US has become a failed state, irrelevant now to the Philippines
THIS year is historic for us not just because of the unprecedented devastation to the world economy and humankind brought about by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. This year is historic to us in a more specific, or unique, way: Since our liberation in 1946, the United States of America — big brother to our elites — has become irrelevant to us.
This year is the start of our total liberation from the American eagle. This is partly due to President Rodrigo Duterte’s audacious pivot towards an independent foreign policy that drew us closer to America’s rivals, China and Russia.
This is also partly due to the demise of the Yellow Cult, whose founders Benigno Aquino Jr. and his late widow Corazon Aquino after all owed much to US sponsorship, providing the former with his Harvard refuge and the latter with the might of US diplomacy and propaganda apparatus to grab power in 1986.
But it is also partly due to the fact that the US has unraveled, nearly imploding this year, with its institutions which our intellectuals and politicians had looked up to for decades proving to be so flawed.
Whether the pandemic overwhelms the US and triggers its fragmentation, whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden wins, and even, I dare say, its economy collapses or not, would not be as relevant now as it was just 10 years ago. Japan, China, Asean, the Middle East and now even Russia will fill the vacuum and become our main economic partners. Only forever-US-fans like Albert del Rosario and Antonio Carpio insist that we need the US Navy to prevent the Chinese from invading us.
(more…)