Mauro Gia Samonte
ON May 23, 2021, a first-time meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the 10 foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) did not take place as scheduled. Even as the Asean diplomats had the forbearance to wait long, the new US state secretary did not appear to have the slightest graciousness to explain his nonattendance at the virtual forum.
When the minutes of waiting wore out, it was never made clear whether Blinken’s absence was an innocent failure, hence pardonable, or a deliberate slight – in which case, it deserves a commensurate counter-snob.
One informed observer goes on record as saying, “It was seen as an all-important first meeting of the US with the Southeast Asian bloc in light of the delicate ongoing US-China relations with Asean, a pivotal player in the global situation.”
“In the history of Asean, there has never been a situation in which the foreign ministers of 10 Asean countries waited for the foreign ministers of dialogue partners and were finally stood up. Foreign ministers of Asean countries are deeply shocked and disappointed, and feel despised and offended by the United States,” the observer adds.
It is said that an official explanation proffered later was that Blinken’s attendance needed to be postponed due to “technical reasons,” but it became the consensus among the Asean foreign ministers that the US was committing a grave failure at recognizing priorities in its geopolitical concerns.
At the moment, Asean rightly feels it serves as a fulcrum in the seesaw between the US and China in the two rivals’ world power play, and as things stand, China has been gaining the upper hand. For one thing, on the economic front, China has already achieved the zenith of development, with the US, in fact, sliding to the third slot next to India, which has the second largest economy. Gauged on the performance in addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, China is again on top, having controlled the killer virus in its own environs in a period of less than a quarter. In the production of effective vaccines, Beijing’s Sinovac CoronaVac has beaten all Western brands, including America’s Pfizer and Moderna, in attending to world needs. Even while the Western vaccines were still testing their vaccines on humans, Sinovac was rescuing peoples from the disease the world over – not only among its Asian neighbors but also those in South America, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. Among the latest beneficiaries of the Chinese vaccine is the Philippines, with an initial donation of 1.5 million doses, part of a total of 2.5 million doses of a donation package.
Range this Chinese performance against that of the US and realize how poorly America has gone into the competition.
Followers of developments in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly the rising tension over the South China Sea, take Blinken’s snob of the Asean foreign ministers’ forum as ill-advised, to say the least. Save for Vietnam to a certain extent, all of the Asean members are one with China in upholding a Code of Conduct over the South China Sea that would exclude the West. Diplomacy must dictate that the correct action of the lead one among those Westerners is to salaam to what is turning out to be an impregnable partnership between Asean and the Asian behemoth. That the US was acting otherwise in the aborted Asean foreign ministers’ meeting with the US Secretary of State smacks of misplaced arrogance.
But come to think of it. Blinken’s snobbery of the Asean foreign ministers’ meeting was not the first time an American ever did the trick. President Trump, my informant tells me, had done it to an Asean forum twice before. Isn’t the US then into one more bullying exercise?
Didn’t I write here some time ago that a bully is always a coward? By pretending to be strong by snubbing the Asean affair, does not the US actually betray its deep sense of helplessness against the formidable alliance already cemented between China and Asean, such that no more of America’s bullying of Asiatics over the past century could ever succeed again without encountering a powerful counterforce?
For instance, imagine Blinken attending the Asean forum and being told, “For goodness’ sake, leave us alone. Keep your warships within your own waters.”
What excuse would the United States still have in deploying nuclear submarines in the South China Sea together with war vessels of the Group of 7, which it leads? Reports have it that the Group of 7, which the US heads and includes Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan, is now into some concerted sailing of warships over the South China Sea.
Had Blinken been told by Asean not to do these things, then there would be no more of the freedom of navigation operations that are there merely to justify US warships sailing in Asian waters, no more of the fantastic ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration which the US has been urging the Philippines to push as a trigger to a shooting war between Filipinos and Chinese, no more of the arm-twisting by the US of the Philippines to extend the Visiting Forces Agreement, no more of all other alibis of US interference in a region not their own, what else? Oh, scores more of things which the US may no longer do without indulging in utter characteristic aggression and atrocities.
So, the heck if the United States snubbed the Asean foreign ministers meeting. ‘Twas no slight. Good riddance, more like it.
Republished from Manila Times 29-05-2021