I loved that picture of the Asean foreign ministers clasping one another’s hands in solidarity that came out last weekend. The occasion was their meeting in Brunei last week. The people in the picture included Malaysia’s Anifah Aman, the Philippines’ Albert del Rosario, Singapore’s Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam, Thailand’s Surapong Tovichakchaikul and Vietnam’s Pham Binh Minh.
I loved the fact that the Kampuchean foreign minister was not there. During the last Asean summit held in Kampuchea, the host country proved little more than China’s mouthpiece, taking the Chinese position that any territorial dispute between China and any of the Asean countries should be resolved only through bilateral talks and not through a multilateral one (that is, by Asean negotiating with, or confronting, China, as a bloc). The Brunei meeting refuted that position.
I loved it that there was no American official hovering in the background or in the sidelines to spoil the view.
I loved it that the Asean representatives expressed themselves forcefully on the issue, led expectedly by Del Rosario. Del Rosario warned that China was ratcheting up its militarization of the region and that its “destabilizing actions” posed a serious threat to it. He took exception to China’s People’s Daily warning of a “counterstrike” against the Philippines if it should continue to embark on a path of confrontation, saying, “The statement is an irresponsible one. We condemn any threats of use of force.”
He said the Philippines would continue to pursue legal and diplomatic avenues to settle its row with China. Right now, it’s in talks with the other Asean countries to forge a Code of Conduct governing disputes, which China has agreed, or been forced, to consider, a departure from its previous insistence on bilateral negotiations.
The coming together of the Asean is a show of force in the best way that shows of force can be shown, which is as a moral force. At least it is the best way to meet China’s expansionism in that it entails the least compromises, the least repercussions, the least tradeoffs, particularly one where the loss offsets the gain.
China’s expansionism is real and obdurate. You recognize a rising power drifting toward an imperialist path when it starts fencing off a presumed backyard, however that backyard includes territories belonging to other countries. You recognize a rising power embarking on an imperialist path when it starts asserting a Monroe Doctrine, or variations thereof, officially or unofficially, in the name of protecting itself.
China’s expansionism is real and obdurate, but it cannot be met in a non-calibrated way, a non-nuanced way, a gung-ho way. The latter is what the military alliance with the United States (and Japan) to protect our claim in the Spratlys is. The latter is what offering the United States indefinite—read permanent—access to our bases is.
There is no lack of example from art and life, from history and action movie, of a community depending on, or securing the services of, a savior, only to see that savior turn on it after the savior has chased the menace away. The savior turned predator, or the blessing turned into a curse, is one of the themes of the westerns, ironically—for us—a favorite genre of the old generation, the Cold War generation. That’s the one about a terrorized town hiring a marshal or gunfighter to fight off the bad guys only to have that marshal or gunfighter take over and oppress the town afterward.
The only difference in our case being that the marshal or gunfighter is not unknown to us, he is a well-known quantity. He is the old kingpin who grabbed our town a long time ago, whom we kicked out for being greedy and abusive. We know that the Americans seized this country from our revolutionaries, we know that we fought for the Americans during the Japanese Occupation, we know they repaid those who did by not recognizing them. And we want to bring them back as our savior?
From our own end, or through our own folly, we know that to this day we are still struggling to be independent not just in body but in mind. We know that to this day the “global outlook” we pride ourselves in having is nothing more or less than the same “colonial mentality” we’ve always had, “global” meaning for us basketball, an Americanized first name, and a heartland called America. We know we’ve just begun to emerge from this mental, psychological, and moral cocoon after we dumped the US bases, seeing for the first time where we are, which is in Asia, seeing for the first time what we are, which is Asians. And we want to plunge right back into the Dark Ages?
China has to be stopped. But we cannot afford to do it by jumping from the frying pan into the fire. P-Noy has repeatedly said that the last three years of his term will be devoted to leaving a lasting legacy to this country. He has been doing very well all this time, pushing back corruption farther than any of his predecessors has done, lifting the economy far higher than any of his predecessors has done, firing up the people’s imagination more frenziedly than any of his predecessors has done. But this tack of dealing with China threatens to undo a good deal of it.
The regression to the time of “special relations,” a long period in our history that from hindsight gives supremely ironic meanings to the word “special”—it was special only in the one-sidedness of the mutuality—is powerful enough to displace the accomplishments. Heaven forbid that at the end of the day, or long after P-Noy has gone, he will be remembered as the president who pushed us forward in body farther than we had hoped but pulled us back in spirit farther than we had expected.
That can’t be such a great legacy.