Second of Three Parts
With President Benigno Aquino
3rd’s policy of allowing massive deployment of the American military and
perhaps the Japanese as well, China will not only undertake adverse
economic, diplomatic and security measures against the Philippines. As
explained in the first part of this article, PNoy is provoking the
People’s Liberation Army to build up PLA capabilities and firepower in
the area.
Thus, the very policies intended to secure the
Philippines and its claimed islands, waters and economic zones, will
actually further endanger them and extend the threats to the entire
archipelago as well as the economy and the nation’s global standing.
But
guess what: increasing Chinese military, economic and international
pressure on the Philippines is exactly what would serve Washington’s
long-advocated initiative to create a “regional architecture” addressing
international issues in Asia, and to increase its military presence in
the region, including the planned shift to the region of 60 percent of
American naval forces, while enhancing alliances and building new ones.
As
the PLA expands in the South China Sea to match the U.S. Seventh Fleet
and the Japanese Navy rotating in and near the Philippines with access
to its bases, the Chinese deployment would underscore even more the
aggressor role in which Beijing has been cast in recent years. And the
more it uses its economic and geopolitical clout against helpless
Manila, the more the bully label sticks.
That would only add
greater impetus and justification for Washington’s so-called Pivot to
Asia, including its push for military buildup, alliances and regional
arrangements to counter the supposed threat of Chinese regional
dominance. If Asian nations buy that geopolitical line, then Washington
would be on its way to regaining its regional clout while trimming
Beijing’s expanding influence.
What a scheme: Aquino lets
Washington and Tokyo expand their military presence in and around the
Philippines, which then provokes Beijing to punish Manila and build up
its forces in the South China Sea—lending credence to the U.S. spiel
that Asian nations must line up with it to contain Chinese aggression.
Will
Asians fall for it? Not if they have a good grasp of history. Then they
would recall that after the early 1991 Soviet collapse, the U.S.
stopped wooing Asia after its global rivalry with the defunct U.S.S.R.
ended. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in America rekindled
its interest and involvement in the region, but mainly to combat violent
extremists. Only belatedly and with much prodding from Washington
policy wonks did the U.S. scramble to regain clout in the region as it
woke up to China’s rapid rise and the coming shift of the world’s
economic and geopolitical center to Asia.
By comparison, since
Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the mid-seventies, China has proved a
reliable and supportive friend to its neighbors, especially the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It cut ties with communist
rebels in Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, and backed Asean in
opposing Vietnam’s 1978 invasion of Cambodia, even waging a brief
punitive war against its fellow communist state.
During the 1997
Asian Financial Crisis, the West lectured and imposed crushing bailout
conditions on the region, epitomized by then International Monetary Fund
Managing Director Michel Camdessus looking down on then Indonesian
President Suharto signing rescue loan terms. China, by contrast, quietly
helped out by not devaluing its renminbi.
And in the past decade,
it boosted trade and investment in Asean, outstripping most nations in
new capital and commerce, especially after the U.S. financial crisis of
2007.
Those with even longer memories can look back on past
centuries and see that unlike Western colonizers and their Japanese
imitators, China never invaded and occupied faraway lands and peoples,
even when it sent what was the world’s most powerful navy to Asia and
Africa early in the 15th Century, with vessels several times the size of
Christopher Columbus’s ships during his voyage to America decades later
in 1492.
The United States, on the other hand, waged a brutal war
to subjugate the Philippines, Asia’s first republic, in 1900, and
fought five major conflicts in Asia since 1950—in Korea, Vietnam and
Afghanistan, and two in Iraq. Plus even more interventions in the
Western Hemisphere, from invasion in Cuba and Nicaragua to subversion in
Guatemala and Chile.
Washington’s big-power ways continue today
with its campaign pressuring governments to hand over cyber-surveillance
whistleblower Edward Snowden.
All that makes it hard for most
Asian nations to swallow the line that China is an aggressor against
which the region should unite under American protection. Nor are they
going to sacrifice burgeoning trade and investment ties with the
region’s main economic growth engine by becoming its adversaries.
Rather,
most of Asia will follow what has been Asean’s longstanding policy of
being friends with all major powers, as envisioned in its 1971
Declaration promoting a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN)
in Southeast Asia. Big nations will always be competing for influence
and clout; little ones should generally avoid taking sides and getting
caught in the crossfire.
That should be one key principle in
addressing the Philippines’ security problems with China: Restore the
warm but equidistant relations the country has had with America, China
and Japan for at least the past decade. Two other tenets toward true
national security: Downplay disputes and undertake confidence-boosting
collaboration. And lastly, build up Philippine defense capabilities,
rather than depending on other nations.
For space reasons, this
article will need to extend to a third part on Friday outlining a
roadmap toward regional harmony and Philippine national security. The
way forward won’t be easy, but it can work.
(The first part of the article appeared on Monday. The last will be published on Friday.)
source: Manila Times' Column of by Ricardo Saludo
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