NEWS reports coming from Southeast Asian nations in recent days validate the soundness of our policy toward China. The first report states that Vietnam seized a Chinese vessel for intruding into its waters. The second relates that Indonesia chastised China for trying to ram an Indonesian vessel towing a Chinese boat caught violating Indonesian maritime sovereignty. And the third says that Singapore called on China to align its security measures with the economic policies it adopts in its foreign relations.
There is a fourth report, this one pertaining to a United Nations commission that expanded Argentina’s maritime territory in the south Atlantic ocean to include the disputed British-occupied Falkland islands.
China is engaged in a massive aggressive bullying over Southeast Asia. Our neighbors are actively resisting it. We, who have been bullied the most severely, can do no less. Our resort to international arbitration is correct and proper. The UN commission report saying that booties of imperialism are not beyond the reach of international law also favors us. But this nonconfrontational approach to the issues is not enough.
True to the dialectical logic that guides the thinking of most communist parties, China has turned into its opposite. A bosom friend of small developing countries under Chairman Mao, China has turned into their most vicious enemy.
Under these circumstances, we have no recourse except to steel our resolve to resist Chinese bullying. We are not a small country. Population-wise, we are individually bigger than France, Germany, the United Kingdom and other West European countries. Moreover, the idea that small nations can never defeat big ones is wrong. Lilliputian Finland held the Soviet bear to a draw in the 1940s. In the first years of World War II, Japan with its 40 million people conquered and overran China with its 700 million people. Concerning the 1979 Chinese invasion of Vietnam, the opinion of international military observers is that the numerically puny Vietnamese People’s Army outperformed the numerically overwhelming Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
Instead of freezing in indecisiveness, let us strengthen our Armed Forces and enter into alliances with friendly countries for mutual defense. The revival of joint military exercises with the United States and the signing of a cooperative agreement with Japan are steps in the right direction. There is a saying that you cannot win on the negotiating table what you have not won on the battlefield.
Our own Gen. Victor Corpuz, a personality of somewhat ambiguous political inclination but of unquestioned loyalty to his country, once wrote a paper on how a small country can defeat a big country in war. It’s time we retrieved this paper from the archives, debated it and benefited from its insights.
We value our friendship with China and we hope that the next administration will find a way to restore this friendship. But it takes two to tango. For the moment we need to strengthen our national defense, to spank the bully in the neighborhood.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano