WITH President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. giving the United States nine bases for its increased military deployment in our country, which US officials, media and analysts repeatedly link to possible war with China, Filipinos should now assess what exactly our leader signed us up for by going all in with the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).Definitely, it's not the independent foreign and defense policy his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte sought to establish, and which Marcos seemingly espoused with his "friend to all, enemy to none" mantra and his recent statements in Switzerland about Asian nations not taking sides in superpower rivalry. Those presidential words now sound not only hollow but even insincere and deceiving.As Marcos knows, we cannot be an enemy to none if we host forces capable of devastating nearby nations. He has agreed to let American ships, subs, planes and missiles use AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) bases, even if Uncle Sam never says which of its battle gear have nuclear weapons violating our Constitution's ban on nukes. (Bar exam question: Based on Article 2, Section 8, can the Supreme Court issue a mandamus for our government to ascertain that military assets coming here carry no atomic warheads?)

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