BY Nick Danby

On 4 January, Chinese President Xi Jinping clasped hands with his Philippine counterpart under very different circumstances from the last time he welcomed a Philippine leader to Beijing.

During that September 2019 visit, which Xi hailed as a ‘milestone’, Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, told a crowd in the Great Hall of the People: ‘I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow’ and ‘I announce my separation from the United States’.

Almost four years later, China’s incessant bullying and unsafe brinksmanship towards the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations over rival claims and privileges in the South China Sea have scuttled Duterte’s era of good feelings and drawn Manila even closer to Washington. Before landing in Beijing, Marcos admitted that ‘maritime issues … do not comprise the entirety of our relations’ but emphasised that sabre-rattling in the South China Sea remained a ‘significant concern.’

Practising the art of the geopolitical pivot, Xi largely side-stepped the South China Sea conflict during his meeting with Marcos and doubled down on previous promises of greater economic interdependence. A slew of initiatives emerged from the summit, including joint oil and gas development projects, renewable energy investment, increased trade and a crisis hotline to resolve maritime disputes.

This course correction towards calmer seas underpins Beijing’s decision to rehabilitate relations with Manila and other neighbours by reverting to its old narrative of non-interference and inter-Asian ‘cooperation’. Recent actions and statements, like a pledge that China would never use its military might to ‘bully’ smaller nations, reflect China’s acknowledgment that its decade-long pugnacious campaign to dominate the South China Sea has done more harm than good. By embracing ‘peaceful outcomes’, Beijing seeks to recast itself as a regional force for good, a hegemon that can spread economic growth and ensure Asian affairs are settled by Asian countries—not ‘aggressive’ foreigners like the US.

In doing so, this kinder, gentler China pledges to embrace cooperation, not confrontation, benevolence not belligerence, in pursuit of ‘win–win outcomes’. These outcomes, according to the Global Times, will usher in a ‘new golden age’ in Sino-Philippine relations. But as the saying goes, all that glitters is not gold. If the Marcos administration is committed to upholding its South China Sea claims in the face of Chinese revanchism, it cannot grow too comfortable with Beijing’s ‘cooperation’ approach.

China has pressed its expansive maritime sovereignty claims in the South China Sea since the late 1940s; it wasn’t until the early 2010s that these claims (often unfounded) gained a sharp set of teeth. In accordance with Xi’s ‘national rejuvenation’ goal, Xi-era Chinese military doctrine stresses control of the ‘near seas’, which these sovereignty claims support.

‘Near seas’ control offers manifold benefits. It would enable China to actualise its anti-access/area-denial concept, solidify power projection throughout the first island chain, and raise the counter-intervention risk calculus for Washington and its allies, all while expanding a security buffer zone to protect the mainland. In addition, unrivalled ‘near seas’ (or South China Sea) control legitimises access to vast and untapped natural resources while safeguarding critical sea lines of communication, which China’s leadership believes could be threatened in a conflict with the West.

Yet after a decade of dredging disputed reefs into military bases, forcing sovereignty showdowns, sinking fishing vessels, harassing survey and resupply vessels, and touting its sovereignty over nine-tenths of the South China Sea, China’s ‘sea control’ campaign has come at a steep geostrategic cost.

In Manila alone, the security establishment has mounted a fierce resistance to China’s maritime encroachments, even pressuring Duterte to reverse rapprochement with China and rescind plans to slacken ties with the US military. The same goes for other Southeast Asian nations. According to the 2022 State of Southeast Asia survey report, which gauges Southeast Asian leaders’ temperature on a range of regional policy issues, only 26.8% of respondents trusted China to ‘do the right thing’. Of those respondents who didn’t trust China, half of them attributed it to China using its economic and military power ‘to threaten my country’s interests and sovereignty’. Concurrently, some ASEAN countries have distanced themselves from Beijing by strengthening partnerships within ASEAN and with the Quad alliance. Other states, like Malaysia, have increased their defence budgets to protect their South China Sea territory.

China’s renewed goodwill campaign should not be taken at face value. Cooperation doesn’t mean China will bury its ambitious South China Sea interests. It means China will try pursuing those interests peacefully to quell tensions until it can no longer achieve those interests without reverting to an aggressive posture—just like the last time it swapped ‘win–win’ cooperation for win–lose brinkmanship.

The Philippines will then find itself between a reef and a hard place. China will likely offer savoury economic carrots to Manila. In exchange, it may seek Manila’s tacit approval to militarise Scarborough Reef, remove the embarked marine detachment on Second Thomas Shoal, or permit Chinese hydrocarbon survey and drilling operations in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, thus making it neither exclusive nor economically beneficial.

But Chinese control of the South China Sea is not a foregone conclusion, despite what Duterte believed. Beijing has already adjusted its risk calculus when the price of international opprobrium outweighed the benefits of maritime belligerence. The Philippines, ASEAN nations and the Quad alliance can continue imposing and signalling that cost. It will require the usual antidote of hard-power prescriptions: jets, corvettes, patrol boats, littoral craft and missiles.

Holding Chinese warships and activities at risk, however, demands more than just a platform and a weapon. The missile must be capable of striking the target. Quad partners should begin integrating the Philippines (and other willing countries) into parts of the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness to provide improved joint awareness, information-sharing and targeting solutions. Quad leaders should also offer economic programs to counterpoise China’s overtures.

Already, Marcos’s decision this month to grant the US temporary and rotational access to four military bases and resume joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea was a wise one because it will help strengthen the Philippines’ defence capabilities, interoperability with allies and commitment to resisting Beijing’s aggressive maritime behaviour. More of that cooperation and coordination is needed, although Marcos has made it clear that the burgeoning US–Philippine military ties pose no direct threat to China, despite being a direct response to China’s militarisation and disruption of the South China Sea.

For now, Marcos is right to balance China and the West with economic agreements for the former and military pacts with the latter. Frank, clear dialogue can cool tensions. But all parties interested in upholding a rules-based order in the South China Sea must keep fielding an appropriate defence of that order, regardless of what ‘win–win outcomes’ China may promise. Then, and only then, can everybody win.

READ MORE:

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/china-philippine-relations-sail-on-calmer-seas-for-now/

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During Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr's visit to Japan last week, the two countries agreed to sharply boost their defense ties, allowing Japanese troops greater access to Philippine territory.

Japan has been careful to avoid mentioning China in such security pacts. But all stakeholders know that it is China that Tokyo has put in its crosshair.

It is believed that the security pact with Manila represents a step for Tokyo to broaden military cooperation with Southeast Asian nations.

In doing so, Japan is seeking to develop its military in the region under the framework of the United States' "Indo-Pacific" strategy. As such, it is the US that is setting the stage for Japan to play on.

The US has long wanted Japan to provide more funds, manpower and resources to ease its own burden. The ambition Japan has demonstrated recently is a direct result of the US' endorsement.

It is under these circumstances that the Fumio Kishida government, despite strong pressure and dissatisfaction at home and abroad, insists on raising the military budget and expanding Japan's armed forces, even though the Japanese economy is weak and his approval rating has fallen below 30 percent for a long time.

Tokyo should realize that the real interests of Asian countries do not lie in siding with the US, but in carefully balancing their relations with the US and China to maximize their own interests, and a war in the region would not comply with their interests.

If Japan goes too far in pressing them to counter China, spurred by its own ambition of taking advantage of the US' China containment strategy to seek re-rise of its militarism, it will finally pay for its own misjudgment of the situation. Its enthusiasm in doing the US' bidding will not make it true friends around the world but instead expose to regional countries how desperate Tokyo is becoming to hoodwink them to jump onto the US' China-containment bandwagon through a Japanese springboard.

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https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202302/13/WS63e97d02a31057c47ebae525.html

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The western sanctions weapon is not new to Syria, but since 2019 it has become a lethal one, destroying entire Syrian sectors and killing its people.

First published in The Cradle February 6, 2023

Some 83 years after being employed against Germany in 1940, economic sanctions have become the most widely-used tool in Washington’s arsenal to coerce adversarial states. Sanctions have become a parallel or alternative policy to military invasions, especially after the dollar solidified as the world’s dominant currency by being pegged to oil in 1975 – and further strengthened by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

This US financial and economic weapon has caused Syria suffering for decades, but its impact has become lethal in recent years, particularly after 2019.

Sanctions negatively affect all vital sectors of the economy, from medicine to education, energy, communications, agriculture, and industry – all the way to dealing with emergency disasters, such as the earthquake that struck Syria and Turkiye in the early morning of 6 February, which has so far led to the death of 1,300 civilians, mass injuries, and the destruction of thousands of homes.

The impact of western sanctions and the US military occupation of Syria has crippled the nation’s economy and undermined its ability to respond to major natural disasters of this kind. The situation issue pressing that the Middle East Council of Churches issued a demand on 6 February for the immediate lifting of sanctions on Syria so that Damascus can deal with the humanitarian fallout from the tragic earthquake.

In 1979, Syria was subjected to Washington’s sanctions for the first time when it was designated a state sponsor of terrorism, and banned from exporting goods and technology to the US. This came as punishment for Syria’s support of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), leading also to a suspension of financial aid from Persian Gulf monarchies (approximately $1.5 billion annually) and a suffocating economic crisis, known as the “crisis of the eighties.”

Less than a decade after a short period of economic prosperity in Syria (the net domestic product increased by about 49 percent between 2000 and 2010), the 2011 foreign-backed war was launched, wreaking havoc on the Syrian economy. Widespread damage was inflicted both by the direct destruction of economic facilities and sectors during combat operations, and by a series of US-driven sanctions, which reached their peak with the 2019 Caesar Act and last year’s Captagon Act that targeted Syria’s indigenous pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.

A double stranglehold

In contrast to most cases in which the US and its EU and NATO allies employ economic sanctions to impose an external economic blockade on nations, the sanctions against Damascus are accompanied by a further internal blockade.

This is achieved by foreign military control over oil resources and critical agricultural fields in northeastern Syria – the “bread basket of the Levant” – which are under the control of the US-backed and Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the “Autonomous Administration” areas.

Damascus is thus subjected to a double stranglehold by depriving it of its oil (the main source of foreign exchange). Energy sales constitute about a quarter of Syria’s export earnings, and covers 90 percent of its domestic market needs. Before the war, in 2010, Syria produced 4 million tons of wheat, a strategic agricultural staple which provides food self-sufficiency and domestic sustenance, about a quarter of which is then exported.

Today, the country has not only lost access to its vital agricultural lands, but western sanctions prevent Damascus from importing these essential staples to feed its population.

This has exacerbated the effects of the blockade on the Syrian people, who are currently going through one of the most severe living, economic, and health crises in their modern history, and are left unable to secure basic daily needs of bread and medicine.

Informed sources tell The Cradle that Damascus is incurring double burdens to secure basic commodities – because these cannot be imported directly – which forces the Syrian government to resort to brokerage firms to circumvent US and European sanctions.

The sources point out Russia’s critical role in securing wheat for Damascus, but this too comes with a financial burden of high shipping fees. Similarly, while Iran provides oil to Syria through a credit line, its transportation is carried out by private companies that face harassment from US authorities – whether by detaining shipments (e.g. in Gibraltar and Greece) or by including participating oil tankers to US sanctions lists.

Under sanctions, Syria is facing great difficulties in rebuilding its key agriculture, industry, energy, education, and healthcare sectors which were destroyed in a war in which Washington played a leading role. Damascus has been reduced to seeking out regional alternatives and intermediary companies to circumvent its stranglehold, or receiving help from friendly countries such as Russia or Iran.

This, of course, comes with its own downsides for the US, as it helps forge closer Syrian political and economic ties with Washington’s adversaries. Today, it is Iranian companies, for example, that carry out maintenance operations and construct new power plants in Syria.

Sanctions upon sanctions

Most of the unilateral sanctions against Syria date back to 2011 when then-US President Barack Obama expanded existing punitive measures under the Syria Accountability Act (2004). The new sanctions included a ban on flights, restrictions on oil exports, financial restrictions on entities and individuals, freezing Syrian assets abroad, travel bans on Syrian officials and business leaders, and severing diplomatic relations with Damascus.

In 2019, the US enacted the Syria-specific Caesar Act, granting Washington the authority to impose sanctions on anyone – regardless of nationality – who conducts business with Syria, participates in infrastructure and energy projects, provides support to the Syrian government, or supplies goods or services to the Syrian military.

The Captagon Act, passed by the US Congress in 2022 to combat the illicit trade of a drug made famous by foreign-backed jihadists in Syria, has the temerity to blame Damascus for the origins of Captagon, and seeks to destroy what is left of the country’s renowned pharmaceutical industry.

In 2011, the EU banned exports of weapons, goods, and energy technology to Syria. It also imposed a ban on the import of Syrian oil and minerals, and any commercial and financial transactions with the Syrian energy sector. These sanctions were expanded in 2018 to include asset freezes and travel bans on individuals and entities allegedly involved in the use of chemical weapons.

Britain imposed parallel sanctions on Syria after its exit from the EU, with several allied states jumping the bandwagon, including Canada, Australia, and Switzerland. Arab countries, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia who financially and materially assisted in the war against Syria, have imposed their own variation of sanctions on Damascus too.

A Humanitarian crisis

The horrifying deterioration of Syria’s humanitarian and living conditions – as a direct result of oppressive unilateral sanctions that violate international laws and conventions – prompted the United Nations to dispatch UN Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures and Human Rights, Alena Douhan, to Damascus between 30 October and 10 November, 2022, to assess the impact of sanctions.

In a statement after her 12-day visit to Syria, the Special Rapporteur presented detailed information about the catastrophic effects of unilateral sanctions across all walks of life in the country.

Douhan reported that a startling 90 percent of Syria’s population was currently living below the poverty line, with limited access to food, water, electricity, shelter, cooking and heating fuel, transportation, and healthcare, and warned that the country was facing a massive brain-drain due to growing economic hardship.

“With more than half of the vital infrastructure either completely destroyed or severely damaged, the imposition of unilateral sanctions on key economic sectors, including oil, gas, electricity, trade, construction and engineering have quashed national income, and undermine efforts towards economic recovery and reconstruction.”

The UN rapporteur said that the blocking of payments and refusal of deliveries by foreign producers and banks – coupled with sanctions-induced limited foreign currency reserves – have caused serious shortages in medicines and specialized medical equipment, particularly for chronic and rare diseases.

She warned that rehabilitation and development of water distribution networks for drinking and irrigation had stalled due to the unavailability of equipment and spare parts, creating serious public health and food security implications.

“In the current dramatic and still-deteriorating humanitarian situation as 12 million Syrians grapple with food insecurity, I urge the immediate lifting of all unilateral sanctions that severely harm human rights and prevent any efforts for early recovery, rebuilding and reconstruction.”

“No reference to good objectives of unilateral sanctions justifies the violation of fundamental human rights, she added, insisting that “the international community has an obligation of solidarity and assistance to the Syrian people.”

Calls to lift Syria’s sanctions

The UN report sheds further light on sanctions-targeted Syrian sectors, revealing that the Syrian economy has contracted by more than 90 percent, and that prices have risen more than 800 percent since 2019.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, and sanctions block the importation of “food, medicine, spare parts, raw materials, and items necessary for the country’s needs and economic recovery,” Douhan reports. In addition, Syria “pays more than 50 percent higher prices compared to neighbouring countries to obtain its food needs.”

The UN rapporteur has called for the unilateral sanctions that the US and EU have imposed on Syria to be lifted immediately, stressing that they are illegal under international law. “I urge the international community, and the sanctioning states, in particular, to pay heed to the devastating effects of sanctions and to take prompt and concrete steps to address over-compliance by businesses and banks,” she stated.

Her report illustrates clearly that the tightening of unilateral sanctions and trade restrictions have generated a long-term economic crisis in Syria, with an increasing rise in the level of inflation and a continuous decline in the value of the local currency from 47 Syrian lira against the dollar in 2010 to more than 5,000 lira in 2022.

Electricity and water

The sanctions have also prevented Damascus from rebuilding damaged infrastructure especially in remote and rural areas, and have caused a “shortage of electricity,” leading to daily blackouts.

The UN’s report made particular mention of the deterioration of the public water supply and irrigation systems, whose rehabilitation has stalled due to the unavailability of equipment and spare parts, with serious implications for public health and food security. It stated that the lack of drinking water in vast swathes of Syria is the cause behind the current cholera outbreak in the country.

Healthcare Sector

Douhan’s report also shows that power outages led to the failure of sensitive and expensive medical equipment, for which spare parts could not be purchased due to commercial and financial restrictions. It reveals that 14.6 percent of Syrians suffer from chronic and rare diseases, and that there are foreign-made obstacles to purchasing medicines – especially for patients with cancer, dialysis needs, high blood pressure, and diabetes, in addition to anaesthetics – due to the withdrawal of foreign drug producers from Syria, and the inability to import raw materials and laboratory reagents to produce medicines locally.

Although medicines and medical devices are not directly subject to sanctions, the ambiguity and complexity of licensing processes, and the producers and suppliers’ fear of penalties, ensures that access to life-saving solutions becomes very difficult – especially after the adoption of Washington’s Captagon Act.

Agriculture and food security

Due to water and energy shortages, and financial and trade constraints, the amount of agricultural inputs such as fertilisers, seeds, pesticides, fodder, and spare parts for agricultural machinery have decreased. Syria’s agricultural crop production declined from 17 million tons annually in 2000-2011 to 11.9 million tons in 2021.

Wheat harvests have decreased from 3.1 million tons in 2019 to less than 1.7 million tons in 2022. While Syria was historically an exporter of wheat, it is now importing it through a network of intermediaries, which increases Damascus’ financial burden significantly.

A strategy to serve Israel’s interests

The US and its allies justify their Syria sanctions as a means of exerting pressure on “rogue” countries to force an alteration in their policies. The extensive experience of this US policy in numerous countries, however, clearly shows that sanctions are mainly a political tool used to subdue governments by devastating their populations.

The sanctions against Syria have resulted in a serious food crisis, with 12 million Syrians – over half of the population – facing food insecurity and 2.4 million suffering from severe food insecurity, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

These sanctions are depleting the life resources of the Syrian people, which Damascus believes is largely related to its conflict with Israel, with Tel Aviv being seen as the biggest beneficiary of Syria’s slow destruction. The UN Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures and Human Rights will present her final report on the impact of the sanctions to the UN Human Rights Council in September 2023.

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https://johnmenadue.com/syria-under-the-american-whip-sanctions-that-kill/

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by Laurent Michelon

In his message of Chinese New Year greetings to the diplomatic corps, the new Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said that "peace, like the air and the sun, is not noticeable when there is no lack of it, but no one can live without ».

He confirmed that in 2023 China will remain on the path of peaceful development, the goal of which is to help build a community with a shared future for mankind. Finally, he insisted on China's support for all major countries to promote a spirit of unity, cooperation and reject the mentality inherited from the Cold War which currently prevails. The end of inadmissibility of the Anglo-American hegemon and its European cronies was not long in coming.

On the stage of the Davos Economic Forum, in a voice of ringardisation and neglected this year by most of the great statesmen, the surprise guest Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, took the liberty of accusing the Chinese government, without providing the slightest proof, of being at the head " of a larger hacking program than any other nation in the world ».

Many executives of Western high-tech companies have confided that they were approached in Davos by American intelligence agents, who wanted to know the details of their operations with China, to establish " which side they are on ».

During her speech, the representative of the European Union Ursula Von der Leyen, always quick to give pledges of her unconditional submission to the Atlanticist camp, almost hysterically accused China of all evils, in particular of preventing the access to its market and to subsidize certain companies, as if China had a monopoly on these practices.

Also in Davos, Chinese Vice Premier Liu. He delivered a speech with a maturity and universalism that clashed with the turbulent playground atmosphere created by the European and American participants. Unlike his Western counterparts who now transform all international summits, whether economic, environmental or otherwise, into a platform for the expression of a certain Sinophobia, the Chinese Vice-Premier has been respectful of the fact that the Economic Forum of Davos is above all an economic forum: it began by reassuring Western investors of the continuity of China's policy of openness, despite the long interruption due to Covid. In a climate of anxiety, he concluded on the need for all participants to be even more open, and that the opening of China to the world is an obligation for it, not a simple opportunity.

A striking contrast with the Anglo-American policy now openly anti-Russian and anti-Chinese, where it is only a question of sanctions and isolation, including in certain business circles. Thus, at the beginning of January, during the 41st Health Conference organized by JPMorgan in San Francisco, closed to the general public and off-the-record, the president of the bank, Jamie Damon, explained in front of an audience of investors in particular Chinese, that China must be isolated. This is the same banker who in 2021 boasted that " his bank will outlive the Chinese Communist Party ».

As if to match deeds with hostile words, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin traveled the week following the Davos Forum to South Korea and the Philippines, at the same time as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg went to South Korea and Japan, in what strongly resembles a coordinated call to order of Asian vassals who could develop inclinations of sovereignty.

Indeed, South Korea's Ministry of Defense published a report in December 2022 that is curiously free of hostile statements against China. On the contrary, it is confirmed in its role as an essential partner of South Korea in " the Indo-Pacific “, a completely artificial new grouping of states neighboring China who coalesce against it under the tutelage of the hegemon. This South Korean report is also silent on the issue of Taiwan, which can only displease the American tutor.

The same month, the new Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. made an official visit to Beijing to confirm the new wind of cooperation that he intends to breathe into Philippine foreign policy vis-à-vis China, which is much less based on ambiguity or confrontation that the United States wants. The two heads of state notably decided to resume negotiations on the joint exploitation of hydrocarbon deposits in the South China Sea.

The Anglo-American hegemon, through its increasingly hostile policy towards China, is engaged in a race to preserve the unipolar world it has established since 1945, for its sole benefit, through financial coercion. and military. It has long since ceased to practice diplomacy, and the West in general no longer has Diplomacy in the traditional sense of the word, namely, an instrument of foreign policy based on negotiation. In the case of France, the end of diplomacy has just been recorded by the current government, which has dissolved the diplomatic corps, and with it its very particular and recognized training, to make it an administrative branch like any other. , therefore a faithful transmission belt for political decisions, instead of being a lubricant in the complex workings of international relations.

The hegemon, flanked by its relays that are NATO and the EU, knows no other way than coercion to preserve its power, and therefore logically engages on the path of confrontation with Russia first , to weaken it so that it cannot come to the aid of China when the time comes for the Sino-American confrontation.

China, like Russia before it on the Ukrainian question, will do everything possible to avoid the armed confrontation into which the hegemon wants to draw it, on the question of Taiwan in particular. But by treating China as a threat on all issues, it has no alternative but to consider the West as a threat in turn, and prepare for conflict by developing its army. Thus, despite its many declarations of economic openness to the rest of the world, China finds itself drawn into the trap of the media and Anglo-American think tanks: it is constantly accused of imperialist ambitions by the former colonial powers ( and today neo-colonial), which is the height of accusatory inversion.

This process in which the hegemon is past master, which has its roots in the Wolfowitz doctrine of the 90s, aims to prevent the emergence of any powerful actor on the international scene who could challenge its domination. Jens Stoltenberg put it in no uncertain terms at Davos 2023:

"It is extremely important that President Putin does not win this war […] because that would be very dangerous for all of us. […] The message to authoritarian leaders, not just Putin, would be that when they use brute force, when they violate international law, they get their way". And to add a few days later in South Korea: "Oceans separate us, but our security is intimately connected".

When will the name of the alliance be updated to North Atlantic and Indo Pacific Treaty Organization (NATOIP)?

source: The Francophone Saker

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The widespread refusal to accept that the US government bombed the Nord Stream pipelines is based solely on the faith-based belief that the US government would never do something so evil, despite its having done many things that are far more evil than this right out in the open.

“Okay sure they’ve been spending the last few years helping Saudi Arabia create mountains of child corpses in Yemen, but blowing up a pipeline? That would be a step too far!”

So much government nefariousness hides behind the completely unevidenced assumption “Oh, our leaders would never do anything THAT bad!” It’s a belief that is based on literally nothing. It’s believed because it is comfortable.

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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/02/17/you-have-to-be-trusted-by-the-people-that-you-lie-to-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/

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METHINKS THAT THE AMERICAN EMPIRE PROPAGANDA MACHINE WILL EVENTUALLY ACCEPT THAT THE AMERICAN EMPIRE BOMBED THE PIPELINES, BUT THIS HAD BEEN DONE IN GOOD FAITH, TO STOP THE RUSSIANS' INVASION. WE COULD NOT FIND A BETTER TURD POLISHING ARGUMENT HERE.

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BY Konstantin Asmolov

On February 7, 2023 a very significant event occurred, in the author’s opinion. The Seoul Central District Court ruled in favor of Nguyen Thi Thanh, a Vietnamese woman seeking compensation from the ROK government. Nguyen claimed that she lost five family members and suffered gunshot wounds herself when members of the Republic of Korea’s 2nd Marine Brigade, also known as the Blue Dragon Division, killed 74 civilians in Phong Nyi village in Vietnam’s Quang Nam Province in February 1968.

According to Nguyen Thi Thanh’s testimony, she witnessed a unit of South Korean Marines open fire on civilians, including her, and their home was burned down. “The Korean soldiers shouted and threatened the families with grenades to go outside,” and when the people came out, they shot them and threw grenades at them. Eight-year-old Nguyen miraculously escaped and was later brought to a nearby hospital with a bullet wound in her abdomen. Her 14-year-old brother was also seriously wounded. Her uncle, 83-year-old Nguyen Duc Choi, also testified that the attackers on the village were Koreans. He saw the scene through binoculars on his way to the village and later discovered the bodies, along with American soldiers and surviving residents.

Nguyen’s account is corroborated by U.S. Army data showing that more than 70 people were killed and about 20 wounded in Phong Nyi and Phong Nyat villages.

Moreover, based on the testimony of soldiers involved in the operation, statements by village self-defense officials, and the plaintiff’s testimony, the court rejected claims by government lawyers that the killing was “collateral damage” from the guerrilla war or that the involvement of South Korean soldiers in the killings was not clearly proven.

In addition, the court rejected the defendant’s argument that she had immunity to a claim for damages by a Vietnamese national under an agreement signed between Vietnam, South Korea and the United States, stating that an agreement signed by military authorities and government agencies did not, in itself, deprive Vietnamese civilians of the right to seek compensation from the Korean government.  “It is difficult to imagine that such an agreement has the legal effect of preventing a Vietnamese individual from suing the South Korean government.”

The court also rejected arguments about the statute of limitations, acknowledging that the plaintiff had to file her complaint decades later.

This was the first time that the South Korean judiciary recognized the state’s responsibility to compensate civilians who had suffered massacres during the Vietnam War. And, in fact, the first legal recognition of massacres of civilians during the Vietnam War.

The author has written about the South Korean trail of the Vietnam War, but that was quite a long time ago and the audience should be reminded that from 1965 to 1973 the ROK took part in this conflict. Relations between Washington and Seoul under Park Chung-hee were uneasy, but as a bargaining chip, South Korean troops (about 350,000 soldiers) went to fight in Vietnam, where they were mostly used in the anti-guerrilla war or, let’s be honest, in the security sweeps aimed at the “potentially disloyal population.” Seoul received modernization of its own army, American military orders, and the opportunity to enter the Vietnamese market in exchange for sending troops, which was one of the components of the Miracle on the Han River.

The South Korean military considered the fight against the Viet Cong as a second act against global communism, and the enemy was not spared. While the entire world is aware of the American destruction of the village of Songmi, South Korean troops destroyed four or five villages in a similar manner, including the aforementioned Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất.   In addition, there was a network of entertainment facilities for the South Korean troops, very similar to the notorious “comfort stations.”

“The Vietnam War has been a thorn in Korea’s side for a long time,” The Korea Times writes. Despite the evidence, the Korean government has yet to admit to any mass murder of Vietnamese civilians by its troops. The government has claimed that the massacres had been “committed by Viet Cong rebels disguised as Korean soldiers,” or that the soldiers might have mistaken civilians for guerrillas.

Even under “democratic presidents” unpleasant facts were swept under the rug. While Kim Dae-jung, a true pacifist and Christian, called the events a disgrace, his successor, Roh Moo-hyun, despite his ostentatious anti-Americanism, did everything he could to keep the South Korean Marines’ “Vietnamese exploits” a thing of the past. Rather, the emphasis was on the fact that many Korean soldiers had been killed and injured as a result of government policies, and that some are still suffering the consequences, including Agent Orange defoliant side effects.

The “restoration of historical truth” did not happen under Moon Jae-in either, who struggled to find the right words even during his state visit to Vietnam.

Understandably, after winning its civil war, Vietnam’s leadership did not engage in the same licking of wounds as the Korean leadership did with regard to Japan. The few victims of the ROK army’s actions, on the other hand, sought justice, and some were able to do so in a South Korean court.

On April 22, 2018 the Republic of Korea held a mock trial to determine South Korean troops’ responsibility for killing civilians during the Vietnam War. It was about a series of massacres, such as those in Hami, where 130 Vietnamese were killed, and Phong Nhị, where 70 people were killed. Two Vietnamese survivors of the Hami and Phong Nhị incidents arrived in the Republic of Korea to testify. But at that time the defendant represented by the ROK government pointed out that there was no absolute certainty that the South Korean military was responsible for the aforementioned crimes and, in general, the specifics of guerilla war must be taken into account: “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Nonetheless, the “court” held the ROK responsible for civilian murders and ordered Seoul to compensate victims in accordance with applicable law.

 Based on the materials of this process, Nguyễn Thị Thanh decided to file a claim for compensation in a regular court, which resulted in a lengthy and meticulously delayed process.

In April 2019, 103 Vietnamese who claimed to be victims or family members of victims filed a joint petition to the Korean government demanding an apology and an investigation into the circumstances, but the Defense Ministry responded with a rejection five months later.

Nguyễn Thị Thanh filed a claim for damages against the South Korean government in 2020, seeking approximately 30 million won ($23,894) in compensation. And now, after much deliberation, the court rules that, “recognizing that the plaintiff’s family members were killed on the spot and that the plaintiff herself was seriously injured as a result,” the state must pay Nguyen the amount indicated, plus interest.

What is intriguing is the impact this story has had on the media. South Korea’s conservative media do not dismiss the verdict as Democratic machinations, and rather fear that if the plaintiffs receive compensation, the country will be inundated with similar lawsuits.

According to some writers, the change in power had no effect on the verdict. Either it was done despite Yoon, or the president-prosecutor and supporter of the rule of law had the opportunity to dismiss this unfavorable verdict but chose not to. In any case, no one writes about any pressure on the court over this verdict.

An editorial in the center-right Korea Times seems characteristic to the author. According to reports, the Defense Ministry intends to appeal the case, and the government is looking for ways to reduce similar claims by Vietnamese citizens in the future. However, “we hope that they will not do so,” because killing unarmed civilians, including women and children, is a war crime that can never be justified.

 Furthermore, by admitting skeletons in its closet, Seoul gains moral authority to make similar claims to Tokyo about “comfort women” and forced laborers, as well as to Washington about American troop actions during the Korean War (the No Gun Ri massacre, in which hundreds of innocent people were killed, and other incidents). “Korea can go one step further only when it is willing to look directly at its own past.”

In this context, the newspaper advises the authorities not only to apologize and make amends, but also to pass a temporary special law to compensate Vietnamese victims of massacres, thereby avoiding the need to deal with future lawsuits.

This thesis is shared by the author. If Seoul acknowledges what happened in Vietnam, it will avoid the very unpleasant position that the Japanese atrocities and violence in Korea are a horror and a reason to demand compensation, while the South Korean atrocities and violence in Vietnam are “something very different.”

In any case, in the author’s opinion, Seoul made a critical decision, perhaps not tactically beneficial, but crucial in terms of historical policy trends. And the author hopes that this is not an isolated incident, but rather the beginning of a new trend.

Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia, the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

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By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com

“China is preparing to kill Americans and we’ve got to prepare to defend ourselves,” empire propagandist Gordon Chang told Fox Business recently.

Chang, who has famously spent more than two decades incorrectly predicting the imminent collapse of China, bizarrely made these comments while discussing a future attack on Taiwan.

Taiwan is of course not the United States and any potential war between Taiwan and the mainland would be an inter-Chinese conflict that needn’t involve a single American, and Chang is most assuredly not part of any “we” who will ever be engaged in combat with the Chinese military under any circumstances.

Chang frames his narrative as though China is menacing Americans in their homes, when in reality only the exact opposite is true: the U.S. has been militarily encircling China for many years and is rapidly accelerating its efforts to do so.

Just the other day the Philippines announced the locations of four military bases to which the U.S. will now have access in its ongoing encirclement operation, most of them in the northern provinces closest to China.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes:

“Three of the Philippine bases will be located in northern Philippine provinces, a move that angers China since they can be used as staging grounds for a fight over Taiwan. The US will be granted access to the Lal-lo Airport and the Naval Base Camilo Osias, which are both located in the northern Cagayan province. In the neighboring Isabela province, the US will gain access to Camp Melchor Dela Cruz.

The US military will also be able to expand to Palawan, an island province in the South China Sea, disputed waters that are a major source of tensions between the US and China. The US will be granted access to Balabac Island, the southernmost island of Palawan.

The new locations are on top of five bases the US currently has access to, bringing the total number of bases the US can rotate forces through in the Philippines to nine. The expansion in the Philippines is a significant step in the US effort to build up its military assets in the region to prepare for a future war with China.”

So it’s very clear who the aggressor is here and who is preparing to attack whom. Imperial spinmeisters like Gordon Chang are just lying when they frame China’s militarizing to defend itself against undisguised US encirclement as China militarizing to attack Americans.

Fun fact: U.S. officials used to pretend China was crazy and paranoid for saying this encirclement was happening. In the 1995 book Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, William Blum wrote the following:

“In March 1966, Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke before a congressional committee about American policy toward China. Mr. Rusk, it seems, was perplexed that ‘At times the Communist Chinese leaders seem to be obsessed with the notion that they are being threatened and encircled.’ He spoke of China’s ‘imaginary, almost pathological, notion that the United States and other countries around its borders are seeking an opportunity to invade mainland China and destroy the Peiping [Peking] regime’. The Secretary then added:

‘How much Peiping’s ‘fear’ of the United States is genuine and how much it is artificially induced for domestic political purposes only the Chinese Communist leaders themselves know. I am convinced, however, that their desire to expel our influence and activity from the western Pacific and Southeast Asia is not motivated by fears that we are threatening them.’ “

Another fun fact: thanks to a 2021 revelation by Daniel Ellsberg, we now know that the secretary of state’s comments about how crazy and paranoid China was for thinking the US wanted to attack it came just eight years after the U.S. had seriously considered acting on plans it had drawn up to launch a nuclear strike on the Chinese mainland.

Mainstream Western imperialists of all stripes have long recognized that a hard conflict with China will be necessary at some point in the future if they’re to continue their domination of the world. In his 2005 book Superpatriot, Michael Parenti wrote that the unipolarist neoconservative “PNAC” (Project for the New American Century) ideology that had by that point taken over US foreign policy was ultimately geared toward a future conflict with China:

“The PNAC plan envisions a strategic confrontation with China, and a still greater permanent military presence in every corner of the world. The objective is not just power for its own sake but power to control the world’s natural resources and markets, power to privatize and deregulate the economies of every nation in the world, and power to hoist upon the backs of peoples everywhere — including North America — the blessings of an untrammeled global ‘free market.’ The end goal is to ensure not merely the supremacy of global capitalism as such, but the supremacy of American global capitalism by preventing the emergence of any other potentially competing superpower.”

But you can see the twinkle of this looming conflict in the eyes of Western imperialists long before any of this. In a 1902 interview (which was not published until 1966 — a year after Churchill’s death), Churchill candidly voiced his support for partitioning China at some point in the future in order to preserve the dominance of the “Aryan stock” over “barbaric nations”:

“The East is interesting, and to no one can it be more valuable and interesting than to anyone who comes from the West.

I think we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them. I believe that as civilized nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations. I believe in the ultimate partition of China — I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.”

The word “partition” here means breaking a nation up into smaller nations, i.e. balkanization. To this day we see Western imperialists pushing for the partitioning of disobedient nations such as Russia and Syria, and we still see this with China in the push to permanently amputate regions like Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan from Beijing.

China’s sheer size, social cohesion and geostrategic location have long been recognized as a potential problem for Western imperialists who wish to ensure their ability to dominate and control, and now we’re seeing that all come to a head. Churchill said of a future confrontation with China “I hope we shall not have to do it in our day” because that confrontation has always been certain to be horrific, and today in the Atomic Age this is far more true than it was in 1902.

And in fact, we do not have to do it in our day, either. We don’t have to do it in any day. The only reason we’re being pushed toward a profoundly dangerous conflict with China is because it’s the only way for Western imperialists to maintain their hegemonic control of this planet, but their hegemonic control of this planet has brought us to a point of endlessly escalating nuclear brinkmanship and looming ecosystemic collapse. It hasn’t exactly been working out great, is what I am saying.

There’s no reason the West can’t simply accept the existence of other powers and stop trying to dominate everyone on earth. We have long been ruled by tyrants who continually push our world toward suffering and death in the name of securing more power and control, but we don’t need to accept their rule. They do not have a healthy vision for our species, and there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them. Their rule is done as soon as enough of us decide it is.

Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes.  For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.

This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/05/02/protests-erupt-against-u-s-military-exercises-and-expansion-of-u-s-military-footprint-in-the-philippines/

This past month, more than 3,000 U.S. and Filipino soldiers participated in a three-week live-fire military exercise called Balikatan, which included a drill to blow up a mock Chinese warship in the South China Sea.

The exercises coincided with the U.S. Navy’s sailing a guided-missile destroyer, the USSMilius, within 12 miles of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands near the Philippines, over which China claims sovereignty.

Demonstrators burn a U.S. flag during a rally in front of Camp Aguinaldo military headquarters in Quezon City, Philippines, on April 11, 2023, as they protest opening ceremonies for the joint military exercise Balikatan, Tagalog for “shoulder-to-shoulder.” The U.S. and the Philippines began their largest combat exercises in decades that will involve live-fire drills, including a boat-sinking rocket assault in waters across the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. [Source: defensenews.com]

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BY Nguyen Kien Van

Despite gaining independence in 1946, the Philippines is still under US political and security control, remaining a US bridgehead in the southern part of the Asia-Pacific region.

The sustained military presence of Washington was a requirement for the island country’s freedom. Under the Treaty on Military Bases, the Philippine government relinquished control of 23 military reservations totaling 4,000 square kilometers, or 1.3 percent of the country’s land area. Tens of thousands of American troops were stationed there.

In the years that followed, the territory under US control dwindled progressively, but essential facilities remained, the most important of which were the Naval Base Subic Bay facility fit even for nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and Clark Air Base facility, capable of hosting B-52 strategic bombers.  The Filipinos refused to renew the agreement in 1991, and the Americans met the withdrawal requirements, handing over all infrastructure to the locals.

The United States was focused on the Middle East at the time, and a joint exercise and the potential of temporarily basing its ships in the framework of a mutual defense pact were deemed adequate levels of presence in the region. It seemed that Manila had finally gained full independence.

However, in the early 2010s, the primary focus of US strategy began to turn toward the Asia-Pacific region, reinforcing the role of its ally in Southeast Asia. In 2014, the two countries signed an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which, in addition to boosting cooperation, called for the rotational return of US military forces to five Philippine facilities.

The move did not require any excessive political effort on the part of Washington. The local elite, all involved in business with the US, could not defy a senior ally. Even the Philippines’ previous president, Rodrigo Duterte, who ardently urged a U-turn toward China, did not dare to dramatically alter the situation.  The deployment of American forces back to the islands was slightly stalled during his tenure, but now the current Philippine President and loyalist to the USA, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., says the countries have agreed to post American troops at four more locations, with their geography clearly reflecting the plans’ anti-Chinese bent.

Three of them—two naval bases and one air base—will be positioned in the north of the island of Luzon, making them the closest place to Taiwan where US forces will be deployed, while also allowing them to control the movement of the Chinese navy through the strait between the islands. Another facility on southwestern Balabac Island is openly supposed to secure sea and air operations in the South China Sea, as well as radio reconnaissance of activities around Chinese outposts on the Spratly Islands and Mischief Reef.

A large portion of the Filipino people, particularly in areas where the foreign force is stationed, is vehemently opposed to the Americans’ return. First, the presence of thousands of aliens covered by the Visiting Forces Agreement excludes them from the field of local law, i.e. grants them full immunity, on a par with diplomatic immunity.

 At a minimum, it leads to an increase in the number of offenses. Just look at the US base in Okinawa, the largest in the region. The presence of Americans has resulted in an upsurge in drug-related crimes, prostitution, and drunken debauchery in bars. As a case in point, the marine who hit an elderly Japanese man with a truck in November 2017 only got away with an internal investigation, which resulted in his reassignment.

When you consider that the presence of US military personnel on the islands makes the indigenous population a valid target under international law, all of this seems inconsequential. It turns out that if the conflict between the United States and China progresses further, the Filipinos will face an automatic nuclear strike. Given the flight time, it is not certain that they will even have time to realize what has changed in the big geopolitical game.

https://journal-neo.org/2023/07/13/the-philippines-still-cannot-get-off-the-colonial-needle/

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Brian Berletic
Washington’s Political Capture of the Philippines: A Former Colony, a Future Proxy

Tensions continue to grow in the Asia-Pacific region and more specifically in the South China Sea where China faces off against the United States and its collection of regional proxies including Japan and Australia.

While the US claims these growing tensions stem from China’s desire to undermine “freedom of navigation” and stability in the region, it is instead part of a decades-long US policy of containing China.

As the US continues to implement this policy, the prospects of an Ukraine-style conflict-by-proxy erupting in the Asia-Pacific region grow.

The US Seeks to Control Asia-Pacific, Not Protect It 

In US State Department documents from as far back as the 1960s, it is admitted that America’s military presence in Asia is maintained, “in support of a long-run United States policy to contain Communist China.” 

These same documents admit that the US maintains three fronts to “contain China” including, “(a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.” 

Washington currently maintains tens of thousands of US troop along the “Japan-Korea front.”

Along the “India-Pakistan front” the US has attempted to undermine Chinese-Pakistani ties through the backing of armed separatists in Baluchistan province, targeting infrastructure projects of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) all while the US courts India as part of its anti-China “Quad” alliance.

Along the “Southeast Asia front,” the US has attempted to build up and install into power anti-Chinese political parties. In Myanmar, the US is backing an armed conflict attempting to overthrow the China-friendly government and replace it with a US client regime. But at the very center of current and growing tensions between the US and China is the Southeast Asian state of the Philippines.

Far from “supporting” the Philippines, Washington fully intends to pit the nation against China at the full expense of the Philippines’ own best interests.

While China stands as the Philippines’ largest and most important trade partner and Manila’s best prospect for developing badly needed modern infrastructure, Washington would have Filippino public funds diverted instead to military spending, fueling tensions that will jeopardize trade and infrastructure cooperation with China.

Instead of Chinese-built roads, rail, ports, hospitals, and schools amid growing bilateral trade, the archipelago nation will instead invest in ships, warplanes, and military facilities to host US troops.

Like Ukraine in Eastern Europe, the Philippines will watch its economy spiral as public time, money, energy, and attention is increasingly invested into a growing proxy conflict orchestrated by and for Washington. The Philippines, already tragically lagging behind the rest of ASEAN, will see the gap in economic power and development widen even further over the next decade if Washington’s political capture of Manila continues.

The Philippines: A Former Colony, Not a “Friend” 

It is important to understand that while the US State Department talks about “support for the Philippines in the South China Sea,” and helping to protect “lawful Philippine maritime operations” against a “dangerous” China, it was the United States that had, in fact, invaded, occupied, and colonized the Philippines.

During America’s colonial rule, the people of the Philippines were brutalized and exploited.

The US State Department on its own webpage titled, “The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902,” admits:

After its defeat in the Spanish-American War of 1898, Spain ceded its longstanding colony of the Philippines to the United States in the Treaty of Paris.

The ensuing Philippine-American War lasted three years and resulted in the death of over 4,200 American and over 20,000 Filipino combatants. As many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, famine, and disease.

The US State Department’s Office of the Historian also admits, “U.S. forces at times burned villages, implemented civilian reconcentration policies, and employed torture on suspected guerrillas.” 

The Philippines gained independence only in 1945 but has since been the subject of long-standing efforts by Washington to reassert influence over the country including through the basing of US military forces and now Washington’s overt use of the Philippines as a proxy in its policy of confronting and containing China.

The exploitation of impoverished Filipinos by the US continued long after gaining “independence,” including specifically on US bases in the Philippines itself. The Nation in a 2023 article titled, “Preparing for War in the South China Sea,” would admit:

…activists say they are troubled by the fact that when the United States employed tens of thousands of Filipinos at the Clark and Subic Bay bases, those workers faced exploitation and wage discrimination, a dynamic intensified by US assertions that it could override Philippine labor law. 

The same article noted how even as the US begins to expand its military presence in the Philippines today, damage done to the population and environment from previous decades of military occupation has yet to be rectified.

Fabricating a Pretext 

While the Western media attempts to convince the global public that China represents a unique threat to maritime freedom of navigation and territorial claims in the South China Sea, the region is, in fact, the site of multiple overlapping maritime claims resulting in long-standing disputes not just between various Southeast Asian claimants and China, but also among themselves.

The disputes can at times escalate in spectacular fashion.

The Star, a Malaysian media platform, in a 2023 article titled, “Kelantan MMEA disposes of seven seized Vietnamese boats,” and the Vietnamese media platform VN Express in a 2018 article titled, “Indonesia sinks 86 Vietnamese fishing boats,” illustrates not only that maritime disputes exist among Southeast Asian nations and have spanned many years, but that these disputes involve confrontations at sea resulting in detained crews, seized vessels, and even the sinking of such vessels.

Despite the seemingly severe nature of these confrontations, bilateral and regional diplomatic relations, trade, and cooperation continue on good and growing terms. In other words, while these disputes exist, competing claimants value and benefit from regional stability more than escalating these specific disputes. The economic and political value of any one claimant resolving these disputes decisively in their favor is negligible compared to the benefits of continued stability and cooperation with other claimants, including China.

The United States has crossed the entire Pacific Ocean to insert itself into these otherwise ordinary and common disputes, and escalate them into a regional or even global conflict. The US and its allies, including Australia and Japan, are using this as a pretext to militarize the Philippines and back it in a confrontation with China in an attempt to dangerously disrupt the status quo surrounding these existing disputes, done at the expense of not only the Philippines relations with China, but at the expense of regional stability.

According to Harvard University’s Atlas of Economic Complexity, as of 2021, China represented the Philippines’ largest export market at around 33% versus the US at 14.5%, Japan at 11% and Australia at less than 1%. Even combined, the anti-China AUKUS alliance together with Japan represents a smaller export market for the Philippines.

The Philippines counts China as its largest source of imports as well at 35% while, again, AUKUS+Japan combined, accounts for less than 16%.

It is also important to consider the majority of the Philippines’ trade is conducted across Asia. Therefore, in addition to sabotaging trade with China directly, a regional conflict would impact and undermine the Philippines’ trade with the rest of Asia, just like the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has undermined both Ukraine’s own economy and Europe’s economy as a whole.

Just as the US did to Ukraine upon its political capture by Washington in 2014, there are no viable alternatives offered for the Philippines to replace the amount of economic cooperation taking place between it and China as it eagerly escalates toward conflict with Beijing. If tensions continue to grow and economic ties begin to unravel, the Philippines, like Ukraine, will simply shed economic prosperity while diverting what little wealth it has into increased military spending.

The notion that China poses a genuine threat to the Philippines based on long-standing, ongoing maritime disputes (which exist worldwide even among European nations), is a fabricated pretext for a vast regional military build-up led by the United States in an attempt to contain China.

The notion that China is threatening trade and navigation in the South China Sea is also a fabricated pretext. The vast majority of all maritime shipping transiting the South China Sea is either coming from or going to China, including to and from nations like the Philippines, according to the US government-funded Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in a study titled, “How Much Trade Transits the South China Sea?”

More than a quarter of all shipping through the South China Sea consists of Chinese exports. Other regional nations moving exports through the South China Sea count China as their largest or one of their largest trade partners, meaning that much of these exports are likely headed to China itself.

Here is revealed the true purpose of a US military build-up in and around the South China Sea – threatening, interfering with, and possibly even interdicting Chinese maritime trade, all as part of a wider effort to contain China. An additional benefit of this policy is the sabotaging of other regional economies, creating a weaker Asia the US is better able to maintain primacy over.

As is often the case, the US pursues a policy in reality diametrically opposed to the fictional policies it publicly announces. The US is supposedly involved in protecting maritime trade of nations like the Philippines through the South China Sea from China, the very nation the Philippines is trading with the most.

The price the Philippines is paying for Washington to “protect” it from Chinese aggression and encroachment taking place in fiction, is the very real surrender of Filipino sovereignty, territory, foreign policy, and economic prospects to Washington.

Only time will tell how long the Philippines will spiral down into the socio-political and economic black hole Washington has opened beneath it, but as Ukraine has demonstrated, the longer the Philippines spirals toward it, the harder it will be to avert the inevitability of disappearing into it entirely.

 Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

https://journal-neo.su/2024/04/09/washingtons-political-capture-of-the-philippines-a-former-colony-a-future-proxy/

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