Indonesia turns Phl Hague win to gas
Indonesia never laughed at us. Didn’t have to. Their action was the slap: ‘You won. But what did you build on top of it?’
Text size
Indonesia never laughed at us. Didn’t have to. Their action was the slap: ‘You won. But what did you build on top of it?’
Indonesia is already sucking gas out of our West Philippine Sea victory.
Think about that. We dragged the Chinese fantasy to The Hague and won. Indonesia was not even a party to that case.
But the ruling also smashed the legal legs under Beijing’s absolute nine-dash BS near Indonesia’s Natuna Islands.
So what does Beijing do? It tells Indonesia: “Don’t dare drill.”
Jakarta looks them dead in the eye and says: “We’re restarting the Tuna gas project.” Three billion dollars.
Meanwhile, the Philippines? “Let’s celebrate.” Tenth anniversary. “Atin ‘to!” We have been polishing that trophy like it was the victory itself: “Final and binding, historic.”
Indonesia never laughed at us. Didn’t have to. Their action was the slap: “You won. But what did you build on top of it?”
Ouch.
Because the honest answer is: “We couldn’t afford much.”
We won one of the biggest diplomatic fights of this century, then came home to a country that still has to go begging richer countries for ships.
Japan, can we have your Abukumas? America, can we have radar? Australia, can you train us? Anybody got a spare ship you don’t need?
We said we wanted sovereignty. What we weren’t ready for was actually owning it. Sovereignty is expensive as hell.
So what we really wanted was the feeling of sovereignty preferably donated by Tokyo and guarded by Washington.
That’s what poverty does to sovereignty. You win the title to the house, you’re still too broke to put a fence in the yard.
Then the rich bully next door keeps walking through because he knows you can’t afford lumber.
We still act like the big question is whether China accepts the ruling, like one morning Xi is going to wake up, stretch, pour his jasmine, “You know what? F*** it. Manila was right. We apologize.”
Not happening. Imagine asking the thief if the house is really yours.
We do the same thing with everybody else. “EU, do you still support the ruling? Japan? G7?” Anybody to make us feel less alone. Very needy. Very sad.
China only needs to make us too scared to exploit our own waters. Scare off investors. Make officials imagine war, sanctions, lost trade, then the big shots in Manila say, “Maybe not now. Maybe later. After more talks.”
There it is.
Caution becomes surrender, and China loves it. It would be delighted if the whole region spent the next 50 years arguing about the same ruling. Debate forever. Issue diplomatic protests forever. Very safe for Beijing.
While everybody else is discussing law, China has already been pouring in the water.
If another country demonstrates how to act on a victory before we do, then our greatest diplomatic victory risks becoming a lesson that someone else teaches us about ourselves.
The real humiliation is not that Indonesia might succeed. Good for Indonesia. The humiliation is that the weapon we forged now works better in somebody else’s hand. Vietnam can use it, Malaysia, Indonesia can use it.
The Philippines may end up with a beautiful legacy: we made it safer for everybody else to stand up to China. Very generous country.
We win the case. They get the confidence. They build the projects. Behaved as though the dispute is over, all while the Philippines is still talking about 2016 instead of building 2026.
And if Indonesia pulls this off, then we lose our favorite excuse. “China is huge. Very powerful. China threatens.” All true.
But China is outside. What if the thing stopping us was inside? Losing to China, you can blame China.
Winning, then building nothing with the win? What’s that?
