China: And we’re thinking of Hueys?

While China continues to seize sovereign territory from us and Taiwan now dictates our judicial processes, guess what Philippine authorities are interested in under the circumstances — Indonesian-made planes and Huey helicopters. And that is just on the foreign front.

At home, while the Abu Sayyaf slaughters our Marines and communist rebels massacre our police forces, guess what has caught the fancy of Filipinos — a Guinness world record in the most number of lanterns released and gates of hell in fiction.

No wonder we invoke very little respect as a nation. Because not only do we not seem to know what our priorities are, we actually show it. We expose to the whole world our weaknesses. It is as if we are inviting the exploitation of our vulnerabilities.

Just consider those Indonesian planes. This is not intended to disparage the Indonesian nation and its good people. But Indonesia is not exactly the place you look for when you have in mind the purchase of warplanes.

As to Huey helicopters, there is absolutely no question about this aircraft’s usefulness and versatility. But that usefulness and versatility was proven in a different age, specifically in the Vietnam War. The world has since moved on.

To be sure, the Philippine military operates on a shoestring budget. But that doesn’t necessarily make us stupid. In fact, the less resources we have, the more circumspect and prudent we should be in allocating them.

We do not intend to go into a shooting war with China, Taiwan, or any of our neighbors with whom we are engaged in conflicting territorial claims and all of whom have some of the best military resources money can buy.

 But for the sake of our sovereignty and self-respect, we need to acquire deterrence. We need military resources that will make our neighbors think twice first before trying to shove us out of the way.

As it is now, China and Taiwan are already twisting our arms. Why? Because they know we can do nothing about it. Filipinos may enjoy self-deprecating jokes like our Air Force being all air and no force, but China and Taiwan ain’t laughing. Their interests are serious and deliberate.

With respectable deterrence, hostile and aggressive countries will be forced to consider costs. They will cease to be as brazen as their moves right now. Deterrence will buy time. And time is all that we truly have to resolve our problems by other means.

But how can you buy deterrence with propeller-driven Indonesian aircraft or Vietnam War vintage Huey helicopters? If these are all that we can afford, better save our money and spend it on other things since we are going to lose anyway. Maybe we can buy even more lanterns.

But I do not think this is a joking matter. In fact, as I already wrote in a previous article, I am truly convinced that the inferiority of our military posture is deliberate and rooted in the culture of corruption that has long been associated with government procurements.

An inferior military creates a situation for a never-ending demand for improvement, which can only be satisfied by an endless cycle of even more inferior procurements to perpetuate and project the situation forward for the exploitation of future generations of corrupt officials.

It is common knowledge that government purchases are always greased with commissions, whose amounts can dramatically rise when they involve goods nobody wants to buy. The harder a thing is to sell, the bigger the enticement will be. So, what’s that I heard? Twenty-one Hueys?

The problem with our leaders and officials is that they think only of their own interests and not the nation’s. How else can you explain the mismatch between the intended military assets purchases and the situation that such purchases had intended to address?