam, a good deal of its population it decimated in the name of giving them democracy. And which is now probably more democratic, in the sense of its people partaking of the bounties of its earth, than most other countries in Southeast Asia, including us. And certainly it cannot be so to Malaysia and Indonesia, two Muslim countries, given that America’s definition of terrorists, who are largely Islamist fanatics, often forget the part about fanatics.

The Chinese word for crisis is the same as opportunity, and we would do well to heed it. This crisis offers us an opportunity to prove ourselves. Two paths lie before us, one of them well-trodden and the other not taken. The well-trodden path has always led us to perdition, and will continue to bring us there. Isumbong mo kay Uncle Sam is a lose-lose prospect: It will bring us neither the help we want nor the respect we need.

The other path is to show a newfound independence and make our appeal to the other Asian countries in that light. I don’t know that it is a win-win prospect, but I do think it offers at least a win-lose one. It might not get China to accept our claim to the disputed territory, but it might just get the rest of Asia to accept our claim to be part of it. That is not so today, notwithstanding our participation in Asian affairs. We are as alien to it as Australia, and Australia is probably less alien to it than us. At least Australia’s foreign policy is an extension of Australia, but our foreign policy is an extension of America. Who knows? Maybe we take the path less traveled and might lose the dispute but earn the respect.

that’s from conrado de quiros’s inquirer column today, Battle, war, a realistic take on our so-called “mutual” defense treaty with america.  his recommendation though, that we take the path less-, or is that never-, travelled, vis a vis china & panatag — i.e., get the rest of asia on our side vs china — seems to me doomed for as long as we welcome, suffer, whatever, the american presence.

read, too, aljazzera‘s Without question: US military expansion in the Asia-Pacific
william esposo’s: Factor these when dealing with China 
asia sentinel‘s China’s Skewed View of South China Sea History 

Philippines wouldn’t mind some Chinese shell shocks

By W. Scott Thompson

OVER the years I recall cartoonists — who always understand best — showing a globe with a bear behind it, his claws grasping more and more of the territory at the edge of his fingers. The Soviets used it about American moves to “encircle” it in the 1950s, just as the French used it about British imperialist moves in the 19th century. Now, which is more apposite, the cartoons about China extending its reach in Asia, as (for example) its patrol boats protect Chinese fishermen in plainly Filipino waters? Or the ones about the new American moves to reassert itself in Asia as Marines begin establishing a multiplier base in Darwin, Australia?

Of course, it’s always partly the same. As countries’ economies expand, and their navies go with it, the navies have to find things to do — things they can do with new capabilities. Well, what’s better than protecting some Chinese fishermen? It’s not as if the Standing Committee of the Politburo said, “Let’s make a move and show who has power”, but it amounts to the same thing, throughout history. When you’ve asserted your domain over the “South China Sea”, then it follows that your orders go out to your navy to protect it. It’s like when the British, having established valuable trade in India 300 years ago, needed “coaling” stations along the way. Guess where the British African Empire began. It was the same with America, though of course we said it wasn’t an empire.

Now some of the smartest Filipinos are saying that the best thing the Chinese could do for the Philippines is to blast its coast from its vastly superior navy. The country is already showing a rare unanimity and nationhood over the confrontation at the Scarborough Shoal in what Manila calls the West Philippine Sea. If Beijing not only bared its fangs but let loose the cannon, the whole world would react — on Manila’s side. The “work in progress” of building a really coherent Filipino nation would benefit enormously. Already Manila has said that its balikbayan exercises with the United States Navy would proceed, even as Beijing blames them anew for causing the rumpus.

My own feeling is that the Chinese miscalculated. For nine years, the president, the unlamented Gloria Arroyo, let the Chinese have whatever they wanted, in return for personal favours — like the incredible broadband project, which allegedly carried with it a 50 per cent cut to the first family (or more) and blew up in their faces. Yet the Chinese ambassador who presided over all this in Manila, instead of getting the reward of a high position in the Foreign Ministry in Beijing, as he no doubt expected, was sent to Jakarta instead. Maybe the wise men of Beijing knew he’d missed the point. The Philippines doesn’t want vassalage.

Now meantime, Washington has a president whose view of the world didn’t start with Europe, like every predecessor of his. Europe’s shine was dimming anyway. He started in Asia, having spent his boyhood in Jakarta and Hawaii. It gives that global map a different perspective. And interestingly, that perspective corresponded with the real trend in world politics, everything shifting perceptibly to Asia. It was going to happen anyway, but Barack Obama has speeded up the shift in American priorities.

We have three tiers regarding China. There’s the inner circle, Japan, South Korea and in effect Taiwan. There’s a second rung, which Obama is beefing up. Basing in Singapore, Australia — and long talks with Filipinos about how best to “protect” them. And there are long talks with some surprising folks not so far from where you readers are sitting. Some are speculating even long talks about the very bases in Vietnam that we withdrew from in defeat a long generation ago. Just look at the map and imagine the rest. The fact is, China is utterly dependent on free passage through the Strait of Malacca; it would be crippled in months if cut off.

Of course, the third tier is the Seventh Fleet, Pearl Harbor, and the American mainland.

So, when a senior Filipino adviser said that he hoped Beijing “bombs the hell out of us, because then the Philippines becomes a united nation”, he meant it. And of course he knows the consequences. Asean tightens up, solidarity all around, and Obama doubles the base in Darwin and Manila renews long dormant but never dead ties (and tons of military assistance to the Philippines).

That’s why smarter people in Beijing are having second thoughts; if for nothing else, for timing. It’s too soon for them to start baring the claws.

china challenge

why indeed is communist china claiming ownership of panatag shoal (aka bajo de masinloc and scarborough shoal) in the west philippine sea when it is clearly within philippine territory?  says a chinese embassy spokesman:

“It is China that first discovered this island, gave it the name, incorporated it into its territory, and exercised jurisdiction over it…

“The Philippine territory is set by a series of international treaties, including the Treaty of Paris (1898), the Treaty of Washington (1900) and the Treaty with Great Britain (1930), none of which ever referred to Huangyan Island or included this island into its territory. Until 1997, the Philippine side has never disputed China’s jurisdiction of and development on Huangyan Island. On the other hand, the Philippines indicated on a number of occasions that Huangyan Island was beyond its territory.

“According to the international law, including United Nations Convention on theLaw of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Philippines’ claim of the jurisdiction rights and sovereignty rights over Huangyan Island with the arguments of ExclusiveEconomic Zone (EEZ) is groundless.

“UNCLOS allows coastal states to claim a 200-nautical-mile EEZ, but coastal states have no rights to infringe on the inherent territory and sovereignty of other countries. The Philippines asserts that Huangyan Island is closer to its territory, but in fact “geographical proximity” has long been dismissed by the international law and practice as the principle of the solution of territory ownership.”

the most taray rejoinder from our side (that i’ve found) comes, ironically enough, from the communist left, party chair jose maria sison himself, in an interview by renato reyes, posted on bayan.ph 

The UNCLOS is the strongest legal basis for the definition of the territorial sea and EEZ of the Philippine archipelago. Also, archaeological evidence shows that the islands, reefs and shoals at issue have been used by inhabitants of what is now the Philippines since prehistoric times. But the Philippine reactionary government muddles the issue and undermines its own position by making historical claims that date back only to a few decades ago when pseudo-admiral Cloma made formal claims to the Kalayaan group of islands.

Chinese historical claims since ancient times amount to an absurdity as this would be like Italy claiming as its sovereign possession all areas previously occupied by the Roman empire. The name China Sea was invented by European cartographers and should not lead anyone to think that the entire sea belongs to China. In the same vein, neither does the entire Indian Ocean belong to India.

the left, of course, is quick to distance itself from china — blatantly capitalist rather than communist, joma says — but at the same time, it would seem that joma is giving china the benefit of the doubt, the incursions are “alleged,” sabay suggest that the aquino admin is only hyping china as an imperialist aggressor to justify the further entrenchment of american military forces in the country.

what really intrigues me is the timing of the scarborough face-off, just when filipino and american military forces were gearing up for balikatan exercises in palawan and luzon, involving 4,500 U.S. troops.  if no such military exercises were in the offing, would china have protested so belligerently the philippine action vs the chinese fishermen, as though to say, don’t count us out?  if no such military exercises were in the offing, would the philippine government have been brave enough to accost the fishermen and risk the ire of china,  as though to say, we’ve got america behind us?

we’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, between a rock and hard place.  with economic policies that have kept us poor and undeveloped, dependent on foreign credit and foreign remittances and foreign goods, a basket case of a third world country that can’t stand on its own two feet, economically or militarily, it’s no wonder our sovereignty is always under challenge, our limits being tested, if not by the military presence of the U.S, then by chinese fishermen trespassing in, and chinese gunboats patrolling, our waters.

just our luck.  given our strategic location and supposedly-still-huge untapped natural wealth under the ground and the seas, rival powers america and china both want pieces, if not all, of us; they just have different ways of getting what they want.

the notion is that if/when push comes to shove, america will rise to the occasion and back us up against china, but in exchange for what more, i wonder.

unless, maybe, china gets to the aquino admin first.  quid pro quo: we back off but you approve this and/or that contract, or you get that pro-mining law passed, yikes!  whatever, sana the president stands tall.  but hey (at the risk of being facetious), baka naman all they want is an official apology for the luneta massacre, ano? — that should be easy, and relatively painless, um, maybe except for the president.

oops.  just saw this on the news: China and Russia launched today, sunday, joint naval exercises in the yellow sea that highlight warming ties between their militaries and growing cooperation in international affairs.  omg.  painit nang painit.  as if it weren’t hot enough.

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Mag-rally kaya ang Pilipinong manginisda sa Scarborough shoal?  by Ellen Tordesillas
China stand-off to affect business? by Boo Chanco
Thorny sovereignty issue by Carol Pagaduan Araullo
Understanding the Philippine Stand-off with China by Steven Rood
Wikileaks cables: Arroyo scandals affected Spratlys, Scarborough
Aquino and international law by Harry Roque
South China Sea represents ‘a new Persian Gulf?’ by Chito Sta. Romana
Fighting Spirit Award by Indolent Indio