‘And it’s doubly difficult for someone like PBBM because he has personal issues pending in America.’
HE could never step foot in the United States, they said. He’d be arrested the moment he tried. And yet there he was, Ferdinand R Marcos Jr., namesake and son of the Philippine president that the United States helped oust in 1986, walking side by side with US President Joe Biden in the White House itself.
With no handcuffs on him, or at least in sight.
So how did this happen? After all the fall from one side of the political divide that this was an impossibility, that never in his lifetime would Ferdinand Marcos Jr ever be able to step foot on US soil – much less in the White House itself?
The answer: realpolitik.
And the big powers are good at that.
An American president is said to have remarked about a dictator: “He may be a sonofabitch but he is our sonofabitch.”’ And that’s how they propped up, or tolerated, leaders around the world who were on paper totally anathema to the democratic principles on which the United States as a republic was built. You see, domestic issues and principles are one thing; national interest and foreign policy are another.
But the same can be said of smaller states like the Philippines which need to tread a fine line between the giants. How to appease one just enough to stay in it’s good graces without going too far. And then swinging back to the other side. Never an easy play. And full of risks. But it’s a game that needs to be played.
And it’s doubly difficult for someone like PBBM because he has personal issues pending in America. Naughty minds will think that Uncle Sam is holding this like a Sword of Damocles above his head.
Thank God I don’t have a naughty mind.
Question now is – what will Beijing do in response?
Any ideas from the naughty minds out there?
I have a thought but then again mine is not a naughty mind.
