Devils we don’t know
IT’S hard for the common observer to really know the origin of President Duterte’s dislike for America, the United Nations, and the European Union.
If I’m to speculate, I think his being “left,” as he claims, has something to do with it. This also explains his inclination to ally himself with China and Russia.
Other theories about Mr. Duterte’s veering away from the Philippines’ long-time alliance with the United States include the fact that he had been denied a US visa in his younger days. But this is too trivial a reason for him to harbor deep-seated ill feelings toward America. There has to be a deeper reason for his anger.
Critics of the Philippines’ relations with the United States have been claiming for years that it’s been a one-sided affair, citing that America had provided vaster amounts of aid to other allies, like Israel, Egypt, Japan, and Korea.
First of all, America treats Israel as a special ally because it is like a godfather to Israel when it was established as a state in 1948. Egypt, being a heretofore moderate state, received considerable aid from the United States to serve as an ally in the volatile Middle East. Japan, devastated in World War II, benefited from US aid in rising from that infernal conflict. The same with Korea later.
Let’s assume for the sake of this discussion that aid is the yardstick for determining the strength or depth of international alliances.
First, the aid recipient must have some value to the aid donor, either for geographic, military, or trade reasons. Second, any type of assistance costs money. For a government to be able to dispense aid, it must go to its legislature to provide it with a budget for the aid. To be able to convince the legislature to approve the aid, the donor government must convince the legislators, and the public, that the proposed aid will also benefit not only the recipient but also the giver. That’s the reality of aid.
Here’s the crux of the issue of the size of aid. The size of the aid is always negotiable. Counterpart panels of the aid provider and of the recipient meet to negotiate the amount of aid and its proposed uses. The aid seekers must be tough negotiators. They shouldn’t be content with whatever amount the aid giver is proposing to give.
Whether it’s deserved or not, Philippine negotiators have had a reputation of being too soft at negotiations, that they’re easily persuaded to accept the conditions and amounts set by the aid donor.
The current foreign secretary has complained that US aid has too many conditions, that aid between “friends” shouldn’t be conditional. That is a most naive statement coming from a foreign secretary. Aid is never given purely out of altruism.
Israel, India, Mexico, Brazil, Egypt, Pakistan, and some others are known internationally as able negotiators. The Filipinos, on the other, are reputed to be “too nice.”
It’s a tough world out there and when it gets down to brass tacks, “nice” doesn’t win too many points. Even among friends.
Will Mr. Duterte be able to win more aid concessions from China and Russia? Maybe. But at what price? China and Russia might be even tougher than the Americans. They may be liberal with aid and business deals now but what about in the long run?
We Filipinos don’t know much about China and Russia. We don’t know their regimen of values or their long-term national and global ambitions. We really don’t know what kind of people they are. What we do know is that they’re not democratic countries.
Not really knowing these two countries, wouldn’t we be better off staying as friends with the United States? Wouldn’t it be better to deal with the “devil we know,” if the US is really that (at least in Duterte’s mind) than deal with “devils we don’t know”?
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Tantrum Ergo. Because of syndication, cable TV channels here show both new shows and re-runs. There’s no problem with real-time events because the rubric “live” is on-screen. But sports re-runs don’t always show the date of the event, leaving viewers clueless when it took place.