It seems we have completely locked ourselves with the devil, for better or for worse.
There is no way we could extricate ourselves from that tight situation we created. After the Permanent Court of Arbitration issued its award on jurisdiction and admissibility of our claim in the China Sea, this country will from now on be gearing in enforcing a decision in the event PCA rules in our favor.
While we rejoice about that hollow decision, we have completely turn our back to any future negotiations. From now on, this country would be guided by the PCA ruling, which in truth has no effective machinery to enforce its decisions.
Those who fully realize its consequence will avoid bringing their dispute to international tribunals much it could shut off their chances to negotiate where they still enjoy a room for flexibility. Aside from the reality that there is no supra state to enforce obedience, allowing the PCA to decide our dispute with China has become a humiliating process. Before we could formally lodge our cause, it would require the consent of the other party.
It would have been ideal if the members of the United Nations automatically became members of the International Court of Justice where they would be committed to abide to the ICJ’s ruling with the permanent members of the Security Council enforcing it. But it was not conceived to work that way by the victorious Allied Powers.
To date, states refuse to recognize and submit to the jurisdiction of any international tribunal invoking the Westphalian theory of state supremacy. They refuse to submit to its jurisdiction or accept its ruling on the basis that jurisdiction is synonymous to the exercise of their sovereignty. This explains why international law is often violated than observed.
Most states would rather resort to diplomacy to amicably settle their disputes because it provides them wider flexibility to negotiate and exact some kind of quid pro quo that would not affect their status as an independent and sovereign state. Direct talks remains conducive much that there is no external pressure passed on by third parties as in defense of the interest of one contesting party.
Hence, when Supreme Court associate justice Antonio Carpio cited the UN ruling where it ordered the US to pay Nicaragua $30 million in damages, he did not explain that Nicaragua’s claim was not about jurisdiction over a piece of territory or island, but a claim for damages. Besides, the decision of the US to pay Nicaragua was more of a political consideration than compliance to the UN ruling. The gesture to increase the amount to $500 million was meant to prop-up Violeta Chamorro’s government that for a time eclipsed the Marxist Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega in 1990.
It must be recalled that Violeta Chamorro was presented to the world by the US as Nicaragua’s equivalent of Cory Aquino whose husband, the editor of La Prensa, was assassinated. The outpouring of sympathy was exploited to defeat the Sandinista government. In other words, it was more of a bribe than payment for reparations.
Historically, the US has never ceded an inch of the territories it annexed from Mexico like what it did to grab Texas, Florida, New Mexico, and Southern California. The US similarly did not hand back the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico to Spain. In fact, if one has to strictly follow Carpio’s line of thought, it could cite the $20-million payment made by the US to Spain for ceding the Philippine in 1898, although strictly speaking, it was a forced sale which Spain had no choice but to accept.
The PCA ruling which acknowledged jurisdiction over our claim has only heightened jingoism among our local war mongers. China now sees the ruling as infringement on its sovereignty that objectively, is far from the issue the Philippines want to be resolved. The worst is, in the event the PCA finally decide the case in our favor, our country would then be preparing for possible proxy war with China for which our people will never have a chance to understand. The US could manipulate our people’s blind rage that Spratly islands are part of our national territory which many political analysts think is most suited to erase the suspicion that we are fighting a war not of our own making, and a war not in defense of our own interest.
As our people are made to believe and accept this calibrated propaganda that the PCA ruling recognized our “historic right” over those islands, many are puzzled why we remain timid in invoking the same principle in our claim over Sabah which is enforced by a legal title. There is no way for our people to know whether they would in the future be fighting as claimants of those uninhabited islands, or in fact defending the interest of the US in securing the strategic passageway and for the minerals and oil deposits in the area which it has long coveted.
Our active endorsement of the US Pivot Asia policy has made the country the first perimeter line in preventing the continued decline of US power and influence in Asia. In fact, our claim in the China Sea has even enticed the local Left and the so-called progressive elements to side with the monopoly-capitalists.
Right now, we are the only country that has been most intransigent to any bilateral negotiations without considering that it is the most appropriate, much that it limits the negotiations to parties directly involved. The stragglers of the Cold War, who think we are still living in an era of ideological supremacy, are the ones manipulating things for us.
Such is most lamentable, for it indicates that this administration does not even understand why we are hosting Apec, and what we want to achieve in that important gathering. Anti-Chinese groups are even spreading the word that Presidents Xi Jinping might not come. China has much more to gain in its continued rapprochement with the countries of Asia than in dealing with one who does not seem to know the direction of his foreign policy, except to pledge his unwavering loyalty to the US.
Right now, all countries gravitate towards China hoping that by extending their collective economic cooperation, they would be able to avoid a repetition of history where they fought a proxy war based on the discredited US “domino theory,” that if one would fall to the communists, the rest will follow. The US is rather selfish, for while it continues to take advantage in having a close economic ties with China, it takes the opposite position by discouraging Asian countries from developing their own channel to avail of China’s “silk road” through the newly organized Asian International Infrastructure Bank which has for its objective the spreading of prosperity across Asia.
rpkapunan@yahoo.com