The friendship card

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana must be worried these days. Last Monday night he was seated beside Ismael Sueno during the Cabinet meeting at Malacañang when President Duterte, in a scene reminiscent of Donald Trump in “The Apprentice,” bluntly told the interior secretary that he was fired.

Lorenzana’s previous seatmates at the Cabinet gatherings were Vice President Leni Robredo and foreign affairs chief Perfecto Yasay. Maybe Cabinet members should avoid sitting beside Lorenzana.

The President’s Chinese friends will probably rejoice if Lorenzana, who is reportedly seen by Beijing as pro-American, is replaced. But the Chinese should be careful what they wish for.

While the military under the Department of National Defense is engaged in domestic counterterrorism, its principal mandate is external defense and protection of Philippine territory. Regardless of attitudes toward Uncle Sam, no DND chief will stand idly by or keep his mouth shut in the face of foreign intrusions into national territory or exclusive economic zones.

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President Duterte is making up for his initial cluelessness about the location of Benham Rise by embarking on a visit to Pag-asa Island, in the Spratlys on the other side of the Philippines.

Pag-asa is a barangay of Palawan and has been inhabited by Filipinos for a long time. It may fall under Beijing’s nine-dash-line maritime claim, invalidated by a UN-backed arbitral court, but China has made no move to stake a claim on Pag-asa in the same way that it has occupied other areas in the South China Sea. So Beijing may ignore Duterte’s visit to Pag-asa.

Diplomatic sources say Beijing was worried when an impeachment complaint was filed recently against Du30. After Noynoy Aquino and his foreign affairs chief, who was seen by Beijing as an honorary US citizen (unlike Yasay, who actually held a US passport), the new Philippine President is a godsend as far as China is concerned. Even if he has often vowed to raise the arbitral ruling on the nine-dash line with Beijing at the proper time.

Even if Du30 makes good on his campaign bluster to jet ski and plant a Philippine flag on Panatag or Scarborough Shoal, Beijing will probably take a kind view of the stunt.

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Critics may think Duterte is selling out to the Chinese. But if the President sticks to his strategy, which he has publicly disclosed, in dealing with the Chinese dragon, it could prove to be an effective approach.

He is treating China as a friend, which is a better way of getting Beijing to do certain things, instead of treating it as an enemy that must be vanquished or an upstart that must be put in its place.

In fact, if we’re going to be a true friend of Beijing, we may want to help craft an exit strategy for the Chinese in maritime areas where its expansive claim has been invalidated by an international court. The strategy must be acceptable to the Chinese leadership and its domestic constituency and must not be seen as a humiliating defeat for the Asian giant.

The exit strategy can start in Panatag, declared as a common fishing ground by the UN-backed court. Chinese vessels still occupy the lagoon and surround the shoal. The UN ruling on Panatag was the only defeat for us. The shoal has been a traditional fishing ground for residents of Zambales and Pangasinan for ages, and its occupation triggered our protest in The Hague. Now it’s been declared a common fishing area, but the Chinese refuse to leave.

President Duterte can build on the goodwill he has developed and persuade the Chinese to leave the shoal as an unqualified gesture of friendship.

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This is better than expecting the US or any other country to shoo away the Chinese or come to our defense in case we precipitate a military confrontation, which we can’t afford, in the South China Sea.

We’re really all by our lonesome in these treacherous waters. You don’t hear much noise from the international community about the need for China to comply with the arbitral court ruling, even if the decision is based on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, an international treaty.

Last December, US Sen. Marco Rubio filed a bill proposing to restrict travel and freeze the assets of entities and individuals who “contribute” to construction or development in disputed waters and who “threaten the peace, security or stability” of the South China Sea and East China Sea. Rubio also proposed to limit US aid to countries that recognize Chinese sovereignty in the contested areas. Anyone doing business with the offenders will face secondary sanctions.

Among the firms operating in the contested areas and artificial islands are China National Offshore Oil Corp.; China Mobile, China Telecom and China United Telecom; China Southern and Hainan airlines; and the firm that dredged sand for the artificial islands, China Communications Construction Co.

Philippine lawmakers should pursue reports that a prominent Tsinoy businessman provided the sand used to build the artificial islands, and that the sand came from the Philippines.

It will be interesting to see whether there is any appetite in the US or the international community for going along with such sanctions.

When it comes to the maritime dispute, you can see foreign capitals keeping mum, worrying about jeopardizing their economic ties with the world’s second largest economy. They have their investors and entrepreneurs to worry about, and domestic jobs whose loss could translate into the weakening of support for their government. You don’t hear loud condemnation from these foreign capitals about the fact that China is the biggest prison for journalists and carries out the biggest number of state executions, and is one of the few places on the planet where the internet is heavily censored.

Even Uncle Sam worries about its domestic agenda when dealing with China. US President Donald Trump, for all his hawkish stance against Beijing, is rolling out the red carpet for his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

For Trump, the Mar-a-Lago meeting is like President Duterte treating Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to breakfast and a tour of his modest Davao City home. So even Trump is making friends with Xi.

If friendship works for them, it should work for us.