By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Part Four: Where Brawner sees war, China sees diplomacy

Guess who came to dinner but who brought gunpower in his pockets and almost set Taiwan on fire?

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

During his senate confirmation hearing last January 14, Hegseth, could not even name a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) when asked by Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth to identify a member of the regional grouping that has an agreement with the United States.

Hegseth mentioned South Korea, Japan and Australia.

Senator Duckworth then pointed out that none of those countries are among the 10 members of ASEAN. Earlier in the hearing, Duckworth said that a U.S. defense secretary has to have a “breadth and depth of knowledge”, and expressed her concern that Hegseth has “neither.”

In March 2025, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, disclosed that he had been accidentally included by Michael Waltz in a Signal group chat where Hegseth shared data about attacks in Yemen hours before occurrence. The discussions involved U.S. officials, including Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.  A spokesperson for the National Security Council confirmed Goldberg’s report and the authenticity of the messages.

Goldberg later published most of the Signal chat showing that Hegseth posted information including the launch times of F-18 jet fighters, MQ-9 drones and Tomahawk missiles, when the F-18 aircraft would reach their targets, and the time the bombs would land. After the Signal leak, media outlet Der Spiegel searched the internet using a commercial information provider and password leaks, which revealed Hegseth’s personal mobile number, personal email address and its password, and Whats App account.

This April, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General announced an inquiry into Hegseth’s disclosure of classified information in the Signal chat.

Trump’s duplicity?

The world celebrated with candidate Donald Trump as he began his second term as US president and appeared tough at the chanting world peace and destroying the reputation of some of the warmongers who walked with him during his first term,

On March last year during the campaign, he said. “I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.

“The deep state must and will be brought to heel. I will shatter the deep state.” 

But merely three months into his administration, it seems that what Trump meant deep state is not the military industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower strongly warned America about, but his pejorative term for those he sees as corrupted and who have weaponized the government against him, such as the FBI and Justice Department.

Actually, as things started to unfold, the US president has only feigned leaving the North Atlantic Treaty Organization leadership to Europe but has no intentions of distancing from allies. The fundamental logic of US defense strategy remains unchanged – achieving strategic objectives through exploitation of and arms sales to its allies, double speak and manipulation, and expansion of its forwarding operating bases.

What the US is doing is spending less in Ukraine but asking Europe to jack up their defense spending budget to a whopping 5 percent of GDP to absorb the war — more than double the alliance’s current spending target, a matter that’s causing consternation among Europe’s cash-strapped governments.

The suggestion, of course, is that much of that, will go to purchases from the US military industrial complex.

Heritage is Deep State

In the Indo-Pacific, Trump has dodged the question of US’ military commitment over Taiwan, until Washington Post headlined “Secret Pentagon memo on China, homeland has Heritage fingerprints”.

The internal guidance memo that bears the fingerprints of the conservative Heritage Foundation, included verbatim, text published by the think tank last year, reorienting the US military to “prioritize deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense” by assuming risk in Europe and other parts of the world.

The document, entitled Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance with “secret or no foreign national” stamps in most passages, was distributed throughout the Defense Department in mid-March and signed by Hegseth before he came to East Asia.

The memo reaffirms the position that the US has identified comprehensive strategic competition with China as an enduring core agenda, regarding China as the principal challenge to its global dominance.

Today we get sense of Washington’s real intent – Assert “China as the (Pentagon’s) sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan – while simultaneously defending the US homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario,” while “leaving the threat from Moscow largely attended by European allies.”

Li Haidong, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University, said
“the US current radical policies contravene its fundamental national and public interests. Forced strategic decoupling with China would incur unbearable repercussions.

“As US persistently attempts to sensationalize Taiwan region as a flashpoint, essentially instrumentalizing the matter to create regional instability in the Asia-Pacific, the final outcome will not be US administration’s America First policy, but rather an accelerated decline of the US development.”

Responding to the Heritage Foundation’s analysis, Zhuo Hua, an international affairs expert at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said, “Such an extreme policy direction represents only the ideology of a small number of extreme conservative forces, and interests of military-industrial complex, and will be opposed by other interest groups’

 “For the secessionist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP-Taiwan) authorities, the US posture outlined in this document is not something to be happy about, as pressuring Taiwan to increase military spending and purchase US military equipment is essentially forcing it to pay a ‘protection fee’ that Washington is unlikely to honor.”

China launched major military drills around Taiwan simulating attacks and maritime blockades, in what Beijing called a warning after Taiwan’s president Lai Chingte articulated 17 steps to push back against Beijing, and dialed up his rhetoric, labelling China a “foreign hostile force” in a speech on March13.

China’s show of force has preempted this coming April 21 to May 9 Balikatan joint exercises by the Philippines and the US featuring a “full battle simulation” with live-fire exercises, including missile tests and the sinking of a decommissioned Philippine Navy vessel, showcasing the firepower of new weapons systems.

The obvious purpose of recent Hegseth’s Asia-Pacific tour was to hype ahead Taiwan to follow the Philippines and Japan in an arms race, underlined with Japan’s order of 400 Tomahawk missiles.

Expect some of these to be deployed in the Philippines as the US hard-sells the Typhon weapon system to our military.  This launcher costs $336 million, curiously the remainder of the $500 million iron-clad commitment made by Joe Biden that was reduced by Trump.

We cannot afford to buy missiles at $2 million to load that system. But under novated agreements with Japan by Secretary of Defense Gilbert Teodoro, 100 Tomahawks can easily land in our soil as grants or loans under a war-version of the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

Hegseth even upped the ante with a 5.58 billion package for 20 F-16 fighter jets, erstwhile bound for the boneyard.

This weaponry is being justified as “deterrence” against “an aggressive China”, but we are already crossing the line between defense and offense. The Tomahawk has a maximum reach of 2,500 kilometers, and our Constitution renounces war as an instrument of national policy.

Which brings us to a point that the Philippines should be asking itself:  So what are we modernizing our military for anyway – to serve as client for the American military-industrial complex? Why would the Philippines join any arms race when we have a Mutual Defense Treaty that is our insurance policy in case of an external armed attack?

Let’s face it, all these nine sites for the Enhance Defense Cooperation Agreement and all this poking the proverbial dragon maneuvers in the South China Seas, is not for our benefit, but for the United States.

War or food

The combined $6 billion for Typhon, Tomahawks and F-16s translates to P360 billion that can arrest the increasing hunger rate of 27.2% of our population has experienced last March.

It can boost our food security, through a radical reengineering of our agricultural system to higher yield, new farming techniques and more jobs, better economies of scale for lower prices in the market.

Instead of spending millions a day, sending our coast guard to challenge Chinese vessels in high seas way beyond our territorial seas, we should use the funds our PCG is wasting onto establishing a modern fishing industry with deep sea capability.

The Philippines has the fifth longest coastline in the world, stretching over 36,290 kilometers (22,549 miles) which is not merely a scenic feature; it is a vital resource supporting diverse ecosystems, including mangroves, coral reefs, and seagrass beds, which are crucial for fisheries and biodiversity contributing to the country’s food production.

Significantly, 60% of our people live along these coastlines, which partly explains why many of the poorest of the poor are our fisherfolk.

While the coastline offers immense potential, the arable land, or land suitable for cultivation, is a more limited resource. The Philippines has a total land area of approximately 30 million hectares, with about 50% classified as agricultural land. The majority of this land is used for cultivating staple crops like rice, corn, and coconut. 

The disparity between the vast coastline and the limited arable land presents both challenges and opportunities for the Philippines. The challenges include ensuring food security and sustainable land management, while the opportunities lie in harnessing the potential of the coastal resources for economic development and food production. 

Besides cutting on imports, a newfangled revolution is harnessing our food resources can help diversify and boost our exports.

Google AI says in the past two years (2023-2025), Philippine exports to the United States have increased with external trade in goods increasing by 0.4 percent in February 2025, with the US remaining the highest contributor to total export value. 

If we fact-check this with the Philippine Statistics Authority, we get a confirmation.

At first glance, the US and Japan are toe-to-toe in the lead.

Given a nominal 0.4% increase in our exports to the US, factor in Trump’s 17% tariff imposed on us last week, will the US imports from the Philippines,  go up or down?

But have you noticed how the chart separated Hongkong from China?

If you add the two, it will sum up to 1,520.23 or 154% higher than the US or Japan.

No need to be a rocket scientist -China remains to be the gateway to enhanced Philippine trade, given its vast population of 1.4 billion people and the 140 countries that have joined its Belt and Road Initiative.

Our present dalliance with the Americans, however, ridiculously typecasts the Chinese as an enemy. #

   

Email: contact@asiancenturyph.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asiancenturyph/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AsianCenturyPH

Substack:

Also read: