USA losing influence across the Pacific
Sun 2:10 pm +00:00, 26 Jul 2026Asia DESTROYS US Pacific Hegemony. End of Alliances | Prof. Jomo Kwame Sundaram
While the US is busy destroying itself in Eastern Europe and West Asia, East Asia, too, is busy preparing for countering US warmongering. But not the way you think. South East Asia is engaged in its own cat and mouse game with the hegemon.
THE FEEL OF EVENTS IN MANILA
Strangely I was staying in the hotel in Manila, where the Asean meetings took place, and where Lavrov met up with Rubio. The rate I paid did seem a lot more expensive than normal. Security was minimal – just the usual frisk at the door and metal detector. Three Police officers checking and a dog!
The one comment I made was that there was no visible or audible input from Bong Bong Marcos the President, and he seemed to be nowhere in the proceedings. Locals I know who see him occasionally – government drivers for example – say that he looks unwell these days, a shadow of his former self. He is extremely unpopular for selling the country out to the USA and the corporations, and not dealing with outrageous level of corruption. Inflation is rampant and so are tax rises. Pay is being swallowed up to nothing and people look depressed, compared to in the past. Bong Bong is as nothing compared to his parents who were formidable operators. They resisted the US takeover of the Philippines in the 1960s and 1970s and paid the price with enforced political removal from the country and Ferdinand developing cancer. The Marcos were blamed for corruption ever since but it was the Aquinos and later Presdients likd Macapagal who signed away the country’s natural resources, and linked the Peso to the US$. Bong Bong seemed to have the opposite approach to his parents – and has been the biggest US Corporate sell-out yet known, just as Asia seems ready to move on from the American Century, and dfind a new pathway.
Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter Sara is a key opponent of Marcos. She is currently suffering an impeachment trial in the Senate. If she survives she will landslide against Bong Bong in the Presidential elections, as the people want to go ack to opposing the takeover by the US corporations, and raise living standards for ordinary Filipinos.
She would not want a war with China as the US seems keen to get going. Japan is probably militarily a more significant opponent of China that the US is now, with a highly advanced drone programme.
