Offline: Don’t fall for China’s trap, Mr. Marcos
China last week said the Philippines should consider holding joint military exercises with China’s armed forces. The possibility was raised by Beijing’s ambassador to Manila.
There is no reason why the Philippines should accept the kind offer, and many reasons why it should flat out be rejected.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines has nothing to gain in training alongside their Chinese counterparts. In all likelihood, the Filipino soldiers will be treated like kid brothers of the Chinese soldiers and officers. Easy to bully the same way China’s Coast Guard continues to bully the Philippine Coast Guard every chance they get.
Not to be racist or anything – I have said on numerous occasions that I have some Chinese blood, for better or worse – but China may want nothing more than to train with Filipino soldiers, specifically the ones who have trained with US forces in the annual Balikatan exercises.
The Chinese are devious this way. They will live up to their reputation of being inscrutable folks. They will pick up what they want to learn from us, and use that knowledge in their greater intelligence war with the US.
To train with Filipino soldiers is to learn the strategies and tactics that have been picked up from the American forces they have trained with regularly.
China is not to be underestimated. It is not only their economy that has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few decades. They have also had major scientific accomplishments, to the point that they are now seriously challenging the US in being the first to establish a permanent station on the moon.
Their long-term goal is to overtake the US as the world’s greatest superpower.
I used to believe that their President Xi was a semi-madman in the mold of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He’s not. He actually comes across as a smart man who knows how to toy with other world leaders.
Like Putin, Xi will also pass on to history one of these years. But he has set the stage for his country to press forward on all fronts until the time comes that China would have overtaken the US as possessing the strongest military and economy in the world.
All of the world’s greatest powers – from the Greeks to the Romans to more recent players like the Spanish and the British and now the US –have risen and eventually fallen. Strongmen like Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Atilla the Hun, among others created vast empires, the likes of which had never been seen before they came along.
But the empires they created eventually fell by the wayside when they passed away. China may not meet that same fate.
Xi is fast becoming a combined economic and military conqueror, but time may be against him, being a senior citizen and all. But the burgeoning Chinese empire he is creating may outlive him, thereby ensuring his place in history. He may want to overshadow the late, great Mao Zedung himself.
In a way, China has already partially conquered the Philippines, thanks mostly to the traitor Rodrigo Duterte.
Where Noynoy Aquino used his brains to defeat China by taking them to international court, Duterte simply surrendered even the country’s patrimony to Beijing without putting up any kind of fight.
This he did by default, reasoning that going to war with China would be a useless exercise as the Philippines would lose in a matter of days.
Too bad Duterte is no student of modern history, as he may not be aware that tiny Ukraine has stood up to Russia and is even beating the Russian invaders in a war that was supposed to last only a few days, or weeks at most.
China’s eventual goal may be to hold the Philippines by the next like a good little boy, but there is no reason why they should be helped by the very armed forces that is supposed to protect the Philippines against any foreign threat.
Incidentally, a little country like Vietnam also humiliated the mighty US of A a few decades ago, and they did so by fighting smart, not just hard. So see? The People’s Republic of China should not be deemed as an unstoppable conqueror who can take over the Philippines without a fight.
And by the way, one of the top US military leaders of all time, General Douglas MacArthur, once said that if he had 10,000 Filipino soldiers under him, he could conquer anyone, or words to that effect.
In other words, there was a time when the Filipino Fighting Man was at par with the world’s bravest. I’m not sure if the same thing can be said now. Not after having a commander in chief like Duterte who once said that China might as well make the Philippines one of its provinces. Maybe he was kidding, maybe he was not.
There may, however, be one reason why joint exercises may be of some help to the country, and it borders on the realm of weird fiction.
The US Congress has been holding hearings on what has previously been considered a fringe, even silly, belief that extraterrestrials walk among us. Seriously.
A most credible witness confirmed that the US is in possession of alien craft and has interacted with non-human beings.
The testimony was before a US Congressional body not many years ago, but very recently. As in last week, recently.
Previously, the US armed forces practically admitted that flying saucers or UFOs are real, even releasing videos showing what has come to be known as the ‘tic tac’ space ships, now also called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.
Presuming that they’re real, the next question is: what are their intentions? Are they friendly or do they have more sinister intentions?
Whatever the case may be, it is best to be prepared. In which case, joint military exercises with all countries would be advisable, North Korea included.
I, for one, would like to see and hear what NoKor boy and girl bands look and sound like.
And yes, folks, I’m kidding. But where joint military drills with China is concerned, I’m not. The answer has to be a big, fat NO.
