Balance and proportion

Mariano Carrasco

DUTERTE’S  uncivilized and brutal way has never seduced me. His State of the Nation Address (Sona) was not impressive. It was rambling, repetitious, incoherent, and did not touch on the root causes of poverty and criminality. Of course, we now know that in his inaugural speech, he profusely thanked President Fidel Ramos for  catapulting him to the presidency. We also know that Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile’s silence vis-à-vis Duterte’s pronouncements and actions speaks louder than words. Enrile has always been a key and clever player in our politics. Both were strong and long-time allies and friends of dictator Ferdinand Marcos before jumping over the fence after sensing the American government’s desire to see economic and political stability.

There is one good thing about Duterte’s pronouncements though, aside from his anti-drug campaign. He doesn’t think that we should go to war with China on the West Philippines or South China Sea dispute. Rightly so. Imagine the horrors of war in the name of the small islands, rocks and reefs jutting out of the sea which the other Southeast Asian countries are also claiming.  All of us would be evacuating from our cities. Schools, hospitals, government and other social institutions, including business, would all ground to a halt when war explodes. Nuclear bombs, fallout, and radiation would likely kill and melt all of us.

China has gone a long way. It has nuclear missiles and sophisticated technology comparable to the United States. If a shooting war or an accidental shooting starts, the nuclear buttons would be ready on both sides. And consider further that China and Russia, another nuclear power, are friends. Russia has been grinding an axe against the Americans over Ukraine where an American-supported coup toppled the pro-Russian government, and over ethnically Russian Eastern Ukraine where a civil war has been boiling, and over Crimea which has declared independence from Ukraine and has now allied itself with Russia. And to think that the Americans and Nato military forces have been recklessly flexing their muscles or joint military exercises in Eastern Europe, right on the Russian boundary. The prospects of war is unthinkable, and horrible indeed. We, the Americans, Chinese, and Russians, should all keep calm and cool our heels. We all live in this world and we only have one world to live in. Those capitalist pigs making so much money from wars and armament-production “should stop destroying our people,” to borrow Duterte’s words.

Indeed we should not burn the house to get rid of some rats.

(Mariano B. Carrasco is a lawyer based in Cagayan de Oro.)