BEFORE the headline matter, an anecdotal tribute to our beloved twelfth president Fidel Valdez Ramos (FVR) from this author’s mom, Noemi Lirag Saludo, the primary girl president of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Business, who served in PCCI’s centennial yr in 2004.
For the chamber’s Philippine Enterprise Convention (PBC), held each October, Saludo invited then-Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamed as keynote speaker, however was initially rejected. She then approached FVR on one in every of his {golfing} rounds, asking if he would possibly preliminary her second invitation letter to Mahathir.
This July 30, 2022 file photograph reveals members of the US Army’s one hundred and first Airborne Division marching throughout an illustration drill on the Mihail Kogalniceanu Airbase close to Constanta, Romania. AFP PHOTO
“Give me the letter,” the previous chief government and Protection and Armed Forces chief advised Saludo.
“I will be your messenger.”
“No, sir,” she demurred in deference. “I simply request your word on the letter.”
FVR insisted and took the letter, promising to handle the matter. His aide then advised the flustered PCCI president that the Philippine and Malaysian leaders had an upcoming assembly in Brunei.
Per week or so later, Mahathir’s workplace advised Saludo he would communicate on the PBC.
The FVR aide later recounted that Ramos gave the invitation letter to Mahathir, urging him to just accept and saying: “You need to meet this girl. She’s an incredible girl.”
That was FVR, the worldwide statesman and main promoter of Philippine enterprise, at all times hands-on in driving progress and luring the world to our land.
Our most profound gratitude, loftiest honor and most fervent prayers, President Fidel Valdez Ramos, to your lifetime of service to the Filipino nation!
Lesson from Ukraine
Turning to the headline matter, it’s completely crucial to maintain out of any devastating struggle. And that’s one large purpose for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s declaration in each his election marketing campaign and his first State of the Nation Handle that “the Philippines shall proceed to be a pal to all. And an enemy to none.”
This prudence of the Marcos safety coverage is clearer than ever this week with China’s live-fire army workouts round Taiwan, together with ballistic missiles flying over the island, amid the go to of United States Home of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Plainly, it could put our nation in grave hazard to be in any manner concerned in confrontations between America and China. Certainly, even when there isn’t a battle, permitting the potential of such involvement by internet hosting large US forces, particularly nuclear-capable projectiles, vessels and plane, would already put the Philippines within the ballistic-missile sights of the Individuals’s Liberation Army (PLA).
What’s worse, Beijing might already take army motion if confronted with the prospect of American naval and air belongings shifting into our archipelago en masse, as stipulated within the 2014 Enhanced Protection Cooperation Settlement (EDCA).
Stalled by the Duterte administration, the US desires the accord carried out full pace, as visiting Secretary of State Anthony Blinken certainly has in thoughts. If that occurs, China might do in Taiwan what Russia did in Ukraine: mount an invasion earlier than the enemy build-up makes it immensely more durable and costlier.
Within the months earlier than Russia’s February 24 “army motion,” Ukraine and the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Group (NATO) have been insisting that the nation ought to be allowed to affix, even when it might put nuclear-capable forces inside minutes of Moscow.
Then, shortly earlier than the invasion, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy introduced that Ukraine would double its army by 2025.
With large armed growth looming subsequent door, together with NATO nukes, Russia attacked. So would possibly China if the Philippines decides to associate with America’s want to implement EDCA and switch our nation once more into its most important army platform in Asia.
Warning from Dad
The American plan to station forces within the Philippines concentrating on the PLA has been expounded in not less than two knowledgeable views. In early 2020, Washington think-tank Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research wrote an open letter to new US President Joseph Biden, urging him to press the Duterte authorities to implement EDCA.
If that have been achieved, the nation might host “small, cellular groups [that] would assist US air and naval operations and maintain Chinese language vessels in danger with ground-based missile models… these plans require saving the VFA (Visiting Forces Settlement) and implementing EDCA.”
The opposite report is a US Air Drive-funded examine by RAND Corp. “Floor-Primarily based Intermediate-Vary Missiles within the Indo-Pacific” by Jeffrey Hornung “analyzes the probability of US treaty allies within the Indo-Pacific area — Australia, Japan, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea and Thailand — internet hosting US conventionally armed GBIRMs,” the projectiles named within the title.
Fortunately, President Marcos shouldn’t be swallowing Washington’s plan. Whereas he and Secretary Blinken reaffirmed the US-Philippines alliance of their August 6 assembly, Marcos stated: “The Mutual Protection Treaty (MDT) is in fixed evolution.” This echoes his marketing campaign statements favoring an MDT assessment in gentle of present geopolitical realities and expressing wariness towards American involvement in maritime frictions with China.
When requested if he would search US army assist in territorial disputes, Marcos stated in January (translated from Filipino): “If struggle breaks out, who loses? The Philippines. So, let’s not permit the issue to escalate to capturing, to struggle.”
Like father, like son. In 1965, his first yr as president, the elder Marcos identified that “it’s to serve her personal self-interest and to safeguard her safety as a nation and her place as a world chief, and solely by the way for our safety, that America has constructed up her imposing army and diplomatic institutions in our nation” (quoted in “The International Coverage of Ferdinand Marcos: From Traditionalism to Realism” https://core.ac.uk/obtain/pdf/42981548.pdf).
Marcos Sr. additional fretted in 1975: “If the aim of American army bases is to strengthen American army posture within the Pacific, or within the Indian Ocean and all through the world, does this not expose the Philippines to the animosities, suspicions and the conflicts arising out of this American army build-up — animosities and conflicts that we have now no participation in making, and don’t these bases endanger the security of the Filipinos and the Philippines not solely from typical armed assault, however from doable nuclear assault?”
And never simply us.
