Our heroes fought invaders’ guns with machetes, bolos, bamboo spears, and bows-and-arrows, making do with what colonized Philippines had. Now, they must be turning in their graves to know that 121 years since our independence, we still have in our puny arsenal weapons dating back to world war II.
We should honor our heroes with credible investment in our defense capability—long time coming. While we were dabbling in our military capacity, China has quietly grown its military might to become the world’s third strongest military overall, next only to Russia and the US, but second in terms of the most number of military personnel, only slightly edged out by India.
Make no mistake about it, China has invested significant resources in, and has worked tirelessly for centuries, building its military to become the behemoth that it is now, and for a reason. Let us not kid ourselves that it will yet again let it pass this time.
We can not—we must not—rely on the US to secure our territorial integrity. Even a Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) will not guarantee that the US will stand on our side at the first signs of trouble. It is not as straightforward as we would like to believe it to be.
Let us consider that the US may be more interested in the trade that goes through the WPS strategic sea lane, which explains why it is insisting in maintaining freedom of navigation, than our sovereign security, if only to spur us to finally get our acts together and draw up a realistic military modernization program.
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