THE late vice president Salvador Laurel, who concurrently served as secretary of foreign affairs during Corazon Aquino’s presidency, once told us foreign-service officers in a light banter that if we ever consider drowning ourselves, let it not be in a glass of water.
I believe this just happened to a retired United States air force colonel who has gone berserk, burning his cover as an American spy dispatched to Manila to foment anti-China narratives while disguised as a Stanford University academic.
A simple verification, via Google AI, of where his mother unit draws money betrays his engagement in espionage operations:
“Yes, the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University is sponsored and funded by the US Office of Naval Concerns (ONR). Launched in late 2021, the ONR provided initial funding — reported at $1.28 million.”
As part of the US Department of the Navy, the ONR draws its funding from the federal budget appropriated by the US Congress to the Department of Defense, specifically within the Navy’s research, development, test and evaluation budget.
The US Naval Institute reports that, “taking its name from an inspired move” in the ancient game of Go, Gordian Knot conceptualized Project Myoushu in 2022 to take a “blank slate” approach to solving the South China Sea maritime security dilemma.
How was the project imported into the Philippine scenario?
Retired US air force colonel Raymond Powell, its director, presented the project in early January 2023 to a conference hosted by the Stratbase Institute, the Manila-based “business consultancy” that also champions Philippine national security issues.
Stratbase, just like Rappler, is an overt US spy base in the Philippines masquerading as a think tank; the latter, as a media outfit.
Powell has since been enrolled at Stratbase as a “nonresident fellow” — another cloak to hide his dagger.
The institute’s current chairman is Manny Pangilinan, point-CEO of Forum Energy, Philex Mining and PXP Energy, the consortium China booted out of the Reed Bank in 2011 for its unilateral exploration of a service contract area outside of the 12-nautical-mile (nm) territorial sea of the Philippines.
Against our current government’s self-serving position, we have no enforceable 200 nm exclusive economic zone (EEZ) west of the Philippines, as existing disputes with Vietnam, China, Malaysia and even nonstate Taiwan have not been resolved in accordance with Article 74 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).
Stratbase is the local adjunct of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., one of the top lobbyists for the Deep State and the US industrial military complex. It serves in the Philippines as the flip side of the Bower Asia Group that established the Southeast Asian Studies program for the CSIS.
Theoretically, Myoushu’s mission, accomplished through the SeaLight Foundation, is to provide reliable and timely accounts of alleged “gray zone” operations through satellite feeds and maritime data analyses to provide content for local media to amplify using their own platforms backing up the Philippine government in boosting its maritime security.
True intentions
Sounds harmless, right?
But the US Naval Institute was more graphic in exposing its true intentions: to render reputational cost to and shame China:
“China’s insurgency as ‘systematic maritime barbarism’ that seeks to ‘overturn the rule of international law that enshrines the longstanding principle of the freedom of the sea’ and ‘impose its own draconian, self-serving, hierarchical vision of maritime sovereignty,’ under which it claims distant ocean areas as blue national soil to deprive weaker coastal states of their own EEZs and fundamental rights at sea.”
The project eventually failed because it did not limit itself to its promised transparency initiative, but freelanced superimposing its own perceptions of how Philippine foreign policy should be shaped. The highest it achieved in Pulse Asia surveys as the most urgent national concern was 5 percent.
Powell manifested his desperation last week, when he himself took off his gloves and ran a two-part advertorial in The Manila Times, attacking the Chinese Embassy for using a good-cop, bad-cop playbook and engaging in what he sees not as diplomacy but as an information war. The retired airman said:
“The ambassador opens a door while his underlings demand that every other Philippine voice shut up and walk through it. The end goal of each cycle is the same: to establish the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) as the sole legitimate voice on West Philippine Sea affairs, and to delegitimize every other Philippine agency that documents China’s aggressive and expansionist agenda at sea.”
Excuse me, this scope is no longer a province of transparency, but a foreigner meddling in sensitive in-country affairs. Worse, he has insulted Foreign Affairs Secretary Maria Teresa Lazaro and our diplomatic corps as incapable of discerning information and critical thinking on what best serves the Philippines and its people.
But what worries me more is that last year, while appearing in the US Senate lobbying for increased defense budgets, Powell severely criticized the “Trump government’s ambiguity, saying it undermines alliance credibility,” as Philippine officials have repeatedly sought clarity on whether US mutual defense commitments extend to the South China Sea.
I am only aware of the Philippine military and coast guard bellyaching this complain. He claims support for what he perceives as a whole-of-government approach, but he seems unaware how President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s fishing for a false start with Beijing in the South China Sea has sacrificed our country’s infrastructure growth, trade and tourism, and direct foreign investments.
This operative has neither respect nor second-guessing for Lazaro and talks behind his own Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which creates the suspicion that he is dangerously moonlighting for the US military-industrial estate or the Deep State.
Nevertheless, for a citizen of the US, which is neither a coastal state in the South China Sea nor a member of the Unclos, talking over our heads, Powell is definitely an undesirable alien who must be deported.
Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan is the vice president for internal affairs of the Asian Century Philippines Institute for Strategic Studies. He is also engaged in print and broadcast journalism.