Political leadership and the South China Sea conflict

While discussing our country’s response to the standoff in South China Sea [also called West Philippine Sea] with a friend, I told him to stop asking me what I think of the likes of PNoy, Binay, or Pacquiao as political leaders.     I know he was being comical. I told him that in the aftermath of China’s aggressive behavior in Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal, not one among our political leaders has risen to the occasion of providing us an intelligent, purposeful, and fearless leadership.     Instead, our politicians would rather engage in a popularity contest on and off-court than pay attention to the territorial contest threatening the very sovereignty and survival of our people.  I am even afraid that some of them are slowly turning into Nero-like yellow-bellies “fiddling while Rome is burning,” literally.   He thought I was very sweeping and harsh in my generalization. But I told him that I am serious about what I said because I have not personally found a political leader who has clearly articulated a steadfast political vision to help us navigate our relationship with a testy China.     Central to my observation is the realization that overall, Philippine politics is too small to deal with the big issues, and too big to deal with small issues.     Our current stock of politicians appears not only clueless, but also nonchalant about the most compelling issue of the day.  Worse, they spend an inordinate amount of time and resources engaging in the “business as usual” politics of “window dressing” and “bread and circuses.”   Take for instance the current preoccupations of our political leaders ranging from the obsession with “Potemkin fencing” to hide our country’s squalor and poverty from foreign visitors, to the penchant for patronizing OFWs, calamity victims, and convicted drug mules to shore up voters’ sympathy for one’s political ambition, to the simplistic televangelizing aimed at setting one’s self up at a higher moral and political ground.   While these priorities may fully serve one’s self interest, this is not the quality of leadership that our country sorely needs for now. If a leader is to have any hope of success in asserting our sovereign and legal rights in Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal, that leader must act swiftly in arresting illegal fishermen and poachers.     Japan and South Korea did it. Why can’t we?   Yes, we are a small country with limited military manpower and resources, but under these circumstances, this is one dispute we absolutely cannot afford to lose.   In times like these, we need leaders who not only possess the intellectual sagacity, but also the martial muster to translate our disparate voices into a specific and steady plan of action.  Unfortunately, this is not our political reality at the moment.     In the meantime, what will we do as a people caught in the maelstrom of escalating territorial dispute with China? What will our leaders do with a resurgent China growing more aggressive in the region? These questions must be urgently addressed by all of our political leaders because not only do they represent a turning point for our foreign policy, but also what will become of us as a nation.   There is no doubt that China’s expansionist policy will be unrelenting in the West Philippine Sea for at least two main reasons. Firstly, as it is in the Chinese imagination, its historical core interest in the region represents to some extent the restructuring of Asia within the overarching processes and outcomes of its ethnocentrism---an attitude arising from its civilizational appropriation and peopling of Southeast Asia as “Nanyang.”     The term which translates as “Southern Seas,” refers broadly to any part or whole of the island nations situated south of China, including the Philippine Archipelago, the Indonesian Archipelago, the Malayan Peninsula, Singapore, and the southern part of Thailand (in Wang Gungwu’s “Community and Nation: Essays on Southeast Asia and the Chinese,” 1981 and Lynn Pan’s Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A History of Chinese Diaspora,” 1994).   Secondly, our current territorial skirmish with China is not just an incident of local and bilateral nature, but an international and multilateral one. In fact, it is a precursor of things to come. Defense analysts assume that the impending maritime battle in South China Sea will be the defining battleground of the 21st Century. The conflict will be on water and not on land  (in Robert D. Kaplan’s “The South China Sea Is the Future of Conflict,” Foreign Policy, September/October 2011 and Rukmani Gupta’s “China and the South China Sea Disputes,” World Focus, May 2011).   Such assumption is not without merit. The South China Sea connects Southeast Asian states with the Western Pacific region. It is a strategic maritime hub directly affecting the interests of 620 million people in Southeast Asia, 1.3 billion in China, and 1.2 billion people in India.  If unilaterally controlled, it can function as a maritime chokehold.   And so, with the expected addition of India and the United States to the mix, we are in for a long and rocky ride.   Who will be our leader worth his/her salt?