Throwing the gauntlet

One newspaper had this banner headline last Saturday, October 19: "PH buying SK fighter jets." Below it was the subhead that read: "Combat planes to help defend Manila's claim to the Spratly isles." Then came the terse two-sentence, seven-word lead paragraph: "Move over. The big boys are coming."

I don't know if the writer, the editors, and the paper itself were only trying to be cute or something. But, as the story would eventually reveal, buying a squadron of FA-50 fighter jets from South Korea for P18.9 billion hardly qualifies the Philippines as a "big boy" in global military affairs.

The newspaper report, if it truly reflects the Philippine position -- and I have no reason to think it doesn't, considering that no official correction or clarification was subsequently issued -- makes us a marked nation by the Spratly's most aggressive claimant, China.

And given the military superiority of China over the Philippines, the puny squadron of South Korean fighter jets whose acquisition we have not even yet finalized (we are only close to finalizing the deal, according to the newspaper report) might as well be gone before we even had them.

I just cannot understand the mentality of the Aquino administration, particularly when it comes to the acquisition of military hardware. It seems to be seized by a consuming need to boast. It simply cannot restrain itself from telegraphing its punches in a fight it always seems to be spoiling for.

But I would not be surprised if this mental aberration is derived from years of being immersed in practice shooting, the adeptness acquired in target practice twisting the mind into a false sense of skill and expertise that could drive one into a sense of belligerence.

This was the frame of mind that actually brought the Philippines into a dangerous standoff with China in the first place. So hyped up was the Philippines with the acquisition of a mothballed US Coast Guard cutter that it started branding it as a warship despite its puny armaments designed mainly for law enforcement.

So China decided to test us and what we can do with our "warship." It sent fishermen into out waters as bait. Still heady from the acquisition of a "warship," we sent it to interdict the fishermen when what was required under the circumstance was a simple law enforcement operation by the police or coast guard.

Having swallowed the Chinese bait hook, line and sinker by sending in our "warship," China sent in a few law enforcement but better armed ships of their own. The whole world of course knew what happened next. Our "warship" took off like a squealing dog with its tail neatly tucked between its legs.

Not that I relished what happened. But I cannot keep from telling myself that we truly deserved that very public humiliation. And that is because this administration has mental issues that it has not been able to deal with. Expertise in target practice does not make us a "big boy" in whatever sense.

Yet we never learned our lesson, apparently because of that mental issue again. So we now have another situation in which we have started to provoke China again even before we have the means to fight in case China decides to respond to the provocation.

Why couldn't the Philippines just have said it was buying a squadron of fighter jets to help beef up its defense capabilities? That would still have sent the same message to China and the rest of the claimants without having to provoke any of them.

Every self-respecting nation in the world has the right to defend itself. Even China recognizes that. So we can buy every sort of military asset that our meager means can sustain without unnecessarily disturbing the equilibrium of others.

But when you stupidly and boastfully proclaim: "Move over. The big boys are coming," and then qualify it by saying we are buying fighter jets to defend our claims in the South China Sea, you are actually telling the bully in the South China Sea to his face that you are spoiling for a fight.

Now, mind you, that bully has a tremendous amount of pride. If it responded mightily to a simple claim about a "warship" that it knew to be patently false, you can get a fairly good idea of how it might respond to a clear and specific challenge to its own claims in the region.

Because of these stupid pronouncements, I now expect China to pay close attention to when we eventually get to acquire the fighter jets. And then it will turn the tables on us and start to provoke us. That leaves us with the question: Are we ready to go to war with a squadron of jets?