“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?”

Langston Hughes, “Harlem”, 1951

President Rodrigo Duterte changed his tune on ending the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the U.S., and on July 29^th signed its extension with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. But nothing in today’s world is unrelated to the Great Reset and the slow-down of trade, and the spike in shipping costs per container from China.

This potentially changes Manila’s future military relationship with the U.S., because if the Great Reset is successful at limiting Chinese economic growth in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, then U.S. policy on Chinese containment in the South China Sea would also be wound-down if avoiding war is also a priority. This would come about perhaps as a consequence of the expected and continued policy of power shut-offs and business closures in the name of combating a mystery illness which defies reason and policy.

The logic here is clear: if China could no longer export globally, it would need to increase both national consumption and also regional exports.

And so we ask – was this renewal of the VFA the last gasp of an American dream deferred? Manila has shown particular prescience in seeing which way the wind is blowing. Duterte continues his criticisms of China’s policy on its maritime borders and use of Philippine waters as it pleases, despite seeing the writing on the wall. But this is all part of the game. China’s absolute hegemony in the region is not a matter of if, but when. Perhaps it has already arrived, and it is only for vested interests and policy wonks to catch up to the new reality.

Lloyd Austin meets with Rodrigo Duterte at the Malacanang Palace in Manila, Philippines July 29, 2021. Robinson Ninal/Malacanang Presidential Photographers Division/Handout via REUTERS

U.S. policy is what we might call ‘unrealistic realism’, it knows it cannot contain China in China’s own backyard, but continues to play the tattered and worn cards it inherited from a bygone golden age of geostrategic unipolarity, arousing false hopes among some in Taiwan and Hong Kong. It uses the language of geostrategic realism, but fudges the numbers in its American style shareholder salesmanship (and not sober thinking) to sell a vision to vested parties of its military industrial complex.

There is so much buy-in at the level of the MIC that unreality is reality. In its own magical way, the U.S. appears to be believer in ‘any wish can come true if you wish it hard enough’. And through this belief in believing it continues to pressure China in China’s own backyard.

The U.S. believes it can leverage pressure, and extract divestment in Latin America or Europe.

The Great Reset and the dubious ‘B3W’ – Build Back Better World – are signs that U.S. policy on China has changed. The U.S. will use the pandemic with aim at depriving China of a consumer base. Freedom and markets no longer privilege the west, indeed it benefits as one would suspect it would, net producers like China. The solution then, is some kind of technocratic police state. Does that mean war with China is on the horizon?

Manila has no desire to be a strike zone for China’s massive PLA, but seeing that the U.S. wants desperately to buy a dream, Manila appears happy to oblige to sell it while it can. At least for now.

The VFA – A Dream Deferred?

The VFA has been in effect since 1999 and lays out the rules for thousands of American soldiers in the Philippines and also serves as the foundation for military exercises between the two countries.

Duterte had threatened not to renew the VFA on at least two prior occasions, with last week’s renewal being the outcome of more than six months of deliberation with the U.S. that began in early 2020, as American foreign policy commitments during its coming interregnum period would remain unclear. This interval also allowed Manila to engage in serious talks with Beijing on a number of issues. While it is rarely if ever made explicit, there is clearly an overt relationship between the details of bilateral trade and the allowance of hundreds of Chinese fishing ships to remain in the Philippines Exclusive Economic Zone one the one hand, and Duterte’s about face on VFA.

Similar threats were made in 2016 after frustration with the Obama administration’s deferred payment on a poverty relief program. The effect of such deferment was collective punishment for some of the country’s most vulnerable, simply for Manila’s aim of improved relations with China. Such relations are important for myriad reasons, but their sharing of the South China Sea and China’s military and economic might most certainly summarize most of them.

Philippine bases used by U.S. forces – Source, WaPo

The situation with American forces in the Philippines has roused anger and resentment from locals, with numerous rape cases and even a failed Supreme Court case in the country. All of these are seen through the lens of the Philippine-American War (1899-1902) which the country’s left, its Islamist, and its nationalist movements have all used successfully to win hearts and minds to their respective causes. Duterte adoption of this sentiment with his particular knack for national populism and off-the-cuff swagger, is strategic and at times even convincingly heartfelt.

Yet it is China’s rising power, both militarily and economically, and a conflict over where China’s territorial claim on the South China Sea begins and ends – with particular view of the Spratly Islands row – has greatly irritated Manila. The Philippine military’s top brass has largely been trained by the U.S., which also includes a ‘School of the Americas’ type of ideological education (indoctrination) aimed at inoculating the officer class from breaking with American interests, not by pledging allegiance to the U.S. in such an overt or vulgar manner, but rather by seeing the world’s divisions and priorities through an American lens.

The Philippines with its 109.5 million people has strategic importance to the U.S. as an iffy military ally in the region. But should a significant conflict explode, like a raisin in the sun, between the U.S. and China, Manila is sober in its awareness of its own likely extermination if it were to place itself as a strategic strike zone for the Chinese military.

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in Beijing, 2017. REUTERS

Manila’s establishment is content with Duterte’s multi-vectored foreign policy which features good relations with both the U.S. and China until now. But the western crisis that brought about the ‘Great Reset’ and its ‘Build Back Better World’ (B3W) will ultimately see the Philippines drift further into China’s permanent orbit.

Though Duterte finishes his six years and terms out in 2022, there is a consensus that he will be choosing his daughter Sara Duterte as his successor. It is likely that Manila’s elites would view this as a strong sign of stability and success of the multi-vectored policy, in light of the ‘love/hate’ relationships that the Philippines has with both China and the U.S. For the Philippine military to view this route favorably, they would insist on warm relations with the U.S.

It is a strange situation that the Philippines is indeed, that the national pastime is to wage relentless rhetorical war on the two countries which are closest to it.

And so, what happens to American dreams on controlling Asia when they are deferred? “Does it fester like a raisin in the sun, and then run?”

Belt & Road Initiative vs. Build Back Better World

Whenever the subject of the ‘Great Reset’ is broached, is about global supply lines, and supply line security. It’s also about the extent that global catastrophes, perhaps weather or perhaps sudden and mysterious pandemics, can be used as a pretext to close ports, to send port workers home, keep citizens home under threat of arrest as in Australia, and effectively shut-down supply lines.

For a number of years, there has been a widely held view that a war between the U.S. and China is all but an eventuality unless some further compromise can be struck. The Philippines has certainly flexed its own muscles in this period, showing both Beijing and Washington that it is a state which places its sovereignty front and center. Historically, Manila was under considerable pressure to bend to the will of Washington, and in return curried enough favor such that the U.S. is practically tied with Japan and China as the top importer of Philippine goods, making up some 15.2% of its total exports as of 2020.

But if global supply lines shrink in volume, then the Philippines looks forward to sustained trade in its region. Japan, China, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Malaysia make up about two-thirds of the entire export portfolio, meaning that not only is Manila decently insulated from the Great Reset slowdowns, but also increasingly reliant on China to provide regional security on the high seas and beyond.

And so it isn’t for nothing that B3W – Build Back Better World – Biden’s haphazardly organized ‘alternative’ to China’s Belt and Road Initiative was rolled out. But it’s also aiming far below the ambitions of Beijing, and has yet fully elaborate this with the kind of detail that China’s BRI has been. To wit, B3W simply rebrands that bizarre concoction of ‘economic development’ as defined by the IMF and remixed with the Sorosian NGO Newspeak and Newthink of globalized politically correct neo-imperialism received by the G7.

For example, if China succeeds in formalizing its control over the South China Sea, what would this really mean economically? If the U.S. no longer has the same access, if it must pay some additional premium to run shipping lines through this strategically significant body of water, then it actually compels the U.S. to change how it does business. And since the way the U.S. has done business with China is unsustainable for a number of reasons, reasons which so far have benefited China’s growth in recent decades, then what is the U.S.’s net benefit of challenging China in the South China Sea?

But the changes in shipping costs have already arrived, and it doesn’t appear that China has created that situation. Rather, it would suggest that the U.S. has engendered such a situation to arise, so that it can adjust beforehand to any changes that Beijing would later make unilaterally. It also may provoke a kind of ‘import substitution industrialization’ in the U.S., a longtime goal of the Trump administration which if carried on by the Biden administration would also mean that Trump’s primary foreign policy aim on trade was successful.

Like a Raisin in the Sun

The worst policy for the Philippines would be to prematurely line up with one power, and sacrifice whatever degree of sovereignty and the liberties implied with this, which it now has. Of course there are sacrifices made here, and gains made elsewhere. Perhaps security is a trade-off for sovereign liberties, but perhaps that cost is too great. After all, options in the geopolitical field are much harder to get back once they’ve been traded off, especially for something like security. The relationships built around security permeate all forms of economic and military life, even the security agencies themselves can become compromised, acting as little more than satellite agencies for the great power which ‘protects’ it.

The renewed VFA may be among the last that the Philippines signs, not because it hasn’t done well with a balanced multi-vectored policy which has used the U.S.-China great power struggle to its own strategic advantage, but because the U.S. may not desire to sustain a presence as a part of its regional policy. The U.S. empire is in a state of stinking like rotten meat, punctuated by significant explosions like the so-called ‘Great Reset’. This makes it volatile and prone to provoke conflicts it thinks it can win today, as opposed to conflicts it knows it will lose tomorrow. But a conflict with China in open military terms doesn’t appear in the cards, today or tomorrow, unless such a conflict takes place in Africa or Latin America.

If indeed a war between these great powers appeared likely in the Asia-Pacific region, it would be suicidal for Manila to align with a U.S. whose track record on both recent wars, but also wars in Asia even during its imperial zenith. The U.S. cannot win land wars in Eurasia. Final victory in Eurasia, for the U.S., has always been a dream deferred. It is as clear as day that Manila’s elite are aware of this, but they have no problem with that raisin in the sun, along the way to an eventual military pact with China.

Jason CASTANEDA

As President Rodrigo Duterte moves to boot US troops from Philippine soil through the cancellation of a key defense pact, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is quietly moving in to take their place.

Duterte’s recent decision to abrogate the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which allowed the US to rotate troops and position equipment in the country, is opening the way for China to solidify its competing strategic position in the country.

That’s at least according to early findings of investigations into China’s undercover and illicit activities, ranging reputedly from espionage to surveillance to money laundering, now being spearheaded by Philippine Senator Richard Gordon.

Those probes have included scrutiny of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens now employed in the burgeoning online casino sector, known locally as Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations (POGOs), many of which are clustered close to key military camps and strategic bases in Manila, the national capital.

Gordon has claimed that the POGOS have been infiltrated by PLA soldiers for intelligence gathering and other activities. Those claims were validated when two card-carrying PLA members attached to a POGO were were arrested in a shooting incident in Manila late last month.

The Senate investigations have revealed a tangled web of official corruption and conspiracy which has allowed countless Chinese citizens, including allegedly between 2,000-3,000 PLA soldiers, to illegally and secretly reside in the country.

Under the so-called “pastillas” scheme, exposed by whistleblower Allison “Alex” Chiong of the Philippine Bureau of Immigration (BI), Chinese nationals pay roughly 10,000 pesos (US$200) as a “service fee” for special treatment and ease of entry into the country.

While around $40 of that fee goes to immigration officers, the rest is allegedly spread among senior officials and other allies of the president who oversee the alleged syndicate run out of Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

The money, according to the whistleblower, is rolled inside a sheet of bond paper, similar to how the Philippine milk candy delicacy “pastillas” is packed. That, the investigations claim, has paved the way for so-called Chinese “immersion missions” by PLA members.

Public anger against the POGOs has recently spiked, fueled by the Duterte government’s belated imposition of a travel ban on Chinese citizens amid the coronavirus outbreak that started its deadly global spread in late January.

Many believe that wayward officials who benefit from the POGOs and import of illegal Chinese workers played an outsized role in the decision to allow thousands of Chinese citizens, including from Wuhan, the outbreak’s epicenter, to enter the country even after Beijing quarantined all of Hubei province.

Senator Panfilo Lacson, chairman of the committee on national defense and security and a former police chief, said that he has recently received information from security agencies claiming that thousands of undercover PLA members are engaged in “immersion missions” in the country, with Chinese spies operating under the guise of POGO workers.

“The intelligence community should exert extra effort to gather information in this regard,” Lacson recently said.

Lacson, Gordon and Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon have all recently warned that China aims to take advantage of the new and growing security vacuum caused by Duterte’s recent abrogation of the VFA with the US, a move that has undermined the legal status of the two sides’ 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT).

The US and Philippines stage thousands of bilateral military activities and exercises each year, including war games that include mock invasions of islands that aim to send a strong signal to China in the South China Sea.

“That may confirm a yet unvalidated report that a good number of PLA members are on ‘immersion mission’ in several parts of the country, although the reason for it is still unclear,” Lascon said.

“The police as well as the intelligence community should lose no time in exerting serious efforts to authenticate the discovered PLA using sources independent of the Chinese government, for obvious reasons,” warned the senator.

Lascon has also claimed that 47 Chinese individuals recently smuggled US$446 million into the Philippines over a recent five month span, whereby the Chinese money launderers paid and made connections with bent Philippine officials.

Senator Gordon, long seen as a Duterte ally, has warned of large-scale money laundering going hand-in-hand with a potential “fifth column” infiltration of Chinese security forces.

“There is tolerance. I don’t know where it is coming from,” said Gordon, implying the Beijing-friendly president is partly responsible for the threat, according to media reports.

“The shenanigans of what we see here, all happened because of the policy decision to allow overseas gaming operations in our country,” said Drilon in directly blaming the Duterte administration.

“What is happening in our country is apparently rooted in the very presence of POGOs run by the Chinese. If there were no POGOs, all of these nefarious activities would have no purpose,” he added.

Fears of systematic Chinese espionage activities were sparked last year when netizens shared images showing the suspicious proximity of Chinese-run POGOs to security and law enforcement agencies in Manila.

Those include POGOs situated near the Philippine Air Force and Navy headquarters, Philippine National Police headquarters at Camp Crame, and Camp Aguinaldo which hosts the Philippine Army and National Defense Department offices.

“When you already see many people [at the POGOs], who are always there…it’s very easy for all these [Chinese] people to perhaps shift their activities to spying,” Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said last year. “They are near [military facilities].”

Philippine National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon, meanwhile, raised alarms last year over the entry of thousands of undocumented Chinese as a potential security “threat”, including through possible PLA surveillance and espionage.

“You’d also start getting worried when a whole building, condominium, tower is occupied by only one nationality where you would not be able to guard all their activities,” the national security adviser said. “Some unwelcome activities could transpire there so we need to prevent those.”

It’s not clear yet that Duterte’s pro-China administration will undertake any concrete measures to address these concerns and reputed threats.

“He [Duterte] told me…We really need the funds from those [POGO] operations,” presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said amid an escalating call for their closures. “Because the money we get from whatever [Chinese] sources is for the government, so the government can use that in any undertaking.”

asiatimes.com

On Feb. 7, the Philippine president notified the USA that a 180 day period has begun in which time American military personal will have to evacuate the territory with Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin stating “the deputy chief of mission of the embassy of the united states has received the notice of termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement. As a diplomatic courtesy there will be no further factual announcements following this self explanatory development.”

Why America’s neocons have been caught blindsided by this announcement remains a mystery as Duterte has threatened to cancel this treaty since his first weeks in office and even told RT on January 24 that “America is not the Philippines and the Philippines is not America. It ain’t that way anymore and I refuse to dovetail under American foreign policy”.

This announcement puts yet another wrench in the gears of those agencies attempting to run a war plan against China as part of the Obama-era Pivot to Asia and broader full spectrum dominance agenda with a vast military infrastructure spread out around China’s perimeter. Some of the points of tension built up carefully over the years around China (any of which acting as a potential spark plug to nuclear war) include North Korea, Japan’s territorial conflict with China, Malaysia and the Philippines’ dispute with China over the resource-rich South China Sea.

With the killing of the VFA, over 300 military engagements will now be flushed as will America’s capacity to rotate U.S. troops through Philippines military bases. Its death also brings Duterte one step closer to ending the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement signed under Obama-clone Benigno Aquino III in 2014. In 2015, while leading a fight against the EDCA, Citizen National Guard founder Butch Valdez was the first analyst to state that the U.S. military installations had likely stockpiled nuclear weapons aimed. But stated that U.S. bases “may very possibly be silos of nuclear armed medium-long range rockets aimed at China.” In recent months Duterte joined Valdez in this analysis.

In March 2019, Philippines Secretary of Defense and long-time Duterte collaborator with Delfin Lorenzana stated to EIR magazine:

“We are in striking distance of Chinese medium range missiles. If U.S. forces would be stationed here, if there is a conflict between the United States and China, then we are a fair target by the Chinese.”

Although the surface excuse used to justify this act has been the American revocation of Senator Dela Rosa’s visa, the true reasons for this break from American military doctrine go much deeper as alluded to by Valdez. Dela Rosa is the former national police chief who headed Duterte’s drug war and is accused by western neo liberal circles of not respecting the human rights of the Philippines’ powerful narco terrorists- 12 000 of whom have died since the crackdown began, and which Trump has supported enthusiastically  on multiple occasions.

Trump has also separated himself loudly from war hawks in administration by giving his full support to Duterte’s decision to end the VFA stating “well I never minded that very much, to be honest. We helped the Philippines very much. We helped them defeat ISIS… I don’t really mind if they would like to do that. It will save a lot of money. My views are different from others.”

The deeper reasons for the ending of the VFA and expanded U.S. military access to the Philippines has more to do with the fact that it has become clearly evident that the American agenda for war with China over any number of Pacific hotspots would result in any host country working with America to be wiped off the map in such war. The fact that the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Pact signed in 1951 is still active to this day, makes American military activity in the Philippines ever more dangerous. As Duterte’s enemy Senator Panfilo Lacson lamented, killing the VFA would reduce the 1951 treaty “to a mere paper treaty as far as the U.S. is concerned.”

In his EIR interview, Lorenzana went onto describe the danger of Duterte’s assassination by U.S. neocons who are in opposition to the positive relationship Duterte shares with President Trump, and also the importance of the Philippines’ turn towards a pro-China/Russia alliance since Duterte’s inauguration:

“We have been cautioned by our friends that the neocons might try to take out the President. Even President Duterte talked about that several times in his public speeches. They are watching what our President does, that if he does things that align with their interests, as the neocons see it, or if President Duterte gets closer with the Chinese, Russia and India. But China said they don’t want a military alliance with anybody. They want to have trade relations with everybody. They want to help people to improve themselves so that we can trade.”

Indeed, on November 2018, the Philippines signed onto China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and Duterte has invoked a Build Build Build strategy which relies heavily on Chinese investment into Philippines infrastructure. In his RT interview, Duterte stated “I want new open fronts with Russia and China, we have an increase in trade and commerce. It’s robust”.

Since 2016, China and the Philippines have signed historic joint resource development treaties across the South China Sea which American geopoliticians would rather see limited to a zone of conflict. Other Beijing-funded projects which synergize with the BRI include the Railway link from America’s former Clark Base to the new coastal city of Subic (another former U.S. Base), the creation of New Clark City which will relieve the population pressure from Manilla, two bridges of Pasig River in Manila and Chico Rivers, Pump irrigation projects in the north, the New Centennial Water Source-Kaliwa dam and the Philippine National Railway South Long Haul which will soon begin construction. With an aim to reduce poverty from its current 26% to 13% by 2022 while ending the drug pandemic which has resulted in a vast criminal infrastructure covertly supported by western powers for decades, Duterte said that this new alliance with China would usher in “a golden age for Infrastructure”.

The first President to start this pro-China policy (after the western-backed color revolution coup which toppled Ferdinand Marcos in 1986) was Gloria Arroyo who led the nation from 2001-2010). Arroyo initiated a historic $8 billion trade deal with China in 2004 after removing Philippine troops from Iraq to the ire of Dick Cheney and John Bolton. Arroyo recently gave a speech eloquently expressing her understanding of the Philippines’ future in this new paradigm of win-win cooperation: “China is correct in striving for partnership and growth and development with its neighbors. This enlightened attitude provides a foundation for continued friendship between China and the world and indeed within China and the Philippines.”

As long as true economic development and long-term thinking drives all discussion of bilateral relationships, rather than empty talk of “good governance” and “free trade” so popular among shallow technocratic circles today, then a new age of peace and cooperation for all nations under a multipolar world order may yet occur.

The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

In recent years, the world has seen the rise of anti-diplomacy occasioned by the appearance on the world stage of political brutes, all operating under the color of “populism.” Aristotle defined a tyrant as someone who rules solely for his own benefit and pleasure. The world has seen the steady rise of such tyrants over the past few decades. What is alarming is that tyranny and anti-diplomacy has flourished in erstwhile democratic nations having traditional presidential-legislative and parliamentary systems of government.

Perhaps it is fitting that Silvio Berlusconi, the media mogul and former Italian prime minister who introduced brutish governance to Europe in the 1990s, has returned to politics after a respite brought about by several indictments and a 2013 conviction for tax fraud. Berlusconi leads his right-wing Forza Italia political party as a member of the European Parliament. Berlusconi’s populism is consistently directed against “Communists.” Berlusconi now directs his ire at the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, which recently forced an old Berlusconi political ally – the right-wing Northern League led by Matteo Salvini – out of a coalition government. Salvini and Berlusconi now vie for the support of some 30 percent of the Italian electorate that continues to admire World War II fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

Berlusconi is recognized more for his crude comments than his neo-fascist policies. In 2003, Berlusconi suggested in the European Parliament that German Social Democratic MEP Martin Schulz play the role of a “kapo,” a concentration camp inmate who was empowered by the Nazi camp officials to enforce rules and labor details, in a forthcoming film. In another reference to German concentration camps that same year, Berlusconi said, “Mussolini never killed anyone, he just sent dissenters abroad for vacation.” Italian relations with Germany and Israel soured. In 2009, at a G20 Summit photo shoot with Queen Elizabeth II and other world leaders, the queen was irritated by Berlusconi’s loud shouting, prompting her to ask Barack Obama – who Berlusconi previously called “sun-tanned,” – “Why does he have to shout?” In 2010, Berlusconi further irritated Israel by telling a joke about a Jew who hid fellow Jews in his basement for money without telling them World War II was over. In 2011, Berlusconi said that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was “an unfuckable lard-ass.” Berlusconi also made crude remarks about Finland’s female president, Tarja Halonen and criticized the Spanish government for having too many women in its Cabinet. Berlusconi insulted China when he claimed that under Mao Zedong, the Chinese government “boiled children to fertilize the fields.” It was a clear sign that the age of modern diplomacy had hit rocky shoals and was about to rapidly sink. In 2011, the worst was yet to come.

Berlusconi’s vulgarity and anti-diplomacy would soon be matched by that of Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines. Duterte called the US ambassador in Manila a “bakla,” which means an effeminate man in the Tagalog language. Duterte also called President Obama a “son of a whore” and Pope Francis a “son of a bitch.” After Iceland criticized Duterte’s human rights record, he responded by stating that Icelanders “go about eating ice” and claimed that Iceland had “no policemen.” He added that Iceland had “too much ice, and there is no clear day or night there.” Duterte’s Foreign Secretary, Teodoro Locsin, Jr., who is nominally in charge of the country’s diplomatic corps, emulated Duterte by referring to Europeans as people “who don’t shower at least once daily and [were] likely on cartel payroll.” Asked about the Philippines and the “international community,” Locsin replied, “Fuck the international community. It can be bought.”

Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack recently insulted South Pacific leaders concerned about the effects of global climate change on their vulnerable nations when he said of Pacific islanders, “They’ll continue to survive because many of their workers come here and pick our fruit.” Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga reacted by threatening to pull his nation’s citizens out of Australia’s seasonal workers program.

Such undiplomatic outbursts were once rare, even at the height of the Cold War. Dwight Eisenhower entertained visiting world leaders, including West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, French President Charles De Gaulle, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, at his Gettysburg, Pennsylvania farm, where, in 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev made a point of inviting Eisenhower’s grandchildren to visit Moscow with their grandparents on a future state visit. The era of diplomacy – both quiet and for public consumption – was one of carefully-written communiqués and protocol-conscious photo opportunities. Four letter epithets were never publicly overheard in matters of diplomatic statecraft.

The personalized insult rhetoric was normally consigned to Third World firebrand dictators like Uganda’s Idi Amin, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh. In the current post-diplomacy era, such insults would no longer emanate from well-guarded presidential palaces in Kampala, Harare, or Banjul, but from the White House, Number 10 Downing Street, and Parliament Hill in Canberra. Leaders and their close advisers now sound more like drunken sailors leaving a bar than representatives of nations with long democratic traditions.

Britain’s Boris Johnson has had a non-distinguished history of insulting people, both as Mayor of London, Foreign Secretary, and now as Prime Minister. He once called those in Commonwealth nations, who avidly welcomed the British Queen, “cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies” bearing “watermelon smiles.” Johnson also said the people of Papua New Guinea, a Commonwealth member nation, practiced “orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing.” Johnson also referred to Africa as “that country.” As Foreign Secretary, Johnson was prepared to recite a crude poem, titled the “Road to Mandalay,” written by Rudyard Kipling about colonial era-Burma. Johnson happened to be visiting the most scared Buddhist temple – the Shwedegon Pagoda – in Yangon, Myanmar. Johnson was prepared to utter the following stanza that referred to Buddha: “Bloomin’ idol made o’ mud/ Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd” – before the British ambassador stopped him with a warning that it was definitely not appropriate to recite such words in the Buddhist religious shrine.

Johnson also insulted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who is no shrinking violet when it comes to his own insults – with a crude limerick he wrote:

“There was a young fellow from Ankara
Who was a terrific wankerer
Till he sowed his wild oats
With the help of a goat
But he didn’t even stop to thankera.”

Not to be outdone, Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were fond of trading insults, with each calling the other a “terrorist.” Erdogan also insulted Australia, stating that “anti-Muslim Australians” in Turkey would return to Australia in coffins like their grandfathers, a reference to the World War I Gallipoli, Turkey invasion that saw thousands of Australian soldiers killed in battle.

Johnson’s ideological and vulgar doppelganger in Washington, Donald Trump, has similarly disparaged Africa and Africans by calling their nations “shithole countries.” At a Republican Party fundraiser in the millionaire enclave of The Hamptons on Long Island, Trump mimicked South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by speaking in a mock Asian accent. Trump’s insults of Mexicans resulted in then-Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto canceling a visit to Washington in 2017.

Prior to his love affair with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump referred to him as “little rocket man.” Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau was called “very dishonest and weak” after Trump stormed out of the 2018 G-7 summit in Quebec. Trump called Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen as “nasty,” after she rejected as “absurd” Trump’s proposal to buy Greenland from Denmark. Trump also insulted Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II by canceling, at the last minute, a state visit to Denmark, leaving the Danes with pre-purchased state dinner food and drink. Trump insulted Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven after the prime minister informed Trump that he had no power to release from jail a fourth-rate US rapper named A$AP Rocky who was charged with the assault of a man on a Stockholm street.

Others who have fallen victim to Trump’s personal insults include French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Merkel, former British Prime Minister Theresa May, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Montenegro Prime Minister Duško Marković, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan (who had to arrange for his own transportation to downtown Washington, DC after arriving at Dulles International Airport in Virginia for a visit to the White House),Afghan President Ashraf Ghani (whose only invitation to meet with Trump was to be at an abruptly-canceled “secret” meeting with Taliban leaders at Camp David in Maryland during the same week that marks the 9/11 attack). There have been others similarly insulted.

The schoolyard antics of Trump and Johnson are matched by Brazil’s Adolf Hitler-loving President Jair Bolsonaro. After President Macron criticized Bolsonaro’s handling of Amazon rainforest arson-inducted fires, Bolsonaro criticized the age of Macron’s wife, Brigitte, who is 66, as compared to Bolsonaro’s wife, who is 37. Macron responded, “I think that Brazilians, who are a great people, will probably be ashamed to see this behavior.” In July of this year, Bolsonaro canceled a meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to get a haircut.

After United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet criticized police abuse and the killing of Amazon indigenous tribal leaders in Brazil, Bolsonaro replied, “While [Bachelet] says that Brazil is losing democratic space, she forgets that her country is not Cuba thanks only to those who had the courage to put a stop on the left-wing in 1973,” a reference to the 1973 military coup that ousted Chile’s democratically-elected Socialist President Salvador Allende. Bolsonaro added insult to injury by praising the Chilean junta’s execution of Bachelet’s father, Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet. Bolsonaro bragged that “among the communists during that era was her [Bachelet’s] brigadier father.” Bolsonaro’s Economy Minister, Paulo Guedes, piled on, stating that: “What I see in the newspapers is that he [Bolsonaro] insulted [Michelle] Bachelet, or that he called Macron’s wife ugly . . . He did say that and it’s true – the woman is indeed ugly.”

Too many diplomats, from UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and UN Middle East mediator Count Folke Bernadotte to Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov, US ambassador to Cyprus Rodger Davies, and UN Commissioner for Namibia Bernt Carlsson, have died in diplomatic service in furtherance of peace to allow low-class ruffians and gangsters to hijack modern diplomacy for their own greedy and extremist purposes.

It is a close race to determine whether Trump or Bolsonaro are having the greatest negative impact on Earth’s climate. Although both reject sound scientific methodology, Bolsonaro slightly edges out Trump due to the fact that the “intellectual” guru for Bolsonaro, a far-right Brazilian “end-times” evangelical “Christian,” is a Virginia-based conspiracy monger named Olavo de Carvalho. Among his other fanciful notions, Carvalho entertains the idea that the Earth is not a sphere but flat.

As wildfires of biblical proportions plague Alaska, Siberia, and the Amazon Basin, unprecedented heat waves hit Europe, and the Greenland Ice Sheet and Western Antarctica melt as Trump figures out how to annex Greenland from Denmark, Bolsonaro is fiddling while the Amazon rain forest burns. Called the “lungs of the Earth” because of its provision of 20 percent of our planet’s oxygen, the Amazon is plagued by Brazilian farmers committing systematic arson to open up more grazing land for cattle. Bolsonaro, who, like Trump, pulled his nation out of the Paris Climate Agreement, has encouraged overdevelopment of the Amazon Basin and given a green light to the forest’s ecocide and genocide of one million indigenous tribes that for millenia have called the region their home.

Bolsonaro and Trump are acting in tandem to see who can do the most damage to the Earth’s environment. Trump has called global climate change a “Chinese hoax” and has scrapped most of the federal environmental protection laws, putting him at loggerheads with state governors and attorneys general and the leadership of America’s automotive industry. Bolsonaro, who rejects climate science like some modern age Luddite, has severed the role of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in conducting satellite surveillance of the Amazon rainforest and fired its director for providing accurate statistics on the rate of Amazon destruction. Bolsonaro is outsourcing the function to a private company, one of several linked to his business network of corrupt political cronies. Bolsonaro, in Trumpian fashion, accused the director of the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) of being on the payroll of a “foreign NGO.” Bolsonaro rejected IBAMA’s determination that in July 2019 there was a 278 percent increase in deforestation of the Amazon from the rate measured for July 2018.

Bolsonaro’s antics have earned him sharp rebukes from Europe, where the effects of planetary warming have resulted in dramatic consequences, including scorching heat waves. The Elysee Palace issued a statement that Bolsonaro lied to President Emmanuel Macron when he told the French leader that he would protect the biodiversity of the Amazon. France and Ireland announced their opposition to a trade deal between the European Union and the Mercosur trade bloc, which is now dominated by right-wing regimes in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. Germany and Norway suspended their financial assistance to the Brazilian government’s Amazon fund due to the inaction of the Bolsonaro regime in failing to live up to its commitments to protect the Amazon region.

Macron was prepared to discuss the destruction of the Amazon at the G-7 summit in Biarritz. However, noting that Trump would likely balk at a traditional summit communiqué, decided to forego the consensus statement because, among other issues, Trump was likely to defend his fellow environmental pirate, Bolsonaro, against any move to single out Brazil for criticism.

Trump and Bolsonaro are not the only environmental pirates on the loose in the world but they are the most destructive. Duterte of the Philippines has categorized climate scientists as “noisy” and he fired one of his government officials for attending too many climate conferences. Duterte is also a skeptic about the benefits of the Paris Agreement. Other climate scofflaws include the Central American nations of Guatemala and Honduras, both ruled by right-wing authoritarian regimes. Insufficient attention to crippling droughts that have forced many Guatemalan and Honduran farmers and their families to migrate north to the United States to face even greater trauma inflicted by Trump’s border security forces have been the hallmarks of the regimes in Guatemala City and Tegucigalpa.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is another leader who has a jaundiced view of the actual causes behind climate change, an event that will eventually lead to the melting of the Himalayan glaciers and result in the drying up of India’s major rivers that provide water to most of India’s massive population. In 2014, Modi answered a question on climate change from a student from Assam, a Himalayan state already beset by the ravages of climate alteration. Modi replied to the student, saying, “Climate change? Is this terminology correct? The reality is this that in our family, some people are old . . . They say this time the weather is colder. And, people’s ability to bear cold becomes less . . .We should also ask is this climate change or have we changed. We have battled against nature. That is why we should live with nature rather than battle it.”

Modi is not quite an environmental pirate on the scale of Trump, Bolsonaro, and Duterte, but he has shown great promise to achieve such ignominy. Someone already ranking among the environmental policy pariahs is Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. At a recent summit of the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu, Morrison prevented the gathered leaders of Oceania to issue a strong final communiqué calling for urgent action to deal with rapidly cascading climate change. Morrison, who is owned and operated by Australia’s coal companies, insisted on a watered-down final statement by the leaders, an action that bitterly disappointed the forum host, Tuvaluan Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga. Tuvalu may be among the first to succumb to rising sea levels, making it the world’s first ex-situ nation resulting from climate change. While Morrison was away in Tuvalu, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, Australia’s fanatical equivalent of US Vice President Mike Pence, said of the embattled Pacific islanders, “They’ll continue to survive because many of their workers come here to pick our fruit.” The racist diatribe was not lost on island inhabitants across the Pacific expanse, from Palau in the west to Tahiti in the east.

Environmental pirates are also found in the leadership of the far-right political parties around the world, including the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The AfD policy plank on the climate preaches classic climate change denial canon in stressing “the influence of CO₂ on global temperatures cannot be proven and carbon emissions reduction measures thus do nothing to protect the climate.”

The rise to power of the eco-nihilists – Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Morrison, and others – will intrigue future historians. They will ponder why, faced with sound scientific data, certain world leaders insisted on doing nothing to prevent the demise of their own nations, as well as global civilization.