THE Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) reached by the United States with the Philippines must be an insurance shot for the former’s continuing obsession to re-strengthen US military capabilities in the Asia Pacific region. All of a sudden, the agreement was there, evidently crafted with covert dispatch when it became evident that President Noynoy Aquino would not get the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) passed within his term. At the opening of the Kuala Lumpur Mindanao peace talks in 2012, the presidential adviser on the peace process, Teresita Deles, declared that the Mindanao peace talks were the centerpiece of the Aquino administration. To those negotiations must relate all transpirations in the political arena, not the least being the impeachment of the late former Chief Justice Renato C. Corona. My say then was that the Chief Magistrate was being weeded out in order to remove early on an impediment to the planned diminution of Philippine sovereignty through the creation of an independent Mindanao state, the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE). Such belittling of the Philippine nation, I perceived, was a necessary cog in the US design to re-establish much-needed military bases to counter fast growing Chinese assertiveness over the South China Sea.