‘The world’s nuclear arsenals are being enlarged at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened; China, Russia, the United States, India, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, France, and Israel have been upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions.’
AS the Philippines marks another Rizal birth anniversary, the world is witnessing a new outbreak of heavy country-to-country violence in a region suffused with apocalyptic culture. Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and other targets last 13 June 2025 had spiraled into the world’s first full-scale example of a “threshold war” (a “new and terrifying form of conflict where a nuclear weapons power seeks to use force to prevent an enemy on the verge of nuclearization from making that jump”). The Houthis in Yemen have joined the fight (launching ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv), “the international community is witnessing the collapse of traditional deterrence frameworks in real time” and the two combatant-nations may have already fallen into the “commitment trap”. [https://phys.org/news/2025-06-iran-israel-threshold-war-rewritten.html#google_vignette]
In Europe, a Russian 32-missile and 440-drone strike wave directly hit 10 sites in Ukraine while the G7 summit was underway in the Canadian province of Alberta. [https://efe.com/en/latest-news/2025-06-17/russia-g7/] In South Asia, the 07-10 May 2025 konfrontasi involved cross-border terrorism and implicit nuclear threats and unveiled a new military doctrine, with Chinese weapon systems (J-10 fighter planes, HQ-16FE + HQ-9BEsurface-to-air missiles, YL-8E counter-stealth radars) tested for the first time in combat. India used Israeli-made drones (IAI Searcher, Heron, Harpy, Harop) indigenous weapons (Nagastra-1 suicide, Rustom-2 medium-altitude long-endurance, Archer-NG armed tactical drones) and 31 MQ-3B Predator drones, (acquired from USA), while Pakistan employed the Chinese CH-4, the Turkish Bayraghtar Akinci, and the indigenously developed Burraq and Shahpar drones.
[https://www.nbr.org/publication/the-may-2025-india-pakistan-conflict-neither-quite-the-same-nor-quite-another/]
In the Promised Land, “after 20 months of Israeli bombing, only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are still partially functional, medical supplies are critically low and no fuel has entered the Strip for more than 100 days.” WHO trauma surgeon and emergency officer Thanos Gargavanis said that the level of violence has not diminished since the Israel-Iran crisis erupted. [United Nations News Today, 17 June 2025; https://news.un.org/en/audio/2025/06/1164491]
In East Asia, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s Liaoning and Shandong Carrier Strike Groups continue to maintain their presence in the Philippine Sea east of the Philippine island of Luzon, sailing via the Luzon Strait between Taiwan and the Philippines. Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyers JS Haguro(DDG-180), JS Murasame (DD-101) and JS Ikazuchi (DD-107) shadowed the ChiCom warships. There were a total of 550 fighter aircraft and helicopter takeoffs and landings from the Liaoning and 230 takeoffs and landings from the Shandong, according to Japanese observers. [https://news.usni.org/2025/06/17/dual-chinese-aircraft-carrier-strike-groups-persist-to-operate-in-the-western-pacific]
The world’s nuclear arsenals are being enlarged at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened; China, Russia, the United States, India, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, France, and Israel have been upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions. [https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2025/nuclear-risks-grow-new-arms-race-looms-new-sipri-yearbook-out-now]
On the brink of Armageddon? This is not Rizal’s era anymore. The Kinzhal is a Russian airborne missile system with a hypersonic aero-ballistic missile. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu had announced on 21 December 2021 that Moscow had set up a separate air regiment of MiG-31K fighters armed with hypersonic missiles. Russia first employed the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system (launched from a distance of over 1,000 kilometers covering its distance within less than 10 minutes) in the special military operation of 18 March 2022, wiping out a Ukrainian underground missile and aircraft ammunition depot near the urban-type settlement of Delyatin in the Ivano-Frankovsk Region. [https://tass.com/defense/1618371] The American take: The truly impressive takeaway from the Patriot systems in Ukrainian service is not the singular takedown of the first Kh-47 “Dagger” hypersonic missiles but the Patriot’s performance under saturation bombardment (filling the three-dimensional airspace with more incoming targets than the defense can handle using a combination of land-, sea-, or air-launched missile platforms, a coordinated impact time, varied altitudes and azimuths of approach, decoys and countermeasures, and sheer numbers). [https://mwi.westpoint.edu/hypersonic-hype-russias-kinzhal-missiles-and-the-lessons-for-air-defense/]
Not in Kansas anymore. Or suroy-suroy in the Rizal Shrine City of Dapitan in Mindanao. Or as Boromir warned: “One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its black gates are guarded by more than just orcs.” Thus, we salute Rizal by reading books in his collection, including Jomini’s Precis de l’Art de la Guerre and the first volume of the Histoire Militaire des Guerres de Frederic II. To wit: “Wars of opinion between two states belong also to the class of wars of intervention; for they result either from doctrines which one party desires to propagate among its neighbors, or from dogmas which it desires to crush, in both cases leading to intervention. Although originating in religious or political dogmas, these wars are most deplorable; for, like national wars, they enlist the worst passions, and become vindictive, cruel, and terrible.” [Baron de Antoine Henri Jomini. Article VII: “Wars of Opinion.” The Art of War. Translated from the French by Capt. G.H. Mendelland Lieut. W.P. Craighill, U.S. Army. Originally published in 1862]
Info-wars, disinformation, fake news. Is this the kind of war being waged by the loyalists of President Bongbong Marcos, VP Sara Duterte and Speaker Martin Romualdez? By the Han chauvinists and violent jihadists? By the advocates of eliminationist anti-Semitism?
