All of this in pursuit of the country’s aspiration to be a
progressive and peaceful nation.
The country has been catching up with its traditional
progressive Asian neighbors and under the leadership of President Rodrigo Roa
Duterte we are embarking on a journey which is totally different from what we
are used to.
Geo-politics in Asia, Europe , Middle East and other parts
of the world are in constant movement-changing to a path that if one remains
unmindful or stagnant will be left
behind in terms of the opportunities one can achieve for one’s country. *
(photo credit to Rappler) |
The Manila Times resident
columnist Mr. Antonio P. Contreras gives
his opinion on the matter in his March 17, 2018 article titled “Duterte is
rocking the world through a diplomacy of creative destruction” and has
presented a well written piece in the whole of what is happening – that is how
the Philippine President with his bold
pronouncements, movements , and policies seems to be creating his own unique
brand of foreign diplomacy which is benefitting the country in terms of
progress and identity in the world stage
For the consumption of our readers, added knowledge, and full understanding of the subject matter we are quoting in full the article that was written by Mr. Contreras in this blog post.
For the consumption of our readers, added knowledge, and full understanding of the subject matter we are quoting in full the article that was written by Mr. Contreras in this blog post.
Duterte is rocking the world through a
diplomacy of creative destruction
WHEN President Rodrigo Duterte boldly sent the
European Union (EU) packing together with its financial aid, his critics
screamed in horror as if it was the end of world. Months later, the EU came
back with a better aid offer, without its intrusive conditionalities.
He is steering the country into the direction of
China, as our principal lender in our ambitious infrastructure program. His
critics are once again hyperventilating, painting a doomsday scenario, more so
that someone claimed in Chinese media that the country’s natural resources
serve as collateral for such loans. The Chinese, of course, will officially
deny this, but only the naïve will believe them. It is already a well-known
fact that China is into debt diplomacy, which recently went into motion when it
acquired control over a piece of land in Sri Lanka when the latter was unable
to pay back. *
However, it is also utterly naïve to paint the
President as totally clueless about this. I am beginning to realize that he is
in fact fully aware of the consequences if our country will not be able to pay
our debts. But that is a big if. What he has effectively deployed is to set us
up with a heavy price to pay if we can’t, to galvanize us into making sure that
we will not fail. And instead of wallowing in the imagined fear of not being
able pay back our Chinese loans, his critics should instead help in ensuring
that we will by keeping our economy robust.
After all, despite the iconoclastic, seemingly
undiplomatic stance of the President, our country is rated to be the best country
to invest in. And this is not just a matter of perception but is in fact
matched by actual results. Foreign direct investments (FDIs) are coming in, in
record numbers.
President Duterte appears to have embarked on a
new doctrine in diplomacy, one that is along the line of what Joseph Schumpeter
has coined to apply to economic transformation of societies. Schumpeter called
this process as “creative destruction,” when economic structures are built by
first destroying the old ones. *
The President unconsciously applies this
doctrine to diplomacy by consciously disturbing, assaulting and destabilizing
prevailing diplomatic practices based on age-old precedents, in order to give
way to new relationships, arrangements and practices. He thus creates an
interruption, if not a chasm, in the prevailing global institutional
arrangements, one that has been ruled by traditional power blocs. It is a
global order that has long been dominated by alliances revolving around
traditional powerful countries that check each other in the world arena, an
arrangement that leaves countries like the Philippines into helpless pawns.
His policy of shifting to China is one bold move
that seriously interrupted the status quo. It is a strategic move of dealing
with a neighborhood bully more directly, instead of perpetually looking towards
an absent big brother who has always assumed that our country will always be a
loyal underling no matter what.
The United Nations is another global institution
which became the target of the President’s diplomacy of creative destruction.
He became a leading and powerful voice that articulated a critique of what the
UN has become, an otherwise useful idea that was rendered somewhat useless
because it allowed its otherwise noble goals to be undermined and hijacked by
extreme political correctness. The concept of human rights, which is in fact
one noble construct that would normally be unproblematic, was weaponized by the
West to become an instrument of selective control over less powerful countries.
Liberal politics, another otherwise ideal political construct that celebrated
freedom and human emancipation, was reduced into becoming a new colonial
discourse that classifies societies and justifies selective assaults on
nations’ sovereignties while tolerating, if not being blind to, the
transgressions of, others. The UN and other global institutions have become the
bearers of what Edward Said has labeled as “orientalism,” where the non-Western
world is seen by the West through a lens that is clouded by prejudice,
inappropriate cultural universalism, and an air of moral, ethical and racial
superiority. *
We see this in the readiness of the global
liberal media, and the UN and its attached organs, or the countries which are
the usual suspects, to condemn alleged human rights violations in less
developed countries, but not the atrocities of American forces in Afghanistan
and Iraq. They are quick to condemn the alleged extrajudicial killings that
victimize even innocent children that they attribute to President Duterte’s war
on drugs, but remain silent on the school shootings in the US that are brought
about by the US government’s policy on gun control, or the lack of it, which is
supported by the Republican majority.
It is in this context that one can see the
creatively destructive potential that the President’s intent to withdraw from
the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court (ICC), can
bring.
Duterte’s critics wrongly attribute this move to
the President’s alleged attempt to escape prosecution by ICC. The President is
not dumb nor naïve not to know that even with the withdrawal, the case filed
against him will remain. What they forget is that this move is in fact a political
statement, an assault on the structured biases of the ICC, and the global
discourse on human rights, in its selective prosecution of President Duterte.
It is a strike against a system that entertains politically motivated
complaints, but neglects its prerogative to investigate on its own initiative
other countries that also launched their own wars on drugs, such as Mexico and
many Latin American countries. The ICC seems to be oblivious of the fact that
the United States has its own bloody drug war and has in fact committed acts
that could even amount to war crimes in many parts of the world. *
The thing is, if the Senate reverses the
President’s intent, or our Supreme Court rules against him, then it becomes
evidence of the fact that institutions work in the country, and that the
Philippines is not a failed state, and the ICC has no business acting like a
court of first instance and thus has no jurisdiction over the allegations
against the President.
Report from Manila Times
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