It all started with the Gregorio del Pilar
It all started with the Gregorio del Pilar. But before I proceed, let me say at the outset that what you are about to read has absolutely no factual basis. I am just toying with the possibility that some of the current problems besetting the world -- from the increased bullying by China in the South China Sea to the Ukraine crisis and even to ISIS -- could have actually started as a seemingly innocuous thing called hubris. Ours.
Let us rewind to April 2012. The Philippines was giddy about acquiring a ship that was to be the biggest ever to enter service with the Philippine Navy -- the BRP Gregorio del Pilar, a 40-year-old decommissioned former US Coast Guard cutter. Used to having to make do with whatever that floats, the Philippine Navy was beside itself just thinking of its first real deep water ship.
In fact, so beside itself was the entire Filipino nation that when the Philippine Navy started calling the former cutter a warship, nobody tried to correct the misnomer. Not even the media, who were expected to know better. On the contrary, not only did the media not set aright the factual error, it gleefully went along for the ride as well, even riding up there in the front seat.
And so it was that in every reference to the BRP Gregorio del Pilar, it was always described as a warship. This was the message we sent out to the whole world. It was as if we were warning everyone to watch out because now the Philippine Navy has a warship. The constant mention of a warship gave the impression that we were spoiling for war. It was as if we were looking for an opportunity to break in our warship.
But as we were to regret later, it so happened at the time that several Chinese vessels were seen illegally poaching inside our waters. At this point, let us be clear about one thing -- illegal Chinese poaching inside out waters is not a rare thing. As far back as anyone can recall, they have always been poaching and we have always been apprehending them. The number of Chinese fishermen jailed as a result is innumerable.
Yet, despite these confrontations, no open conflict ever erupted between the Philippines and China. China has always managed to keep its reactions well within levels that can be resolved by diplomacy. Up to that point, it can even be dare said that China respected our sovereignty inspite of what its secret ambitions may have been or what provocations it may have been waiting for it to unleash its real intentions.
Well, into that hair-trigger situation we strode. Where before we merely sent maritime police and coast guard units to interdict illegal Chinese poachers, thus strictly hewing to the civilian nature of our law enforcement actions, in April 2012 we drastically changed tack. Bristling with the bravado of a small child who just had his first Christmas toy pistol, we sent a "warship" to interdict the Chinese poachers.
That was the provocation China had been waiting all along. That was the act of belligerence that China sought to justify what action it had long ached to do in the South China Sea. So, no sooner had the Gregorio del Pilar accosted the Chinese fishing vessels than real Chinese warships came to eyeball ours, prompting our Philippine Navy to hastily order a retreat.
By the way, despite their being real warships, the Chinese take great pains to disguise them as civilian enforcement vessels. This is in direct contrast to our own attitude concerning the Gregorio del Pilar, which we insist is a warship, thus making the April 2012 all the more funny -- what with our warship turning tail in a face-off with civilian vessels. Our navy said the del Pilar had to refuel, but we really do not have to bite that, do we?
From that one incident, China managed to put a foot through the door. And never again would it let go off the opportunity it had been waiting for decades. Now, two years hence, it has claimed ownership of several islets, expanded their sizes through reclamation, built structures and even an airstrip, and declared a township over them for which permission must be secured by anyone needing access.
All the while, we have stopped invoking military might with regard to our own claims in the South China Sea. Instead we have grown moist-eyed in looking up to the United States for help in extricating us from the hole we dug for our own selves through mindless hubris. To our entreaties, the United States dutifully responded with vague verbal assurances, for which we eagerly paid with new deals allowing limited US military access to our shores.
Further north, another rival to both the US and China had been watching with keen interest the unfolding developments in the South China Sea. In particular, Russia was watching how the US would react to Chinese provocations. And it was heartened by what it saw. What Russia saw was an America that was no longer able or willing to pull the trigger.
And just as China had waiting for its provocation, so was Russia waiting for its own to unleash its designs of reclaiming what it can of the old USSR before the breakup. And that happened when the pro-Russian president of Ukraine was ousted. Correctly noting that the US will not intervene in the same way that it simply folded its arms when China began grabbing land in the South China Sea, Russia moved swiftly, annexed Crimea, and now stands menacingly outside the gates to the east.
As if on cue, Hamas began harassing Israel, mindful of the growing tentativeness and indecisions in Washington, which seems more preoccupied with such matters as same sex marriages and marijuana. Into this growing vacuum of confused US policies, an even more scary proposition has taken root -- the establishment of a brutal caliphate called ISIS in the lawless vastness of Syria and Iraq. And all because of the BRP Gregorio del Pilar. Or so it seems as a joke only. Or is it?
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