DURING the recent ASEAN-Australia Summit, the focus of Australian and the Western media revolved around two ASEAN leaders, President Bongbong Marcos and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. The two presented sharply contrasting perspectives on the world today, particularly on their views of the peacefully rising power of Asia – China.
As usual, the Western press used the international event to highlight the angle reflecting the Western alliance’s geopolitical interest – the “China threat.”
Pres. Bongbong Marcos was only too happy to oblige and went on to grandstand on the South China Sea dispute and how his Philippines would not “give an inch of territory” to a foreign power,” thereby revealing his ignorance of the difference between an EEZ (exclusive economic zone) and sovereign territory.
PBBM pompously presented himself as leader of a nation preparing for war, as one headline puts it: “PH again on front line like in WWII.” Another headline puts it that his country is “in a region under ‘threat’… a Philippine on the frontlines.”
But in the end, he was insulted by Aussie journalists in an interview asking him about the “stolen Marcos wealth” to which BBM could only stammer in reply.
Marcos Jr. swore allegiance to U.S. hegemonism in saying, ”It therefore behooves the Philippines… to maintain respect for the rules-based international order…” which is the US’s arbitrary rule book that defies the United Nations’ and international law subscribed to by 194 countries of the world.
Foreign Policy magazine columnist Stephen War defines “rules-based order” as “the current order, whose rules were mostly made in America.”
Marcos Jr. made a spectacle of himself in order to please the “White” crowd and his colonial master, the U.S. of A.
Bongbong’s speeches in Australia all seemed coming right out of an American speechwriter’s laptop – not unlike what Cory Aquino speechwriter Teddy “Boy” Locsin admitted in 1989 that the CIA looked over his shoulder while writing Cory’s speech in Bonn, Germany and would instruct the “Boy” to rewrite what is not in line with the CIA guidelines.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was the real hero for Asia and ASEAN thru his speeches, as the Associated Press report of March 4 headlined, “Malaysia’s prime minister resists US pressure and says Malaysians don’t have a problem with China.”
The South China Morning Post blared “Malaysia’s Anwar has no problem with China, complains about US pressure at Asean summit in Australia: ‘We are independent.’” To Anwar, instead of being a “threat,” China is Malaysia’s “leading investor.”
Defiant Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia is standing up, head high, for ASEAN and Asia while Bongbong Marcos is being seen as an American surrogate.
The Philippines is becoming the shame of ASEAN and Asia in being a lapdog of a declining power that is eclipsed in the European continent and West Asia and facing extinction in Asia. This trajectory is boosted by the greed and depravity of the ruling families and the caboodle of Filipino sycophants and US-proxies in our country.
Anwar Ibrahim echoes the sentiment of the rest of ASEAN, and Asia as a whole, as the anxiety over the creeping US preparation for committing a Ukraine 2.0 in Asia grows.
US Imperialism is using the Taiwan bogey and the Philippines as stepping stones to sustain its aggression and its decades-long encirclement of China. It has military bases on what it has identified as its ‘First Islands Chain’ of defense against China, with the Philippines as the most crucial along with Taiwan and Japan.
US strategic objective in a war against China is not to win, as a layman would think. As retired Philippine Army general and Intelligence Service of the AFP (Isafp) chief Victor Corpus says, the US plan is to cripple China and Asia’s economy, in the same manner that the European economy has been devastated and de-industrialized by the Ukraine War.
America’s physical economy has been emaciated by American manufacturing industries’ exodus to low-labor cost countries since the 1980s. The US now hopes to bring back these industries to the American mainland.
The US’ sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022 has compelled German industries to relocate to the US mainland. Now, it is forcing Taiwan chip manufactures to set up in the US.
If the US can create an Asian regional war short of World War III, it could achieve its objective of crippling Asia’s economy.
In pursuit of this, the US anchors its plan on China’s perceived reluctance to start a nuclear war, says Corpus who adds, however, that China has the capability to inflict a non-nuclear response to US aggression thru its hypersonic missiles that can hit the US mainland in less than an hour.
And yes, what would prevent China from using its growing nuclear arsenal if pushed to this option by American aggression?