UNBELIEVABLE. While President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. says he doesn't want conflict with any country, his statements and actions, and those of his officials, especially those in the Philippine Navy, have thrown down the gauntlet at the feet of the military and economic superpower in the region, China. Marcos will go down in history as the first president of a weak country to go to war against a nuclear-armed superpower.

And war over what? Over proving its sovereign rights over an 85-km permanently submerged Ayungin Shoal that Filipinos hardly know where it is and which would fit in less than half of Taal Lake.