IN the satirical novel The Mouse that Roared by Leonard Wibberley—and the 1959 film by the same title—the tiny, fictional European duchy of Grand Fenwick declares war on the United States, hoping to take advantage of American largesse by surrendering to it after a token invasion.
The duchy sends a contingent of 20 soldiers in medieval chain mail across the Atlantic on a small merchant ship, but stumbles upon a secret weapon—the Q Bomb—that enables it to declare victory over the United States, which sues for peace. The Q Bomb remains in Grand Fenwick, held by “the little countries of the world” as a weapon of last resort if the superpowers refuse to disarm.
Perhaps hoping to take a page from Grand Fenwick, President Rodrigo Duterte has taken on the United States, taunting its leader as a “a son of a whore,” declaring an end to US-Philippine joint military exercises after October; rejecting joint patrols of the disputed areas of the South China Sea; and vowing to open new alliances with US rivals Russia and China—all in the name of establishing an independent foreign policy.
With the same indignant independence, Mr. Duterte also told the European Union to go procreate and gave them an internationally recognizable hand gesture of disdain that his new Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations would certainly appreciate. He also likened his bloody anti-crime campaign to the Holocaust, saying he would “be happy to slaughter 3.5-million drug users”—in the same way the Nazis wiped out six million Jews. The United States was manipulating the peso to drive down its value vis-a-vis the US dollar, he said, and the CIA wants him killed.
Almost daily, now, Mr. Duterte’s Cabinet secretaries have had to scramble to parse his outrageous words and to minimize the damage. The alliance with the United States, we are told, is as strong as ever—we just won’t be holding joint military exercises for the rest of Mr. Duterte’s term.
President Rodrigo Duterte was not likening himself to Adolf Hitler, the Palace says, but merely responding to critics who compared him to the Nazi leader because of the thousands of alleged drug suspects killed under his watch. Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno denied the President’s suggestion that the exchange rate was being manipulated.
In letting loose at every opportunity with his profane and incendiary words, Mr. Duterte proves that he is indeed the mouth that roared. Like the fictional duchy of Grand Fenwick, his assault on the United States looks quixotic—and almost comical, were its implications not so serious.
Unlike Grand Fenwick, however, Mr. Duterte has no secret weapon that will enable him to win—and Russia and China are unlikely to provide him with one. He does not have a Q Bomb. All he has is the F Bomb—and we have all seen how ineffectual that is in a world of civilized grownups.
