Fire in the East: RPs’ strategic location

(First of two parts)

We have all been greatly perturbed by the increasing temblors shaking the country these past few months. Or is it the past year since civil society started to desert President Joseph Estrada? As it was, we were shocked and shaken by a maze of scandals perpetrated by Estrada, his administration and his midnight barkada. This led to EDSA or People Power II and Estrada’s disgraceful fall from the heights. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, then vice president, took Malacañang over. This should have led to political respite and surcease.

Instead what we have today is a nation mired in more social unrest, lurching drunkenly as crime and violence intensify as well as graft and corruption. Bomb scares proliferate right in the heart of Metro Manila. We are a nation frightened, shivering in the dark. There is no leader we can turn to. Except possibly two men whose positions constrain them from lifting a torch and saying: Follow me. What we have instead are American combat troops. Anyway, who are these two men?

The first is Jaime Cardinal Sin, archbishop of Manila and acknowledged leader of the Roman Catholic Church. The second is Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide. Cardinal Sin’s flock theoretically comprises the Christian majority which flocked to EDSA I and II. When he talks or says Mass, or mounts any rostrum, the cathedral doors grate with solemn sonority. Justice Davide has the merit of standing very tall. He is the judiciary’s high and venerable priest, his pronouncements a rich glower of hammer strikes on the anvil.

Neither the Cardinal nor the Chief Justice has the stature of the King of Thailand, H.M. Bhumibol Adulyadej. Whenever Thailand is in deep trouble or crisis, the nation looks up to him to intervene. And he does. In his presence, army generals, politicians, industrialists, and business tycoons kneel and prostrate themselves. And agree to what the King says or decides. Thailand has never teetered hopelessly on the edge of the cliff or gone over.

It is to our great disadvantage we Filipinos have no such royalty. What is seemingly incredible is that Thai royalty, the King, has absolutely no constitutionally-defined political power. With the passage of the years, the King has come to represent the symbol of Thailand’s continuity, a symbolic royal thread between past, present and the future. And so he has become what he is today, a sort of divine arbiter. Is he human? Yes, he plays the sax, the piano, the guitar, the drums. He is addicted to jazz. And sports.

But back to where we are.

I wouldn’t have resorted to this two-column series were it not for the increasing and for many mystifying presence of US combat troops in the Philippines. The government (and so does the US) gives us the usual abracadabra they are here to train Filipino soldiers in modern warfare under the aegis of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). The abracadabra includes the announcement the Yanks are here to help us exterminte the Abu Sayyaf. And yes, help the government wage war on terror. Here we enter a murky area. What other terror outside of Abu Sayyaf? The only reply we get – and it’s not a reply – is that more US combat troops by the thousands will be coming to join more Balikatans. And the terrorists better watch out.

The majority of the Filipino citizenry not only accept the American presence. They welcome it. They even revel in it.

Why? Possibly two reasons. America remains Mother America. Our culture is largely that of America. It is a dependency culture, which is strange for the continent we live in – Asia – whose culture has deep roots in the Asian psyche and civilization. When political scientists talk about "Asian values", these are not our values. There are about three million Filipinos in the United States. The other reason is the Fear Factor. When a poor nation is in trouble – worse it is lost and bewildered – there is a fear of the unknown.

To compensate, we seek the womb, we seek American protection. We don’t even inquire as to whether this protection is good for the country or not. We don’t even seem to mind that in a rapidly changing world, where Asia asserts itself this time as a modern colossus and a rival of the US, this protection could come at a very great price – our freedom as a people.

This is where our two-column "Fire in the East" comes in.

Actually the title comes from the book itself "Fire in the East" authored by Paul Bracken. About this book, Paul Kennedy (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers) writes: "At a time, when it appears that the United States bestrides the world while the nations of Asia are in trouble, he points to a steady and significant shift in the military-technical power balance in Asia’s favor." Helmut Sonenfeldt of the Brookings Institution comments in like vein: "Bracken argues cogently that American forces and the base structure on which they rely are becoming dangerously inadequate and indeed vulnerable. He shows, wisely if sadly, that international arms control regimes are unlikely to reverse the ominous dynamite."

I shall in the course of hammering out these two columns quote other authors, authorities and experts on the subject of war and geopolitics as these concern the US and Asia. My only abiding concern is that Filipinos must have access to the true global picture, as this is drawn at length by highly respected Western experts and authorities. In the Philippines, the media remain largely silent on or indifferent to the subject. Our political and social scientists, economists, do not care to comment or are largely ignorant.

As it is, we are now being gulled by our government as to the real purpose of the American presence. I am listening to the same name-calling and propaganda hoopla all over again: If you are not for us, you are against us (shades of George Bush!). Or you must be an anti-American. Or worse, you are a communist, or a leftist and a fellow traveler. If you love our country, we must all unite against the war on terror. The Americans are here to help us. So let’s be grateful. Let’s not rock the boat.

We shall begin with Bracken whose broad brushstrokes explain America’s and the West’s geo-political strategy in Asia.

The West’s dual strategy, he writes, "is to pursue its own technological superiority at all costs while trying to keep down any other player from amassing advance armaments. That was easy when Asian military capability was limited… In the early 1990s, the United States pretty much ran things by itself." In other words, this was Pax Americana, the US superpower mission to impose or implant American culture and civilization over Asia. And elsewhere. In due time, this began to shake and unravel as we shall explain forthwith in detail.

"The spread of missiles and weapons of mass destruction to Asian nations signals the end of even American dominance," Bracken emphasizes. The stoutest allies of the US in Asia are Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. The Philippines was in this roster until 1991. This was when the Senate drove out America’s two largest overseas military bases – the Subic naval base, homeport of the 7th Fleet, and Clark Airbase, headquarters of the US 13th Air Force. The result was a "thinner rimland from which to operate" and "we see the West being forced out of Asia."

This, Filipinos have failed to see or even perceive. Bracken continues: "The US geopolitical strategy in Asia stands in a long tradition of Westerners using the rim of the continent to block or moderate the influence of larger continental powers" like China, India and Pakistan. Saudi Arabia is America’s foil in Asia to contain Iran and Iraq. The latter two with North Korea comprise the "Axis of Evil" that President Bush depicted with such ideological malevolence that even Western Europe was startled.

In 1991, when Subic and Clark were given the boot, China had not yet posed a serious political and military threat to Pax Americana. And at that time, nine years before 9-11, America felt utterly secure and invulnerable. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans shielded the continent from the invasive reach of any nation. Except, of course, Russia which by then had wilted and crumbled to a weak nation-state." The end of the Cold War in 1989-91 cracked the Soviet Union wide open and strangled communism in its cradle.

But China was another matter. China had grown too big, too powerful, too pervasive. Its economy was shooting for the stars. Its nuclear weaponry was rising from the ground with intercontinental ballistic missiles that could eventually hit any American city. Its military started to reach out across seas and oceans in the Pacific, previously the sole preserve of the US 7th Fleet. Chinese naval vessels marauding in the South China Sea began to scare Washington. This was palpable when China renewed its territorial claim to all islands belonging to the Spratly group perilously close to the Philippines. The Philippines also has claims to some Spratly islands, notably Kalayaan or Freedomland.

This, for the Americans, was dynamite. As it was for the Philippines. (To be continued)