Litmus for Lorenzana
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2019 20:06:09 +0000
I already had doubts that day in November last year when former ambassador Alberto Encomienda called a meeting among like-minded friends to tackle the issue of Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana agitating for review of the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) between the United States and the Philippines. The former envoy had prepared a lengthy paper enumerating the different facets of the issue, the most overriding being that the treaty had long lost its reason for being as far as the Philippines was concerned, so it was high time the accord got scrapped for good. I believe it was in that meeting that I proposed the formation of a group specifically meant to campaign for the abrogation of the treaty. I named the group SCRAMDT for Scrap the MDT.
At any rate, it was evident in the gathering that the attendees were of the mindset that Lorenzana was on the side of the group in regard to the intention of working for the abrogation of the MDT. As it is, the MDT is good for the US, and a proposal to review the pact implied a getting away from the US side. If this were so, then Lorenzana must not be an Amboy as he had been publicly advanced already.
I doubted it, though — but for reasons I could not quite place. If Lorenzana was an Amboy and he was proposing a review of a US-friendly arrangement, then that arrangement must still lack imperatives for America under current circumstances. As far as the Philippines was concerned, those circumstances sum up the simmering tension between the US and China over the South China Sea: US insistence on “freedom of navigation,” its continuing naval war exercises with Australia, Japan and New Zealand, while China pursues its binge of land reclamations that eventually turn out to be forward military bases, with airfield runways that extend to as long as three kilometers.
To the US’ much touted naval power became counterpoised to China’s own increasing military might. This now accounts for the de facto military standoff obtaining in the contested waters of the South China Sea (which even President Duterte has learned to refer to as the West Philippine Sea). To break loose of the standoff — meaning, to gain the upper hand — has presumably been the immediate strategy by either side in the conflict.
Where, then, in this current discussion, does Lorenzana figure?
I judge social events accordingly as they relate to one another, and to that question I tended to take an answer from the visit Lorenzana did in January on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy Escort Task Group (ETG) 539 consisting of missile frigates Wuhu and Handan and replenishment ship Dongpinghu, which docked at the South Harbor toward the end of last year. Lorenzana made the visit shortly after announcing his suggestion for the review of the MDT. Welcoming him aboard the Wuhu together with commanders of the PLA Navy escort group was the Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua. The pose the group struck for the consumption of the media spoke more than a thousand words could: Lorenzana was going the China way.
Beyond that conjecture, I thought I saw something else. President Duterte would be going out of office in three years’ time, and there was no heir apparent to his throne. So, Lorenzana’s curtsying to China early on could be part of the packaging he had to undergo in preparation for that eventuality.
I was heavily relying on historical patterns of succession to the Philippine presidency, i.e., succession by a vice president, succession by a
Senate president, succession by a senator and succession by a secretary of National Defense.
At any rate, that visit by Lorenzana to the Chinese naval vessels appeared to assure the anti-MDT advocates that they had a potential leader in him.
And then came Independence Day 2019. Lorenzana stunned the media with his combative words against China in connection with an alleged ramming by a Chinese vessel of a wooden Filipino fishing boat. Those words had an overall effect of generating intense animosity from Filipinos high on the spirit of nationalism, coming as they did in the midst of the country’s celebration of Independence Day. Coupling that announcement was a posting on Facebook of a photograph depicting a vendor selling stick Chinese flags right among the Philippine Independence Day celebrants at the Rizal Park.
The noise Lorenzana created continued way into the evening, with traditional US chuwariwariwaphs former Foreign Affairs secretary Albert del Rosario, Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, Jay Batongbacal and Richard Heydarian all singing Lorenzana’s anti-Chinese hate hymn. In the evening, Rappler amazingly already came up with a video presentation posted on Youtube depicting the supposed ramming incident, albeit all done in computer graphics illustration, nothing real.
That very same evening, Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo issued a press statement largely replicating Lorenzana’s bile on the incident. And when at the same time also Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Boy Locsin Jr. issued his own protest, it was with a careful annotation that he was “taking cue from Secretary Delfin Lorenzana.”
And joining in the fray was US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim, already hinting at invoking the MDT to justify American intervention in the affair.
All of a sudden, in my perception, Lorenzana did appear like a cardboard image breaking up into bits which I must piece together with such exquisite care for me to make it whole again.
But what happened so that Lorenzana must take his strong stand against China only now?
Assume that Lorenzana is a US boy, a rabid one at that. What hurts the US must hurt him. Conversely, what pleases the US must please him.
Of late, what could be a most pleasing development for the US is its having completely withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty it had with Russia. This means that US is no longer encumbered in establishing land-based nuclear warhead launchers, unlike when it was restricted by the INF and it had to launch its nuclear missiles from the water, like those Tomahawk missiles Trump ordered against Syria in 2016, which Russia failed to neutralize, coming as they did from US submarines deep under the Mediterranean Sea.
Coming down to brass tasks finally, I am reading this paper from the Philippine-BRICS Strategic Studies, a portion of which reads:
“US wants immediate missile deployment to Asia
“In the wake of the US INF Treaty pull out, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced that he wants to see the US deploying ground-launched intermediate range missiles in Asia as soon as possible, ‘We would like to deploy a capability sooner rather than later… I would prefer months…‘”
“US allies Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines are among the first expected to receive deployment of the missiles.”
Now, how’re we gonna get those missiles if the MDT were not in place in the Philippines!
So, now, doesn’t it dawn upon us finally? Lorenzana’s frenzied damning of China now is actually setting the stage for planting on Philippine
soil American nuclear missiles launchers. Lorenzana could be running out of time doing it. As Esper requires, he wants only months to get it done.
At this, China has not hidden its response. With those US missiles there, Philippine military bases will be among its first targets in the event the tension at the South China Sea explodes into a shooting war.
God save the Philippines!