By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Filipino-Americans have caught on to the fear of a US-proxy war erupting in the Philippines.

Arnedo Valera, known Filipino international law and human rights expert based in Washington DC, has not only organized a picket at the United Nations in New York last weekend, calling out the breakdown of human rights in the country but is now preparing to lobby the halls of Capitol Hill and state legislatures to expand his advocacy to protest the US military creating another “Ukraine” in Southeast Asia.

In his op-ed entitled “Reject War, Choose Peace: Urging Diplomacy Over Destruction in the Philippines”, Valera said “The stakes are too high—we cannot allow the Philippines to be drawn into geopolitical proxy wars or face a situation reminiscent of Ukraine. The potential consequences are dire, with the complete devastation of our nation and the loss of millions of lives in mere moments.”

What worries Valera is, “We see too much rhetoric and not enough action on peace. There are no formal talks, no diplomatic engagements or negotiations taking place—just increasing tensions. If this situation spirals out of control, the cycle of violence will be unstoppable, leaving no victors, only victims.”

He said, “Saying no to war isn’t just a stance—it’s a necessity for our survival. This should be our collective prayer and unwavering commitment. There is no scenario in which the Philippines can emerge unscathed. We must reject war at all costs”.

The lobby will be punctuated by a protracted schedule of mass actions, including a demonstration in front of the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC before July 22, the day President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will deliver his third state-of-the nation address.

Marcos starts provocations

It will be remembered that since the Philippine President announced last February 2023 four additional US bases to its Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with Manila, diplomatic channels to China have been restricted by his administration. This included discussing 11 crucial economic cooperation proposals by China in favor of the Philippines, which partially explains why the country has experienced a severe inflation since then.

What became priority were a series of provocative actions on the part of the Philippine Coast Guard and the Armed Forces involving resupply missions to Filipino marines stationed at the BRP Sierra Madre, a derelict marooned since 1999 on the reefs of Ayungin Shoal.

In its condition, it cannot even be considered a “vessel” because it is no longer capable of navigation, or moving on its own power.

Marcos wrongfully but regularly mentions that as Philippine territory in his speeches and statements, when the 2016 Arbitral ruling has already identified the area to be “low-tide elevation” in Paragraph 383 which invalidates sovereignty claims. His advisers have also foolishly misled the President that any exclusive economic zone exists in the same area, when the Arbitral ruling again classified it under Paragraph 1161 as “quintessentially military situation”.

Even anti-China former magistrate Antonio Carpio has amended his original view on this matter and now advocates “civilianizing” the area.

Marcos has rescinded whatsoever protocols and agreements that existed before his watch, deprecating the situation to a “fair game”.  Before the end of last year, however, he sought a paradigm shift in dealing with Ayungin Shoal, as China blocked all uncoordinated moves by the Philippine side in the area.

That would have opened a continuing window for Philippine and Chinese diplomats to talk, but as soon as Philippine Navy Rear Admiral Albert Carlos worked out a “flawless” mission on an operational level last May 5, he was axed from his office and placed on a “floating” status.

When the Philippine Navy unilaterally attempted another resupply mission last June 17, the Chinese Coast Guard physically stopped our ships and boarded our boats, to the extent of confiscating firearms. In the scuffle, one soldier got a finger cut, and others were hurt.

The Philippine-side, ever insensitive to international law, once again made a mistake of using a “gray” military ship, the same error it committed during the Scarborough standoff of 2012.

Embarrassingly, the Maritime Council with Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and Former AFP Chief of Staff Andres Centino declared it a miscommunication and said the Philippines will start announcing its resupply schedule but Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro and National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano tagged it as “an aggressive and illegal use of force”.

Current AFP Chief of Staff, Romeo Brawner called it “piracy”.

All things-considered, President Marcos denied any announcement of future resupply missions.

Call it by whatever name, it created a “maze” in the present administration.

To where the paradigm shifted?

What has become obvious is that Marcos’ flipflops are more than proofs of incompetence, but what revealing to be a deliberate effort to drive the country to war while confusing the public.

If you listen to him now, he goes to media to make it appear he would be eating crow as he bats for diplomacy, but if you examine what he has been doing on the ground, his intentions are not even close to that.

What does the Financial Times of London suggest is his new paradigm? “Philippines secretly reinforces ship at centre of South China Sea dispute.”

Asian Century Philippines Strategic Studies Institute President Herman Tiu Laurel said it should be “perfectly understandable” that the Philippine proxies of the US are conniving to start building a forward operating base in Sierra Madre to add to its new “Agile Combat Employment” doctrine of dispersed military assets.

Viewing from how the situation has greatly deteriorated following the sacking of Admiral Carlos, this is most likely what he approved as his paradigm shift in dealing with China.

This bolsters Financial Times’ identifying the rusting and dilapidated ship that serves as the detachment of Filipino marines to provide a Philippine military presence at the site as “central to an increasingly dangerous dispute” between Manila and Beijing.

His recent speech at the Singapore Dialogue carried veiled threats not only against China but ASEAN’s lack of unanimity with his nebulous foreign policy.

That sent the Asian Century think-tank to assert “This possibility should, likewise, be a cause for concern for Filipinos and ASEAN, as it clearly will be the precursor for a military base added to the US military bases under EDCA (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement) in the Philippines’ major islands that could easily invite war to the entire region”

The ongoing reconstruction of BRP Sierra Madre is confirmed by the videos showing sparks from welding rods and surveilling overloaded resupply shipments to the junked ship.

No diplomacy can even begin, prefaced with duplicity.

Recalling Mark Twain

Arnedo Valera’s protests on American soil bring to mind how the Philippine American War prompted many turn-of-the-century writers and artists to speak out against those who advocated American adventurism abroad.

It fueled a bitter early 20^th century national debate over U.S. involvement overseas, a precursor to the outcry over the Vietnam War a half-century later. At the start some Americans who opposed the annexation of the Philippine Islands were motivated by racism. One U.S. senator warned of the coming of “tens of millions of Malays and other unspeakable Asiatics.”

Some considered the occupation immoral and inconsistent with American traditions and values. Many joined the Anti-Imperialist League. The conflict popularized the concept of the “white man’s burden,” the notion that the United States and Western European societies had a duty to civilize and uplift the “benighted” races of the world.

But it was the words of the likes of Samuel Langhome Clemens, under whose celebrated pseudonym of Mark Twain, created the blockbusting adventures of “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer”, that the substantive narrative exposing The United States’ true intentions were.

In his article on February 1901 entitled, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” he came out with this riveting message that finds its mark to this day and age:

“There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land. . .

“True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have turned against the weak and the friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic; we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a Shadow from an enemy that hadn’t it to sell;

“…we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his liberty; we have invited clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandit’s work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear, not to follow; we have debauched America’s honor and blackened her face before the world. . .’

In a 1906 essay about the Moro massacre in the Philippines, which was not published until after his death, Twain condemned the American military:

“General Wood was present and looking on. His order had been, “Kill or capture those savages.” Apparently, our little army considered that the “or” left them authorized to kill or capture according to taste, and that their taste had remained what it had been for eight years in our army out there–the taste of Christian butchers.”

More than 4,000 American soldiers and about 20,000 Filipino fighters died. An estimated 200,000 Filipino civilians died during the war, mainly of disease or hunger, when our population was only 7 million.

Reports of American atrocities led the United States to turn internal control over to the Philippines to Filipinos in 1907 with the convening of the first elected assembly. In 1916, the US Congress passed the Jones law that promised the nation eventual independence.

In the interim, US leaders tried to transform the country into a showcase of American-style democracy in Asia. But there was a strong undercurrent of condescension.

U.S. President William Howard Taft, who served as first civil governor of the Philippine until 1901, launched the policy of pacification calling the Filipinos “our little brown brothers.”

 The archipelago became an autonomous commonwealth in 1935, and the U.S. granted independence in 1946.

But until the present, we Filipinos, has not yet gotten rid of our big, black  and white brothers, in their contemporary forms as Austin and Biden.#

   

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