THIS sordid affair, the French in the Hague labels "l'affair Duterte" has made amateur lawyers of many of us. From where one sits, it was either a lawful arrest or kidnapping of a former president, "giftwrapped and delivered" to the ICC by our own government. Sen. Imee Marcos' subsequent hearings, for which she was dropped from the Alyansa Para sa Bagong Pilipinas senatorial lineup, exposed the criminal incompetence of this government and the prevarications of her complicit brother. Imee, the Marcos who should have been president and not this weak caricature of a male sibling, displayed balls — evocative of her dictator-father. She has long distanced herself from the has-beens, entertainers, ex-convicts and opportunists of the Alyansa. Suspended in political limbo with the support of Sara, this development, if played well, could propel her to a second Senate term.

In any event, DU30 now in the Hague will undergo a protracted trial — where at the end he is either pronounced not guilty, sent home free and live the rest of his life back as my neighbor in Davao City at a very ripe age; or die miserably in his cell while undergoing a trial that could last anywhere from 3 to 8 years.

By which time he could be venerated as a beloved dead hero elevated to cult-like status similar to that of his partner, the "Appointed Son of God," Quiboloy. But unlike this KOJC charlatan, the Deegong will be vilified by the Marcoses as they did Ninoy. And the rest of the country grudgingly moves on, as always, suffering under this dysfunctional system of government where our corrupt leadership will steal us blind — salved from time to time with "ayuda."

BBM and the Marcos family, whether they will survive this or not, will have extracted their pound of flesh. Sweet revenge! More miserable than their patriarch dying in Hawaii and awaiting decades before being brought back home and given a hero's burial — courtesy of the one now languishing in a cell at the Hague. Karma has a way of upsetting events.

As to the parents, relatives and loved ones of victims of the "tokhang" drug war, 3,000-6,000-30,000 souls — choose your number — EJK'd or justified killings, they too will have their pound of flesh. These people, mostly poor and society's fringe, will continue to wallow in poverty and injustice — courtesy of these morons, incompetents and the corrupt they will elect to the highest offices of the land. This is the cycle of misery that has continually defined our system of governance.

International Criminal Court

This court is totally alien from that of our country's where delays are de rigueur, judges are bought, witnesses disappear, and justice is dispensed based on the status of the litigants and respondents. Former ICC judge Raul Pangalangan emphasized that "...the tribunal operates under a unique legal framework that does not always conform to traditional national legal systems." The ICC does not fit into familiar categories of Philippine jurisprudence. Pangalanan who served as an ICC judge from 2015-2021 averred that "international criminal tribunals are in a class of their own. They are sui generis." A class of their own.

Retired Supreme Court associate justice Antonio Carpio said that our Philippine courts have no jurisdiction over the ICC. The legality or illegality of the Deegong's arrest and subsequent flight to the Hague will not deprive the ICC of jurisdiction to hear and decide on the case. "The ICC has nothing to do with how the surrendering state carried out the arrest," Carpio said. The ICC's prerogative is very clear; once handed over, it acquires jurisdiction and trial on the merits will proceed as scheduled — by its own rules.

In a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, 51 percent agree that Duterte, a most beloved Filipino president, should be held accountable for the killings (EJK) during his watch. This reflects the importance of accountability and perhaps a shred of decency left for majority of the Filipinos. For its part, ICC will have to establish the Deegong's guilt for human rights violations.

Political theater

From hereon in, Philippine public opinion and our Constitution are irrelevant to the ICC. It operates on hard facts, legal precedents and international law. But Pinoys love political theater and will continue to squeeze the issues dry to advance the political agenda of the pro-Marcos and the pro-Dutertes; but sadly, not much for the near-voiceless victims together with the rest of the citizenry caught in the middle.

And therein lies the Filipino tragedy. This trial and its implications on the rule of law and justice will be eclipsed by partisan street protests, vlogs/blogs and social media noise and the circus of the midterm elections reducing serious endeavors as simply vehicles playing on voters' emotions.

Video clips from the Duterte camp show the miserable former president enroute pining for "pancit and bulad"; and exhibited at the pre-trial chamber in a loose fitting "Amerikana." "Kawawa naman!"

And the trolls from the Marcos camp countering with old clips of the foulmouthed former president, cursing the Pope, President Obama, calling them "sons of a whore," and clips mocking the ICC to get him — dead or alive! And his self-incriminating admission of nurturing a death squad (DDS) — instructing them to "kill this person (drug lord/addict), because if you do not, I will kill you."

Midterm elections 2025

On May 12, we will have a vague idea on whether Marcos-Romualdez were the geniuses they are purported to be with their strategy to get the still popular Deegong out of the political calculation barely two months before elections. Prior to the ICC hullabaloo, the Alyansa senatorial slate, propelled by logistics anomalously sourced from the 2025 budget, were on an upward trajectory, hoping to get enough senators for the two thirds needed to impeach Sara. The impeachment of the VP was an imperative as she is a heartbeat away from the presidency. Anything that happens to BBM — God forbid, an assassin's bullet, or an overdose of "polvoron" — before she is impeached will upset the well-executed schemes of Marcos from the time of the legislative hearings on Sara's corrupt practices — stage-managed by the equally corrupt minions of Speaker Martin Romualdez.

Sad reality

But do we really care about what happens with both camps? Duterte has accumulated enough wealth from Pharmally and scores of lucrative ventures to pay for top-tier accredited ICC lawyers to defend him. If he's clean and innocent, then he's free! If not, then he rots in jail.

And what do you care about the Marcoses? They and their cohorts have looted the country blind and perverted the bureaucracy. We should boot them all out.

What about us — the Filipino right smack in the middle of this insanity?

This Marcos-Duterte teleserye has been played to the hilt with their UniTeam in an attempt to monopolize power for the next generations. We are being distracted from what we really deserve — good governance. We need to fix this and plan out what we need to do next to free ourselves from this cycle of hopelessness.

Something's gotta give!

Third of a series

PART 1 of this Russo-Ukraine war series started with the humiliation of Zelenskyy by Trump and Vance at a White House press conference on Feb. 28, 2025. Victor Hanson, a political scientist, advanced the idea of a DMZ formula and a minerals agreement to end the war ("Hysteria at the White House..." TMT, March 5, 2025).

In part 2, Dr. Vladimir Brovkin's take is for Europe to take up the slack with the imminent US withdrawal from the war. This puts the onus on Europe to unify and defend Ukraine. This is now Europe's war — which it should have been in the first place if only they had a foreign policy independent from the US ("Trump-Zelenskyy fallout..." TMT, March 12, 2025).

This third part speculates on the endgame of this war, extracted from three renowned political scientists and economists: Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University ("Ukraine war is over"); Richard Wolff ("American empire is over"), University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and John Mearsheimer ("The tragedy of great power politics") of the University of Chicago.

Simply put, this war is over! Only the details of who lost and lost more will be speculated upon. But the repercussions on geopolitics are myriad. To understand this war better, it is important to dig into its political and historical antecedents.

The backdrop to all these is gleaned from the works of Sachs, Wolff and Mearsheimer, going back to the end of WW2, upon the rise of two hegemons, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States of America. The Cold War was dominated by these two nations — backstopped by their respective alliances — NATO of the West and the Warsaw Pact of the East. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991 presaged the ascendancy of America as the sole superpower.

America with a forked tongue

A prior agreement of Feb 9, 1990, hammered out between US Secretary of State James Baker and USSR Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, stated that NATO would not move "an inch eastward" as a condition to German unification formally ending WW2.

But in 1994, America reneged on its word. It cheated! President Clinton signed on to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine. The US enticed former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO; Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic became members in 1999; and 2004 saw Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia accepted into NATO.

In 2004-2005 the Orange Revolution erupted in Ukraine installing President Victor Yushchenko, who was oriented towards NATO. In 2010, President Viktor Yanukovych won but pushed for Ukraine's neutrality, antithetical to US championing NATO membership. On Feb. 2, 2014, Yanukovych was ousted in a CIA-instigated regime change, through the Revolution of Dignity. This gave Putin the alibi to annex Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula and recognize the Russian-sponsored separatist states of Donetsk and Luhansk in the southeast, collectively known as the Donbas region.

It was only a matter of time before all these would come to a head. Thus, Putin made his move on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2023, a bloody war that Putin said was going to take a few days. It's now in its third year and counting.

Fast forward – crossroads

Early March last week, in the aftermath of the Trump-Zelenskyy reality TV confrontasi resulting in the public humiliation of Zelenskyy and his subsequent bending of the knee, Trump is once more in control of this proxy war.

In a meeting on March 11, 2025, hosted by Saudi Arabia in Riyadh, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the peace process was back on track, making an offer that Ukraine has accepted, for a 30-day ceasefire and immediate negotiations, touted as one that is enduring and sustainable to end the war. This has been transmitted to the Russians.

Putin rebuffed the offer. He believes that the war is going Russia's way, and the ceasefire just gives the losing Ukraine breathing space to regroup, especially in the wake of US unilateral decision to pause sending military aid to Ukraine (immediately reversed) — which for Putin, may look like an indication of weak US resolve or perhaps a signal from his buddy that Trump has his back.

Root causes for the war

But Putin's rejection of the ceasefire is based on some nuances, as the root cause of this war, revealing Putin's true intentions for naming this a "special military operations" instead of an invasion of Ukraine, with NATO encroachment as the immediate cause.

Putin framed this war in a historical context. In what historians consider as Putin's warped view of history, Lenin, the Bolshevik founder, created Ukraine artificially at the expense of southern Russian lands earlier in the formation of the USSR.

Prior to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution that midwifed the USSR, the Russian empire that ended under Tsar Nicholas II included the region that is now Ukraine, with a significant portion also under Austro-Hungarian control. The Bolsheviks recognized the need to address the national aspirations of various ethnic groups within the former empire, including Ukrainians.

In 1917, Ukraine declared independence, followed by a tumultuous period of civil war and shifting control among various factions. In 1922, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was established as a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. The borders of this republic were drawn in a way that included territories that were historically part of Ukraine but also included areas that had significant Russian-speaking populations.

In some oblique way, Lenin and the Bolsheviks played a significant role in shaping the modern political landscape of Ukraine. But the historical roots of Ukrainian identity and territory are much older and more complex than the idea of an "artificial" creation.

These facts did not deter Putin from inculcating these historical distortions into his narrative. At one time Putin even claimed that modern Ukraine was a creation of the CIA and the European Commission, in the wake of the Orange and Euromaidan revolutions, in his conversation with former EU commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso.

From where he sits, Ukraine should not exist as a sovereign state; and if it does now, it should not operate outside Russia's orbit. Marching his soldiers to Ukraine therefore was his special military operations to retain land that has always belonged to Russia — particularly the Russian-speaking oblasts.

America's offer for a ceasefire and negotiations therefore would be an overture for Russian capitulation. The bottom line for Putin now emerging is that Ukraine must exist only upon the sufferance of Russia and must therefore be part of the Russian Federation. It will not be a member of NATO, ever, nor will foreign troops be tolerated within its borders — peacekeepers or otherwise.

In the final analysis, Ukraine as a sovereign state is a concept that needs to go away. Putin is prepared to go through a protracted war to see this through. He knows the West does not have the stomach for this seeing that Trump is wavering.

Unlike Trump, the illiterate, Putin is a student of history. And he reads Sachs, Wolff and Mearsheimer. The American empire is over! It had peaked long before Trump. He just accelerates its downward spiral. And Putin is not intimidated.

Second of a series

THE first part of this series was a description of a possible solution to the war through the lens of a political technocrat, Victor Davis Hansen — decidedly an admirer of Trump. Predictably, Trump, in a childish pique, suspended military aid to Ukraine. This could be lifted pending Zelenskyy's total and complete humiliation by way of public apology — bending the knee, as demanded by the Trump mafia-like cabal.

After Zelenskyy flew to Europe in the immediate aftermath for a summit of NATO/European leaders, Europe verbalized its intent to increase their contribution to Ukraine's war effort.

This second part is the assessment of Dr. Vladimir Brovkin, a Russian-born US historian and author who has written articles on the Russian revolution, communism and the Soviet experience.

The trap

Brovkin's take on last week's spat at the White House is kinder to Trump and harsher on Zelenskyy. Fresh from meetings with Macron of France and Starmer of the UK, prior to Feb. 28, Zelenskyy ostensibly was to bring the same message which the two prime ministers had unconvincingly presented to Trump weeks before: the Europeans want to be involved in Ukraine once a cease-fire with Russia was in place by stationing peacekeeping troops.

Trump was noncommittal as the implications could be deadly to America — a possible trap when future agreements are violated and hostilities break out. NATO's Article 5 automatically takes effect. This cornerstone of the alliance simply means "an attack on one is an attack on all." The US is obligated to step in and back the European troops. For Trump, who has had tiffs with other NATO members for non-fulfillment of their commitment to spend 2 to 3 percent of their GDP to defense, this was a big no-no! He has often threatened to opt out of NATO compelling them to up the ante — a typical bully tactic — forcing Europe to arm itself and perhaps go it alone, not spilling American blood.

Zelenskyy, the darling of the US Democratic Left and the Europeans, went into this lion's den — a MAGA territory, overconfident. Video clips show him rudely interrupting Trump, hogging the limelight, delivering the same song and dance number that Putin is evil and can't be trusted and Ukraine's cause is just. The optics were bad for Zelenskyy whose sense of entitlement did not go well with a bigger ego in the room.

Trump's position — Ukraine's surrender!

But Trump and Vance were prepared to shoot down Zelenskyy. It started with a classic art of the deal gambit. "You don't have the cards. You couldn't have survived three days without US help. We can't fund this war forever ... Ukraine can't fight forever ... we have to bring this thing to a close."

Duterte's ICC kidnapping with Marcos' help could be the start of BBM's fall
Trump was harsh. In front of an international audience, no doubt with an eye to his Russian buddy. He gave Zelenskyy a chance to accept his grasp of reality, while giving away negotiating chips for future talks:

Ukraine can't win this war; Ukraine has to cut losses and must conclude a deal. This must have warmed the cockles of Putin's heart. Briefly, Ukraine survives minus the Donbas, Crimea and the current Russian-occupied Ukrainian oblasts. No NATO membership ever, and Ukraine remains neutral.

On security matters, VP Vance made clear that "...if Ukraine wants real security guarantee and ensure that Putin will not invade Ukraine in the future, Ukraine has to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine." America needs to have a long-term stake in the country rebuilding its economy — perhaps a mini-Marshall plan akin to one implemented in 1947. The minerals deal would provide the wherewithal. This was Trump's pathway to peace — the only way!

Where Zelenskyy sits

But how does this fit into the big picture? Dr. Brovkin identified other stakeholders. The Ukraine establishment is firmly in control of the National Maidan (the nationalist group that emerged after the Ukraine regime change in 2014). This was the revolution staged-managed by the CIA ("Closing act to Putin's war," TMT, March 16, 2022) that eventually catapulted Zelenskyy to power. Accordingly, "they would rather die than conclude anything with the Russians."

Also, there's a huge constituency of Ukraine families of those killed at the front wondering what their sons, daughters and husbands did die for. With Trump threatening to abandon NATO, Europe may not have the military capability — for now. The US has, but may no longer want to be involved in a war fought across the Atlantic Ocean far from American soil that could escalate into a nuclear war.

From where Putin stands

Putin vehemently belies this unnatural bromance with Trump and the accusation that Trump does Putin's bidding. Putin's strange protests reinforce Trump's assertion that he works for the interest of Ukraine — which happens to be congruent to the Russian dictator's. The end game sees the winning side — Russia gains something; while the losing side, Ukraine, merely survives. This is the Trump/Putin win-win scenario for peace.

Roughly, Putin's four positions are outlined thus: 1) Ukraine must remain neutral and no NATO membership; 2) Russia retains the four major oblasts now Russian-occupied; 3) Ukraine must be demilitarized; and 4) the country must undergo de-Nazification.

Putin demands further guarantees. The dissolution of NATO to be replaced by a new security architecture arrangements that may even include Russia itself, enforced by a new international treaty defining the borders of countries within Europe and Russia. The details can be determined during the negotiations.

Kremlin generals

Russian politics is complicated and secretive. Putin's views are not universally accepted. The Russian generals and nationalists form a formidable group with positions more drastic than those of Putin/Trump. The occupied oblasts are not enough booty of war. They want the entire Novorossiya — shades of the old Russian empire that would include the region immediately north of the Black Sea and Crimea, including the port of Odessa; and the entire left bank of the Dnieper and the Russian-speaking provinces.

Economic cooperation with US will strengthen the Russian oligarchs and the business elite, silenced at the moment, which could assert political power. They would rather that power shifts to the patriotic Russians who have come to the fore during the war.

And regime change is a must. Zelenskyy has to go together with the Nationalist Maidan/Bandera regime in Kiev and the installation of a "Russia-friendly" neighbor.

The changing tides

After World War II, the United States assumed a pivotal role in shaping the geopolitical landscape. Its actions and policies from this period established it as a dominant global power and a key architect of the new international order. In his ignorance, Trump who does not read and is illiterate on world history, inadvertently upended the geopolitical dynamics, accelerating the emergence of a multipolar world.

Europe, long weakened by their dependence on an ally, who is now unreliable, must step up to the plate. Trump serendipitously accomplished what he has bullied Europe all along — a unity described by a Polish Premier Donald Tusk as "500 million Europeans, asking 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians."

This could mean Europe could go it alone and fight a war in solidarity with Ukraine against Trump's best buddy, Putin.

First of 3 parts

SEVERAL interpretations are going around the internet of that Feb. 28, 2025, White House press conference involving Trump and Zelenskyy. From where one sits, the protagonists are seen in a different light. This first column of three parts paints Trump as seen by many — subjective, at best, as the performance of a despicable and uncouth host, with Zelenskyy absorbing the abuse.

The presscon was initially to announce the Trump/Zelenskyy bilateral agreement on US investment in Ukraine's minerals and other valuable resources. Roughly, the deal was for Ukraine to pay off the US for the financial aid and weapons infused during the war. Trump wants $500 billion worth of Ukrainian minerals as compensation. Zelenskyy claims that US military aid has totaled nowhere close to $500 billion.

Zelenskyy offers Ukraine's strategic resources in exchange for continued military support and security guarantees. Trump's transactional approach to international diplomacy was at his extortionate best. Sign up or he walks out.

Press conference — wrong format

From the outset, Trump and Zelenskyy were already in disagreement on translating the meeting's agenda. The minerals deal was the opening gambit for peace negotiations. But this was the wrong forum open to the international press, with the fine print still unresolved.

Trump was to showcase this meeting as his triumphant start to put an end to the Ukraine-Russia war — an election promise. Zelenskyy, the subordinate client, was to play a crucial albeit a supporting role.

To recall, Trump disparaged Zelenskyy as an "... unelected dictator... he should have stopped the war and never started it." A total prevarication, perhaps as a gesture to his buddy Putin, who must have been gleeful at Trump's historical revisionism.

Zelenskyy with the world's eyes on him went off-script and played to his audience for continued US and NATO support to stop Putin and have his troops withdrawn, forthwith; in effect prolonging the war. With his customary military fatigues at the oval office and once the rockstar of the Democrats, he tried to use the same playbook with the MAGA crowd. It didn't work. Trump stopped him in his tracks.

Vance interjected, echoing his mob-boss, berating a caporegime for not having ever said thank you once — a mafia-like fixation on obeisance. From there, the presscon went downhill fast. Social and mass media have gone to town muddling the more substantive part of what was perceived to be a start of negotiations to end the war.

Roots of Ukraine-Russian war

I have written extensively on this war since March of 2022 depicting its genesis. We were unequivocal in asserting that Russia's invasion in 2022 was the sum total of NATO's and America's relentless encroachment over the years that included the CIA-sponsored Euromaidan Revolution in 2013 resulting in a regime change in Ukraine, which in turn gave Putin the alibi to annex Ukraine's southern peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and recognize the Russian-sponsored separatist states of Donetsk and Luhansk in the southeast, collectively known as the Donbas region.

The Ukraine war should not have happened. But the West, particularly the neocons in D.C., propagated the fiction that Putin is an imperialist bent on reviving the old USSR. This was really just conjecture. Putin came to power only in 2000 a decade after the Cold War ended. It took another two decades for the Ukraine crisis to erupt in 2014 induced by NATO intrusion into the former Warsaw Pact countries, enticing them into NATO memberships shortly after the USSR collapsed.

A predominantly Christian Orthodox non-Islamic country, Ukraine was one of the 15 constituent republics of the Soviet Union from its 1922 founding until its dissolution in 1991; whereupon it reverted back to a status as an independent republic. It was the biggest and the most populous after Russia itself and the USSR's westernmost border. Here the complications begin as it played footsies with the archenemy of Russia — the US-led NATO. NATO's overture to Ukraine after the USSR's collapse is tantamount to providing a casus belli for Putin's acts.

Current status and a possible exit

After three years of war, all sides are exhausted. All want out, looking at diplomacy to end the war. One possible scenario is proposed by Victor Davis Hanson described in his webpage as "an American classicist, a military historian, and conservative political commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review and the Washington Times."

Hanson's intriguing take is that this is the closest that the three protagonists have arrived at ending the war with this minerals agreement. The real issue at hand is separating Russia now from Ukraine and the US participation. The relevant question is how far Putin can be pushed back from his current position in the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya oblasts.

That's why this minerals agreement was so innovative because most of the key deposits are along this disputed area where Europeans and Americans can come in and have their mining concessions and personnel on the ground. These are not American "boots on the ground" that Zelenskyy salivates for but will have the same deterrent effect as security guarantees. Putin will not go in there and kill Americans or disrupt mining operations. A prosperous mining business is advantageous for all sides. For this to be acceptable to all parties, these are the "sine qua nons":

One, Ukraine can't be a NATO member, ever. Trump himself does not want this. Even Europe doesn't want Ukraine in NATO. Ukraine by then will be better armed, better militarily trained than any of the 32 countries in NATO. And Putin knows this.

On Zelenskyy's part, he must understand that he is a subordinate and that the US is key to his survival and has "all the cards" as intimated by Trump.

Two, nobody ever said that Ukraine will be helped militarily by NATO to take back Donbas or Crimea. No American president will give Ukraine the military wherewithal to reclaim these occupied territories. Putin knows this too.

Three, Trump needs to persuade his buddy to agree to go back as close as possible to where Putin launched his Feb. 22, 2022, invasion. This could be established as a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

Not only can Putin get out from this war of attrition but can brag that he has legitimized and institutionalized the acquisition of Donbas, the oblasts and Crimea. America and NATO can lift the economic sanctions and invite Russia to reenter the family of nations.

And these should be the negotiating parameters. Zelenskyy does not have a choice. His main sponsor plays by his own rules and is a bully! Cutting a beneficial deal on the minerals concessions creates a de facto commercial "trip wire" along the DMZ. This could be the basis for a lasting peace.

But this is just one side of the ramifications of the Trump-Zelenskyy reality TV spat. Part 2 next week is another façade of the bigger picture — where in the end Trump with his "Art of the Deal" could really pull this off.