BY PHILIP BOWRING
HONG KONG – Bully and coward are the same person. Donald Trump, in office for only a brief time, is already proving that one point that ought to make even Trump voters uncomfortable. Their leading man mimics an upstart Asian leader, the new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who assumed his office last summer.
Trump shares Duterte’s loud mouth, delight in insults and post-truth utterances. And Duterte, just like Trump now, presented himself as the quintessential hard driving, no-nonsense tough guy, wielding power in the interests of the downtrodden and disadvantaged — in his case not against “Washington,” but against Manila elites, criminals and corruption. He regularly intones that he would defend the integrity of the nation against external and internal threats.
In another amazing parallel between the United States and the Philippines, the main external threat of the Philippines is quite clearly China.
After all, China had seized the Scarborough shoal, rich fishing grounds off the Philippines coast. Worse, it has been militarizing its claims over almost the whole of the South China Sea.
Given what a tough guy Duterte makes himself out to be, the expectation was that, once elected, he would surely take advantage of the July 2016 Court of Arbitration ruling in the Philippines favor and redouble its efforts to face the Chinese Goliath. Instead, he flipped in the opposite direction. He turned on the U.S. ally and pronounced that there is no point in confronting China. The Philippines cannot possibly win against such a giant, Duterte argued.
What is politically far more important for Duterte is that the U.S. makes a far better foreign target by which to express the president’s claims to nationalism.
Meanwhile, Duterte is clear that the real enemy is within — drug users and vendors. Duterte’s so-called war on them has so far claimed 6,000, and counting, lives of his own people. Many innocents have died — but none on the side of the so-called forces of law and order, official or unofficial killers.
And, of course, while thousands of civilians die in Duterte’s one-sided local war, not one soldier or sailor has been put in harm’s way to stand up to China.
Read the full story at JapanTimes