Warning: Marcos may be walking Ukraine’s path

BOTH leaders espoused peace with other nations, including neighboring nuclear-armed behemoths.

Then-presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy won the 2020 Ukraine elections pledging a peace deal with Russia, which first invaded in 2014, annexed the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea and backed ethnic Russian separatists in the Donbas region in the east.

In his 2022 presidential campaign, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. constantly mouthed his mantra of the Philippines as “friend to all, enemy to none.” He even visited the Chinese Embassy on its October 1 National Day, though not July 4 at the American Embassy.

Yet both are now in conflict after abandoning neutrality and backing the United States.

Zelenskyy nearly concluded a peace accord in March 2022, weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded, opposing Ukraine’s plan to join the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), with three nuclear powers and two nations that thrice invaded Russia.

But the US and Britain pressed Zelenskyy to keep fighting, promising NATO arms and funds. So, he trashed the pact, which would have led to full Russian withdrawal and Ukraine neutrality.

Thus, war continued through the last two years till now; some half a million people died, many millions of Ukrainians fled westward or abroad, and the armed forces are virtually destroyed.

The West wanted Russia driven out of Ukraine and weakened by war and sanctions. But the opposite happened: Moscow gained more territory, and its 750,000 troops in and around Ukraine are now Europe’s most powerful. And Russia’s economy has surged with oil revenues and military spending.

Marcos also heeds America

Now, President Marcos and our country are facing the consequences of heeding Washington. Just as Zelenskyy did when US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv, nixed the peace deal and pushed for more war, Marcos reversed his neutrality policy after Austin’s February 2023 swing through Manila.

The President granted US access to nine bases of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), making our country a far greater threat to China than Cuba was when Russia nearly installed atomic missiles there in 1962. Uncle Sam came down hard on Cuba, imposing debilitating trade sanctions for 62 years and counting.

China has not gone that far, but it stopped billions of dollars in infrastructure financing and employed tougher measures against our coast guard and fisherfolk in disputed waters.

Every country, even ours, gets nasty toward neighbors used as military platforms by rival powers. Like Cuba and Ukraine, so too with us.

Meanwhile, escalating China frictions helps America’s agenda, justifying the use of nine AFP bases and probably more, despite the danger of foreign attack cited by US generals, think tanks and media — but not Philippine ones. Plus, building support for extending the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) underpins US bases’ access.

America’s bases agenda has also shaken national politics. Fearful of another Duterte presidency, the US and its Filipino allies have moved against Vice President Sara Duterte while building up House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez as her rival.

So, what began as an unbeatable Marcos-Sara super-coalition, which could have enacted sweeping reforms and stayed in power till the 2030s, is breaking apart.

Even as Marcos and Romualdez led a Rizal Park rally for his Bagong Pilipinas movement, Sara’s brother Sebastian Duterte, Davao City’s mayor, called on Marcos to resign at a city rally against Charter change, accusing him of laziness.

And if the Marcos-Duterte discord was not enough, the US agenda may have helped even the communist insurgency, which will get peace talks to stop counterinsurgency gains.

Leftists had always decried US forces using our bases. But now they have clammed up. What do they get in return? Peace talks were announced in November, urged by peace process adviser and former AFP chief Carlito Galvez Jr. He is probably the most gung-ho bases supporter, even declaring them “no cause for concern” despite knowing that military facilities get bombed during and even before the war.

We ain’t seen nothing yet

Intensifying conflicts with China, between Marcos and Duterte camps, and with communist rebels taking advantage of peace talks — sadly, that won’t be the end of our travails from America’s agenda.

Investor confidence may falter not only over the Marcos-Duterte row but also with business concerns about China frictions, as cautioned by the SM conglomerate’s Teresita Sy-Coson. Who would set up shop in a potential war zone?

And there may be many more EDCA sites, as the AFP said last

April, to enable “360-degree protection” of the country.

That’s also in line with Washington’s Agile Combat Employment (ACE) strategy of dispersed bases. Explained Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, who commands US air assets in the Pacific:

“The whole big picture purpose of ACE is … to have jets spread out over many, many islands [so as] to make the targeting problem for the adversary more difficult. It makes them use more munitions.”

Translation: Many more EDCA bases would make America’s adversaries use up more firepower and targeting all across our country. US warplanes would be harder to hit. Guess who wouldn’t be?

What about protecting bases? Wilsbach does not favor massive defenses. “In lieu of hardening places, what we’re spending our infrastructure dollars on this year is sustainment of our main facilities,” he told a Colorado conference after Marcos granted access to nine EDCA sites in February 2023 (https://www.airandspaceforces. com/wilsbach-no-pacaf-airmanis-excused-from-practicing-ace/).

So, while Guam will get extensive, advanced defenses over two years, it seems no such protection is planned for other sites, although bases here face far greater threats, being more than 1,000 kilometers closer to China than Guam and reachable by many more Chinese weapons.

There’s more. America’s military chief, Air Force Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown, wants to deploy in allied countries intermediate-range missiles able to hit China and surrounding seas. In 2020, the US Air Force under him commissioned RAND Corp. to ascertain if Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand would accept such projectiles. None would, RAND reported (https://www.rand.org/pubs/ research_reports/RRA393-3.html).

But Rodrigo Duterte was president then. Now it’s Marcos.

How does heaven see all this? That’s for Sunday, February 4.