It’s hard to tell what his ideological leanings are. He does have some historical associations with communist/socialist groups, but I can’t figure out how seriously he takes those ideas now. If he’s an -ist at all, I’d say he’s an opportunist.
Brianjones: The core of National Socialism (a variant of fascism) is State direction of enterprise (ie., extreme dirigism) for the benefit of the State, typically coupled with delusions of racial superiority/purity (eg., State-sponsored “Pinoy Pride”, antipathy towards Chinese-Filipinos) and pseudo-religious underpinnings (in this case a bizarre form of Catholicism with all the Christian features excised). All of this is enshrined in the 1987 Constitution. When I call the Philippines a fascist state, I mean it in the precise sense.
As GooseEgg pointed out, Duterte inherited this and there’s little he can do about it.
Totally agree with this sentiment. I think I posted elsewhere that what third world countries need, in general, is policemen. Good, honest, incorruptible policemen who do their job. Swedes maybe. Or Canadians. But not Filipinos. I’ve no doubt there are a few good men in the PNP, who try their best against all the odds, but they’re swamped beneath a fetid tide of corruption and unbridled criminality.
Just saw this one and wanted to add it to the conversation:
From China Duterte embarks on his next state visit, to Tokyo. Japan is by far the Philippines’ biggest economic benefactor, but will no doubt feel pressure to up its game after China’s gestures, especially with maritime tension between Japan and China increasing of late.“His strategy may pay economic dividends by pushing for more Chinese and Japanese development competition over the Philippines, particularly in the infrastructure landscape,” said Heydarian.
In that sense Duterte is deploying the well-worn strategy of playing great powers off each other.
Duterte did not, however, pull off a perfect diplomatic performance in Beijing. At one point he referred to Chinese president Xi Jinping as “Ji Xinping.”
Ideology, whether capitalism or socialism or whatever, under this conditions, in a developing country, is just a facade, a costume to wear to the parade. The final objetive is maximum benefit to The Supreme Leader, by all and any means. If that entails dancing with the Devil or screwing the whole country, so be it.
Which leads us to the question of who benefits Filipinas more, China or USA, being a completely moot one. The real matter is who benefits Dutarte at this moment. The rest of the country is powerless and in there for the ride, no matter if it leads over a cliff. With control of media outlets telling people what to think, that is xiao case. The military as said are the only ones who may have a beef. In this kind of society, the military is an outlet for social mobility, power and fortune, if one plays one’s cards right. So the military has as much to lose if it upsets the gravy train.
Really bad for Taiwan now, with Filipinas and Thailand under heavy handed regimes. Indonesia ain’t that stable either. And China reaping the advantages of what we call in Spanish fishing in turbulent waters.
Looks like things are deteriorating pretty quickly:
Left-wing protesters are demanding the withdrawal of American troops and burning American flags. Since the earlier protesters were run over by Filipino police, shouldn’t they be burning the Philippine flag?
maybe the protesters who got run over were right-wing protesters.
re. Icon’s comment, I find that the best thing about Taiwan is that it isn’t a lightning rod. Nobody ever says: “It’s all Taiwan’s fault! Let’s storm the Taiwanese embassy! Or whatever they call the embassy here!”.
So whereas everyone hates America and blames Americans for their own stupid fuckups (as opposed to the problems Americans actually are responsible for), you don’t get flotillas of suicide bombers turning up here avenging their grievances.
Guys, it is not the blame factor, but rather bad timing for the New Southbound Policy. Ain’t many friends out there and when the mess gets bloody, it might be better to stay as far away less, well, they get involved.
Truly Taiwan has lots of, ehem, expertise in making business in unsavory places, but with China already in, pickings will be slim and too dangerous to be profitable.
Don’t know about this Duterte guy, but in principle, I’m for a more multi-polar world where the US has less influence. Also, I don’t think I’d want to live under the Chinese regime, but the US has screwed up far more countries internationally (and intentionally).
Isn’t that the same logic that “look, the politicians haven’t made things better for a long time, let’s elect Donald Trump because he’s not a politician?”
Or “look, Jason Kipnis made an error that allowed the Cubs to get ahead. Kipnis has made many errors throughout his career, why not put me as the second baseman of the Cleveland Indians, I’ve never made an error in the majors ever.”
You’re assuming that everyone wants the current world order to continue, perhaps just with a few tweaks. You’re assuming that everyone buys into the logic that “the enemy is bad, but my guy can/will fix things”.
Of course though, you overlooked my first sentence. I’d rather not have to choose between Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber as emperor of the world, hence my point about a multi-polar world where none of these actors would get to unconditionally screw around. Same crap, different bucket, but hopefully, if you put two buckets full of crap on a pole, you won’t get any of it on you.
Regardless of how China actually feels, in Duterte’s speech in China, he made clear that’s how he sees international politics. Duterte clearly states that after his alliance with China, he is going to visit Russia and tell Putin it’s Russia, China, and the Philippines against the world.
if peace depends on multiple nations balancing each other out with military power, then the world will always tumble into war when one of those powers weakens.
Of course, absolutely. However, if nature abhors a vacuum when one of several powers weakens, then it really abhors a vacuum when the sole power weakens. I don’t know if you’re actually arguing in favour of the US as sole superpower, but your argument could apply against you as I outlined in the previous sentence.
You’re assuming that we can just make such things as war go away and everyone can get along. I don’t subscribe to any variation of the Whig view of history. I think this is where you and I are talking past each other: I think that there are certain things baked into the human condition that are just screwy; humans can be more or less screwy, but they’re always going to be screwy to a certain extent.
I’m arguing for the UN to be a more useful organization, and international power struggles can be played out within the confines of the UN’s meeting hall.
How would that work? How is that working out now? Would you keep the Security Council (especially the five permanent members)? If not, would you make it democratic? What if a large number of countries wanted to overrule liberal, Western democracies?
All the arguing in the world isn’t going to make the UN a more useful organization. Governments around the world are generally corrupt, inefficient and downright parasitic, which is perfectly reflected in the UN, a lowest-common-denominator organization if there ever was one. Just ask all those poor Africans who were protected by UN “peacekeepers.”
Just look at the EU, in which the member states are all functioning democracies (ok save for perhaps a few mishaps a la Hungary), share (more or less) common values of freedom and basic human rights, economically not that far apart from one another (again there’s still an ocean between the levels of say the Netherlands and Romania, but you get the point), and have made plenty of remarkable achievements that have never been able to be done in human history (open borders, labour rights improvements, LGBT rights expansion, cultural/educational cooperation etc.), it still gets loads and loads of backlash, and is currently in the middle of deep shit, with one of its largest pillars just voted to leave. How useful can the UN be? There are 193 member states, a lot of them would love to see some of the others burning in hell, the current state of affairs is probably working as well as things could get.
Besides, even though the political section, aka the General Assembly/SC, will never be “useful” per se, a lot of the specialised agencies are actually doing a lot. The UNESCO, for example, has been very valuable when it comes to natural/cultural preservation. Same goes for ICAO, UPU, WHO etc. It’s a pity that we are boycotted, but that doesn’t mean the whole organisation is better off abolished. It’s still an enormous body after all.
I couldn’t give half a shit for cultural preservation. A worthwhile culture is perfectly capable of preserving itself.
What the world needs now is cultural evolution. That’s a Darwinian process, by the way - a fact that progressives tend to forget.
These other UN do-gooder programs are also suspect, to varying degrees. Not necessarily worse than major organized charities in general, but that’s a rather low bar.
By cultural preservation I mean the preservation of sites, not the cultures themselves.
Without the UPU and ICAO you can’t even send any mail/package or fly internationally. At least nowhere near as efficient and safe. (Btw, just an interesting trivia, since we’re not in the UPU, Japan and America help us with our mails.)
