THE four-day 21st Shangri-La Security Dialogue meeting ends today in Singapore.
This security dialogue platform has become increasingly prominent among the countless such platforms around the world as tension between the two major world superpowers, China and the US, seem to be reaching a crescendo.
Last Shangri-La dialogue in June 2023, the tension between the US and Chinese delegations was palpable, at one point Lt. Gen. Jing Jianfeng, vice chief of the Central Military Commission’s Joint Staff Department said, US Defense Secretary Austin had tried to “pull out of Beijing’s one-China principle.”
A much-awaited meeting of the defense chiefs of the two superpowers never materialized.
Every year the Shangri-La Dialogue organizers await China’s acceptance of the invitation to attend the event without which, the forum would be lackluster, and it is fortunate that China has announced its Defense Minister Dong Jun will be attending and will deliver a keynote speech on China’s “Approach to Global Security.”
The Shangri-La Dialogues is convened by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank focusing on defense and security issues headquartered in London and funded mainly by Western governments and its allies.
The Global South is severely under-represented in the forum. The suspected bias of the forum, including host Singapore, should be kept in mind.
Philippine President Bongbong Marcos, Jr. was also invited and slated to deliver the keynote address which the Presidential Communications Office headlines in its news release “PBBM is this year’s world leader to deliver keynote for 21st Shangri-La Dialogue,” adding “Only one leader delivers this address every year, and President Marcos was given the distinct honor…”
It is a stretch to describe BBM as a “world leader” who was treated by US President Biden during the ”Triad” or trilateral meeting in the US last April 2023 as a “second class” leader denied of equal honors accorded to Kishida, and seen by ASEAN, Asian and Global South leaders now as a mere sidekick of the US.
BBM is losing the country: the anti-BBM movement growing broader every week from one Maisug rally to another going around the country even as the government tries to suppress each and every site blocked with tractors and trailers, a MAD (Marcos Alis Dyan) movement just launched early this week and a third of the people losing trust in him in only the second year.
“World leader” BBM settled for a meeting on the aisles of the Nov. 2023 San Francisco APEC meeting, to tell President Xi Jinping he’d like to “ease tensions in the SCS between the Philippines and China” and when Wescom chief Adm. Albert Carlos “operationalizes” the “easing of tension,” throwing him under the bus.
The AFP is simmering. YouTube Blogs of retired generals like “The General’s Viewpoint,” FB posts of ex-generals Orlando E. de Leon and Romeo Poquiz protesting the mismanagement of the nation are getting tens of thousands of views each day. BBM had to go around the military camps to speak out against “destabilization.”
All is not well, Mr. World Leader.
It is obvious the US proxy-dent, BBM, is given such an exalted role at the 2024 Shangri-La Security Dialogue by the London-based IISS to focus wider attention on the US-engineered Project Myoushu and its propaganda “assertive transparency” staging “water cannon me” forays for the Western media circus to propagate around the world.
The US wrought most of the problems the proxy-dent has on his head, the schism with the mass of Duterte supporters was by US poking of the International Criminal Court case against Duterte, the conflicted foreign policy by US military bases accepted by the proxy-dent, the dearth of investments the geopolitical-economic alienation of China.
We have supported BBM and seek to save him, as the Marcos matriarch Imelda tried making a very public visit to the new Chinese Embassy chancery opening, and Imee Marcos playing devil’s advocate to the administration.
We wonder if his words at the Shangri-La Security Dialogue will serve as a turnaround or a deepening of the hole he has dug. (rpkapunan@gmail.com)