DESPITE the genuinely warm and moving welcome the Albanese government gave President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the Australian Parliament, some Green senators managed to protest his visit, raising the issue of alleged human rights abuses. According to reports, Sen. Janet Rice raised from her seat a banner that accused the honored guest of such abuses and had to be escorted out of parliament.
Three other Green senators — Jordon Steele John, David Shoebridge and Barbara Pocock — reportedly joined Rice in her protest, but they failed to disrupt Marcos' performance as he spoke of "bayanihan and mateship" between Australia and the Philippines.
At home, Marcos supporters attacked Rice for "disrespecting the President." Sen. Robinhood Padilla filed a resolution calling upon the Senate to declare Rice "persona non grata" even though Rice may have no plans of even visiting the Philippines at all, in which case she will have no way of finding out whether she is welcome or not. Better for the Department of Foreign Affairs to give her the relevant facts on her unsubstantiated complaint.
Marcos had come to Canberra to seek, among other things, Australia's help in protecting his country's claim in the South China Sea. This is primarily a matter of law, particularly the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos). His visit produced a maritime cooperation agreement with the receiving state, yet Marcos spoke as though he could by his lonesome, prevent any power from taking over any part of the vast global waterway that is being claimed by the Philippines. And his audience, minus the Greens, gave him resounding applause when he said, "I shall never tire of repeating the declaration that I made from the first day that I took office: I will not allow any attempt by any foreign power to take even one inch of our sovereign territory."
It sounded like a takeoff from Winston Churchill's quote at the House of Commons in 1942: "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire." Of course, nothing puts the Philippines on the same footing as Britain, which confronted in war the aggressive might of German Nazism. And as one rather caustic local columnist has pointed out, the Philippines had already lost 232 billion inches of its claimed territory when China took over Bajo de Masinloc or Scarborough Shoal after a short "standoff" in 2012. In reality, Marcos, like his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, probably believes the Philippines would not be able to stand up to China alone; it needs the help of friends and, for that matter, has been asking them to help.
These include the United States, with which the Philippines has a longstanding Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) and an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement that allows the US to pre-position its forces against China inside "agreed Philippine locations"; Japan, which has agreed to provide the Philippines some badly needed military equipment; and now Australia, with whom the country has an unratified visiting forces agreement (VFA), signed in 2007 as an "executive agreement," without complying with the treaty requirement under the Philippine Constitution.
In a few days, Marcos will reportedly be traveling to Germany, presumably to solicit similar defense cooperation from the German government. This comes at a very interesting time when there is talk of Germany becoming a world nuclear power. When was the last time Germany got involved in Philippine military affairs? In 1898, at the end of the Spanish-American War, after Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet under Rear Adm. Patricio Montojo in the battle of Manila Bay, a German squadron arrived at the bay under the command of Vice Admiral Otto von Diederichs, commander in chief of the German Asiatic Fleet on board the flagship Kaiserin Augusta, with 2,500 troops. This was accompanied by the cruisers Kaiser and Prince Wilhelm, a transport with 1,400 enlisted men.
More ships appeared in Manila, suggesting Germany's active interest in annexing the Philippines. But Germany made no such move. Some analysts and scholars have suggested that Germany might have taken such a move had the US wavered in its decision to acquire the islands. But the Treaty of Paris of Dec. 10, 1898 put the country safely into American hands at the price of $20 million paid to Spain and ended all such speculations.
Should a maritime cooperation agreement between Germany and the Philippines emerge from Marcos' proposed visit, it would unequivocally make the Philippines much stronger vis-â-vis the other South China Sea claimants. Should China ever attempt to take over any portion of Philippine territory, it will have to reckon with these friendly countries acting either individually or in concert in support of their friend. Under the MDT, the US response will be nearly automatic, and the other countries will most likely follow suit. In a normally functioning international order, this should deter China from taking any aggressive moves.
But if the countries supporting the Philippines are not driven by a peace agenda, we might see the exact opposite result. Whether therefore we maintain any security ties with the US, Japan, Australia, Germany or any other country, it is in Marcos' best interest to make it clear to all and sundry that we have no wish to become part of any war with China, but simply to coexist peacefully with her so that we can all do our best for the peace and progress of our region and the world.
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