We are witnessing today the most powerful country in the world, the United States, undergoing intense internal economic and social division as well as unprecedented breaking of agreements with allies even while they are being forced to conform with unilateral US impositions of all kinds. The pandemic in the US is still increasing at over 60,000 infections and hundreds of deaths a day, six months after the beginning, with over 4.2 million infections, when many other countries have brought it under control in two to three months. US President Donald Trump considered it a sign of weakness to wear a mask but finally started to wear one in June, also six months after being advised to do so by all world health institutions but still blaming everyone else. Normally if one believed in the superiority of one’s system, one should let the systems work themselves out to their natural levels of achievement, competing on skill and innovation than on force. If harmony were desired, more interaction and mingling would be advantageous, instead of closing consulates or limits. With the entry of the US and the United Kingdom, Japanese battleships and French frigates into the area (South China Sea or SCS), one sees a return to the colonial period of the powers that dismembered China, where any “accident,” possibly deliberate ones, or incidents or miscommunications can happen in contested waters of the South China Sea.

Trump's South China Sea war nears but PH should avoid it. (2020, July 26). The Manila Times, pp. A5, A6.