EDITORIAL - War of passports

The Philippines seethed when China, upping the ante in its territorial dispute with its neighbors, begun issuing passports that included geographical outlines encompassing areas in the South China Sea that Manila is contesting.

The Philippines can choose to seethe all it wants until it drops dead or goes nuts. Or it can go the way of India, which begun issuing its own passports showing maps containing disputed territories with China, after China started it with passports showing maps with the same areas.

On learning of the new Chinese passports, the Philippines, still wet behind the ears in geopolitics, swiftly filed a diplomatic protest, naively thinking it amounts to anything. Well, it ain’t worth doodley-squat and up until now, we are still left holding an empty bag.

India, on the other hand, chose to react differently. It did not throw a fit like the Philippines and filed no diplomatic protest it knew the Chinese already anticipated. Instead the Indians reciprocated, a tit-for-tat over which China cannot complain, having started it first.

This is a classic example of not getting mad but getting even, in ways that we also can, such as similarly issuing passports with maps showing the territories we claim. This way we can also prick China’s pride without having to fight a war we cannot win.

Issuing passports is vastly different from physically confronting China on the ground in any of the disputed rocks and islets in the South China Sea. With a vastly superior force, China will have no compunction to crush us. All it needs is the smallest provocation.

But away from the actual bones of contention, a different war can be waged, a war which, while not resulting in actual winners, can be safely engaged. Thanks to India for understanding the situation perfectly. India, after all, once fought China in an actual shooting war.

Today, such a war can induce an end-of-the-world scenario. Both China and India have gone through the billion-people mark. More importantly, both have gone nuclear. Any war that escalates to the nuclear level will leave nothing of the two countries. Safer to fight a passport war.