“The latest powerful salvo from the Malaysian Foreign Minister Hasan should be a final wake-up call to BBM that he is taking a disastrous track on the collaboration with the war-thirsty US and Western forces”
THE South China Morning Post headlined last April 25, 2024 “South China Sea: Malaysia opposes ‘external forces’ meddling in disputed waters, foreign minister says in swipe at US-Philippines military exercises,” the normally very reticent ASEAN member states are certainly beginning to be very audible in their opposition to the year-and-a-half US-BBM ramp-up of tensions in the disputed South China Sea areas of the Philippines with other littoral ASEAN countries, Taiwan and China.
China is the only focus of the Philippine’ contestations which is so very strangely convenient for the American’s containment targeting of China and the Project Myoushu’s “assertive transparency” campaign of the US Office Of Naval Research’s Gordian Knot Center of National Security Innovation (a.k.a. Maritime Counter-Insurgency operations).
Some of the objectives of these US Black Ops are “exacting reputational cost on China” and, ”…generating international support for Philippine claims.”
In the SCMP report, Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan stated his opposition to “external forces” meddling in disputed waters as no longer such a “veiled swipe” at US-BBM military exercises.
The reference is clearly to the US naval assets leading the US-BBM military drills in disputed SCS waters, an unequivocal chastisement of the interference which the US is conducting in the ASEAN and Asian region stirring up trouble and tension.
The Malaysian foreign minister’s criticism of the US interference in the ASEAN regions comes just a week-and-a-half after Singapore foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan’s visit to Manila to advice the Philippines’ foreign minister Enrique Manalo that “… Although Singapore has no claims in the SCS, the moment you have escalation of tension or collisions or military action in the SCS, it will immediately impair and impede trade. It will increase insurance premiums…”
Balakrishnan objected to the accusations from US and Philippine sources that ASEAN has failed to issue a unified stance on the SCS dispute saying, ““The most important thing for the whole of ASEAN is to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea because it is not only our immediate backyard but it is also one of the world’s busiest waterways …”
In fact, the US-BBM’s daily tension-building naval drills news releases are already impacting ASEAN trade.
All these followed Singapore Premier Lee Hsien Loong’s Nov. 2013 rhetorical advice to Filipinos, “Do Filipinos want to be the battleground between the US and China?”
That had apparently shaken the Philippine government to re-engage China in bilateral talks again in the Wang Yi-Manalo phone talk in Dec. 2023 and the official Jan. 2024 8th Bilateral Mechanism talks which resulted in January to the February 4th peaceful and uneventful BRP Sierra Madre RORE.
The USAF ex-colonel Raymond Powell went on the offensive again and went on to browbeat BBM, and the AFP knelt again and obeyed the US diktats to escalate the blatant RORE missions to deliver construction materials for the US project to build “Forward Operating Base Sierra Madre” to complement the US bases deploying the mid-range missiles with the Typhoon launchers for the military drills that would then be deployed to the EDCA bases in Cagayan Province.
The latest powerful salvo from the Malaysian Foreign Minister Hasan should be a final wake-up call to BBM that he is taking a disastrous track on the collaboration with the war-thirsty US and Western forces with their Japanese militarist allies.
He’d better take heed before ASEAN rises forcefully against this US threat to create war in Asia to destroy its growing GDP.
To repeat, ASEAN rejection of the US-BBM proxy war preparations collapses the US “assertive transparency” aim of “exacting reputational costs on China” and “generating international support for the Philippine claim” as it shows even the Philippines’ closest neighbors are rejecting it.
This collapses the “assertive transparency” of the US Office Naval Research’s Project Myoushu in the just first quarter of 2024.
The US Office of Naval Research is funding the operations of Project Myoushu from the 2022 US Congressional $ 500-million special “America Compete Act” anti-China information fund. It’s running out very soon as the US financial system grinds into its last gasp in the last quarter of 2024. (rpkapunan@gmail.com)