Listen to Trump: ‘Get along with China and we won’t be angry’

PRESIDENT Marcos 2nd was expecting that US President Donald Trump would congratulate him, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did in June, for “standing up to China’s aggressive actions targeting lawful Philippine activities in the South China Sea.”

Instead, Trump told him in front of the White House media on July 23, 10:52 minutes into the 35-minute event: “I don’t mind if he [Marcos] deals with China, because we’re getting along with China very well. We have a good relationship.” And then, about 10 minutes later, Trump repeated his advice: “You can deal with China; you should deal with China.”

If the King T says King X is a friend, shouldn’t that king’s vassal, Marcos in this case, also be King X’s friend?

Marcos was stunned, and I would imagine him saying in his head: “But your people have been telling us China is an expansionist power, and that we should stand up to it, and the US come to our aid, if conflict breaks out.”

Believe Trump instead of Hegseth, Mr. President. As Sen. Tammy Duckworth said, Hegseth is “literally the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in history.” His career has been that of a soldier in the US National Guard, and Trump took notice of him because of his all-out support when he was host of the talk show “Fox and Friends Weekend.”

In contrast, Trump knows China, and what kind of country it is, interacting with its officials and businessmen for at least two decades. Trump had been trying — unsuccessfully though — to get into China’s hotel business since 2008.

China

However, in his first term as president (2016 to 2019), he undertook a trade war with China by escalating tariffs on Chinese goods. He accused China of stealing US technology, and even blamed China for spreading the Covid-19 virus. But that seems to be all behind him, and even announced in the press conference that Chinese President Xi Jinping has invited him to Beijing, and that he will “probably be doing that in the not too distant future.”

That would be his second visit to China, after his Nov. 8-10, 2017, high-profile state visit to Beijing, with his successor Joe Biden refusing to make a state visit to that country.

I don’t think Marcos has ever studied nor does he really understand our disputes with China. But like Aquino III, he has exploited Filipinos’ historical sinophobia and portrayed his stance as against an expansionist power, which is the US-provided script.

This is obvious in his statement in his first state of the nation address: “I will not preside over any process that will abandon even one square inch of territory of the Republic of the Philippines to any foreign power.” In his 2024 SONA, he even emphasized his belligerent stance and warned China: “The death of any Philippine citizen in our ongoing standoff with Beijing in the South China Sea would be very, very close to… an act of war.”

Belligerent

Only Marcos and President Aquino III have been belligerent toward China. Other presidents embraced pragmatic geopolitics: That the Philippines and China (as well as Vietnam) each have conflicting claims in the South China Sea. This, however, can be shelved until an agreement accepted by all claimants is reached, with the two countries instead developing their friendly, cooperative relations, especially economic, for the welfare of the Filipinos.

Marcos’ stance — and messaging — has been that his administration will fight China’s “aggression,” and it will get US support in case military conflict breaks out between the two countries. Marcos’ administration has been sending the messaging that it will get American resources to build up its military capacity to fight China.

However, Marcos initially had no bad blood with China, especially since it was his father who made the breakthrough of establishing diplomatic ties with that emerging superpower, which most countries shunned. In fact, he visited China from Jan. 3 to 5, 2023, his first trip abroad after Southeast Asia.

However, Marcos suddenly changed his stance toward China after US defense secretary Lloyd Austin’s unscheduled one-day visit to Manila a month later, on Feb. 2, 2023. On the same day, Marcos announced that the US would gain access to our new Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites, adding to the four Aquino III gave the US in 2012.

Sites

The two sites were in Cagayan province at the northern tip of Luzon, and the other one was in Balabac, Palawan, facing the Spratlys. It was an unequivocal message that the two sites were for the defense of Taiwan against a Chinese invasion, while the third is aimed at China’s artificial island fortresses in the Spratlys.

The Chinese Embassy in Manila and the foreign ministry issued statements that these bases were a direct challenge to its territorial claims and a potential staging ground for US military action against Chinese forces in the South China Sea.

Philippines-China relations went downhill after that, with the Philippine Coast Guard provoking China several times by challenging its hold on Scarborough Shoal (which Aquino III lost in a standoff with China in 2012) and Ayungin Shoal, which is adjacent to the Chinese-controlled Mischief Reef.

I suspect that Austin, in his one-on-one talks, reminded Marcos of what US officials told him months before the 2022 elections: For him to continue the pro-US servile stance of Aquino III, or else it would mobilize against him all its resources here — including US-funded media outfits and organizations, such as the then-strident anti-Marcos Rappler — as it did with his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte.

These, as well as the US massive media apparatus, succeeded in portraying Duterte’s war on drugs as resulting in so many killings that it constitutes a crime against humanity — which eventually led to charges against him by the International Criminal Court, with the Marcos government’s police even forcing his transport to and detention at The Hague.

Vulnerability

Marcos’ vulnerability to US pressure is due to the fact that the US District Court of Hawaii, after a series of trials from 1986 to 1995, awarded approximately $2 billion in damages to victims of human rights violations during martial law, to be collected from all the assets of the Marcos clan.

This was affirmed in 1996 by the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Additionally, a contempt judgment of $353.6 million was imposed against Imelda Marcos and Marcos Jr. in 2012 for failing to comply with asset disclosure orders, bringing the Marcoses’ total potential liability to around $2.4 billion. The amount actually paid to the victims — mostly through unilateral recoveries by US authorities — to this day totaled only $31.3 million.

These rulings have not been challenged by the Marcos family. Officially, therefore, Marcos and his family are in contempt of court, and therefore can be arrested and jailed. They are decisions by US courts that the executive branch cannot enforce so far — an idea abhorrent to the Americans.

While the mainstream explanation is that the US cannot recover assets outside its territory ruled as ill-gotten by its courts, there have been several cases in which it did, among them the recovery in 2020 of $480 million in assets of former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and the recovery last year of $50 million in assets of officials of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

A US lawyer who has been working for decades to recover the Marcos assets had told me: “Our government can do what it sets out to do, especially with the Marcoses’ worldwide reputation as one of the worst kleptocratic families in the world…. We can’t even get an audience with justice department officials with whom we can plan out a strategy for this.”

Servility

Marcos’ motivation for his servility to the US and belligerence toward China stance was to preserve his clan’s hidden wealth. In contrast, the previous Aquino government’s anti-China stance was the result of two forces converging against China: the Obama administration’s campaign — disguised as his infamous “Pivot to Asia” policy — to arrest the rise of China challenging US hegemony in Asia and a cabal of tycoons who thought it could force China to allow its Philex Exploration to explore for oil in the Reed Bank, which China considers part of its territory, the Nansha archipelago. I’ll discuss that in detail next week.

Trump’s advice to Marcos “to get along with China” is the US president saying: “I’m not of the same thinking as my predecessors. Get along with China, and nothing will happen to you and your clan’s wealth.”

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Listen to Trump: ‘Get along with China and we won’t be angry’
Source: Breaking News PH