Let's not beg for help

IS IT a case of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind? The first few months of the Duterte presidency have been marked with unrestrained antiAmerican rhetoric. Go to hell, the Americans were told. We will survive without any help from you. We're leaving your United Nations. It's going to be the Philippines, China and Russia against the world.

Now comes the US government announcing that it has deferred aid for our anti-poverty program and here we are pleading for a reconsideration of the decision. Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, who knows (better than Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay) how the US refusal would impact our anti-poverty program, said he "hoped" the financial package will eventually be cleared. That's diplomatic speak for begging.

The country's top diplomat characteristically took a more defiant stand, reflecting Duterte's earlier pronouncements. If you really like to help us, he told the US, do it without conditions.

Unfortunately, and this is something that Yasay surely knows, there are no freebies in bilateral relations. There is always a string attached to a foreign country's act of generosity. In this particular case, the US financial grant is tied to their, not our determination, that we have complied with internationally-accepted norms of respect for human rights.

This is a sore spot for the Duterte administration. No less than the nation's own survival is at stake in the war against drugs, they say, and the least that you, Americans, can do if you do not want to support us is to leave us alone. And please do not lecture us about respect for human rights because you massacred Filipinos when you invaded us and you continue to execute your own people.

As if the vehemence with which we expressed our displeasure was not enough, we declared that henceforth we were pursuing an independent foreign policy, which, in case it's meaning would be lost on anyone, we defined as cutting our umbilical cord to America. Then came that famous declaration of the 'three of us against the world."

The rapprochement with China came with a tidy initial cost: we abandoned the decision of an arbitral tribunal that recognized Philippine sovereignty over the West Philippine Sea. It was just a piece of paper, we said, given China's resolute position not to honor it.

Indeed, China, which did not participate in the proceedings, was not bound by the decision. But to set it aside for that reason alone was myopic because it failed to consider the weight of international opinion that the "piece of paper" carried.

Not surprisingly, an unburdened China proceeded with the militarization of the West Philippine Sea. There are now anti-aircraft guns mounted in the artificial islands that they built. We can imagine what other military hardware they will install on the territory that was supposed to be ours but which we conceded and which is less than100 miles from the nearest Philippine island.

Oh yes, we're getting guns from the Chinese under easy installment terms, and bullets, too, to shoot our brother Filipinos with. No big deal since we shoot only those who are involved in the illegal drugs trade, either as consumer, salesman, middleman or distributor.

But wait, where are the manufacturers? Didn't all those drug lords that they paraded during the antiDelima congressional hearing declare that the shabu came from China? Would the Chinese assistance in our war against drugs not been more meaningful if it came in the form of a crackdown on the shabu laboratories in the mainland instead of in guns and bullets?

But we digress. We have already given our word: we will survive without America. Therefore, let's not beg them to help. Time to walk our talk.