The Philippines, the next Ukraine

As the war between Ukraine and Russia — in reality the attempt by US/NATO to destroy Russia — grinds on towards the inevitable demise of Ukraine,  preparations are gaining sway to switch attention from this, the hors d'oeuvre, to the declared main course, which is the destruction of China. And so for another episode of “Let’s you and him fight”, it needs another corrupt, misgoverned loser which nobody gives a damn about within an arm’s length of its declared enemy, that will do as it’s told to be the sacrificial dummy.

Step forward, the Philippines!

The USA already has many military bases in the region (see below), and we are constantly hearing reports of agreements being signed between the USA and the western-leaning countries: Australia, Japan, South Korea and various Pacific islands, as the process cranks up. The UK of course is getting its hands dirty as usual, in AUKUS. In this article I will focus on the Philippines, but first I want to put it in the context of the USA’s little known overall plan for dragging yet more countries in the region into the fray, which more fully displays the scope of the USA’s determination to encircle China.

https://sam.gov/opp/3fa531370dde4e6f8ce9c3b8ceef95f7/view

This document was brought to my attention recently by a Moon of Alabama contributor. It was issued by Sam.gov, a US organization, on 18 July 2024, with the title INDO-PACIFIC MULTIPLE AWARD CONSTRUCTION CONTRACT FOR PROJECTS IN THE NAVFAC PACIFIC AREA OF OPERATIONS, and it contains a list of east Asian countries within which the USA potentially will issue contracts for construction work. The countries first.

Caroline Islands, Philippines, Northern Territory Australia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Maldives and other areas under NAVFAC Pacific cognizance.

Well, there’s a lot to chew on there and I won’t delay long except to say that there would be some serious arm twisting to be done (at which the USA is of course seriously adept), particularly Malaysia and Indonesia, both in the BRICS queue which look favourably towards China (Malaysia interestingly does not give visas to Israelis: truly an admirably country!) and Nepal which shares a border with Tibet, has good relations with China and has a communist government! Not entirely fruitful soil, then.

And the work.

This MACC will encompass a wide range of design-build projects that may include new facilities, repair/renovation, and upgrades to a variety of facility types including, but not limited to, building facilities, warehouses, bridges, wharves/piers, dredging, airfield runways, fuel storage, roads, hangars, and other base infrastructure facilities produced in accordance with nationally recognized industry, international, federal, and/or military standards. 

I think you’ll get the picture.

Now I turn to the Philippines. I guess a little geographical round up will help you follow the story.

Number 1 is Shenzhen, China, and Hong Kong is nearby.

Number 2 is Taiwan.

Number 3, the location of the northern three new US bases on Luzon, Philippines.

Number 4, Manila, the Philippine capital.

Number 5, Ubay island, Philippines.

Number 6, Palawan island, Philippines.

Number 7, Balabac island, Philippines, location of the fourth new US base.

And number 8, the Sabah province of East Malaysia, on the island of Borneo.

Note also the position of the Spratly islands, the region which contains the shoals I refer to later.

Next, a little history is necessary to set the scene. First it must be stressed that the Philippines possibly holds a record in that it has been colonised for most of the past five centuries. First visited by the Spanish in the form of the fleet commanded by Magellan who was killed near present day Cebu in 1522, colonisation began in earnest with Legazpi in 1563. The Spanish (whose undesirable legacies include the Catholic church) were booted out by the USA in 1898, but the succeeding Philippine-American war saw the US taking control in 1902.

The Japanese occupied in the second world war, and then the USA returned. While independence was nominally achieved in 1946, the USA retained substantial control through the Bell Trade Act that same year, which included preferential tariffs on imported US products, and no restrictions on "Parity Rights" granting U.S. citizens and corporations rights to Philippine natural resources equal to those of Philippine citizens - this Act, and particularly the parity clause, was seen by critics as an inexcusable surrender of national sovereignty, but acceptance was a condition of the USA paying $800 million war damages. The USA also held on to its military bases on a long lease. The government vote by 12 to 11 in 1991 to have the remaining US bases removed from the country (the air base at Clark had recently been destroyed by a volcanic eruption at Pinatubo) is celebrated in a monument on the waterfront at Subic Bay, pictured here, where there was a large US naval base.

.A short-lived triumph. The USA left for a while but crept back in with five bases in 2016. And that was the start of a new occupation which accelerated in 2022.

President Duterte had performed something of a balancing act between China and the USA, and Marcos Jr had campaigned with a similar policy, but as soon as he was elected he was off to Washington to swear allegiance and the Philippines has returned to being firmly under the thumb of the USA, with disastrous consequences for the people (although there are rumours that he was promptly leaned upon by the usual suspects who had something on him, perhaps a legacy of his dictator father’s period of rule).

MANILA, May 18 2022 (Reuters) - Philippines president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr on Wednesday said his country's ties with China will expand and "shift to a higher gear" when he takes power, signalling intent to advance outgoing leader Rodrigo Duterte's pro-Beijing agenda.

The new order came with four new US bases to be installed. Three will be located in Luzon in the far north, a move that angers China since they are at the closest approach to 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. Interestingly my informant told me that he had actually just returned from this one with his employer, a prospective US contractor. If you look for it on Googlemaps it is described as Permanently Closed so presumably it is on the point of being reinstated.

As my wife and I were travelling to the Philippines in early April this year, a consignment of US military equipment was arriving to this area to take part in exercises involving US and Philippine forces on an unprecedented scale. It included a Typhon missile system which can deliver nuclear armed Tomahawk missiles with a range of 2000 km (this would be in contravention to the Philippine constitution). Shenzhen is about 1000 km away, Shanghai is also in range. China is furious about the installation, and it was later declared that this equipment would be returned to the US in September, but that really seems unlikely - what was the point of teaching the Filipinos how to use it? - and the internet has gone strangely silent on the matter. We’ll see.

The US military will also be able to expand to Palawan, an island over in the South China Sea. Ownership of its western waters is disputed between six local nations, but of course western attention focuses entirely on that between China and the Philippines - they have renamed the South China Sea as the West Philippine Sea! - and the focal point of aggravation has been around the Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratlys. The Philippines grounded a warship there, the 328 foot Sierra Madre in 1999 to help stake its claim, and parked a crew of marines on it, these need regular flights to be serviced, when we were in Port Barton a few months ago, directly east of the Shoal, there were daily flights of military planes flying overhead.

An interesting cartoon from the Manila Times a few days ago puts Chinese “aggression” nicely in context:

In October 2023, repairs and retrofitting to the Sierra Madre started. The Philippine government aimed to improve the living conditions inside the ship by repairing the existing sleeping quarters, adding a modern kitchen, and access to the internet. There have been marine confrontations there, but more recently the action had moved to the Sabina Shoal further north. The Teresa Magbanua has just been removed from there and so for the moment the squabbling has quietened down.

This is all being wound up by the USA, looking to create an excuse to invoke the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty. So the US will also be granted access to Balabac Island, the southernmost island of Palawan, giving ready access to those disputed shoals, and interestingly being the southernmost part of Palawan it is a mere 60 km from the Sabah province of east Malaysia on Borneo: perhaps its dual purpose is to persuade Malaysia not to step out of line? Looking at the broader picture, the Chinese claim, being 1,175 kilometres off its southern shores, seems a bit ambitious, but then again, have you seen where Guam is?

So the new locations are on top of five bases the US already had put in, bringing the total number 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. The increasing militarisation of the Philippines against China places it in the front of the queue to be the USA’s next sacrificial proxy dummy, once Ukraine is completely wrecked.

Seeking to obscure the fact that the country has now been placed on the front lines of a catastrophic conflict, the Philippine ruling elite is now demonising China and people of Chinese ethnicity with absurd and lurid claims that Beijing is infiltrating spies into the country.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/06/21/zkuv-j21.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws

Consequently another indication of the hardening of anti-China policy has been that Chinese citizens are now all but unable to obtain tourist visas for the Philippines and visitor numbers have crashed since the peak in 2019, with disastrous consequences for the tourist industry which many Filipinos are dependent upon. The Chinese tourists, pre-Covid, were then a close second to South Koreans, but since they now can go visa free to Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, the numbers are unlikely to recover. At Port Barton on Palawan island we asked permission to take a short cut through a substantial beachside resort which looked quiet, I asked how many guests they had and the answer was “none”.

But the pro-US policy is not without opposition. Recently, Sara Duterte resigned her governmental posts and apologised for backing Marcos in 2022, but has retained her vice presidency and looks to be preparing to contest the next election. (The rule is just one term of six years, although it is being rumoured that Marcos is preparing to abolish it. There is also talk that Marcos supporters will try to impeach her). And interestingly, the Philippine media unlike the western is not totally onboard with the USA’s support of Israel: an opinion leader in the Manila Times had this to say last week:

“How can Filipinos look up to the US as the beacon of democracy and the "international rule of law" when it is funding the most blatant barbarism occurring in our times…”

https://www.manilatimes.net/2024/09/11/opinion/columns/israeli-us-genocide-in-gaza-continues/1970531?

As you may have guessed by now, this turn of events has had personal implications for me. About the time of Marcos’s election, I was in the Philippines arranging an SRRV. This is a lifetime residence permit. Having married a Chinese woman last October I then began an application to have her put on it. She had be present in the Philippines to complete the application, this depends upon getting a tourist visa to enter there, and this now entails making an application online to a consulate to arrange an appointment! After two failed attempts we discovered that the only way was to engage an agent and pay an extortionate fee which undoubtedly covered the payment of bribes to consular officials. My wife called the agent one Friday morning, and they called back in the afternoon offering an appointment at the Guangzhou Consulate the next working day! And so after seven months’ effort we finally succeeded and she now also has the visa in her passport. We can now come, stay and go as we please, but our interest in spending more time there with the Sinophobia mounting and US missiles potentially aimed at our apartment in Shenzhen has been somewhat compromised.

The Philippines’ GDP per capita, in the region second only to Japan in the 1960s has floundered since, and at $3,499 is outranked by most comparable neighbours. The scale of the poverty beggars belief. Some of the obvious problems in the Philippines are, in no particular order:

1. Rampant corruption (giving bribes is de rigueur when dealing with the authorities). The Manila Times recently mentioned two recent examples.

First, the Pharmally scam, which is on record as the biggest act of official corruption in the history of the corruption-prone state. More than P47 billion ($836 million) was spent at the height of the coronavirus pandemic to acquire face masks and other protective gear to fight Covid-19. That amount was squandered through a rigged acquisition process that either delivered substandard and expired items or nothing at all (rather like the UK, then). More than P11 billion of that money involved a purchase contract with a newly incorporated corporation called Pharmally. A recent Senate inquiry found that much of that money was reinvested in the Philippine offshore gaming operations.

The other is the P5.6 billion school-feeding program. The nutribuns were often found to be "mouldy and insect-infested." Other food items were found to be in various stages of decay. The food processing was "unsanitary" and the packaging substandard. In many cases, the expiry details were misleading, allowing the delivery of already expired items. In all, 10 out of 17 regions in the country were affected.

The writer concludes by asking: “Do you know of any other country where official malevolence has no limits?” You can read the article here.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2024/09/08/opinion/columns/pharmally-2-rotting-bread-spoiled-milk-for-malnourished-kids/1969793?

2. Child malnutrition. United Nations Children's Fund data showed that 95 Filipino children die every day from malnutrition-related illnesses, and 27 out of 1,000 children do not live beyond five years. A World Bank study found that one in three Filipino children younger than five years suffers from stunted growth. The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao — which has the highest poverty and illiteracy rates in the country — has a child-stunting rate of 45%. If ever these malnourished children survive, they will mostly grow into sickly adults incapable of performing their basic duties as citizens.

3. Very poor education standards, the chart below shows the Philippines at the bottom of STEM attainment of about 90 countries (needless to say China, Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong rank at the top).

4. About 80% of the population is Catholic. As a result of Catholic doctrine, most poor families have many more children than they can afford. To give you some idea of the power of its hold, the Philippines is the only country in the world, outside the Vatican (that’s a country?) where divorce is illegal, except for its Muslims. According to a 2022 survey, 17.5 per cent of Filipino women aged 15-49 have experienced some form of physical, sexual, and emotional violence from their intimate partners, from which there is no legal release.

On May 22 just past, the House of Representatives passed the Absolute Divorce Bill by 126 votes to 109, and now supported by 50% of the population it is waiting for approval by the Senate, which seems in no hurry: the latest report says that at least five out of the 24 senators are backing it. Five! Doesn’t look too hopeful: the last attempt in 2018 failed there.

5. The Philippines infrastructure is a masterclass in underdevelopment. While the country consists of over 7,000 islands and so the necessary transportation is largely by sea and air, the main bloc of Luzon which contains the capital and two international airports urgently needs efficient rail transport. By the 1930s the Philippines had a substantial rail system. It was severely damaged during the war and instead of being repaired the bulk was sold off as scrap. From a peak of 1,100 kilometres, there are currently just 130 operational. While the USA offers countries nothing more than militarisation, China through its Belt and Road programme funds infrastructure development around the world. It had plans to fund two rail projects in Luzon and one in the southern island of Mindanao, but these were cancelled by Marcos in 2023, no doubt at the USA’s behest. With its poor passenger rail provision, no freight and no urban MTR services, the 2019 Global Competitiveness report gave it the lowest efficiency score among other Asian countries in terms of efficiency of train services, receiving a score of 2.4, and ranking 86th out of 101 countries globally (Wikipedia).

6. Consequently about 2% of the population, about 2 million, among them some of the most highly qualified, and 60% are women largely working as nurses or else as often poorly treated servants, work abroad to send money home to support their families. Oh, and I mustn’t forget to add, the best Rock bands in China are all Filipino! I’ll post a short video at the end.

7. The Philippines has been listed as the most dangerous country of 193 in terms of natural hazards: earthquakes, typhoons, volcanoes, you name it, they have it.

8. But the overriding problem of course is the more than a century of being dominated by the poisonous parasite that now threatens to destroy it. What the Philippines needs most of all is a leader with the courage to tell the USA to sling its hook, and then follow its nearest neighbour Malaysia in applying to join BRICS. Sara Duterte, 2028? She will decide at the end of 2026.

To sum up. Essentially, then, the Philippines is already a failed state. The peso is now down to 59 to the dollar (it was 2.00 in 1962) while in PPP terms it is about 19, so imports aside it offers a very low cost of living to a foreigner - your money is three times more valuable than you think! Daily wages begin at about $10. Yes folks, that’s the day, not the hour. A few cities such as Manila and Cebu are rich in parts but elsewhere in town and country the poverty - families typically living in makeshift sheds barely fit to house chickens with no utilities, and waste ending up in a river or sea (the Philippines is listed at number 3 of 193 nations responsible for polluting the seas with plastic waste) - has to be seen to be believed. They say a picture paints a thousand words, so maybe a video ten or a hundred thousand. I haven’t gone out of my way to film poverty, but I found a couple of clips from longer films to convey the message, take a look here. It’s just five minutes long. Note the characteristic fishing pump boats, or bangkas, a sort of trimaran, peculiar to the Philippines.

But I love the Philippines. Its people deserve better: much better.

And the Filipino band. Six minutes.

UPDATE SUNDAY 22 SEPTEMBER.

China on Saturday deployed several maritime militia ships to the Sabina Shoal after the Philippines disclosed that it had sent a ship as a replacement for the BRP Teresa Magbanua.