PURE legalese would place America as acting in an unabashed, unimpeded impunity. In the space of just a month, it has caused the downfall of two heads of state. One, Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, whom it kidnapped together with wife Cilia in early January; and two, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, whom it killed in missile attacks at the end of February.
Certainly, it’s absurd to discuss the events as if they are simple elements in criminology. But that’s precisely the problem here. The United States has been committing transgressions against nations here and there the world over and nobody’s doing, again to put it in legal terms, any redress of grievances.
All the United Nations — the world body entrusted with the duty of maintaining world peace — could do was issue a lame call for the cessation of hostilities.
Nothing more.
As if the words of the UN secretary general has the powerful bearing of the fiat of the Pope of the Catholic faith.
And as ever, the United States maintains the criminal, condemnable chutzpah of creating chaos as it chooses.
What can a small nation like the Philippines do under such circumstances?
Appeal to Filipinos in war-torn areas to keep safe and assure them that their government is monitoring the situation.
Is such assurance good enough to keep them safe?
As world affairs have progressed so far, it’s the United States that alone, albeit forcefully, wields the supreme say-so on when to keep world peace or consign it ultimately to kingdom come.
The Maduro kidnapping and the massive missiles attack that killed the Iranian ayatollah, along with several other top Tehran officials sans sanctions of any form from contending world powers, must indicate an amount of world indifference quite conducive to the further, unbridled proliferation of American criminal lordship over the world.
Time and again, the United States has made clear its stand for Iran not to develop nuclear power.
The very elementary observer scratches his head, asking, “why not?”
If Russia, China, North Korea, the NATO bigwigs, Pakistan, India can develop their nuclear capabilities, why can’t Iran?
The question really is not for taking sides in the conflict. It is for trying to seek a way out of the escalating tensions that threaten to destroy not just the Middle Eastern countries but the whole human race.
Certainly, that includes the Philippines.
Iran’s bombardment of countries across the Middle East is centered on the United States military installations in those areas.
That’s understandable. This is war where you hit your enemy wherever he is.
And it so happens that the United States has a lot of those installations in the Philippines.
By virtue of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) of 2016, America had been privileged to establish military facilities right inside the camps of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. By the letter of EDCA, those American military facilities are never to be subject to inspection by Philippine authorities. So, while the agreement stipulates that no nuclear facilities are to be established in the EDCA sites, the very fact that those sites are forbidden inspection by Philippine authorities could prompt any US enemy to assume that those EDCA sites contain — or anyway could contain — US nuclear arsenal.
The assumption is particularly validated by proven US expertise at subterfuge.
Initially for the purpose of EDCA, America got the Antonio Bautista Airbase in Palawan, Basa Airbase in Pampanga, Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, Mactan-Benito Ebuen Airbase in Cebu, and the Lumia Airbase in Cagayan de Oro City.
Upon the accession of the President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., America was granted four more sites, namely, Camp Melchor de la Cruz in Gamu, Isabela, Lalo Airport and Camilo Osias Naval Base in Cagayan, all three fronting China less than 200 kilometers away, and Balabac island in Palawan, face to face with China’s forward military bases in the South China Sea.
Finally, the potential of those sites containing nuclear capabilities has been betrayed by the installation in those areas of the medium range missile launch system Typhon, capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
In fact, such installation has been the cause of China’s loud protests, citing it as provocation and source of destabilization in the region.
Here is the Philippine predicament at the escalation of the war situation in the Middle East. China will be involved. When this happens, the United States will have to mobilize its forces and resources in the EDCA sites, aiming it at China.
Whether Filipinos like it or not, all because the Philippines is host to American military facilities, it is in imminent danger of being dragged deep into the worsening United States-Iran conflict.
In the last video we saw of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., he was a far cry from the bubbling, exuberant, inspired chief executive at the start of his term, ready to tackle all challenges of Philippine nationhood.
“I will not cede even a square inch of Philippine territory to any foreign power,” he swore so valiantly in his inaugural speech.
In the video cited above, he appeared to have lost all the élan of a presidency, betraying instead an inner torture of one tasked with carrying the nation on his shoulders in what is turning out to be most difficult times of unavoidable involvement in world nuclear conflict.
Iran insists in pushing ahead with its development of nuclear power. The United States says “no.”
By what authority has US the right to say so?
By sheer world thuggery.
The recognized arrogance and capacity of the United States to get what it wants done in the world.
How to get out of this gauntlet appeared to be the president’s consuming burden when in the video cited above all he could say to Filipinos in the Middle East was: “Keep safe.”
President Marcos definitely has more options than mere verbiage.
By the terms of all the lopsided military agreements tying Philippine security to America — the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) of 1951; the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) of 1998; and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) of 2016 — all it takes to end those treaties is for Marcos to write letters to America stating he wants the treaties ended. After a year from the date of such writing, the treaties are deemed ended.
The Philippines is released from its bondage to America — from whatever evil things America wants to do to the world.
Iran loses reason to extend to the Philippine confines its animosity with America.
The Philippines is saved.
Surely it seems too simplistic a deduction.
America will involve the Philippines in its world conflicts any which way it wants: the Philippine contingent in the Korean War in the 1950s; the Philcag in the Vietnam War in the 1960s; the Coalition of the Willing in the US attack on Iraq in 2003 leading to the execution of Saddam Hussein.
But then again, it is through such formalities as written treaties that America has been drawing legitimacy for its plunder and pillage of the world.
Without those treaties, America’s involving the Philippines in its world military adventures would be exposed as criminal.
In such a circumstance, the Philippines necessarily has the support of an upright world.
To Marcos, here is your countrymen’s earnest prayer for their salvation: Write those letters now.