Disingenuous talk

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 06-11-201

 
Last Monday the University of the Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea sponsored a round table discussion with Georgetown University professor and former Central Intelligence Agency China expert, Prof. Robert G. Sutter, on the US role in the China Sea crisis.  The Malcolm Hall seminar room was packed with eminent experts in relevant fields aplenty, such as former UP President Dodong Nemenzo, acclaimed international correspondent Chito Sta. Romana, writer Richard Javad Heydarian, former ambassador to ASEAN Wilfrido V. Villacorta, security expert Romel Banlaoi, journalist Ellen Tordesillas, and many others.
 
Prof. Sutter’s books take up two pages on Amazon.com.  On the Internet I found Sutter involved in a controversial refusal of cooperation with a Federal Bureau of Investigation “sting,” as well as in appeals for help in tracking Chinese spies, urging others to do likewise.  Sutter covered a very wide range of issues and never left any doubt as to his view of China as an “aggressor” and the usefulness of the US to its ASEAN allies in counterbalancing China.  Even though Sutter maintained a scholarly demeanor in his talk, to my mind, several lines betrayed the disingenuousness intention.
 
Sutter admits that a power shift has occurred in Asia with the ascendance of China and the decline of the US.  In explaining the US “rebalancing” (a.k.a. “pivot”) to Asia, Sutter admitted US perception that the future is in Asia and that Barack Obama is giving the “pivot” high priority.  He reiterated several times that the US is here to stay because Asia is important for “US jobs” and in order “to pursue free trade policies”--reflecting a US fear of growing Asian skepticism of US reliability.  But Sutter emphasized that the US is not out to isolate China; only to engage it.  One of what I thought was a very disingenuous line of his was when he posed this question regarding China’s peaceful intentions vis-à-vis its economic success: “Why are they (the Chinese) building their military if they are peaceful?”
 
As echoed by former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in his speech at the Pentagon in 2005, every student of international relations and diplomacy knows that “Weakness is provocative.”  As such, defense and military capability is essential for nation-states serious with their sovereignty; and China is no different.
 
Another Sutter line that struck me as utterly disingenuous was “(the) US does not like war, neither does it like appeasement,” which reminded me immediately of the destruction of the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, now Syria; the US drone wars in Pakistan, Sudan, and Yemen; the West’s deployment of new troops to Africa; and US destabilization of Venezuela (and now, likely, Brazil to weaken BRICS), ad nausea.
 
Sutter emphasized what he sees as tense relations of China with its neighbors such as India, Pakistan, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Indonesia while leaving out growing trade ties between India and China, the $4-billion gas deal between Russia and China, or how South Korea criticized Obama on Japan, etc.
 
Moreover, Sutter didn’t explain that the US “free trade” scheme in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which demands that other countries open their agricultural sector to US dumping, was rejected by South Korea and Japan, or that the TPP violates national sovereignty and prioritizes corporate power over human and economic rights of nations, which the Chinese trade pact, the Regional Cooperation Economic Partnership (RCEP) rejects in favor of respect of national economic sovereignty.
 
Sutter insists that the US is the “leader of Asia” (his words) because it provides “security and stability,” which Asians need because, as he claims, “Asians don’t like each other” and would require the US to mediate.  And so, the US is willing to spend “$50-billion to stay” (perhaps militarily) in Asia.
 
When the open forum started, the first to raise a question was Dodong Nemenzo who inquired about how “ironclad” the guarantee of Obama was to defend the Philippines, to which Sutter had no satisfactory answer.  Richard Heydarian then asked about the “nexus” of the Chinese people and the Chinese government’s policy on the China Sea claims, which Sutter had to admit was a serous factor as the Chinese have to respond to popular expectations.
 
Chito Sta. Romana asked whether China is claiming the seas or the islands (which has implications on adjacent waters).  I later stood to lament the myopia of Philippine forums missing the timeline and broad geopolitical panorama: Tensions started with Obama’s “pivot,” followed by (US pawn) Japan’s “nationalization” of the Diaoyus, and the Philippine naval ship BRP Gregorio del Pilar’s arrest of Chinese fishermen at Scarborough.
 
Finally, I asked Sutter, “What is US retired Marine Colonel T.X. Hammes’ ‘Offshore Control’ war doctrine (which is the US plan to choke off China’s economy by closing the Malacca and Lombok straits)?”--to which he pleaded ignorance.
 
Is China then building the “artificial islands” as forward defense to preempt the US shift of 60 percent of its forces to Asia by 2020?
 
(Watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., this week on “Tiananmen: The whole truth”; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)

Aquino's two strategic errors

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / June 9, 2014 / Daily Tribune


BS Aquino assumed the presidency in 2010 without anybody, including himself, having any clue about his program of governance, much less his foreign policy direction.

This void in his domestic agenda, summed up in his “No wang-wang” State of the Nation Address, was made much more glaring when his early foreign relations crises betrayed his ignorance of even basic diplomacy — disappearing from sight and failing to communicate with Hong Kong’s chief executive at the height of the Luneta hostage massacre (followed by more fumbles four years on), as well as shooting-from-the-hip against Taiwan’s allegations in the 2013 killing of its fisherman, only to embarrassingly admit the culpability of Philippine Coast Guard personnel later on.

Considering the enormous significance the Philippines has played in global geopolitical relations, the cases of the HK Tourist Association and Taiwanese fisherman’s killing should really be very minor issues for a competent government; but, for a government such as Aquino’s, these become tsunamis of bad international publicity and a testy test of wills between the Philippines and the two smaller Chinese territories with tragi-comedic consequences, resulting in net losses to the country’s credibility and economic opportunities.

Even so, the deleterious effects from those two diplomatic debacles cannot compare to the disastrous handling by the current regime of its strategic relations with the leading nation of the 21st Century, China.

While BS Aquino fiddles with puerile theories of good governance through his vapid “no wang-wang” and “matuwid na daan” pronouncements, the rest of the world had already begun studying and responding to historic shifts in world history.

The global political landscape has changed so much that even the most powerful of the powerful on the world stage has had to read and catch the winds in order to steer the course of their nation’s voyage.

The world’s superpower, the US of A, waited for the opportune time to announce its “pivot” (later named “rebalancing”) to Asia, veering its power in the Asian Century toward the China Sea — in much the same way that it had captured the Philippines as its geopolitical base in Asia at the turn of the 20th Century.
A year after BS Aquino’s “election” into the presidency via Hocus-PCOS, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the US’ pivot to Asia as a return to its markets, primarily through the programmed transfer of 60 per cent of US military assets to the region by 2020.

China, of course, did not miss any of this nor any of the scathing lessons in its history with Western powers. China saw through the US prodding for the “nationalization” by the Japanese government of the Diaoyu (or Senkaku) Islands in 2012, and was not blind to Philippine officialdom’s appointment of a US green card-holding Foreign Affairs secretary, its elimination of credible China expert, Chito Sta. Romana, for the ambassadorial post to China, and its clandestine development with the US of the so-called Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (Edca), among many other developments.

The current deterioration in Sino-Philippine relations cannot be more markedly different to how it was in years past. Since the late 1980s, Deng Xiaoping had already discussed with Corazon Aquino the need for mutual respect and bilateral dialog, and of shelving disputes in favor of joint development of resources in the disputed waters of the China Sea. Even 50/50 arrangements were proposed. Cory Aquino had no objections throughout her term while Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada continued with the cooperative spirit. Gloria Arroyo even signed a Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking with China (that was unfortunately shelved).
But the tone soon changed under BS Aquino, who presided over the arrest of Chinese fishermen at the Scarborough Shoal in 2012 (leading to a “standoff”), before allowing his subalterns to hurl false allegations against China, such as the “concrete blocks” for construction in 2013, the “invasion of Pagasa in 2014,” and other anti-Chinese black propaganda.

Despite persistent appeals for bilateral dialog, top Philippine officials continued the anti-China harangue and reveled in “insulting” it by filing the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (Itlos) case.

All these, coupled with Barack Obama’s April 2014 Manila visit, where he uttered his disingenuous “non-containment of China” speech, timed with the signing of the Edca between the US and the Philippines, undoubtedly set the tone for China’s latest assertions.

Since dialog is now off the table, and with the Edca signaling advanced US military deployment to this part of the world, China’s answer has been its reclamation activity at the Mabini Reef. Now, the Philippine press reports a “worried” BS Aquino, telling the nation of more Chinese ships at the disputed Spratlys, with more reclamation being undertaken.

Will the US come to save the reefs and islets that its purported ally is claiming? The Web site Real Clear Defense answers that through Harry Kazianis’ article, “Would Americans give their lives for Asia? No.” Well, at least not before 2020, that’s for sure. So why should China wait until the US has 60 per cent of its military forces in Asia?

BS Aquino and his cohorts now see the prospect of China really taking over the disputed islands and waters without any Philippine capability of countering it, and with the Itlos not mattering a hoot as the Chinese have said.

Still, dialog can be put back on the table if BS Aquino can come to his senses and learn some foreign policy and geopolitical history lessons fast.

BS Aquino, however, is a really bad learner. In the Napoles case, for instance, he has also made the strategic error of training his guns only against opposition senators, instead of seeking an honest-to-goodness political resolution that can lead to overall reform of the flawed system, of which he is part.

As a result, BS Aquino and his allies are as damaged today as their intended victims. They may become even more damaged once the Supreme Court brings out its ruling on their infamous Disbursement Acceleration Program.

(Join me and Chito Sta. Romana, Benito Lim, and others on our GNN Talk News TV program on June 14, Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)

Tiananmen after 25 years

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / June 4, 2014 / Daily Tribune


It was June 1989. I was in the US for meetings with refugee program officials in my capacity as administrator of the Philippine Refugee Processing Center, as well as to visit a sister at the University of Pennsylvania. The bloody turmoil in Beijing was all over the media, and a rally was to be held at a university park. I attended and listened to a speech in broken English about liberty, freedom, and China. It seemed that Deng Xiaoping’s crackdown was widely condemned.

Chinese-British writer Han Suyin, however, had a different take. Renowned for her novel A Many Splendored Thing, which was made into a movie that won three Oscars, Han Suyin (who died in 2012 at age 95) defended the crackdown, arguing that China had to keep order and prevent chaos. As a celebrated cultural icon, her words carried weight.

For 25 years now, the Tiananmen events of June 1989 have been invariably described as a “massacre” (specifically, a massacre of “students”). Chinese government reports the number of casualties at around 300 while Western accounts place the casualties between 400 and 800 civilians (Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times) or up to 1,000 (Amnesty International) and 2,600 (Time magazine in 1990 — since retracted). More often than not, the casualties on the government side (soldiers and police) — no matter how important, if one had to have a complete picture — aren’t ever mentioned. There are pictures of rows of Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) burnt out and of police burnt to a crisp in their vehicles.

With 25 years of hindsight and new information available on the Tiananmen or June 4 Incident, we are given a chance to evaluate the events better. One crucial source that is now available (thanks to Julian Assange) is WikiLeaks, which showed secret US cables reported in The Telegraph on June 4, 2011 by Malcolm Moore (“WikiLeaks: No bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim”) that said, “Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square... Instead, …Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters outside the center of Beijing, as they fought their way toward the square from the west of the city.”

It added: “Inside the square itself, a Chilean diplomat was on hand to give his US counterparts an eyewitness account of the final hours of the pro-democracy movement… In 2009, James Miles, who was the BBC correspondent in Beijing at the time, admitted that he had ‘conveyed the wrong impression’ and that ‘there was no massacre on Tiananmen Square. Protesters who were still in the square when the army reached it were allowed to leave after negotiations with martial law troops…’ Instead, the fiercest fighting took place at Muxidi, around three miles west of the square, where thousands of people had gathered spontaneously on the night of June 3 to halt the advance of the army.”

The Web site nsnbc.me (not MSNBC) by Chritoff Lehmann has a 2,000 word piece by Dr. Long Xinming entitled, “Let’s Talk About Tiananmen Square, 1989: My Hearsay is Better Than Your Hearsay,” which says, “There were two events that occurred in Beijing on June 4, 1989. They were not related. One was a student protest that involved a sit-in in Tiananmen Square… The other was a worker protest… (where) a group of workers had barricaded streets in several locations leading to Central Beijing, several kilometers… from the Square… (And) there was a third group present… which consisted of neither students nor workers. ‘Thugs’ or ‘anarchists’ might be an appropriate adjective… The violence began when this third group decided to attack the soldiers… with Molotov cocktails, and torched several dozen buses —with the soldiers still inside.”

The Voice of America (VoA) played its role broadcasting 24/7 its version of the events at Tiananmen: “And all university students of that day… tell of listening to the VoA in their dorms, late into the night, building in their imaginations a happy world of freedom and light… offering comfort and encouragement, provoking, giving advice on strategy and tactics.” And what about the US government? “There were five or six primary leaders of the Tiananmen Square sit-in… They were spirited out of China, first to Hong Kong, then to Taiwan. And very shortly thereafter were in the US.”

One of the Tiananmen student leaders, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize years later despite (or because of) his support for the US attack on Iraq.
There is no question that China in 1989 was a country dealing with many challenges and problems. It had not yet become the Dragon Economy that it now is. Would it have progressed to its present enviable state as the top economy of the world if it had not restored order by some degree of force 25 years ago?

(Join me and Chito Sta. Romana, Benito Lim, and others on our GNN Talk News TV program on June 14, Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)