IT is that time of year again. What time? That time when a new year has come around and with it a renewed attempt to wangle a White House Invitation for P-Noy; this time by making a premature and provocative enunciation. Bet you thought I would say ejaculation. No way.

A Red Chinese state organ has declared that China should punish the Philippines with an economic embargo, for choosing a useless security partnership with the United States. China implied that the US cannot or will not hold up its end of a security deal, the Mutual Defense Treaty, notwithstanding. China, on the other hand, is very rich.

And that is true. In his last trip to Red China, the President expressed a deep interest in reviving the NBN-ZTE deal on the ground that, if he does it, it is not corrupt; if GMA had done it, it would have been. And even if she aborted it, it remains a nonexistent crime so a crime nonetheless though without any existence. There are minds or non-minds that can entertain such vacuities.

So what happened?

Just a month ago, we were honky-dory with China. Now China is threatening to turn the Philippines in the South China Sea, into the equivalent of Cuba off the coast of Florida: an economic pariah.

What happened was that one day, just out of the blue, an infantile Palace announced what the United States would have been happy to hear—but not along with the rest of the whole wide world.

In geopolitics, some things are best kept secret, until they are good and ready to be sprung upon the world of friends and enemies. We could have had, should be having, a gradual military buildup with our only military ally in the universe, the United States.

Instead, the Palace announced to the whole wide world that the Philippines is open to, nay, invites a wider scope of security cooperation with China’s main rival, the United States.

Why would the US be happy?

Because the next struggle for mastery, to quote EP Thompson’s classic study, will not be in Europe or the Middle East but here in Asia before moving on the battlefields of Africa.

But why does it have to be secret? Because, until a new and enhanced security arrangement with the United States is well under way and deeply and firmly established, it will have no deterrent effect or military value whatsoever. For God’s sake, is there no one in this government who took deterrence theory at the Naval War College in Monterrey?

In fact, a premature enunciation may trigger a series of events, like an early arms race, that might make a wider engagement too expensive, ruinous and self-defeating to undertake.

Worse, immediately after making this premature worldwide announcement, the Palace announced that China had nothing to fear from the offer it made to the United States. This was a slap in the face of Chinese military pride. It implied, nay, it declared, that China should be afraid. Two centuries of shame rose up in the Chinese breast to cry for revenge.

The result, a call for an economic embargo of the Philippines by the continental economy that will outstrip all the other economies of the world in the next decade, even if the US will still outdistance any other military power or combination of powers for the next 500 years. In short, even with a bankrupt economy, the US can end all human life on the Chinese mainland in a flash.

But why did the Palace make these public announcements? Why did it treat a highly sensitive diplomatic-military initiative like it was a Hollywood exposé? Why did it provoke an overly sensitive superpower just spitting distance away? To wangle a White House invitation. It is that time of the year again. The Palace does not want the President pounding the sidewalks of New York eating hot dogs again.

Let me assure the Palace, it will get that invitation. I am giving a 100-percent guarantee.  Even at this moment, the right calls are being made. If you do not believe me, give me your name, and I will cancel your US visa, you f**king communists. We should have eradicated all of you when we were in power during Cory’s administration.

In the meantime, though, puhleeese, stop acting like a child and start acting like a real government, instead.

What is at stake here, is not another starlet to text, especially a Korean, but the survival of our race, the security of our nation, and the peace of this part of the world.