Geopolitics

Will the geopolitics of our region be dramatically altered by one unbridled mouth?

That is unlikely, even if that one unbridled mouth is wrapped in hubris. Words may hurt, but they rarely cause permanent injury – unless of course those words come as commands to a large military force.

President Rodrigo Duterte did suggest, while in Beijing, that the Philippines, Russia and China get together against the rest of the world. The suggestion was greeted with stony silence by the two superpowers in that grouping. We are the pauper in that triumvirate and neither Moscow nor Beijing would want to be led by the weakest link in that proposed chain.

That stray utterance will quickly pass and be forgotten. It was, after all, uttered by a man who dishonored his hosts by rolling up his sleeves while reviewing the honor guard in Brunei and left both his collar and his coat unbuttoned while doing the same in Beijing.

The two superpowers, one fading the other rising, will not want to be led by someone unschooled in decorum. One, after all, buttons up not to impress the host but to honor him. If the hosts allowed their honor guards to come to formation in their street clothes, that would have been considered a supreme insult.

Fortunately, in both Brunei and Beijing, the hosts exercised Oriental manners to the extreme. They took no issue with President Duterte’s sloppy dressing. This was a man, after all, who came to his own inauguration wearing brown cotton pants.

So maybe Duterte’s unfathomable fashion sense is not of earthshaking importance. But the ruffian attitude and the coarse language that go with the way he suits up completes the picture of a careless and volatile leader who should not be depended on for too much.

I can sympathize with Duterte’s discomfort with the collar button. I used to attend meetings with an unbuttoned collar and loose tie until a colleague, so upset by it all, walked up to me to button my collar and push up my tie. I have since then remembered to do it myself.

Imagine Vladimir Putin, always impeccably dressed and more presentable than any of the actors who played James Bond, walking up to Duterte to fix his tie. The obsessive-compulsive Russian leader is wont to do that. This could cause a major diplomatic incident.

The meetings in Tokyo unfold even as I write this. We can only hope someone beside the President reminds him to button up. For the protocol-conscious Japanese establishment, this is a matter of politeness. There are simply too many ways to offend a Japanese host.

On the eve of the Tokyo visit, one of his battalions of interpreters let loose the possibility that the Filipino president might work his wonders and get China and Japan to sort out their problems and become allies. That is unlikely – and surely not because of Filipino prodding. The sheer weight of historical grievance and current strategic scenarios militate against the likelihood of a Sino-Japanese embrace.

Besides, the last time Tokyo spoke of a Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, there was war. Millions died in that war which ended when the US tested on two Japanese cities the tremendous power of atom bombs. Tens of thousands of residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must have thought, in their last moment, the sun had crashed onto the earth.

The Japanese are happy holding on to fortified islands China claims while making profitable investments in the mainland’s galloping economy. They are content paying the US to maintain bases in Okinawa to deter any aggressive Chinese move.

The US, for its part, is pretty set in its strategic view of East Asia. Their view may be a recycled version of the Yellow Peril the Europeans of another age feared. They waged the Vietnam War precisely on the assumption that if this domino does not hold, China’s infantry would march freely across all of East and Southeast Asia.

Washington is not about to abandon its reincarnated containment policy towards China. The Americans were once assured it enjoyed a strong frontline defense with heavily armed South Korea, a fortified Japan, a determined Taiwan and, until Duterte became president, a dependable Philippines.

Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” is really nothing more than a restatement of the old, Cold War-vintage containment policy towards China. But while the US sustained what is probably an obsolete geopolitical strategy, the Americans have fallen deeper into debt with China. The Chinese hold hundreds of billions in American debt paper. That pile of debt must have produced a mountain of profit the past few weeks when the dollar spiked against all other currencies.

The Japanese, the South Koreans and the Taiwanese are pretty comfortable with the US strategic view. It assures them support to push back against China. For the same reason, although always understated, the Vietnamese share the same appreciation for the posture Washington maintains.

Of all these countries, it is Vietnam that shares a physical border with China. They once had to fight a small war in the mountain passes to repel a Chinese expeditionary force out to “punish” the stubbornly independent Indochinese nation.

Duterte’s visit to Japan will not alter the basic geopolitical realities of this part of the world no matter the anti-US rant he unleashes. His version of the universe is about as unfashionable as the way he carries his clothes.

If he carelessly brings his Beijing act to Tokyo, we will be in danger of losing friends.