No, Virginia, there will be no war between the Philippines and China, where the United States will sail the Seventh Fleet to our aid. War, to quote Don Vito Corleone, "is bad for business."

Business is bad as it is. China's economic growth is at a downturn; America is grappling with lawlessness, big banks closing and financing an expensive war in Ukraine, and our country's inflation figures aren't that pretty either.

So our and China's coast guard vessels scraped against each other in Ayungin. I am as enraged as the next Filipino, although the videos I had seen so far looked like it was simply a case of "chicken" gone wrong. No one rammed anyone head on.

Of course, official voices will be heard; patriots from both sides will cry "attack!" and outrage will be heard from respective allies. US President Biden, facing a drubbing in the polls, made the perfunctory hawkish statements so as to appear macho-er than Trump, mincing no words when he said that "the United States' defense commitment to the Philippines is 'ironclad,'" obviously alluding to the Mutual Defense Treaty.

Although he may have neglected to mention two phrases in the agreement: "armed attack" and "in accordance with (both countries') constitutional process."

Bumping into each other's border patrols can hardly be considered an armed attack and, yes, under the US Charter, it is Congress that declares war, not the POTUS. And in war-weary Washington, the legislature may be loath to start another conflict in the wake of the humiliation in Afghanistan, the aforementioned Ukraine thing, and the ongoing hostilities between its BFF Israel and Hamas, which necessitated the deployment of an entire carrier fleet.

POTUS, as commander-in-chief, can always do things short of war by ordering his military to supply us with arms and ammunition. But the record of the US in that department does not inspire confidence: decades-old equipment often shorn of vital armaments.

I wouldn't take a trip from Manila to Baguio in a 30-year-old car, yet the Yanks expect us to wage war with 30-year-old frigates. Not too confidence-inspiring. And the new generation must be reminded that when an invasion from Japan appeared imminent in the 1940s, in spite of desperate pleas by President Quezon for war materiel, the US sent us but a few obsolete aircraft that were no match for the Japanese Zeros.

At any rate, it is going to take more — much more — than a scratch on the side of the hull of a naval patrol craft to launch a full-scale war. In the Battle of the Paracel Islands, South Vietnam and China actually went head-to-head in a shooting battle of several warships on each side.

Lives were lost, ships were sunk. But did the conflict escalate? No. Not only because of prompt diplomatic action, but due to the realization by both sides that war would be disastrous, as all wars are. As an aside, South Vietnam, then a staunch US ally, formally requested help from the Seventh Fleet. Its commander looked the other way and said, "Is there someone talking?"

Let our politicians, though, continue with the tough rhetoric, if that's what they think is going to make them popular and advance their political plans. Let the Chinese push back too with harsh words of their own. Some 1.4 billion people are watching them, thus the officials of the Chinese Communist Party need to look good. And let us just keep laughing at the young hotheads in Congress and the Left who are always spoiling for war while being averse to anything that might compel their supporters to march in the hot sun and learn how to use firearms. It should be fun to arm these dolts with rifles and send them to Ayungin Shoal.

No, there ain't gonna be a hot war. Any wound felt vicariously by Filipinos from the gash on the side of our ship is not really a gaping wound, but more of a scratch, a cold lesion.