Tags: Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana

Tightening Philippine military involvement with the US

On May 7-18, the Duterte government will engage in its third Balikatan joint military exercises with the United States since October 2016. The exercises will have two new features: 1) participation of Japan and Australia, both America’s close cohorts in Asia and, 2) the start of construction, inside a Philippine base, of the first of…

DND, AFP are spoiling the peace talks resumption

In his latest turnabout on the issue, President Duterte apparently seeks to convince the public that he is dead set on continuing the GRP-NDFP peace talks that he unilaterally “terminated” just before the start of the fifth round of formal negotiations in November 2017. Twice this month, he has made such a public affirmation. On…

Repeating history

“Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” There are those who want us to forget the bitter lessons of martial law and the Marcos dictatorship. They say these hard-earned lessons should be discarded as irrelevant to our current situation because the threat of ISIS-inspired extremism is real and only martial law…