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He didn't ask for it, he was referencing the efforts of past administrations to get modern weaponry that never went anywhere. For example, there was an attempt in the late 90s to acquire fighters from Israel that got blocked by US congress (because of American technology in the fighters) because...

Constructing the Suez Canal and Panama Canal made economic sense -- look at the distances being saved. The Kra Isthmus Canal requires a lot of effort and resources to save what, a day or two? I'd like to see the numbers -- obviously there's something compelling there if they're going to proceed...

This headline/title is not quite misleading, but its focus on the raw number rather than proportion made me groan There were lots of Chinese students at my alma mater (an urban campus in the west coast is all I'm going to say) and what struck me was the seeming lack of support that the...

I can't even begin to explain it to myself, much less to a non-Filipino. I guess it could be related to our fatalism? Life goes on no matter what we do or think, so you might as well make the most of it. You have to live with our neighbors no matter what they do, so you might as well get along...

I was just speaking in broad terms, rather than a specific relationship between the two countries. I just think it's hilarious, in the context of the never-ending Chinese grudge against Japan, that some Chinese can fall into the same pattern of thinking as certain members of the IJA high command...

Well I take it all back, then -- the hubris shown is more like Japan circa 1937. Come on, guy, step back a bit. We were even on the same side during that war!

I'm sure dowager empress Cixi had a similar train of thought circa 1894...

ASEAN isn't a military alliance like NATO. SEATO was, but it was an abject failure and none of the current governments dare attempt a repeat. ASEAN is more akin to a proto-European Union -- the difference is that the organization's current trajectory shows only weak signs of leading to future...

The porous southern border is the shame of the Philippines. It causes danger to our own country and that to our neighbors (as we saw with the Lahad Datu incident). We have taken steps to counter it, with our Coast Watch program, but it will remain a problem for the forseeable future. It is a...

Part of it was military adventurism (coup plotters among the military) -- why arm them when they would just use the hardware against the government? Part of it was the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which we had a more difficult time to recover from than our neighbors. Part of it is as...

Our navy used to be much larger, as well as our air force. We just lost 30 years, however, and didn't start recovering economically or militarily until 2010. We still have to catch up to what we were 40 years ago, much less our neighbors as they are today. The US is helping us, but we have...

even if vietnam cannot get *used* japanese ships, they can still get them new. last year we signed a deal for 2 large patrol ships and 10 smaller patrol ships with good financing terms. the two larger ones were supposed to be used units slated to retire, but I believe it was changed at the last...

america gained $24 billion from international students last year The International Student Economic Value Tool | NAFSA most of them didn't go to ivy leagues, so they're not even paying for prestige. i live next to a mediocre state school (i was also a student there 10 years ago), and there are...

we're not provoking you intentionally. we take poaching seriously, and that's why we also arrested filipino fishermen in the area that were doing the same thing. the environment and our fish stocks are very important to filipinos. we risked damaging our relationship with america last year after...

uhh, the filipino militants you're complaining about are enemies of the filipino government and filipino people. in fact, they don't want to be called filipinos, that's why they're fighting in the first place. one of the victims was also a filipino

Japan is already doubling the size of our coast guard with the 10 new patrol vessels they are building for us. We were also supposed to get 2 100m ex-japan coast guard ships as well, but i haven't heard anything about them in a while. And all that was before their export law change. last week's...

the southern tip of the philippines is not really representative of the whole. that region contains 3.5% of our population. and the warlord who perpetrated the maguindanao massacre in 2009 was installed by a pro-chinese presidential administration. we voted in aquino to clean house, and that's...

you guys realize president aquino is ethnic chinese right? he's part of the cojuangco clan, a family descended from chinese traders who later became landlords The clan is descended from Co Yu Hwan (Chinese: 許玉寰; pinyin: Xŭ Yùhuán; Quanzhou Hokkien literary: Hěu Ggiókhuán; colloquial: Koǒ...

if done, that could possibly work, and would be pretty sneaky. it would set off a turf war between the department of state and the department of justice, since as has been pointed out, state has already done this relatively recently. in any case, i'm not gonna rule out obama being spineless on...

The US State Department and Department of Defense were dealing with Afghan warlords in the last decade (everyone knows this). Many of those warlords are also druglords. When at least one of them visited America to confer with the state department and DOD to work out some deals, he was arrested...