From Shadows to Shields: The Philippines Must Finish What It Started
By Karl Garcia
Photo credit Linkedin
The Philippines is at war—though not in ways most people see. Cognitive, cyber, asymmetric, and incremental maritime pressures are all quietly reshaping the nation. No missiles fired, no headlines made—but sovereignty tested, minute by minute. Winning these wars demands more than warships. It demands sharper minds, stronger institutions, and a citizenry that treats information, waters, and territory with equal vigilance.
Yet our vulnerability is centuries in the making. The first Philippine defense blueprint—the 1935 National Defense Act (NDA)—was visionary. Douglas MacArthur’s name adorns it, but the technical genius of Dwight D. Eisenhower and General James B. Ord made it function. Together, they built a 10-year plan for national defense: mobilization structures, citizen-army systems, and long-term, technocratic planning.
But the plan was frozen halfway by politics and shifting priorities. What remained shaped our defense for decades: an Army-first, Army-only system. Today, a law written for infantry still shapes our tri-service needs. Eighty years later, we are still paying the price.
Modern Threats, Silent But Deadly
Threats today would have been unimaginable in 1935:
Cognitive warfare: Disinformation and propaganda fracture society from within. Every hour spent chasing manufactured outrage is freedom lost at sea.
Cyber warfare: State-backed hackers probe agencies, ports, banks, and telecoms. A blackout, a port closure, or a leaked cable could cripple the nation faster than missiles.
Asymmetric warfare: Gray-zone tactics—ramming, swarming, laser harassment, lawfare—project dominance without firing a shot.
The “Slow Squeeze” at sea: Subtle, incremental moves chip away at authority. Layered blockades of reefs and shoals, starting with fishing boats, then militia, coast guard cutters, and eventually naval assets, gradually reshape control. Each small act seems negligible, but together they rewrite reality.
In this quiet contest, the Philippines cannot outgun a great power. But it can make interference costly and unmanageable.
Hedgehog Defense: Making Every Attempt a Mistake
Borrowing from nature, the hedgehog strategy focuses not on chasing predators but on making every attempt to bite a mistake. For the Philippines, this means:
Coast Guard transparency: Through documentation, photos, and daily briefings, covert coercion becomes public accountability. Silence no longer favors aggressors.
Archipelagic defense: AFP and PCG coordinate around islands, not landmasses, extended by minilateral alliances. A guarded gate invites peace; an unguarded one invites probing.
Civic participation: Ordinary Filipinos escort boats, supply fishermen, and support coastal communities. Deterrence becomes cultural, not just military.
Smart investments: Prioritize capability over showy assets. Make foreign ships irrelevant without trying to match them ship-for-ship.
The northern channels—Bashi, Balintang, and Luzon Strait—may prove as strategic as the West Philippine Sea. Controlling these passageways shapes the rules of regional movement.
Lessons from History and Abroad
History and global examples remind us: finish what you start.
Japan faced embargoes but built alternatives, recycling programs, and strong partnerships over decades.
South Korea developed domestic shipbuilding and auto industries over decades—no shortcuts, no resets every election.
Eisenhower and Ord remind us that disciplined, long-term planning works. The Philippines started something extraordinary in 1935. The challenge now is to finish it—with tri-service modernization, multi-decade planning, and integration of cyber, cognitive, and asymmetric defense.
Unity Is the Core of Defense
Retired Gen. Emmanuel Bautista said it best: “Bayanihan is our real strength.” Defense isn’t just hardware; it’s culture, coordination, and collective resolve. Ordinary citizens, when aligned with institutions, turn deterrence into identity.
Finishing what we started is not just legal or technical—it is strategic, psychological, and cultural. To defend our maritime nation, the Philippines must:
Modernize the NDA to reflect tri-service and maritime realities
Build multi-decade modernization pipelines insulated from politics
Harden defenses across cognitive, cyber, and asymmetric domains
Engage citizens as active participants in sovereignty
Stand Firm in the Quiet Contest
The Philippines cannot choose the wars imposed upon it. But it can choose to finish what it started, stand firm across land, sea, and cyberspace, and make itself unmanageable to coercion.
Our waters are not just boundaries—they are livelihood, culture, and passage to the world. Defending them requires strategy, discipline, and unity. From MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Ord to today’s PCG, AFP, and citizen defenders, the lesson is clear:
See the threats. Understand them. Resist. Finish what we started. Protect what we value.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
Philippines, where are we going?
Hi.Arleen.
I have the same question over and over again and I still continue to find ways for PH to stay the course.
Atin Ito’s foray to Scarborough Shoal: A quest for the Filipino’s ‘Theory of Victory’
https://verafiles.org/articles/atin-itos-foray-to-scarborough-shoal-a-quest-for-the-filipinos-theory-of-victory
The future of warfare
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rowena-Tatad/publication/349072031_Short_Sharp_and_Multidimensional_Future_Wars_and_Considerations_for_Philippine_Defense_and_Deterrence/links/601e0b9ba6fdcc37a806392f/Short-Sharp-and-Multidimensional-Future-Wars-and-Considerations-for-Philippine-Defense-and-Deterrence.pdf
The post scares me, for the challenges of today when information is so dirty that we elect crooks, AI can be used maliciously, and the cost of defense is enormous. The Philippines needs to be smart, but leaders are, in many cases, stupid. Scary.
I am scared too. Jusr in the senate, bato mwssagws Lacson that he will beat his record for hiding. Serious or joking it is stupid.
For the military misadventures it is the soldiers who acts as pawns in the combined hame of thrones and game of retired Generals.
Our vp playing coy if she wants to be the next leasder.
All we could do is not allow ourselves to be pawns.
these days and most often, those that escape our country, have indonesia as 1st point of call. apparently, there is a chinese owned airport in indonesia that is not under indonesian customs. the indonesians are complaining about that airport being a state within a state, unmanned by indonesian customs as the chinese owners said local airport dont need monitoring by customs or immig agents.
the chinese airport was also alice guo 1st point of call when she fled our country. and from there, escapees can hop all over asia and the world. unless their filipino passport is canceled.
Sabah too, some Brunei.But Yes China for hundreds of years set its foot prints in Indonesia. Easy access to Australia and the Philippines.
https://www.inquirer.net/462108/ph-revitalizing-civilian-sea-patrol-for-maritime-monitoring/
PH revitalizing civilian sea patrol for maritime monitoring
in case of civilians as sea patrollers, will they be compensated in case they got hurt while discharging sea duties? will their families be compensated? if I were civilian, I want that in writing.
I dont really like using untrained civilians vs highly organized chinese militia, or professional foreign thieves who fish our seas, and sometimes drop illegal drug hauls, our civilians doing the nitty gritty coz our the high ranking bosses think themselves too important for the dirty job of being in the frontline and may be fired upon or challenged by these latter day sea pirates who are cutthroats and armed to the teeth, and have fast and better sea worthy vessels than what our poor civilians have. by pirates, I mean any of those hordes that ply our seas and dont identify themselves and kill off their maritime responders.
if civilians are to form a militia, their duties ought to be very clear. they should also be trained just in case the meet a very tough customers out there who will take them as hostages. and if their boats are rammed, how soon can civilians hope of rescue?
Here is a bonus. Ala tanod: armed only with radios or satellite phones at the most.
Filipino Fishers at Sea: Building a Civilian Maritime Presence with Safety Nets
In recent years, the Philippine government has ramped up support for fishers operating in the West Philippine Sea (WPS), reflecting a growing recognition that these civilian mariners are more than food producers — they are also frontline witnesses to incursions and environmental threats. Yet the question remains: are we adequately equipping them with the safety nets and institutional backing they need to navigate both the waves and the geopolitics?
Precedents Exist, But Are Limited
Community-based initiatives such as Bantay Dagat have long relied on volunteer fisherfolk to patrol nearshore waters, enforce fisheries laws, and prevent destructive practices. Thousands of volunteers across the archipelago receive basic training, some insurance coverage, and local incentives. Similarly, the Philippine Coast Guard Auxiliary (PCGA) provides civilian support for search-and-rescue and disaster-response missions.
These programs demonstrate that civilian maritime involvement is not unprecedented in the Philippines. Recent government initiatives — such as BFAR’s Kadiwa ng Bagong Bayaning Mangingisda (KBBM) program — further integrate livelihood support with maritime presence, delivering fuel, ice, and logistical assistance to fishers in contested zones. These measures are designed to maintain Philippine presence, ensure safety, and uphold livelihoods simultaneously.
Yet the parallels with local volunteer programs have limits. Bantay Dagat and PCGA volunteers typically operate in municipal waters, far from the complex geopolitics of the WPS. Insurance and welfare benefits, while in place, are tailored to accidents or natural hazards — not detention, harassment, or escalatory encounters with foreign vessels. And legislative efforts to formalize and strengthen civilian maritime roles remain pending.
Risks Are Real, And Stakes Are High
Operating in contested waters exposes civilian fishers to a level of risk that no coastal volunteer faces. Unlike barangay tanods or CAFGU units on land, fishers can encounter foreign coast guards, militia vessels, or naval forces, often with limited avenues for legal or diplomatic protection. Without clear legal frameworks, robust insurance, and integration into official maritime operations, civilian maritime presence could be mischaracterized as a paramilitary force, inviting both international incident and propaganda.
What Needs to Be Done
To safely and effectively expand civilian maritime presence in the WPS, several measures are essential:
1. Legal clarity: Clearly define the role of civilian fishers as observers and livelihood participants, not combatants, under the supervision of BFAR and PCG.
2. Safety nets and welfare: Provide comprehensive insurance, hazard allowances, legal assistance, and compensation for lost livelihood in case of harassment or vessel damage.
3. Training and equipment: Ensure access to marine safety courses, communication devices, satellite tracking, and emergency protocols. Weapons must be avoided to prevent international escalation.
4. Integration with formal forces: Fishers should operate as part of coordinated missions with PCG or AFP patrols, enabling rapid response if incidents occur.
5. Transparency and oversight: Civilian involvement must include clear command structures and accountability mechanisms to prevent misuse or misrepresentation.
Building a Strategic, Not Ad-Hoc, Presence
The seeds of a civilian maritime presence are already visible in government programs, insurance schemes, and volunteer patrols. But to transform these initiatives into an effective strategy for the WPS, the state must treat them as national programmes, not improvisations. This means investing in legal frameworks, training, welfare, and coordination — turning ordinary fisherfolk into empowered participants in maritime security and national sovereignty, rather than leaving them exposed to geopolitical hazards.
The Philippines has a foundation to build upon. What it now needs is the vision, planning, and protective infrastructure to ensure that those who venture into our contested seas do so with both purpose and protection.
🇵🇭 “Porcupine Defense vs. Salami & Cabbage Strategy”: Effectiveness Analysis
China uses:
1) Salami Slicing
Small, incremental actions below the threshold of war (e.g., laser pointing, water-cannoning, construction on shoals, deploying cutters).
2) Cabbage Strategy
Surrounding disputed features with layers of ships:
Maritime militia (1st ring)
Coast Guard (2nd ring)
PLA-Navy (3rd ring)
→ creating facts on the water before the defender can react.
The Philippines’ Porcupine Defense is meant to make any aggression costly by using:
Dispersed anti-ship missiles
Sea denial weapons (mines, drones)
Mobile rocket artillery
Maritime domain awareness (MDA)
Allies for deterrence
Civilian resiliency & asymmetric tactics
The key question: Can it stop creeping encroachment without triggering war?
🦔 I. Where the Porcupine Defense IS EFFECTIVE
✅ 1. Deterring outright invasion or seizure of large islands
A2/AD (anti-access/area denial) systems like BrahMos, HIMARS, NSM, Spike-ER, and coastal radars make rapid island seizure costly.
China will think twice about turning Pag-asa or other inhabited islands into a hot war.
→ POD works best for big, high-risk events.
✅ 2. Punishing or deterring major escalations
If China attempts:
land reclamation on Ayungin
blockade of Palawan–Mindanao SLOCs
permanent occupation of Scarborough
…Philippine shore-based missiles and alliances can be leveraged.
High-end deterrence improves because the price of escalation becomes higher.
✅ 3. Strengthening legal and political deterrence
The porcupine model integrates:
joint patrols
internationalization of incidents
real-time transparency (FOIC, AIS, drones)
allied military presence
China’s grey-zone tactics rely on ambiguity.
The POD reduces ambiguity by exposing actions publicly and immediately.
Porcupines thrive in sunlight.
🟡 II. Where the Porcupine Defense Is ONLY PARTIALLY EFFECTIVE
⚠️ 1. Against maritime militia swarming
Porcupine defenses are military systems.
Militia boats are civilian-coded, lightly armed, and numerous.
Missiles cannot be used on them without:
violating rules-of-engagement
sparking escalation
creating propaganda for China
The result:
POD cannot directly engage “people’s militia” boats.
⚠️ 2. Against CCG (China Coast Guard) coercion short of lethal force
Water cannons, ramming, and blocking cannot be deterred by missiles.
A porcupine’s quills cannot stop:
water cannoning
shadowing
preventing rotations
sealing access to shoals
Unless the coercion clearly escalates, high-end weapons remain unusable.
→ The POD deters war, but not “below-war” harassment.
⚠️ 3. Delayed reaction due to bureaucratic and legal constraints
An effective porcupine requires:
rapid intel fusion
clear command-and-control
automatic ROE triggers
well-funded logistics
The Philippines still suffers from:
fragmented agencies
slow-signing authority
overlapping missions (PCG/PN/BFAR)
→ China moves in hours; PH responds in weeks.
🔴 III. Where the Porcupine Defense FAILS (unless complementary reforms happen)
❌ 1. Countering the “Cabbage” occupation of small features
If China surrounds Ayungin Reef with:
inner militia ring
middle coast guard ring
outer PLA-N ring
…there is no porcupine response that can break through without triggering a gun battle.
POD cannot dislodge “slow occupation by layers.”
This is exactly how China took:
Scarborough (2012)
Several reefs in Spratlys earlier
❌ 2. Preventing construction once China starts building
After the first dredger arrives and CCG forms a blockade,
military force cannot be used without starting a conflict.
The porcupine cannot strike:
dredgers
supply barges
temporary piers
…without escalation.
Meaning:China can build, reclaim, and militarize under a cabbage shield.
❌ 3. Preventing economic and political coercion
Porcupine defenses are kinetic.
China’s tools include:
trade pressure
tourist bans
OFW targets
investment withdrawal
A missile cannot protect:
agriculture exports
Filipino workers abroad
port concessions
telecom dependency
→ POD is military-only; coercion is multidimensional.
⭐ IV. How to Make the Porcupine Defense Actually Counter Salami & Cabbage Tactics
A. Add a “Banana Peel” Layer (persistent presence)
24/7 PCG + BFAR presence
autonomous surface drones
tethered balloons & FPV drone swarms
“white hulls first” rule
legal action on every infraction
Grey-zone fights need grey-zone assets.
B. Add a “Coconut Shield” (civilian protection layer)
fisherfolk inclusion in maritime domain awareness
satellite-fed community alert networks
NGO/press boats to expose harassment
Sunlight is a shield.
C. Add “Bamboo Spear” capabilities (non-lethal deterrents)
LRAD (long-range acoustic devices)
dazzlers
high-pressure water cannons
non-lethal area denial buoys
drone harassment
These allow escalation without crossing lethal thresholds.
D. Interagency Fusion (National Maritime Council / proposed reforms)
China succeeds because:
CCG, militia, and PLAN act seamlessly
PH must unify:
PCG
PN
BFAR
NICA
NEDA
DFA
EO 57 (2024) and the proposed National Maritime Council are attempts to fix this.
E. Persistent Allied Embedding
The deterrent effect is strongest when:
U.S. Coast Guard rides on PCG ships
Australia/Japan join rotation convoys
Quad/ASEAN observers embed for transparency
Allies neutralize the ambiguity China needs.
🧭 Bottom Line
The Porcupine Defense is highly effective at deterring big wars—but weak against small bites.
China’s salami slicing and cabbage encirclement succeed because they operate below the threshold of kinetic response, where porcupine quills cannot be used.
To counter salami slicing:
persistent presence
non-lethal tools
unified command
To counter cabbage strategy:
rapid political escalation
internationalization
pre-positioned civilian and allied presence
hardening of all outposts
A porcupine stops wolves, not ants.
The Philippines must add layers suited for grey-zone warfare.
Caveats
Authorities had repeteadly said thet will not water cannons.
Great read. I don’t know why the Philippines has not taken legal initiatives, like suing China for damages to Scarborough and elsewhere. I like the recommendations, especially prepositioning and hardening PH presence in her seas. The Philippines should build a permanent outpost to replace the Sierra Madre, then use China’s response to publicize her nonsense of building islands and lying about how they will be used (non-militarily they said). The Philippines should also calculate that the US is currently an unreliable military partner.
UP is completing the damage estimates.
The UP IMLOS (or UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies) study indicates that Chinese vessels have damaged corals in the South China Sea through activities like reef mining and dumping crushed coral. The Philippine Coast Guard has documented the destruction and accumulation of bleached coral fragments around Rozul (Iroquois) Reef, attributing it to the presence of 33 Chinese vessels, and Chinese authorities have denied the allegations.
.China’s Reefs of Denial: Why the Philippines Must Sue Now—Not Later
By [Your Name]
When a nation’s reefs die, part of its future dies with them. That truth sits at the center of the Philippines’ dilemma in the West Philippine Sea (WPS). Over the past decade, China’s massive dredging, island-building, giant-clam harvesting, and militarized construction have devastated some of the richest coral ecosystems in the world. And while Manila’s scientists—most recently at the UP Institute for Maritime Law and the Law of the Sea (IMLOS)—continue to produce compelling evidence of this ecological destruction, the question remains: Can the Philippines finally sue China “pronto”?
The answer is both yes—and not yet enough.Evidence is Not the Obstacle. Political Will Is.
IMLOS’ reef-damage study, along with findings by the Philippine Coast Guard and the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea, establishes a clear and damning pattern:
The data is there. The damage is measurable. The causal link is undeniable.
But evidence alone does not file cases. Governments do.The Legal Pathways Exist—and Are Stronger Than Before
Contrary to popular perception, a new case does not need China’s permission.1. A New UNCLOS Environmental Arbitration
Under UNCLOS Articles 192, 194, and 197, states must protect and preserve the marine environment.
A fresh case could focus solely on:
China will refuse participation, as it did in 2016—but the tribunal can still rule. And precedent is on our side.2. An ITLOS Advisory Opinion
This route bypasses China entirely.
Other states and oceans-governance bodies have taken this path before.
An advisory opinion strengthens Manila’s hand diplomatically, even if non-binding.3. Domestic Litigation
Symbolic? Yes.
But a Philippine court ruling adds narrative power and moral legitimacy—critical in a geopolitical contest.
In short: the legal machinery is ready; the political leadership must choose to activate it.China’s Counter-Narratives Are Growing More Aggressive
What once were quiet denials are now orchestrated information campaigns.
Beijing’s recent “ecosystem reports,” claiming reefs degraded due to “natural causes” or “Philippine activities,” are a preview of China’s defense playbook.
Just as troubling is its shift toward environmental weaponization—declaring marine “nature reserves” inside Philippine waters to justify exclusion of Filipino fishers. This tactic reframes occupation as conservation.
Failing to answer this with a formal legal challenge risks allowing China to control the narrative and normalize the fiction that it is the victim of environmental harm—not the perpetrator.The Real Battle Is Not Just Legal—It’s Moral and Multigenerational
Coral reefs feed our coastal communities, protect our shorelines, and sustain fisheries that millions depend on. They are not abstract geological features; they are living assets of the Filipino people.
Every year of inaction means:
To delay is to concede.Why Sue Now
Filing a new environmental case would:
Even if China ignores the ruling, the world will not.
And in international disputes, lawfare is cumulative: each ruling builds the foundation for future sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and collective action.The Philippines Cannot Afford Silence
The next move in the West Philippine Sea is not China’s.
It is ours.
IMLOS has done its job.
Scientists have done theirs.
The evidence is ready.
The damage is real.
The moral weight is clear.
The only question left is whether the Philippine government will finally turn science into action—and action into accountability.
The time to sue is not sometime in the future.
The time to sue is now.
Yes indeed. China’s outrage can be used against them, Be not afraid of conflict. Use it.
They are the rulebreakers and provocateurs in short, they started it.
A thief always denies his thieving when caught. Hire good attorneys, document the destruction.
Excellent!
Yes, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has initiatives to hire ethical hackers, referred to as “cyber warriors,” to strengthen its cyber defense capabilities against increasing cyberattacks. This includes plans to form a new Cyber Command and a directive from President Marcos to recruit cybersecurity professionals, reports this YouTube video, this Philstar.com article, and this YouTube video. The AFP is also enhancing its cyber infrastructure, investing in technology, and collaborating with other agencies and international partners.
Hiring initiatives
Broader cyber defense efforts
Good to know that there is an awareness of the cyberforce need. I’m skeptical about execution, but maybe under Teodoro it will be “professional”.
I really like his leadership.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) integrates AI training into its cybersecurity initiatives and military education programs to develop its “cyber warriors”. This includes participating in international exercises, partnering with the private sector, and overhauling its curriculum to address modern, AI-driven warfare.
Key Aspects of AFP AI and Cyber Training
Separately, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) also uses AI training to fight crime, utilizing machine learning and data analysis to assist investigators.
You should connive your way into a job there as an AI warrior. Librarian undersells your skills.
My shruggjng of Dr Jay Batongbacal of UP’s complaints of me using AI in our discussions made me carry on.He gave up complaining.
I waa taking about the Maritime League forum where some rertired and active Generals appreciate my comments
Haha! Nice work!
Haha!
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is building up its “cyber warrior” capabilities to defend its networks and counter the malicious disinformation campaigns and hybrid threats, including those from foreign-funded troll farms.
AFP Cyber Warriors
The AFP has formally recognized cyberspace as the fourth domain of operations and is establishing a dedicated Cyber Command.
Troll Farms
Troll farms are organized networks of fake social media accounts and paid “keyboard warriors” used to spread disinformation, manipulate public opinion, and sow chaos or political division.
The Conflict
The conflict is a modern form of hybrid warfare where the AFP’s legitimate cyber defense and information efforts are pitted against the anonymous, coordinated disinformation campaigns of troll farms, some of which are allegedly state-sponsored by foreign powers like China. The AFP has had to disable comment sections on its official Facebook page temporarily to deny these “inauthentic actors” a platform. The core of the battle is an “invisible war zone where perception, trust, and truth are the primary targets”.
The Philippines Is Stuck Between Extremes—and Stuck Without a Strategy
For decades, Philippine politics has been hijacked by two loud minorities: the far left and the far right. One screams “imperialism,” the other screams “nationalism,” and together they drown out the only thing that actually matters in governance: policy grounded in reality.
The result?
We don’t just have poor oversight—we have no strategy at all.
The Empty Alternative to EDCA
Take the anti-EDCA chorus. They argue passionately against U.S. access, against joint bases, against interoperability. Fine. Opposition is healthy.
But ask them what the Philippines should do instead, and the answer collapses into vague sentimentalism about “sovereignty.”
Without EDCA, what’s the plan?
Take on a nuclear-armed superpower with a slingshot?
We threw the Americans out of Subic and Clark in 1991, carved up the land for commercial use, and called it a patriotic victory.
Yet we never built a navy, never built an air force, and never built deterrence.
Instead of fortifying our archipelago, we built duty-free shops.
War Contingency? We Don’t Even Have Logistics
If conflict erupts over Taiwan or the West Philippine Sea, the Philippines will face its largest evacuation operation in history:
more than 200,000 Filipinos in Taiwan, plus tens of thousands of foreigners who will look to us for humanitarian corridors.
Do we have ships, ports, shelters, or even a working plan for that scale of movement?
We don’t.
Because we’ve wasted 30 years debating nostalgia.
We Worship Old Laws Like Museum Artifacts
Our defense thinking is trapped in Commonwealth Act No. 1, written in 1935.
The far left romanticizes guerrilla warfare.
The far right glorifies self-reliance.
But war today is not rifles in the jungle.
It’s satellites, cyberattacks, drones, precision missiles, and maritime surveillance.
We cling to a pre-World War II statute like it’s holy scripture while our neighbors invest in hypersonics and A2/AD networks.
The Jeepney Is Our National Metaphor
The jeepney is an ingenious postwar adaptation—but we froze it in time.
We declared it cultural heritage, then used that as an excuse to avoid modernizing transport for decades.
Our defense posture is the jeepney problem in uniform:
take an old tool, celebrate it, politicize it… then get stuck in it.
Luck Is Not Strategy
For years we’ve been lucky: geopolitics shielded us, regional balances distracted aggressors, and crises passed us by.
But luck ends.
Today:
Taiwan is at risk.
The West Philippine Sea is boiling.
Hybrid warfare is already happening.
Evacuation and disaster plans remain skeletal.
Defense modernization is two decades behind.
We have become the duck drifting peacefully while the hunters circle the pond.
Time to Outgrow the Extremes
The Philippines does not need ideological cosplay.
It needs governance:
A coherent defense doctrine
A working evacuation and disaster plan
Strong alliances anchored in national interest
Real investment in energy, logistics, and industry
A modernization program insulated from political theatrics
Both extremes—left and right—have one thing in common:
they offer no realistic alternative for protecting 115 million people in a dangerous century.
It’s time to stop shouting at ghosts of the past and start preparing for the threats already at our doorstep.
Because the world is moving fast, and we are standing still.
And standing still, in geopolitics, is simply another way of falling behind.
This and the energy loop reflect simple incompetence of the first degree among regulatory agencies, and their inability to guide Congress and the President on needed rule-making. Turf issues as well. The government does need an applied AI center to get the insights that you provide here. I hope agencies go to it naturally but, duh, they are incompetent so the probability of them being able to find competence through AI is likely small.
All resolvable if we have the resolve and not a New Year’s resolution.
I know this is long, but I have to share it.
Philippine Defense Strategy: Beyond Ideological Paralysis A Comprehensive Policy Analysis Executive Summary
This analysis examines how Philippine defense and foreign policy has been constrained by ideological extremes at the expense of pragmatic strategic planning. It identifies critical capability gaps, evaluates the consequences of policy paralysis, and proposes a framework for reality-based governance in an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific.
Key Findings:
Part I: The Historical Context The 1991 Base Closure: Sovereignty Without Strategy
The Decision:
What Followed:
The Paradox:
We gained symbolic sovereignty but lost strategic autonomy. Without credible deterrence, we became more dependent on external security guarantees, not less. Part II: The Ideological Trap The Far Left Position: Anti-Imperialism Without Alternatives
Core Arguments:
Strategic Blind Spots:
Historical Precedent:
The Huk Rebellion (1942-1954) guerrilla model is romanticized but irrelevant to:
The Far Right Position: Nationalism Without Capacity
Core Arguments:
Strategic Blind Spots:
The Jeepney Metaphor:
The jeepney—born from WWII surplus, celebrated as cultural icon, then frozen in time—is the perfect symbol of this mindset:
Similarly, defense policy is trapped between nostalgia for past victories and unwillingness to adapt to present realities. Part III: The Strategic Deficit Gap 1: No War Contingency Planning
Taiwan Scenario:
Current Preparedness:
Comparative Failure:
Gap 2: Maritime Domain Blindness
The Challenge:
Current Capabilities:
Result:Illegal fishing, smuggling, and territorial incursions occur with impunity in vast stretches of Philippine waters. Gap 3: Legal Anachronism
Commonwealth Act No. 1 (1935): National Defense Act
Still the foundational law for Philippine defense, written when:
Provisions include:
What’s Missing:
Why It Persists:
Constitutional/legal reform is politically toxic. Easier to add piecemeal amendments than undertake comprehensive modernization of defense law. Part IV: The EDCA Debate—Beyond Slogans What EDCA Actually Is
Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (2014):
Current Sites (as of 2023):
9 locations, including:
The Opposition Case: Steelmanned
Legitimate Concerns:
The Missing Piece:
If EDCA is rejected, what replaces it?
Hypothetical Alternatives (Never Articulated):
The Pro-Alliance Case: Steelmanned
Pragmatic Arguments:
The Missing Piece:
If EDCA is the answer, why has defense capability still stagnated?
The Problem:
EDCA has been treated as a substitute for indigenous capacity-building rather than a complement. Defense modernization continues to lag even with alliance benefits. Part V: The Real Threats (Not Talking Points) Threat 1: Gray Zone Warfare (Present Tense)
Definition: Actions below the threshold of armed conflict but designed to achieve strategic objectives through coercion.
Philippine Experience:
Current Response Capability:
Insufficient. Philippines lacks:
Threat 2: Taiwan Contingency (High Probability, 5-10 Year Horizon)
Scenario Parameters:
Philippine Exposure:
Current Preparedness Score: 2/10 Threat 3: Hybrid Warfare Infrastructure Gaps
Modern Conflict Domains:
Philippine Vulnerabilities:
Part VI: What Realistic Strategy Looks Like Principle 1: Doctrine Before Hardware
Current Problem:
Defense modernization has been equipment-focused (ships, planes, rifles) without underlying strategic doctrine.
What’s Needed:
Precedent:Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update provides clear model—public document laying out threats, response strategy, and investment priorities across 10-year horizon. Principle 2: Alliance as Multiplier, Not Substitute
Smart Alliance Management:
Red Lines:
Principle 3: Build What We Can Realistically Use
Priority Investments (5-10 Year Horizon):
Maritime Domain:
Civil Defense:
Cyber and Information:
Not Priority:
Principle 4: Legal Modernization
Update Commonwealth Act No. 1:
Create Defense Industrial Base Policy:
Principle 5: Insulate Strategy from Theater
The Problem:
Every six years, a new administration reviews defense policy through partisan lens. Continuity suffers.
Solutions:
Part VII: The Cost of Continued Paralysis Scenario A: No Change (Baseline)
5 Years:
10 Years:
Scenario B: Ideological “Victory” for Either Extreme
If Far Left Prevails (Withdraw from Alliances):
If Far Right Prevails (Uncritical Nationalism):
Scenario C: Pragmatic Reorientation (Proposed Path)
5 Years:
10 Years:
Part VIII: Why This Matters Beyond Security Economic Security
Energy:
Trade:
Infrastructure:
Implication:Military weakness translates directly to economic vulnerability. Coercion doesn’t require invasion—just credible threat to trade routes and critical infrastructure. Political Stability
Extremist capture of debate creates:
Historical Pattern:
Every crisis reveals governance gaps, produces calls for reform, generates temporary political will… then normalcy returns and reform dies.
Examples:
Breaking the Cycle:
Requires institutionalizing reform beyond electoral cycles and ideological fashion. Democratic Resilience
The Authoritarian Playbook:
Philippine Vulnerability:
When legitimate security concerns go unaddressed by democratic institutions, public turns to authoritarian alternatives (Duterte’s appeal partially based on “getting things done”).
Defense:Competent, transparent, accountable governance that actually delivers security is the best defense against authoritarianism. Conclusion: From Slogans to Strategy
The Philippines stands at a crossroads. We can continue performing ideological theater while the geopolitical landscape shifts beneath us, or we can choose the harder path of pragmatic governance.
This requires:
The alternative is not neutrality or sovereignty.
The alternative is irrelevance.
Because in the 21st century, small and medium powers that fail to adapt don’t get to abstain from great power competition—they become the terrain on which it’s waged.
The Philippines deserves better than vague promises of sovereignty from those who offer no strategy to defend it, and better than uncritical alliance from those who offer no indigenous agency.
We deserve governance grounded in reality.
And we deserve it before the luck runs out.
I only scanned this as it is too much to absorb and there is little likelihood of the shortcomings identified being resolved. I put in the category of “think smarter and use AI to help you out” which applies to just about every agency. We need a tech President.
Thanks Joe.
Yes we need a Techie president and I know the pretender in waiting is not one.
The Philippines has spent the last thirty years trapped in a strange ideological loop. One side romanticizes neutrality and rejects alliances. The other clings to a dream of total self-reliance that our budget—and geography—simply cannot support. These two extremes shout past each other, yet end up producing the same result: no real capability, no real strategy, and no real preparation for the threats now closing in around us.
The post-1991 expulsion of U.S. bases was supposed to mark the start of a confident, independent defense posture. Instead, it marked the beginning of a long decline. We closed the bases, sliced up the facilities, and attempted to run a modern archipelagic defense force on nostalgia and symbolism. The jeepney became our national metaphor: charming, resourceful, but hopelessly outdated for the world it’s forced to operate in.
Meanwhile, the region has changed beyond recognition.
China’s presence in the West Philippine Sea is now constant, coercive, and increasingly dangerous. “Monster ships” loom over Scarborough Shoal. Water cannons and ramming incidents at Ayungin have become routine. Taiwan’s semiconductor boom has drawn a quarter-million Filipino workers to the island—plus hundreds of thousands more visitors—yet the Philippines has not built the evacuation capacity required for even a fraction of them.
If a crisis breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, we cannot simply send prayers and a press release.
Reality Check #1: Defense Spending Still Doesn’t Match Our Rhetoric
Despite the sharp rise in risks, the Philippines still spends barely 1% of GDP on defense—less than Vietnam or Singapore, and barely above the levels of permanently neutral states that actually have nationwide bunkers and conscription. We have none of those. What we have is a political habit of proclaiming “independence” while outsourcing our security to luck.
Reality Check #2: Alliances Are Not Optional
Critics of EDCA warn that the nine agreed sites make the Philippines a “target.” They never explain the alternative. Without allies, the Philippines would face the world’s largest coast guard, a modern blue-water navy, a vast air force, and the most capable missile inventory in Asia—with a handful of frigates, a fragile radar system, and a 1935-era defense law.
The uncomfortable truth is this:
EDCA doesn’t make us a target. Geography already did. What EDCA does is make us harder to hit and easier to help.
This is why the United States, Japan, and other partners are increasing exercises and interoperability with our forces. It’s not about turning the Philippines into a launchpad. It’s about giving an archipelago of 7,600 islands the capacity to monitor its own waters and defend its own people.
Reality Check #3: Self-Reliance Doesn’t Mean Going It Alone
Some nationalists insist we must rely only on ourselves. That sounds admirable—until you ask how.
Should we build jets? We can’t even build enough patrol boats. Should we revive Swiss-style neutrality? Switzerland spends less on defense because it has more prepared civilians than soldiers, nationwide hardened shelters, and a doctrine built over a century. The Philippines has none of this.
Self-reliance is not isolation. It is the ability to stand strong because you made intelligent strategic choices, including the right partnerships.
A Better Path: Porcupine Defense
There is a growing consensus—here and across the Pacific—that the Philippines must adopt a “porcupine” defense posture:
dispersed missile batteries like BrahMos,
fast attack craft and unmanned surface vessels,
mesh-networked drones and sensors,
EDCA-backed airfields and fuel depots that double as civilian assets,
civilian–military evacuation and disaster plans that actually exist.
This is how small states deter large ones: you make yourself too painful to swallow.
We do not need aircraft carriers.
We need a thousand small, smart, hard-to-kill systems that exploit our geography.
We cannot match China ship for ship.
We must make aggression politically, militarily, and economically unattractive.
The Cost of Doing Nothing Is Now Unaffordable
The Philippines is running out of time for indecision.
Our fishermen are harassed.
Our waters are patrolled by foreign ships.
Our workers in Taiwan face risks we have not planned for.
Our military modernization is stuck in electoral cycles.
And most dangerously of all:
We still have no national consensus on what we are defending—or how.
The far left rails against alliances. The far right fantasizes about an isolationist arsenal. Both miss the point. The Philippines is neither a continental power nor a hermit kingdom. It is an archipelago on the front line of Asia’s most consequential rivalry.
We can cling to myths, or we can confront geography.
We can insist we don’t need allies, or we can build a defense posture that finally recognizes the stakes.
We can keep drifting—or we can decide.
In the end, national security is not about bravado. It is about choices, made early, consistently, and with clear eyes.
The Philippines does not need to become a fortress.
But it must finally stop pretending that symbolism is strategy.
We have allies, a strategic location, and an archipelago built for defense. What we lack is the political will to turn those advantages into real security.
The world has changed.
The Philippines must change with it.
Before the next crisis forces us to.
Reality check #3 is a humdinger. It’s like the Left cannot grasp the concept of retaining sovereignty by working with others. Well, they can, but they need arguments to sell their schtick.
I hope one day we find the correct and balanced mix.
OP-ED: The Philippine Navy’s Port Problem Was an Accident Waiting to Happen
If Hanjin hadn’t gone bankrupt, the Philippine Navy today would have a very simple problem: nowhere to park its new ships. It sounds absurd, but it’s true—and it reveals how accidental our strategic gains often are.
For years, the Navy’s modernization program moved ahead without a matching modernization of naval infrastructure. We bought frigates, corvettes, and offshore patrol vessels—but we did not build the deepwater ports to berth, maintain, or deploy them efficiently. This mismatch was not a secret; planners flagged it repeatedly. But budgets went to “shiny hardware,” not to the critical but boring foundations: piers, drydocks, and logistics hubs.
Then came the collapse of Hanjin Heavy Industries in Subic. What was a catastrophic loss for local shipbuilding suddenly became a windfall for national security. The Philippines didn’t plan for it—we lucked into it. Without Subic’s deepwater shipyard, the Navy’s José Rizal–class frigates and forthcoming corvettes would be fighting for space in cramped and shallow ports like Sangley, Pier 13, or Naval Base Heracleo Alano.
Let’s be honest: without Hanjin’s bankruptcy, the Navy’s modernization would look like a family buying SUVs without a garage and parking them on the street, hoping it works out.
And Subic is just one piece.
The country still lacks:
A dedicated homeport for surface combatants (a permanent one, not improvised)
A modern drydock capable of handling corvettes, OPVs, frigates, and submarines
Maintenance, repair, and supply hubs outside Luzon
Strategic dispersal sites to avoid having the fleet sitting like ducks in a single base during a crisis
We can criticize past administrations for many things, but the deeper issue is cultural: the Philippines plans for acquisition, not sustainment. We celebrate the arrival of a new ship, but forget the 30–40 years of maintenance, training, port infrastructure, and logistics behind it.
The Subic opportunity should have triggered a national rethink. Instead, we risk repeating the cycle: buying assets we cannot fully support, while relying on luck, foreign partners, or emergency improvisation to fill the gaps.
If the Philippines wants a real navy—not just a shopping list—it must invest in the infrastructure that makes a navy work. Otherwise, the fleet will continue to grow only because of accidents of history, not by coherent defense planning.
The so-called Gerasimov Doctrine
More than a decade ago, a dry lecture delivered in a Moscow conference hall unexpectedly became one of the most misunderstood documents in modern strategic discourse. In early 2013, General Valery Gerasimov—then newly appointed chief of the Russian General Staff—addressed the Russian Academy of Military Sciences on what he believed was the future of warfare. His speech, later published in Voyenno-Promyshlennyy Kurier and translated into English in Military Review by Robert Coalson in 2016, carried an unassuming title: “The Value of Science Is in Foresight.”
Yet this modest article would be transformed in the West into something it never claimed to be: a blueprint for Russian hybrid warfare, a doctrine of subversion, and the intellectual spark behind election meddling, disinformation campaigns, and the Kremlin’s shadow wars. Thus was born what Western commentators came to call the “Gerasimov Doctrine.” And like most political myths, it grew not from what the author said—but from what others needed it to mean.
Gerasimov’s actual argument was neither esoteric nor revolutionary. He pointed out that in the 21st century, non-military tools had acquired a strategic potency once reserved only for armies and tanks. Information operations could destabilize governments; economic pressure could coerce without firing a shot; social and political manipulation could fracture societies from within. Meanwhile, large, lumbering conventional formations—the pride of Soviet military planning—were becoming increasingly obsolete in a world shaped by technology and asymmetric threats.
In other words, he was observing what everyone else was already seeing.
But the context matters. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, colored revolutions, and the expanding role of digital information warfare, Gerasimov was cautioning his audience that Russia itself was vulnerable to these new forms of conflict. His warning—intended for internal consumption—was flipped on its head abroad. Western analysts interpreted it as a confession of Moscow’s playbook, proof of a master plan for hybrid war.
In reality, it was a mirror, not a manifesto.
Yet the myth persisted because it served a purpose. The West needed a shorthand to explain the shock of Crimea, the disinformation campaigns targeting Europe and the United States, and Russia’s shadowy involvement in conflicts from Syria to Africa. “The Gerasimov Doctrine” offered a convenient, almost cinematic narrative—an evil genius sketching out a formula for invisible war.
But if we step back from the myth and look at the substance, Gerasimov’s article still matters today precisely because it captured a global shift that no country can ignore. The tools of modern conflict have diffused: the battlefield is no longer a geographic space, but every device, every network, every citizen’s perception of truth. Wars are no longer declared; they simply begin. And victory is no longer measured in territory, but in influence.
That’s the real reason Gerasimov’s 2013 speech endures. Not because it dictated Russian strategy, but because it articulated—plainly and presciently—what warfare had already become.
The lesson for the Philippines and other vulnerable nations is clear: if conflict today is fought in the spaces between traditional warfare and political subversion, between information and coercion, then national security can no longer be the siloed domain of generals alone. It must be an all-of-government, all-of-society effort.
In the end, the so-called doctrine was never a doctrine at all. But the dangers it described? Those are very real—and they belong to everyone.
Something to think about.
American mil-startups have cloned the Iranian Shahed drone. If these cheap, unsophisticated and unsexy drones are seriously being considered by the US Defense Establishment, then it should be be given a serious look by the Philippines. I can imagine a Philippine company being able to get off the ground and start building Shahed-like drones en masse to augment higher end systems that the Philippines is either buying or the US is “forgetting.”
https://www.twz.com/air/u-s-deploys-shahed-136-clones-to-middle-east-as-a-warning-to-iran
If the US calls it LUCAS then we call it LUKAS
Short answer: Yes — but only up to a point.
The Philippines can and is already building a domestic drone and defence-tech ecosystem that supports national security and economic growth — however, fully reverse-engineering and fielding advanced loitering munitions or satellite-linked swarming systems like the U.S. “LUCAS” requires substantial investments, careful legal/diplomatic navigation, and clear policy choices. Below I’ll explain what’s realistic, what’s hard, risks, and safer / higher-value alternatives that help the country “survive and prosper” without needless escalation.
What’s already in Manila’s favour (momentum & laws)
Manila recently passed laws and policy moves to revive a domestic defence industry and incentivize local production and tech transfer. This provides a legal and fiscal framework to build capacity. .
There’s growing activity locally in unmanned systems (academia, small firms, Navy/AFR projects, and market growth in civil drones). The domestic drone market is expanding, and government programs are pushing self-reliance pilots and demonstrations. .
What reverse-engineering an advanced loitering-munition (like LUCAS) actually requires
You can think of this as three categories — hardware, software/communications, and systems integration:
1. Hardware & manufacturing
Composite airframes, precision propulsors, warhead design (if lethal), EO/IR gimbals, commercial/satellite datalinks and ruggedized electronics. Industrial machining, composite layup, and supply chains for sensors/MCUs are needed. (General point supported by observed requirements for similar systems.)
2. Software, autonomy & C2
Navigation, guidance, path planning, target recognition (ML), and secure beyond-line-of-sight command links (satcom / SATCOM terminals or relays). These are often the highest-value / hardest-to-replicate parts because they require skilled engineers, datasets, and testing facilities.
3. Testing, sustainment & doctrine
Safe flight-testing ranges, weapons-effectiveness trials (if kinetic), logistics, spares, ECM/ESM hardening, and operational doctrine for employment and escalation management.
All together, these require decades of industrial maturation unless you rely on foreign tech transfer / licensed co-production. .
Legal, diplomatic and escalation risks (don’t ignore these)
Producing or proliferating kamikaze drones has export-control, sanctions, and arms-control implications. Partner countries may withhold certain technologies and suppliers.
Indigenous production of strike drones can accelerate regional arms races and risk miscalculation in contested waters — that’s a political and ethical cost. .
A practical, lower-risk strategy that helps the Philippines survive and prosper
Rather than trying to replicate advanced offensive systems outright, the smarter path is a dual-use, phased industrialization focused on resilience, maritime advantage, and economic spillovers:
1. Prioritise maritime domain awareness (high value for PH)
Persistent ISR (long-endurance UAVs, USVs, maritime sensors, coastal radars, satellite data buys). These protect fisheries, EEZ, and shipping routes and have direct economic benefits. (Philippines already pilots UAV/USV projects.)
2. Build counter-UAS & defensive systems
Invest in detection (radar, RF-intercept, EO fusion), soft-kill options (jamming, cyber), and interceptor options. Defensive tech is politically less escalatory and immediately protects assets.
3. Grow the civil drone / dual-use industrial base
Support startups and university labs to build payloads, comms, autonomy (for agriculture, disaster response, mapping). Civil demand drives scale, lowers costs, and trains engineers. The growing Philippines drone market makes this commercially sensible.
4. Focus on component mastery first
Electronics packaging, custom PCBs, RF modules, satellite terminals, computer vision models, and ruggedization are exportable capabilities. Mastery here enables many peaceful industries (telecoms, maritime electronics, disaster tech).
5. Use licensed co-production and targeted partnerships
Co-manufacture under license with allied suppliers for complex components while developing local supply chains for simpler parts. The law and incentive packages make such partnerships easier.
6. Create centres of excellence & talent pipelines
Fund university-industry R&D hubs, apprenticeships in avionics and RF engineering, and scholarships for systems engineering and ML. (Academia in PH is already doing experimental UAV work.)
7. Transparent governance & export controls
Put clear rules on what may be developed domestically, export licensing, and end-use monitoring to avoid sanctions or proliferation problems.
Economic & resilience benefits (why this is prosperity, not just defense)
Civil applications of drone/autonomy tech (agriculture, fisheries monitoring, disaster response, infrastructure inspection) deliver immediate economic returns and jobs while building the workforce you need for higher-end systems. The local market is projected to expand strongly.
What not to do
Don’t try to clandestinely copy or produce advanced offensive systems without legal frameworks or partners — that invites sanctions, supply denial, and escalation. Also, I won’t provide instructions on building weapons or weaponized systems.
Quick roadmap (practical first 3 steps)
1. Policy & financing: Activate SRDP incentives, set export / end-use rules, seed a sovereign tech/defence fund.
2. Tech basics: Fund 3 university/industry demo projects for long-endurance ISR UAVs, a counter-UAS suite, and a maritime USV proof-of-concept.
3. Partnerships: Negotiate tech-transfer/co-production with friendly suppliers while building local component supply chains (RF, sensors, PCBs).
AFP has to lead on this, making the market for finished products. It can’t be the manufacturer who leads.
This insight is excellent.
The Philippines did or does have a start-up drone manufacturer. I recall writing an article about it several years ago. It was a private venture and probably died without government backing. I also touted drones in this 2011 article, way before Ukraine actually proved the point. They are affordable and nasty.
Thanks for this classic, Joe.
There are multiple Philippine drone startups, all who purport to build a 100% Filipino drone, just like MyPhone which claimed to produce a 100% Filipino smartphone but had just rebranded bottom barrel Chinese Android imports.
Well with drones it is a bit different. Think about LEGO and that is the landscape of quadcopter, hexacopter, octocopter, and decacopter drones today. Parts are plug and play, essentially by adding motors and rotors the payload capacity of the drone is increased (along with the size). Most Ukrainian first-person drones are built this way using commercially available parts. Software is open source then tweaked to suit the application. Something the Philippines can definitely do, though the utility of a short range rotor-based drone to deter seaborne attack is not that high compared to the battlespace on the flat plains of Ukraine.
A “dumb” Shahed-type drone is much more useful. No need for jammable GPS or radio guided navigation guidance. Most Shaheds use inertial guidance systems that are pre-programmed and attack relatively fixed targets in a saturation attack. That capability is both cheap and highly effective at penetrating through the modern anti-air systems that China has by virtue of simply overwhelming available missile interceptors with sheer quantity.
As for the Iranian Shaheds being reverse engineered by the US, the interesting story here is the Iranians had actually reverse engineered the Israeli Harpy/Harop drone, which in turn was a technology transfer from a 1980s West German-American program to produce saturation-type drones by Dornier and Teledyne Ryan to fight against the Soviet horde once most high-end NATO weapon systems had been destroyed. The way the Shahed launches from mobile multiple racked launchers is exactly the same. The general drone planform is the same. The Shahed’s propulsion itself is an Iranian-built Chinese reverse engineered clone of the of the original Dornier-Teledyne Ryan DAR drone’s Limbach-designed motor.
See here:
https://www.suasnews.com/2025/07/die-drohne-antiradar-the-original-shahed-drone/
Thanks for the brief. Developments are moving fast. At the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine the Ukraine used simple drones flying over Russian troops and dropping grenades, the video ginned up with music for propaganda value. Now they crank out big long distance monsters and build drone boats. Russia uses drone swarms for offense. It’s new war-fighting. Cheap, deadly.
It does help the Ukrainians that most current Russian weapon systems were created by the Ukrainian SSR in the first place during the Soviet times. Knowledge can be forgotten during periods of a people’s loss of confidence in themselves. Luckily in today’s world of plentiful information, one can actively choose to find the good information. The Ukrainians did that by the elders such as engineers in their diaspora coming back, and intently listening to advice by foreign helpers, but most importantly willing to try anything and keeping with it. Sadly in the Philippines it seems that Filipinos did not want to listen to the elders from the Commonwealth and Third Republic, such as Irineo’s oft used example of the Manila water supply, nor do Filipinos often listen to the advice of those who would become helpers. Well, people learn one day, eventually. Often change requires surviving a crisis.
The Philippines is what it wants to be, I figure. If the choice is cheating and indolence over progress, then there is no need to bewail history, there is only a need to try to shape a different future.
It’s true: a nation ultimately becomes what it repeatedly chooses. If the Philippines continues to accept cheating as normal and indolence as culture, then history is not the culprit—current preferences are. But this also means the future is not doomed. The real task is to break the cycle of self-inflicted limits.
Shaping a different future begins when enough people decide that competence matters more than connections, that institutions matter more than personalities, and that discipline is not oppression but a prerequisite for prosperity. Other countries made that shift—Vietnam, South Korea, even Indonesia—and their trajectories changed.
The Philippines doesn’t suffer from a lack of capability; it suffers from a lack of collective decision to prioritize progress. When that choice finally changes, everything else can too.
ASEAN’s Rare-Earth Moment: Vietnam Leads, but the Region Must Think Bigger
For decades, the global rare-earth supply chain has been a one-country game. China dominates not because it owns most of the world’s deposits—countries like Vietnam, Australia, and even the Philippines have substantial reserves—but because Beijing built the refining plants, trained the chemists, subsidized the factories, and shouldered the environmental burden. The world bought the finished products, and China bought everyone’s raw ores.
Today, as geopolitical tensions intensify and countries race to secure the minerals needed for electric vehicles, wind turbines, semiconductors, and advanced weapons systems, Southeast Asia finds itself holding a strategic card it has never fully played: Vietnam possesses the second-largest rare earth reserves on Earth.
But possessing rare earths is not the same as shaping global supply chains. That requires vision, coordination, and political courage—elements ASEAN has often lacked.
Vietnam Has the Minerals, but ASEAN Needs the Strategy
Vietnam has been quietly positioning itself as the region’s rare-earth powerhouse. The Dong Pao deposit alone could support decades of extraction, and partnerships with Japan, South Korea, and the United States signal that Hanoi understands the stakes. But for rare earths, mining represents only the first rung of a much longer and more technologically demanding ladder.
The real value—financially and geopolitically—lies not in the minerals pulled from the ground, but in the processing, separation, and manufacturing that turn those minerals into magnets, motors, electronics, and defense components.
This is where China maintains a near-monopoly, and where ASEAN must decide whether it wants to remain a raw-materials exporter or graduate into an industrial power.
Why Southeast Asia Has a Unique Advantage—Right Now
Three global forces are finally giving ASEAN an opening:
Every major economy—Japan, South Korea, the U.S., the EU—openly seeks “China-plus-one” supply chain diversification. ASEAN fits the bill.
Few regions outside China have significant, easily accessible rare-earth deposits. Vietnam is one of them.
Malaysia already hosts Lynas, the world’s only major non-Chinese refiner.
Thailand is gearing up for EV production.
Singapore can supply financing and logistics.
This is the skeleton of a regional supply chain. All it needs is deliberate coordination.
The Stakes: Either ASEAN Builds a Supply Chain or Stays China’s Quarry
The worst-case scenario is painfully familiar:
ASEAN mines the ore, ships it offshore, and buys back the finished products at ten times the value.
If ASEAN simply extracts rare earths, China still wins.
The region must break this cycle by investing in processing, advanced materials, and magnet production. This requires billions of dollars, a trained technical workforce, and environmental safeguards that are politically unpopular but economically necessary.
Yet doing nothing is far more dangerous. It will trap ASEAN in the same low-value development path that it has struggled to escape for half a century.
What ASEAN Must Do Now
To turn Vietnam’s deposits into regional power, Southeast Asia must think like a bloc, not a collection of competing markets.
Build a rare-earth industrial corridor, linking Vietnam’s mines with Malaysia’s refineries, Thailand’s manufacturing hubs, and Singapore’s capital markets.
Leverage Japan and South Korea’s need for secure supplies to bring in technology and financing.
Create environmental and regulatory standards that make ASEAN the most reliable non-China rare-earth zone.
Invest in human capital, especially metallurgists, chemists, and materials engineers—fields that the region has historically neglected.
None of this requires antagonizing China; it simply requires ASEAN to stop outsourcing its future.
A Moment That Will Not Come Twice
The world is restructuring its supply chains for the first time in 30 years. That window will eventually close. If ASEAN acts boldly now, it can become a central pillar of the Indo-Pacific’s technological infrastructure. If it hesitates, others—Australia, Canada, even Africa—will fill the role.
Vietnam has given Southeast Asia a natural advantage. The question is whether the region will use it—or let it slip back into the ground.
I don’t think it is a regional problem or issue. There is demand, there is dirt, and any country with the dirt can sell it, with the Philippines having the advantage of low-cost diggers, to the extent humans are involved.
So far Viertnam is number two in Asia in terms of rare earth deposits so if we ho diggingwe go to Vietnam.
I still think we go diggig in the dumps pr at least the so called sanitary landfills.
My guess is that Vietnam will initially work with advanced industrialized countries to build capacity, convert that external support capacity to indigenous internal capacity, and go from there. Surely there will be trade with other ASEAN countries, but being that ASEAN is both weak and disunified, I doubt the bloc as a whole can do anything when the PRC tentacles are wrapped around multiple ASEAN members (who also happen to be historical enemies of both Thailand and Vietnam).
Some food for thought:
I learned the other week that as of the iPhone 17 series Apple had designated Vietnam as a “Tier 1” market, which means new products will be released in Vietnam and other Tier 1 countries first. Another indicator is the Vietnamese language is prioritized when it comes to new Apple features, including the AI ones. Vietnam has been on the Samsung equivalent of a Apple “Tier 1” market for quite some time. Such corporate moves are indicators of where companies will place focus and more importantly, investment. Meanwhile in the Philippines…
One day one young leader will compile all our wasted chances and opportunities and do something about it.
Perhaps not necessarily a young leader, but a competent leader who can articulate a vision in plain terms and have the courage to push it through.
Absolutely — and that distinction matters.
A country doesn’t need a young leader; it needs a capable one. Someone who can do three things simultaneously:
1. Articulate a clear, simple, believable vision
Not buzzwords, not motherhood statements, not “targets” that collapse on contact with reality.
But a vision that:
connects directly to people’s lived experience,
explains why certain sacrifices or reforms are needed, and
gives a coherent picture of what the country will look like when the effort pays off.
The best leaders make complexity digestible without dumbing it down.
Lee Kuan Yew did it. Zelensky does it. Jokowi does it. Even Vietnam’s technocrats, quietly.
The Philippines rarely gets this because leaders mistake verbosity for clarity and populism for connection.
2. Possess the courage to push through resistance
Any real reform in the Philippines immediately gets attacked by:
entrenched private interests,
political clans,
bureaucratic inertia,
legal obstructionism,
a public conditioned to mistrust institutions.
A competent leader needs political courage — not recklessness — to tolerate unpopularity, punish corruption even within their own camp, and take responsibility for decisions.
This is what made Ramos effective. It’s what made Gordon effective in the places he ran.
It’s what made ADB, BSP, and even DOF pockets of excellence — they had leaders willing to absorb friction.
3. Inspire collective courage
Filipinos often look for a lone savior. But progress comes when leaders activate society:
give professionals the confidence to innovate,
give the poor the tools to organize and participate,
give institutions the protection to do long-term work,
give businesses a predictable field to invest boldly.
This “confidence activation” is exactly what you described in the Ukrainian example:
knowledge is not lost — it simply gets buried under cynicism, and leadership is the excavator.
Why the Philippines keeps missing this type of leader
Because elections reward theatrics, not competence; dynasties reward survival, not vision; and the national culture punishes ambition by calling it “feelingero.”
But the moment a leader emerges who:
speaks plainly but thinks deeply,
pushes hard but walks clean,
focuses on systems instead of spectacle, and
refuses to treat Filipinos as incapable children,
— the country responds. The hunger for integrity and direction is always there.
And the good news
The Philippines doesn’t need a demigod.
It needs one competent leader to reset expectations and show that good governance is possible. After that, standards rise and political culture shifts — slowly at first, then quickly.
You’re right: it’s not about youth.
It’s about the competence, clarity, courage, and moral ballast to drag a country upward and convince it to climb with you.
If you want, I can sketch a profile of such a leader, or outline how a reformist leader could realistically win and govern under current Philippine conditions.
https://rareearthexchanges.com/news/vietnams-parliament-puts-rare-earths-under-lock-and-key-a-new-legal-play-in-the-global-resource-race/
OP-ED: The Age of Infinite War — Why Old Theories Still Rule the Conflicts of Tomorrow
By Karl Garcia (guest commentary)
The world today is not drifting into a new era of conflict. It is already deep inside one. What makes today’s wars disorienting—Ukraine, Gaza, the South China Sea, the Sahel—is not that they are unprecedented, but that they mix together every form of warfare ever imagined. To understand our moment, no single theorist is enough. Instead, one must weave together the insights of Gerasimov, Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Rupert Smith, Mary Kaldor, and even Samuel Huntington.
And once these ideas are seen in the same frame, a stark conclusion emerges:
Modern war is total in scope, hybrid in form, political in essence, societal in battlefield, and psychological in objective.
Gerasimov: The Battlefield Has No Boundaries
General Valery Gerasimov, often misinterpreted, never published a doctrine. But his famous 2013 article outlined a simple observation: war is no longer declared; it arrives through “non-military means” that exceed the power of traditional weapons.
Cyberattacks, disinformation, lawfare, economic pressure, political subversion—these blur the line between peace and conflict. Gerasimov doesn’t replace Clausewitz; he updates him: politics has swallowed the battlefield whole.
Rupert Smith: War Is No Longer About Winning
In The Utility of Force, General Rupert Smith argues that industrial wars—World War II-style national clashes—are over. Instead, modern conflicts are “wars among the people,” where victory is not decisive but conditional and the goal is to shape behavior, not conquer territory.
Where Gerasimov notes a broadening of tools, Smith notes a shift of purpose:
Armies can no longer deliver political solutions.
Military force is now a messaging instrument.
Conflicts are persistent rather than winnable.
Combine Gerasimov and Smith and the message is clear:
War today is political warfare conducted continuously, using both armies and algorithms.
Mary Kaldor: The New Wars of Fragmented Societies
Kaldor’s New Wars adds the social dimension. Fragmented identity groups, militias, criminal networks, and extremist factions fight for:
power,
resources,
ethnic domination,
or simply survival.
Where Smith describes “wars among the people,” Kaldor describes “wars inside the people”—conflict as a breakdown of governance, not just a clash of armies.
Overlay Kaldor with Gerasimov and you get a grim reality:
States fight hybrid wars externally, while societies fight identity wars internally.
Clausewitz: The Old Master Still Rules
Clausewitz remains the anchor:
War is the continuation of politics by other means.
All modern thinkers—Gerasimov, Smith, Kaldor—remain inside Clausewitz’s shadow. What changes is not the logic, but the means:
For Clausewitz, armies clash.
For Gerasimov, states clash using everything.
For Smith, militaries shape political outcomes.
For Kaldor, societies themselves are battlefields.
Clausewitz explains the core. The others explain the environment.
Huntington: The Cultural Dimension of Conflict
Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations is controversial, but one idea remains relevant: Culture, civilization, and identity shape conflict as deeply as geography or economics.
This is particularly visible in:
Russian vs. Western worldviews
Islamic identity conflicts
China’s Sino-centric worldview
The rise of nationalist politics globally
Huntington complements Kaldor’s identity-based conflicts and Gerasimov’s emphasis on the ideological battlespace.
Sun Tzu: The Timelessness of Deception
Sun Tzu fits perfectly into the Gerasimov era.
His core message?
Cyberwarfare?
AI-driven propaganda?
Economic coercion?
Election interference?
Lawfare?
These are Sun Tzu with microchips.
Where Sun Tzu says “attack strategy, alliances, and will,” Gerasimov shows how to do it with modern tools.
Other Thinkers Who Matter
Mao Zedong – People’s War
Insurgency, political mobilization, the population as the center of gravity.
Mahan – Sea Power
Still relevant in the South China Sea: maritime control = national prosperity.
Jomini – Operational Geometry
The logic of maneuver warfare now applies to information networks and supply chains.
Thomas Schelling – Coercion and Escalation
Deterrence in the nuclear age; now reborn in the cyber age.
Synthesis: The Seven Principles of Modern Conflict
Integrating all theorists yields a unified framework for modern war:
There is no peace—only low or high intensity conflict.
Civilians, social networks, infrastructure, and cities are the main battlespaces.
Narratives matter more than firepower.
All fighting is an extension of political aims.
Identity shapes both perceptions and strategies.
Land, sea, air, space, cyber, cognitive—one battlespace.
Conflicts end not with victory but with fatigue, negotiation, or collapse.
Conclusion: The Age of Infinite Conflict
If the 20th century was the age of industrial war, the 21st century is the age of infinite war:
Everywhere
All the time
Using every tool
With no clear beginning or end
This is not pessimism—it is clarity.
Nations that understand this live. Nations that do not… fall behind or fall apart.
The theorists—from Clausewitz to Gerasimov—were not contradicting each other. They were writing different parts of the same book.
And today, that book is no longer theoretical.
It is the world unfolding before our eyes.
Thanks to President Aquino the funding of AFP has improved by leaps and bounds.
**OP-ED | Commonwealth 1.0, Incremental Gains, and the Discipline of Markets**
The Philippines remains trapped in **Commonwealth 1.0**—a centralized, patronage-heavy political operating system that refuses to upgrade. Grand reforms stall, the bureaucracy protects its turf, and Congress rarely thinks beyond the next election.
But even inside this outdated architecture, one sector shows what steady, structured progress can look like: **the Armed Forces of the Philippines**.
The **AFP Modernization Act** works because it does what most Philippine laws don’t—
it guarantees **long-term, predictable funding**. In other words, it gives the AFP something the rest of government rarely enjoys: **a steady income stream**.
And this matters. Defense planning depends on continuity, not improvisation. You cannot build fleets, bases, and air defense networks on political whim.
Yet this success tempts some to argue that the AFP should become a manufacturer, even a self-sufficient defense industry. This is a dangerous illusion. Manufacturing is a **market discipline**, not a military one. It requires scale, competition, export demand, and private-sector efficiency. The AFP has none of these. Turning soldiers into factory managers would only create another state-owned money pit.
The smarter path is simple:
**keep the AFP focused on warfighting and let markets handle production**, with the state providing predictable demand and stable rules.
Incrementalism is slow, but in defense it has proven its worth. Hardware is arriving, professionalism is rising, and planning horizons are finally expanding. This happened not because the system modernized, but because a single law insulated the AFP from the system’s worst habits.
The Philippines may still be stuck in Commonwealth 1.0, but the path forward is clear:
**protect continuity, strengthen markets, and avoid turning the military into something it should never be—a manufacturer.**
In a country allergic to big reforms, disciplined increments backed by steady funding may be the only way to move a nation forward.
One step at a time seems to be the way, and is necessary because of the lack of money for big steps, and the choice to keep feeding corruption.
It is one step at a time—because the country keeps choosing to walk instead of building the road.
When the state refuses to tax properly, refuses to enforce rules, and refuses to clean its own institutions, it condemns itself to incrementalism. You can only take small steps when:
Big steps require money,
Money requires discipline, and
Discipline threatens the networks that profit from disorder.
This is the Philippines’ core trap: underdevelopment by political choice. Not fate, not geography, not culture—choice. Keeping corruption well-fed means starving everything else. It forces the country into “manageable reforms” rather than transformational ones.
But here’s the paradox that gives some hope:
Incremental steps can still accumulate into structural change—if they move in the same direction.
Look at:
AFP modernization (slow but real progress)
digitalization of procurement (partial, uneven, but improving)
the very gradual rise of civil society oversight
the shift in public expectations toward more competence
These are not revolutions, but they are not nothing.
What really matters is coherence:
If the AFP modernizes while procurement stays corrupt → net zero.
If infrastructure improves while local governance remains predatory → net zero.
If markets are liberalized while courts remain unreliable → net zero.
The Philippines keeps gaining with one hand and losing with the other.
What would “good incrementalism” look like?
Small steps, but all aligned toward:
1. Reducing discretion (digital payments, e-procurement, transparent budgeting)
2. Increasing predictability (rule of law, clear regulations)
3. Creating stable income streams for institutions (AFP, LGUs, agencies, investment funds)
4. Building credible enforcement (the real bottleneck—everyone knows the rules, no one fears breaking them)
The bitter truth:
Countries that refuse to kill corruption end up paying it like a permanent tax. In this sense, the Philippines uses corruption as a substitute for hard reforms. As long as that choice holds, the country’s development will keep crawling.
But crawling is still forward movement—if someone keeps the direction straight.
are you describing the Philippines as a caterpillar or a centipede?
They are both itchy.
Is that why there is a Filipino rock band called Itchyworms?
mayhap
Hummm, more like a turtle.
So is the fable of the hare and the tortoise applicable, or that of the monkey and the turtle? Or both?
Haha, both, lol. I just couldn’t relate to the nation as a bug, but agree it moves slowly.
Assets That Matter: Time to End the AFP’s Era of Display Modernization
The Philippines has pursued military modernization for more than a decade. Yet the recurring problem remains the same: purchases that look good in a parade or press photo do not always translate into real, integrated combat capability. That is the central corrective Defense Secretary Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro has been insisting on — not opposition to modernization itself, but to the ways it has been financed and implemented.
The limits of symbolic procurement
Recent statements from the Department of National Defense and the AFP’s own reviews stress that capability requires more than platforms bought one-by-one. Teodoro and senior commanders have called for a program that builds systems — sensors, munitions, logistics, training, basing and command networks — not isolated trophies that cannot be sustained or used effectively. The DND’s review of the modernization program (the “re-horizon” process) reflects that shift in emphasis.
The costs of monetizing strategic terrain
Teodoro has been explicit in warning against using base conversion as a near-term funding fix. He argues that some military sites converted for commercial use were not random real estate but strategic assets whose locations confer enduring military value — advantages that are hard or impossible to replicate elsewhere. He has publicly opposed extending the corporate life of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) and questioned the wisdom of further conversions as a funding model. That critique is not rhetorical: it is rooted in the reality that geography — coasts, chokepoints and terrain — cannot be bought back.
From “one unit” purchases to an integrated architecture
The evidence from defense analysts and recent AFP planning shows persistent problems: slow procurement, insufficient sustainment funding, and acquisitions that are hard to support with local maintenance and supply chains. Teodoro’s policy prescription is to prioritize interoperability, sustainment, and force structure over piecemeal buys — in short, to treat modernization as building an architecture, not a collection of museum pieces. International assessments and the AFP’s own Re-Horizon 3 planning note the same challenges.
Fiscal realism and institutional reform
Teodoro has also pushed for institutional fixes: revising procurement timeframes, amending the modernization law that locks in long-range “horizons,” and seeking creative but transparent financing models that do not sacrifice strategic terrain. These calls reflect two realities: (1) modern weapons are expensive to buy and maintain, and (2) a reliable sustainment and legal framework is as crucial as the initial purchase.
What meaningful modernization looks like
Meaningful assets are those that contribute to deterrence and operational resilience: layered maritime domain awareness (sensors and patrols), credible coastal and anti-ship defenses, integrated air defenses with sustainment stocks, distributed and survivable basing, and trained personnel with a dependable MRO ecosystem. Anything acquired without the means to maintain, integrate, and sustain it is militarily marginal. This is the practical standard Teodoro argues the AFP must adopt.
A sober choice
The AFP is staffed by capable professionals. But good soldiers, sailors and pilots cannot be turned into an effective deterrent by ceremonial purchases alone. The Philippines faces a choice: continue the cycle of symbolic procurement that yields short-lived capability, or commit to a methodical, integrated program that values geography, sustainment, and systems over optics. Secretary Teodoro is asking the nation to make that sober choice. The risks of delay — both strategic and fiscal — are growing; so is the cost of correcting past mistakes.
Ceremonial purchases would be a submarine. Teodoro is buying missiles, ships, and planes, all useful in some capacity. There are surveilance drones supplied by the US. Very useful for spotting blacked out Chinese ships or get details around the Sierra Madre. I think AFP is pragmatic today.
A welcome pragmatism.
Philippine Defense Modernization: Analysis & Reforms Executive Overview
The Philippine Armed Forces (AFP) modernization program faces a critical juncture. Defense Secretary Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro is pushing for fundamental reforms to shift from acquiring standalone platforms for symbolic purposes toward building integrated, sustainable combat systems. This research synthesizes key issues, recent policy changes, and the path forward for meaningful defense capabilities. Core Critique: Form Over Function
The traditional approach to AFP modernization has prioritized:
This has resulted in capability gaps across critical areas: sensors, munitions stockpiles, logistics networks, training programs, basing infrastructure, and command-and-control systems. Major Policy Shifts Under Teodoro Abandoning the “Horizon” Structure
In August 2025, Secretary Teodoro announced plans to abandon the rigid 15-year horizon framework that had structured AFP modernization since 1995. He described these timelines as “too long and too impracticable” given the pace of technological change and evolving security threats.
Re-Horizon 3 Overhaul: The third modernization phase has been extended to a 10-year timeline starting from 2023, providing greater flexibility to address external defense needs as they emerge rather than adhering to predetermined schedules.
The AFP has welcomed these changes, acknowledging that the original law had become outdated after three decades. Rejecting Base Conversion Funding
Teodoro has taken a strong stance against using the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) as a funding mechanism for modernization. Key points:
Teodoro has urged Congress to reject extensions of the BCDA model and allow the AFP to retain remaining military assets for national security purposes. Persistent Modernization Challenges Procurement and Supply Chain Issues
The AFP continues to struggle with:
Historical Context
The AFP’s focus on internal security during the martial law period in the 1970s created a decades-long delay in developing external defense capabilities. This legacy continues to shape institutional priorities and resource allocation. Corruption and Transparency
Procurement processes remain vulnerable to corruption, undermining both the efficiency of acquisitions and public trust in defense spending. Institutional reforms must address transparency and accountability. Reform Agenda Procurement Law Amendments
Teodoro has advocated for revising procurement regulations to enable:
Fiscal Realism and Sustainable Funding
Rather than relying on one-time land sales, reforms should pursue:
In July 2025, Teodoro emphasized the need for sustained funding to counter emerging threats, including cyber warfare, as part of maintaining an independent foreign policy. Priority Capabilities for Meaningful Modernization Maritime Domain Awareness
Given tensions in the West Philippine Sea, the AFP requires:
Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD)
Credible deterrence requires:
Air and Coastal Defenses
Layered defense architecture should include:
Sustainment Ecosystem
Moving beyond one-off purchases requires:
Interoperability with Allies
The AFP must ensure compatibility with:
Recent Progress and Ongoing Gaps Achievements as of Late 2025
Remaining Challenges
Strategic Context
The Philippines occupies a critical position in the South China Sea, making it both strategically valuable and vulnerable. Ongoing territorial disputes, particularly regarding the West Philippine Sea, have heightened the urgency of modernization. The approach to defense transformation will determine whether the AFP can provide credible deterrence or remains dependent on allies for basic security functions.
China’s growing assertiveness in the region, combined with rapid advances in military technology, means that delays in reform compound strategic risks. The window for building effective capabilities may narrow as potential adversaries continue their own modernization programs. Recommendations for Implementation Short Term (1-2 Years)
Medium Term (3-5 Years)
Long Term (5-10 Years)
Conclusion
The Philippines stands at a crossroads in defense policy. Secretary Teodoro’s reforms represent a necessary shift from symbolic acquisitions to functional capabilities, but successful implementation requires sustained political will, adequate resources, and institutional reform. The alternative—continued reliance on piecemeal purchases and unsustainable funding mechanisms—risks leaving the AFP unable to fulfill its constitutional mandate to defend Philippine sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The credibility of Philippine deterrence depends not on how equipment looks in parades, but on whether it can be effectively employed, sustained, and integrated into a coherent defense architecture. This requires difficult choices about budget priorities, institutional change, and long-term fiscal commitments. The reforms outlined by Teodoro and analyzed in contemporary defense discourse provide a roadmap, but translating vision into reality will test both leadership and national resolve.
I don’t think defense is at a crossroads, I think Teodoro is exercising the suggested plan within his real-world boundaries, one being money, the other being a need to avoid direct fighting with China. If the Philippines is a turtle in its progress, I think Teodoro is breeding the snapping turtle variation.
I guess this piece incliding the thread covered a lot.
Our grand plans we abandon because all good plans of mice and men will go aray este awry.
We innovate but after that we stagnate.
We hype and flex a fighrer jet and then we leave them in the hangar until the next event
We aquire a ship with no bases so we need to repurpose when the opportunity cones because we are ingenious in our cartesian coirdinate system or diskarte.
Reactive, resilient, slow, but of good will. The opposite of China.
Thank you for all your meaningful insights.
Yes Joe we should not bewail the past, not kick ourown butts and move forward.