Playing with pawns

Two rich guys are locked in a bitter rivalry. Instead of fighting each other, they go to a vulnerable neighborhood, hand out weapons to local gangs, and watch the chaos from a distance.

That’s a proxy war in a nutshell. It’s how powerful countries play dangerous games without getting their hands dirty. They pick other people’s battles, supply the guns, and let real people pay the price. Lives become bargaining chips. Streets become battlefields while those who started it watch from afar — safe and untouched.

To some, it is a strategy, but to the discerning geopolitical experts, it is a cheat code for power, and ordinary people pay the bill.

In the Philippine setting, ours is also a borrowed battlefield for a cynical game where superpowers pursue their ambitions, at the expense of human lives.

Such is the cruel calculus that shaped the 20th century. Truth be told, the Cold War’s ideological struggle was exported to the jungles of Vietnam and the mountains of Afghanistan, where the US and the Soviet Union fueled devastating conflicts with money and weapons.

Today, the script remains the same, only the actors have changed. In Yemen, a brutal civil war is intensified by international powers backing opposing sides. In Syria and Ukraine, local conflicts have been supercharged into global flashpoints by the influx of foreign weapons, mercenaries, and strategic posturing.

The greatest lie of a proxy war, analysts say, is “plausible deniability.” Sponsors speak in sterile terms of “strategic interests” and “regional stability” while their exported weapons tear apart real communities, e.g., the nine Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites in the Philippines.

All these US sites — at Cesar Basa Air Base (Pampanga), Fort Magsaysay (Nueva Ecija), Lumbia Airport (Cagayan de Oro), Antonio Bautista Air Base (Palawan), Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base (Cebu), Naval Base Camilo Osias (Cagayan), Camp Melchor de la Cruz (Isabela), Balabac Island (Palawan), and Lal-lo Airport (Cagayan) — speak of conflict.

The exploitation of local struggles by foreign interests with a broader agenda is imminent. The original fight for justice or resources is drowned out by the roar of foreign artillery, making peaceful resolution impossible.

Whether we like it or not, the true cost is never borne in the capitals of the warring sponsors. It is paid by the people on the ground. The lasting damage is seen in children who know not safety but war, in communities torn apart, and in a future ruined by explosives, missiles, and deep trauma. And it lasts for decades.

This pattern is potentially unfolding in a new arena: the Philippines. Rising tensions in the South China Sea have put the country in a precarious position. Its own local problems could be exacerbated and intensified by the major powers seeking to check each other’s influence.

The very real concerns of Filipino fishermen, coastal communities, and a government defending its sovereignty are hijacked. We Filipinos, with our own complex history and aspirations, could become the next set of pawns on this grim chessboard. Our lives and stability are threatened by a game played from thousands of miles away.

Isn’t this a cowardly way for a powerful country to fight a war — by proxy, letting other people die in their place?

For the planners, it’s all strategy. For the people living it, it’s survival. It could be the buzz of a drone you don’t recognize, the armored tanks rolling down your street, or that sinking feeling that your home and your life have become just another move in someone else’s game.

Undoubtedly, the worst part isn’t the violence, but the dehumanization and how people are easily turned into numbers. Let’s look past the rhetoric — they see maps, not souls.

Until the world stops viewing crises as politics and sees the human beings behind the headlines, the vulnerable will keep paying the price, and the powerless will remain pawns in deadly proxy wars.