Pivot Away from Containment

When O’bummer announced his pivotal “Pivot to Asia” geopolitical strategy last year, he intended to transfer at least 60% of America’s military into the Asian region, with the Philippines and Japan as patsies.
The Okinawan refusal against American military bases in its turf only pushes America further into our country and plans to install at least eight military bases here and a possible return to its original two mammoth bases in Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base which were closed down in 1992 through the restriction in our 1987 Philippine Constitution.
Inside the country, a sizable population doesn’t fully understand why the Treaty on US Military Bases was never renewed. They could not understand why since 1896 and up to that year, there was no significant benefit to the country that these military bases ever brought in terms, of economic and military. We still have the most dilapidated ill-equipped armed forces in the region. In times of natural disaster, even our last C130 Air Force plane wasn’t able to fly to drop needed disaster relief to Typhoon Hainan victims in 2013.
Recently, 44 members of the elite Special Action Force were decimated inside MILF camp while conducting a covert anti-terrorist operation in compliance with the US directive, and in gross violation of the peace agreement between the government and the MILF.
To put it simply, the presence of the US military and its constant inference in our internal affairs, compounded by the heavy presence of the Jesuits, are at the root of our pathetic sociopolitical and economic conditions.
The US policy is simple: make their “allies” in the region totally dependent on them militarily, while another arm of the Empire develops and exploits our own natural resources like the Malampaya natural gas near Spratlys in which Shell and Chevron are getting 90% of the revenues while our Masonic/Jesuit/Knights of Columbus affiliated corrupt politicians have to divide amongst themselves the remaining 10%.
Whenever we put in power a leader that is pro-people, those “agents of chaos” known locally as the Council of Trent and the MSM will go on hyperdrive in destroying that man’s reputation and in a week, or two, a new president would be sitting at the helm, ready to do their bidding. This was what happened to ex-president Joseph Estrada, the “President of the Masses.”
Sometimes, the new president would try to be pro-country, too, by engaging in real economic infrastructure projects like a nationwide railway system and a national broadband project to bridge the digital divide between the people in cities and the countryside, with financial loans and machineries from other countries like China. That president would have to go, too. This was what happened to ex-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Economist who, ironically, replaced Joseph Estrada.
Finally, the Jesuits were successful in putting a loyal puppet in the present president BS Aquino, the Spineless.
From time to time, the current president enjoys good write-ups from western papers with fancy terms like “positive economic growth” or “stable economic fundamentals” but clearly, nothing has change except the continued eradication of the middle class, just like what’s happening in the mainland United States today.
In return, the present administration of BS Aquino is offering the entire nation for the Empire’s whims…
subic naval base

Manila offers US its military bases in case of N.Korea war

“The US would be allowed to station forces at military bases in the Philippines if it went to war with North Korea, Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said Saturday citing a treaty between the allies, AFP reports.

“Our mutual defence treaty calls for joint action if either the Philippines or the United states is attacked,” del Rosario said in comments sent to AFP at a time of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula.

“It would then be logical to assume that in the event of an attack on the Philippines or on our treaty ally, the US would be allowed to use our bases,” he added.

Del Rosario was responding to a question about whether the archipelago, a former US colony, would allow the stationing of American troops on its soil in case war broke out between the US and North Korea.”

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US targets eight RP military bases to keep watch on China

  • Written by  Tribune Wires
  • Sunday, 26 April 2015 00:00

Eight military bases in the Philippines were identified by the United States for possible access to rotate troops, aircraft, and ships under the Expanded Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).
The EDCA  is signed with the Philippines to support the US  policy to shift its forces to Asia.
Termed as the Asian rebalancing of US military  forces, the policy is  also being undertaken as China expands its military presence in the South China Sea.
In speech in Arizona, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter bared Washington’s next phase in its Asia “pivot,” deploying its most sophisticated destroyers, bombers and fighters to the region.
With Asia “pivot,”  US Marines are already rotating through the Australian tropical city of Darwin, the country’s closest city to Asia, for training.
There are at least eight spots in the Philippines that were named as possible sites where American troops, planes and ships will be rotated through a series of military training and exercises, according to  AFP chief Gen. Gregorio Catapang.
However, it was reported the U.S. will have to wait until after the Philippine’s Supreme Court makes its rulings on the constitutionality of the EDCA which was signed last year between Manila and Washington.
The high court may decide later this year.
“If we formalize (now) and they start putting up structures and it’s not constitutional, they will have to destroy those structures,” Catapang said recently.
The official said the list was finalized in October during a Mutual Defence Board meeting.
It was learned that four of the locations are in Luzon where U.S. and Filipino soldiers  hold exercises, two in  Cebu, and two in Palawan near the disputed Spratly.”

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There will be a presidential election set for next year and for the first time, one presidentiable in the person of the current Vice-President, Jejomar Binay, is making it a policy to engage with China once elected. As expected, this pronouncement sent shockwave in the local MSM and even in the West.

Binay’s surprise China policy

The vice president also does the nation a great service by presenting a foreign policy and China-relations position that is in direct contrast to that of the BS Aquino administration and its US-appointed Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario that promote subservience to US diktats, including its “Asia Pivot” of 60 percent of US military assets to Asia no longer just to “contain” China’s development and growth. In raising the China “joint venture” idea, Binay has gotten the world’s attention, too.
In response, hawkish neoconservative US magazine National Interest’s Malcolm Cook on April 15 wrote: “’A new twist in the South China Sea showdown’… In one of his first extended interviews addressing foreign policy issues, (VP) Binay focused on the prospects for joint Philippines-Chinese development of natural resources in the West Philippine Sea, and downplayed the case filed by the Aquino Administration to the International Tribunal…” This was, of course, preceded and followed by a lot of derogatory comments on Binay and his policy.
Cook, for instance, drew this comparison: “It would be a return to the policy preferred by Aquino’s predecessor, President Macapagal-Arroyo… (who had) joint development plans with China… When Aquino took office in 2010, he and Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario quickly adopted a much firmer stance.”
We all know today how “firm” BS Aquino and Del Rosario are in being pro-US — such that they left the Special Action Force (SAF) 44 to die just to protect US interests.
During the time of Gloria Arroyo, the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking could have been the Philippines’ best option to break the lopsided Malampaya gas template of 10 percent for the country and 90 percent for Big Oil.
Filipinos must read seriously US intentions that are represented by its resurgent “think tanks,” such as this Blackwill and Tellis write-up in Foreign Affairs magazine: “A new US grand strategy toward China cannot be built on a bedrock of containment… Washington’s current approach toward Beijing, one that favors China’s economic and political integration into the liberal international system at the expense of the United States’ global preeminence and Asian primacy, is weakening US influence throughout Asia and beyond.”
And as containment is no longer enough for US strategic advocates, with the mainstream insisting on “(China’s) integration into the liberal (private banking elite controlled) international system,” which runs smack against its avowed socialist system with market characteristics (state supremacy within a one-party system, people’s or public banking system, national sovereignty, etc.), things will inevitably come to a head.
Henry Kissinger was quoted, “In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.” Thus, it is clear that the US will settle only for hegemony.”

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If the Americans today could do something to stop its country’s imperialistic ambition which do not benefit them in any way whatsoever in the first place, our country and Asia as a whole would be a better place to live in.
There is a need for the United States to pivot away from Asia for good.

Stiglitz: ‘Pivot away from containment’

Wednesday, 10 December 2014 00:00
Not a month passes by that no earthshaking developments arise from the East.
Just this week, in an article for Vanity Fair slated for January 2015, entitled “The Chinese Century,” renowned former top US International Monetary Fund economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote, “When the history of 2014 is written, it will take note of a large fact that has received little attention: 2014 was the last year in which the United States could claim to be the world’s largest economic power. China enters 2015 in the top position, where it will likely remain for a very long time, if not forever. In doing so, it returns to the position it held through most of human history.”
The 2,681-word article goes through the millennia of shifts of economic power from one society to another and describes the painful, often bloody, struggles accompanying the changes; but it concludes this way: “We (the US) should take this moment, as China becomes the world’s largest economy, to ‘pivot’ our foreign policy away from containment. The economic interests of China and the US are intricately intertwined…
We will have to cooperate… the most important thing America can do to maintain the value of its soft power is to address its own systemic deficiencies — economic and political practices that are… to put the matter baldly… skewed toward the rich and powerful. A new global political and economic order is emerging… if we respond… in the wrong way, we risk a backlash that will result in either a dysfunctional global system or a global order that is distinctly not what we would have wanted.”
Filipinos who love America, sometimes even more than they could love their own country, should ponder on Stiglitz’s advice. Stiglitz is saying that the US needs to save itself first, as we ourselves see with the crises of economics and finance, race and its military-industrial complex’s runaway global war monkey business. Filipinos who love America can help save America by echoing to their friends there to heed Stiglitz and allow our World a century of respite from global tension and war.
Across the globe, in China, the president of the largest economy in the World today spoke to his nation’s “central foreign affairs” body on precisely that principle.
Xinhuanet reported that at the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs, Xi Jinping “stressed the importance of ‘holding high the banner of peace, development and win-win cooperation, pursuing China’s overall domestic and international interests and its development and security priorities in a balanced way, focusing on the overriding goal of peaceful development and national renewal, upholding China’s sovereignty, security and development interests, fostering a more enabling international environment for peaceful development and maintaining and sustaining the important period of strategic opportunity for China’s development.’”
China’s “two centenary goals” to be achieved by 2049, the hundredth year of the 1949 Chinese Revolution are: doubling the 2010 GDP and per capita income and finishing the building of a society of initial prosperity in all respects, and the Chinese dream of the great renewal of the Chinese nation.
In his speech Xi said, “Among many other things we should also realize that the general trend of prosperity and stability in the Asia-Pacific region will not change … We should continue to follow the independent foreign policy of peace… While we pursue peaceful development, we will never relinquish our legitimate rights and interests, or allow China’s core interests to be undermined. We should uphold… the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence… We should continue to follow the win-win strategy of opening-up and a win-win approach in every aspect of our external relations such as political, economic, security and cultural fields… We should increase China’s soft power, give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China’s message to the world…”
China’s Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence are: Mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; Mutual non-aggression; Mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs; Equality and cooperation for mutual benefit; and Peaceful co-existence. Upholding the first principle’s underlying basis can be used to overcome disputes concerning it, and there are many efforts toward this.
On Dec. 13, Saturday, the Ateneo Ricardo Leong Center for Chinese Studies is holding a round table discussion with historian and US-China expert Dr. John Delury on “Expressing Joint Responsibility between Philippines and China for Maintaining Stability in the Region.”
(Listen to Sulo ng Pilipino, 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable channel 8, SkyCable channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)
HermanTiuLaurel

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