RUTHFULLY YOURS

Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Cynthia E. Ayers is currently Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. Prior to accepting the Task Force position, she served as Vice President of EMPact Amercia, having retired from the National Security Agency after over 38 years of federal service.

“Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace– but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775

Indeed – there is no peace. There hasn’t been for a very long time. In spite of the peace that many world leaders thought was being ushered in following the destruction of the Berlin Wall, there has been no real peace. We discovered this much too late, when our country was attacked fifteen years ago, on September 11, 2001.

We were not really “at peace” during the years between November 1989 (when the Berlin Wall came down) and the events of 9/11 (2001). Acts of terrorism occurred throughout the 1990s, and at least some actors were supported by one or more nation-states. While Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was spreading nuclear technology around the globe, North Korea and Iran (with assistance from Khan) spent the decade rattling nerves with their progress on the nuclear weapons front. The Iranian regime continues to act aggressively in the belief that the United States has been in a state of war with them since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Similarly, North Korea’s dynastic rulers have used the notion of a war that never ended to poke, prod, threaten and try to provoke the United States.

Do we still have liberty? Perhaps it’s a matter of perspective. President Lincoln predicted that if war were to come to the shores of America, it would spring from within – a form of national suicide. Unfortunately, the partisan politics of our day would seem to add credence to that notion. The scandals of late have people wondering if we are sitting in abeyance like proverbial boiling frogs while our liberties are being systematically destroyed.

We fear more substantial and lethal attacks on the homeland, and the rising tide of global unrest may portend such events. There are credible threats from external sources of intent to attack us internally. Regardless, decisions recently made by U.S. leadership have raised concern as to whether we have already succumbed to the desires of our enemies.

No sane individual in Western civil society wants war. War is an vicious, destructive process in which disputes are generally terminated only long enough to re-arm. Miraculously, our country has, for the most part, escaped the violence of war on our soil for 150 years (relative to the turmoil that other countries have long endured).

Last week I wrote about the shortening odds of a war in Asia over China’s rapacious land claims. China is threatening war with Japan over Japanese-controlled islands that it claims, and is threatening war with Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and every major seafaring power over its claim to control the shipping lanes through the South China Sea.

Under President Obama, the U.S. has launched several freedom-of-navigation voyages and fly-overs of China-claimed territory to indicate our disregard of the Chinese position. But those saber rattles have been half-hearted: After a U.S. Navy vessel sailed past a Chinese artificial island, a Defense Department official told the U.S. Naval Institute that the voyage had been conducted under the principle of “innocent passage”: that a ship can sail through another country’s territorial waters so long as its intentions are non-belligerent. Of course, this concedes China’s control — and makes it look like the Obama administration is interested only in appearing tough to America, not to Beijing.

The Philippines have been less sanguine. They took China’s claim of sovereignty in the South China Sea to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in The Hague, and won, though China refuses to recognize the result. (Why should they? The Hague is a laughingstock.) More substantially, the Philippines have grounded a naval ship on a reef in the Spratly Island chain, in the South China Sea, and keep a permanent detachment of marines there. The physical Filipino presence is meant to dispute the Chinese position. The Chinese coast guard has blockaded the ship to prevent food and water from being delivered, and now the marines are resupplied by helicopter.

To this extent, the Philippines — a nation protecting its own claims — serves as our proxy in the South China Sea. But it’s not just a marriage of convenience: The Filipinos are our genuine, hard-and-fast friends. Pew Research regularly polls world opinion of the United States; as of last year, the U.S. had an approval rating in the 80s in just seven countries: Senegal, Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, South Korea, Israel, and Italy. There’s only one country where we break 90 percent approval: the Philippines, where 92 percent of Filipinos have a favorable opinion of the U.S. That’s 9 points higher than Americans’ approval of America. Statistically, the Philippines is the most pro-American country in the world.

The Philippines recently elected a new president, Rodrigo Duterte. He was elected thanks to the popularity of the ruthless anti-drug war he led as mayor of the Philippines’ fourth largest city, Davao. As mayor, he opened drug-rehabilitation centers, offered pensions to recovering addicts, and called for private citizens to murder drug dealers. He has continued the policy as president, openly advocating vigilantism.