ROTC is not only about discipline

I do not know the real reason why Vice President Sara Duterte Carpio, concurrently the secretary of education, wants to reintroduce the ROTC into the school curriculum, this time into the two years of senior high school, the equivalent of what used to be the first two years of college. But I guess it has got something to do with discipline which, more often than not, is what most people believe is what ROTC is all about.

But ROTC is not all about discipline. In fact discipline has got nothing to do at all with ROTC being in the curriculum of any school. Discipline is just a welcome consequence of ROTC. There is no way a person cannot emerge more disciplined after undergoing two years of rigid military training. It is, therefore, for this reason that I am all for the reintroduction of ROTC in the curriculum.

There is, however, another big reason why I feel this country needs the ROTC again, now at this very moment in time, and from hereon, onwards. And it is because we now live in an increasingly dangerous and dangerously belligerent world. There is hardly any kink in international relations that is not couched in threats of war instead of talking things over.

It is a world where the need for a reserve pool of able young bodies grows in urgency by the day. We do not know when the first shot, whether fired in anger or by accident, will come and trigger the nightmare we wish we will never have. ROTC is not about discipline. It is about going to war. It does not even matter whether we war in defense or in aggression. When war comes, distinctions are the least of our worries.

Any self-respecting country needs a credible force to fight for its interests, a fighting army of which the ROTC is an integral part, though held in reserve. But when the time comes, and the need arises, these ROTC graduates will be pressed into service for the motherland. That is what ROTC is really all about. And it is what we currently do not have.

Indeed I find it truly incredible that we do not have an ROTC considering how loud most Filipinos are about going to war if necessary in defense of a few rocks and islets that we claim but not actually possess in the South China Sea. I am one of possibly only 26 people who believe America will not go all out in our defense and that it is better to engage China in talks than losing even so much more in war.

Going to war is not the only patriotic means to defend the interests of a country. But since there are only 26 of us who share this belief and we are obviously outnumbered by the 110 million others who want to confront China, on the mistaken expectation that America will come running to our aid, then the least we could do is prepare for it. And reintroducing the ROTC is one way to do it.

We need to prepare for our own defense because, despite the existence of an RP-US, or is it US-RP, Mutual Defense Treaty, the US just cannot come to our aid as fast as we would want them to. Not even if it wanted to. There are legal processes the US must abide it before it can commit itself to war. By the time it is ready, we shall probably have been overrun, in whole or in part, by China.

And the best the US can probably do is provide weapons and intelligence and impose sanctions, just like what it is doing in Ukraine. What it is doing in Ukraine is what it will do in the case of the Philippines, as well as in Taiwan. America has simply lost too many of its young men fighting other people's wars it is not likely to sacrifice more. So let us get it on with our ROTC.