Responses to China-RP alliance

Responses to China-RP alliance

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 12-08-2014 MON)

 

It was at the Diliman Book Club Yuletide get-together last Saturday that I learned of more unexpected reactions to our Wednesday article, which posited that an RP-China alliance would open better prospects for the Philippines’ prosperity than maintaining its foreign policy status quo with the US today.

 

Earlier, former congressman Willy Villarama had emailed me back the said article indicating that he had BCC’ed it to his email directory.  Several other responses by email reflected a general interest in the proposition.  But it was China analyst Chito Sta. Romana who gave me a surprise at the Diliman Book Club gathering.

 

Chito told me and the others around one table that he was surprised to find the article “China: A better ally” on the Facebook page of Roilo Golez and his group with a note, according to Chito, “Let’s get it straight from Herman Tiu Laurel.”  Roilo Golez is, of course, one of the staunchest anti-China and pro-US proponents alongside Rafael Alunan, Loida Nicolas-Lewis, Rodel Rodis et al. who’ve tried to organize mass rallies against China the past two years but which have never gone beyond a hundred or so participants.

 

I was intrigued by the news.  I wondered if it was a tactic to scare the anti-China crowd further with the “Yellow peril” and “the communists are coming” bogeys.

 

I will take the Golez inclusion of my article last week positively and assume it is in the interest of having an honest discussion on what the Philippines’ foreign policy direction should be as nations traverse the crossroads of the 21st Century.  Chito, however, had an advice for me: China, he said, champions the “non-aligned movement” and declares itself “non-aligned.”  What China looks forward to, he said, is “partnerships.” “Besides,” Chito added, “China may not want the Philippines as an ally.”

 

I didn’t interpose any disagreement to Chito’s advice; indeed, China is known for its advocacy of the Non-Aligned Movement since the time of Premier Zhou Enlai in the 60s.

 

The line between “alliance” and “partnership” is quite thin, but the semantics is important and Chito is right to be careful in using the term.  “Alliance” in the global and geopolitical context has come to assume an almost automatic political-military connotation, as we have seen in the controversy erupting in Japan when its premier Shinzo Abe forced the reinterpretation of that country’s Peace Constitution to allow Japan to engage in defense of “alliance” states.

 

As China eschews military alliance, in May 2014 Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Asian countries against “unhelpful military alliances,” which the US has been reinforcing in the region.

 

At the turn of the 20th Century, treaty defense obligations to smaller allied countries imposed by military alliances with major powers dragged Germany, France, England, Russia, and the US, often against the better judgment of leaders, into mankind’s first true world war.  But China is not averse to all kinds of alliances and, in fact, today it champions economic alliances of politically non-aligned nations such as BRICS, the economic alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa for “a new economic order.”  The same is true for its spearheading the recent FTAAP, the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, with 21 member-states, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to enhance ties with Central Asian states and Russia.

 

Chito Sta. Romana suggests a more gradual process of establishing a new policy direction with regard to relations with China.  Instead of an alliance with any country, the Philippines, he says, should declare an “independent foreign policy” unallied to either China or the US.  To my mind this is enough to constitute a “revolution” in our hundred-year-old policy of subservience to Uncle Sam.  This is the same view expressed by De La Salle University International Relations academic Dr. Elaine Tolentino on my GNN cable TV show last Saturday.

 

However, I believe we should go one step further to ensure a peaceful world environment for the peaceful development of all: The Philippines is a citizen of Humanity which faces the great risk of World War III today in all parts of the globe where the US is supplying hundreds of tanks and planes, such as in Ukraine and the Baltic states bordering Russia--this, amid the backdrop of Resolution 758 practically authorizing Kiev to attack East Ukraine (http://www.globalresearch.ca/reckless-congress-declares-war-on-russia/5418287), as well as the US “pivot to Asia” and its pursuit of the “Air-Sea Battle” and ”Offshore Control” doctrines against China, ad nausea.

 

It is the obligation of all nations, including the Philippines, to contain the hegemonic aggressiveness of the US by promoting a global “balance-of-powers.”

 

The Philippines must not only break free of the US but engage in building that “multipolar world.”  Aside from benefitting from the economic boon, it should end the domination of a singular superpower imposing its arbitrary idea of peace on humanity and, to paraphrase President Xi in his speech to a Central Foreign Affairs meeting, work toward an “enabling international environment for peaceful development.”

 

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