PEOPLE are still talking about how US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance behaved condescendingly at the meeting in the Oval Office with Ukraine President Zelensky. The bullying was evident, as the fiery exchange of incendiary words was made in full view of the diplomatic officials of both sides, and the American media—and later by the world through the internet and social media platforms.
Zelensky was invited to the White House as the leader of a sovereign country, Ukraine, which possesses in its mountains and hills tons of rare earth minerals that America needs for the manufacture of its computers, digital chips, armaments, home appliances, power generators and almost all gadgets and devices in modern technology. Zelensky would have signed a mining and development agreement with the US involving these mineral resources, but this was scrapped when the question of security guarantees he was asking in ending the Ukraine-Russia war had become farfetched.
The meeting, too, showed all and sundry how the second Trump administration treats its allies, looking down at them like vassals.
‘We hope this official realization of the need to really modernize the Armed Forces of the Philippines will be transformed into action soon.’
With the Marcos administration placing all its bets in the one and only American basket, this concerning encounter between Trump and Zelensky should jolt the makers of Philippine foreign policy, most especially President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, to the reality of Trump’s true regard for basic diplomatic decency and how to treat his country’s long-time allies.
Two cases in point are Canada and Mexico, America’s immediate neighbors in the south and in the north, which are both punished with 25 percent tariffs on their exports. The reason given is that the illegal drug fentanyl, which comes from China, is smuggled into the US through its borders with Mexico and Canada. And then, there’s Ukraine, which starting this week had to fight a losing war with Russia because Trump suddenly cut off American military aid.
As if to reassure Filipinos, Malacañang on Wednesday reaffirmed the government’s focus on enhancing the Philippines’ self-reliant defense capabilities. Palace Press Officer Claire Castro stressed in a press briefing that the country must be prepared to defend itself, regardless of its alliances.
Castro said whether we have allies or not, we also need to prepare ourselves. We really need the AFP modernization program so that we don’t rely too much on our allies, she added.
A day or two before this, Ambassador to Washington Jose Manuel Romualdez said the same thing in reaction to the Trump-Zelensky encounter.
Romualdez said: “We have to be ready for that type of situation. It may be some other president in the future, but at the end of the day, each country now has to be ready to be able to beef up its own defense, beef up its own economic security.
“And that’s always been what we have been doing … that we would like to put up our own resources to be able to modernize our armed forces and to be able to bring our economy to where we want it to be.”
We hope this official realization of the need to really modernize the Armed Forces of the Philippines will be transformed into action soon.
