Forgive and forget is high up in the ‘moral’ pantheon of Filipino ethic
Welcome to the newest “security” alliance – JAPHUSAU, forged “trilaterally” after earlier bilateral declarations in Canberra.
Days before, the navies of the four nations conducted joint drills in the SCS, and our coast guard immediately welcomed the announcement made by Marcos, Biden and Kishida in DC, enshrining maritime cooperation to “coordinate collective responses” in the face of tensions in the disputed seas.
“Upping the ante versus China” is how a senior defense analyst of US think-tank Rand Corporation describes it.
“It carries some risk, but there does not seem to be any viable alternatives if Beijing continues to claim much of Manila’s EEZ…but a big problem is whether China’s maritime expansion continues or stops,” said Derek Grossman in an interview with Nikkei Asia.
For better or for worse, the Philippines has chosen sides in the looming Sino-American confrontation, between the withering hegemon of the previous 100 years to the one aspiring to replace it.
In character, China recoils and calls the arrangement a “mini-NATO” in the Asia-Pacific, while Biden in the joint press conference at the White House repeated his country’s “iron-clad commitment” to the Philippines.
Is that “iron-clad commitment” binding upon Donald Trump?
Note that our Mutual Defense Treaty has many clauses that hedge on direct US confrontation with whoever we are in conflict with. They can calibrate their response, while we think “iron-clad” is automatic.
China bristled at the reference to Taiwan, which it has always maintained as an “internal affair” and the basis for the whole world save for 13 countries to accept “One-China.”
Meanwhile too, talks between Japan and our country are on its final stages, where Japanese “self-defense forces” will soon conduct joint exercises with our AFP, another “visiting forces” agreement similar to what we have with the US of A.
For Beijing, it is clear we have taken sides, and there is no turning back, at least for as long as Marcos Jr. is the chief architect of our foreign policy, as our Constitution states.
The Japan which the Chinese will never forget for its inhuman “Rape of Nanjing” where civilians were cruelly massacred during the Sino-Japanese War is now in cahoots with a small country, then US territory, which it occupied during the Second World War, and upon which the same US of A lobbed two atomic bombs to force immediate surrender.
And for what are we now being drawn into another US quarrel?
For Philippine EEZ-defined atolls and Japan’s fear that China will eventually interdict “freedom of navigation” in the China Sea.
“Eeez a puzzlement” to Chinese leaders, mired in Confucian philosophy with a history of non-invasive involvement with its neighbors and the world.
What China does not realize is that few Filipinos have a sense of history. Forgetfulness is a trait for a people raised in the Roman Catholic ethic of “forgiveness.”
Yesterday’s enemies have become today’s “reliable” friends.
Besides, geopolitics is not too different from plain politics, where today’s enemies can be tomorrow’s friends. Just take a look at our trapos, as they change political colors very easily.
Never mind the atrocities of the Japanese occupation.
Never mind the carpet bombing of Manila, once described as the “Pearl of the Orient” by American liberation forces, leaving it a pile of rubble, its destruction second only to Warsaw’s by an imminently defeated Germany against advancing Soviet forces.
Never mind the thousands who were bayonetted to death by retreating Japanese forces when MacArthur belatedly “returned” to “liberate” us.
And never mind too that our heroic resistance fighters against the Japanese enemies of our occupier America were treated shabbily by “mother” America after the war, given crumbs for their heroism.
Never mind Balangiga, Bud Dajo, and the massacre of our ancestors when imperial America took over imperial Spain.
Forgive and forget is high up in the “moral” pantheon of Filipino ethic.
Other countries likely think of us as “masochists” who would endure any suffering, any humiliation, just as internally, we choose some of the least, some of the worst among us, to lead us.
On the domestic front, look at how Napoles is still in jail, while we have returned some of her accomplices to positions of power, even as we have not dug deep enough to charge the other “silent” accomplices.
JAPHUSAU now, wonder what happens after China and Taiwan are re-unified? A new Fil-Sino alliance?
I remember an old song, which begins with the question “Where have all the flowers gone?” and ends with “When will (we) ever learn?”.
