EDITORIAL — ROTC not a deterrent against China

How do we get China to stop from bullying us in the West Philippine Sea? Simple, according to Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa; get our students into Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) again so that we will always have a force ready to fight.

"Bababuyin lang tayo ng mga 'yan dahil alam nilang very weak 'yung ating defense, wala tayong very credible na ready reserve force that we can mobilize anytime pag magkakaroon ng gulo," he said.

Senator dela Rosa seems to have a romanticized, grandiose, and overblown opinion of ROTC. We are not sure where he gets it from.

The training that students get during ROTC is drastically different from the training recruits get in the Philippine Military Academy or the regional army training camps.

The current ROTC program isn’t really focused on teaching cadets how to fight; it’s focused on parades and drills. Very little part of it, if any at all, involves handling of actual firearms or practicing tactics useful in the modern battlefield.

Do not get us wrong here, we do not question the usefulness of trained cadets when it comes to occasions like responding to natural calamities or man-made disasters, where we question it is in whether or not we can intimidate China just by having them.

Even if the ROTC program does come up to a level where it can turn a citizen into a capable soldier-in-waiting, ready and able to defend his country when the need arises, Senator dela Rosa is missing the point of modern warfare.

Does he really imagine China getting intimidated by ROTC cadets or citizen soldiers? Not only do they have more than two million trained active-duty personnel; with all the nuclear missiles they have at their disposal they don’t even have to put boots on the ground if they want a fight.

To sum all this up, ROTC is not a deterrent against China.

Given his constant pushes, Senator dela Rosa seems to have a thing for reviving a program that isn’t only obsolete but also rife with controversy. We cannot be blamed for thinking that he and others may have a vested interest in seeing such a program returned.