Philippines: Trotting llama or chicken with dancing elephants?

SAN FRANCISCO—Internationally, the Philippines is on a roll.

Recent media reports have been upbeat. Take a recent op-ed piece in the Financial Times which flips around a joke on how the Philippines became the slow moving llama after swapping places with Chile which took its place as an emerging Asian tiger.

Columnist David Pilling writes about how the llama of Southeast Asia – or perhaps we should really say carabao — “has broken into a trot,” noting the country’s growing foreign reserves that helped wipe out foreign indebtedness, narrowing deficit, a boom in business processing jobs and even some signs that President Aquino’s anti-corruption campaign is paying off.

There’s even a mention of the Hacienda Luisita Supreme Court ruling, about which Pilling notes, “The fact that a sitting president can be stripped of land is a hopeful sign that the separation of powers enshrined in the constitution is being honoured.”

(Again, I really think P-Noy can do more with what appears to be a defeat and turn it into a positive sign of change under his watch.)

Critics can find many points to nitpick in that op-ed piece. To be sure, many problems remain.

A few recent ones are troubling, like the rising tensions with China, the powerful and aggressive Asian tiger.

Will the llama’s trot be cut short by a rampaging tiger? Or maybe we shouldn’t even think of either a llama or a carabao.

“When the elephants dance, the chickens must be careful,” was how the father of the protagonist in Tess Uriza Holthe’s novel, When the Elephants Dance,” explained war.

The novel is about the Philippines during World War II when the father explains, “The great beasts, as they circle one another, shaking the trees and trumpeting loudly, are the Amerikanos and the Japanese as they fight. And our Philippine Islands? We are the small chickens.”

Once again, the country finds itself as one of the chickens with China and the U.S. as the new dancing elephants circling one another in the Asia Pacific.

Two things are already clear.

The Philippines will get clobbered in a war with China.

And despite all the talk of a long friendship — which in fact is a very troubled friendship marked by a brutal war at the turn of the 20^th Century and American support for a Filipino dictator – and despite American concerns about China’s influence in the region, the United States will never go to war to help the Philippines claim a bunch of islands. There simply isn’t an appetite for more war in the U.S.

As has been stressed by so many analysts, diplomacy remains the most effective weapon in the Philippine arsenal at this point.

Sure, a better-equipped navy and military force can help. But near term, one thing that would help prevent tensions from sliding perilously into war will be the ability of Philippine political leaders and diplomats to make it as difficult as possible for China to justify to the world an increasingly aggressive posture in the region.

One problem is that annoying its neighbors and the rest of the world may not even be Beijing’s biggest concern.

Manila is portraying Beijing as a bully. But one can bet Beijing is spinning the conflict in a differing way to the Chinese public – that it is China that is being bullied, that in sending navy ships to the disputed areas, it is bravely standing up an arrogant country which is really just a stooge of the United States.

Yes, the U.S. clearly is eyeing China’s moves in the region with concern. But there’s one big complicated global economic reality in which all the players in this conflict are in fact inextricably linked to one another. The US needs China, and China needs the U.S. And the Philippines, of course, also needs both.

“We foresee that (China) will become the top export market for the Philippines come 2016,” Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr, president of the lobby group PhilExport was quoted as saying in an Asia Times Online report. “At the end of the day, we will be at the losing end [of a boycott on Chinese goods.] If they retaliate, we would lose a big market for our products.”

“We have to be realistic that we can’t win it economically or militarily” if we go head-to-head with China, Ortiz-Luis said.

The stakes are high. I’ve been swapping e-mails with Chip Pitts who has taught courses on ethical globalization, international business and human rights at Stanford Law School and who has studied the conflict extensively.

He said a would-be trigger for a broader conflict “could literally be anything.”

“Borders, including borders at sea, are notorious triggers for conflict since they not only provide conduits for enhanced trade and understanding, but also points of friction where people’s very histories, identities and aspirations run up against each other,” he said.

He said that in an e-mail back in August, before the recent flare-up. The situation has gotten a tad worse since then. As the Asia Times Online report noted there have been signs of nationalistic backlashes in both countries.

And Chip highlighted “the need to contain growing nationalisms all around, since domestic pressures can contribute to saber-rattling, growing risks, and increasingly rigid and antagonistic positions.”

Otherwise, if tensions spin out of control, there won’t be much dancing or trotting around in that corner of the world.

On Twitter @KuwentoPimentel. On Facebook at www.facebook.com/benjamin.pimentel