The Phl-US love-hate affair and China’s cruel seductions

If you allow this writer a little attempt at analogy, simile perhaps with a little sprinkling of hyperbole, in the field of foreign relations, then I will oblige.

Today's celebration of Philippine-American Friendship Day is like an anniversary of two lovers who have become estranged from each other. The USA, since 1901, or for a period of no less than 119 years, had always treated the Philippines as a second-rate secretly desired, but not truly loved girlfriend. And the Philippines tolerated the US because it appeared as a knight in shining armor saving the weak and struggling country from the clutches of a very cruel and exploitative, former bullying lover, Spain. Our heroes, Bonifacio and Aguinaldo bickered and murdered on a fictional “independence” while Spain secretly sold us to the US, via the Treaty of Paris, for a measly sum of twenty million dollars.

Then the USA, which had a rivalry with Japan, over supremacy in the Pacific, shifted the terrains of its battles from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and from the US mainland into the islands and house of its subservient girlfriend, the Philippines. Thus, our country was devastated and our women ravished, our men were massacred, our children traumatized. Our honor was ruined and the whole nation's culture was psychologically damaged. But the US, thanks to General Douglas Mac Arthur, (“I shall return'') came again like a knight in a shining armor, supposedly saving us from the inhumanities of the Japanese Imperial army.

And because, we owed them twice, first from Spain and later, from Japan, we offered our virgin forests and all gold, iron and copper, coconuts, bananas and pineapples and all lands to be exploited by the Americans. President Manuel A Roxas signed an agreement allowing the Americans parity rights to our land and to our national patrimony. They built US bases to serve as camps for their attacks to Vietnam and North Korea. Thus the enemies of the US became enemies of the Philippines. And we were treated by the US with condescension like mendicants, lining up to beg for visas, and buying their defective helicopters and old navy boats. All presidents of the Philippines were pro-Americans, except only Quezon, Marcos and Duterte.

Quezon preferred a government run like hell by Filipinos than run like heaven by Americans, and so we got the hell. Marcos shortened the 99 years existence of the US bases, and so, the CIA maneuvered his ouster via an American-supported EDSA revolt of less than a million people, deciding for and in behalf of 90 million population. Duterte declared that his government is veering away from America. He visited China a number of times but hated going to Washington, meeting Xi Jinping many times while refusing to meet Trump. China is another cruel suitor, seducing and bullying us into submission. China is like hell even as America may not be heaven for us. China is scheming, manipulative, maliciously seductive with a propensity for a sadist lover.

By leaving US and going to China, the Philippines may be jumping from the frying pan to the fire. At least the US, minus Trump, is still the Filipino's American dream of being the land of milk and honey, the home of the brave and the land of the free. To China, the predator, we are just a very fat and delicious prey.