🇵🇭 Marcos meets with Japan, US

Hello friends!

I spoke with my pals at Reformasi Dispatch last night (new episode tomorrow, subscribe on Spotify!) and was reassured that I haven’t missed much — the very long Idul Fitri holiday ground the country to a halt for a week.

So, rather I’ve had a look at the meeting between Bongbong Marcos, Japan and the US in DC last week, as well as the very weird but occasionally insightful commentary offered by Duterte on Manila-Beijing relations.

See you all tomorrow for a Mekong update,
Erin Cook

Marcos meets with Biden, Kishida in DC

US President Joe Biden has been a busy boy these last few months, but hosting Filipino President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last week must’ve been very high on his agenda. He was full of big words for the region — “a great deal of history in our world will be written in the Indo-Pacific in the coming years” — but it’s specifically the Philippines and the South China Sea we’re interested here.  

US support of the Philippines in the South China Sea is ‘ironclad’: “As I said before, any attack on Philippine aircraft, vessels or armed forces in the South China Sea would invoke our mutual defence treaty,” Biden told reporters, as reported by the Associated Press. 

It comes, of course, off the back of months of skirmishes in the waters, particularly around the Second Thomas Shoal, and finger-pointing between Manila and Beijing about who is actually to blame. The trio never explicitly named another party as inspiring the meeting — but it’s not like they needed to. 

“No one should violate China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, and China remains steadfast in safeguarding our lawful rights,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said last week, as reported in the above AP piece. Both the Filipino ambassador to China and an official at the Japanese embassy were hauled into the foreign ministry last Thursday to defend “negative comments” made against China, Reuters reports.

It’s not all security. In a post to Facebook and quoted by the official Philippine News Agency, Marcos Jr noted he and Biden had spoken about deepening economic ties in addition to shoring up the bilateral relationship. “Today's talks with President Biden highlight the strength of the collaboration between the Philippines and the United States, bolstering economic ties and enhancing regional security,” Marcos said.  

While Malacanang is breathless in its approval of the meeting, many Filipinos, wary of becoming an outpost of US defence in the Pacific (or deepening that, depending on your view), are less impressed. Responding to media questions on Monday, Marcos stressed there were no plans to additional Enhance Defense Cooperation Agreement sites in the country. Last year, the president granted the US access to four sites — including the most northern one from which you can basically touch Taiwan — under the agreement, to much criticism in both Beijing and at home.

Last year’s announcement was specifically in response to heightened tensions in the Philippines’ jurisdiction of the South China Sea — no matter what Beijing says, he told a gathering of foreign media. “These are the reactions to what has happened in the South China Sea, to the aggressive actions that we have had to deal with: the water cannoning, the lasers, the collision, the blocking of our banca, our fishermen, the putting of barriers across Scarborough Shoal, this is a reaction to that. This did not cause that. That happened before we had Edca,” he clarified, via the Inquirer. 

One thing I’m still unclear on is what this ‘red line’ is exactly? What type of incident triggers the US-Philippines treaty? I assume something really outrageous like live fire will do it, but, even with a blustering Beijing, that seems unlikely still. But it is clear that both Manila and DC think we’re at least a little closer to that line than we were a year or so ago.

Or, maybe, it’s a correction after six years of former president Rodrigo Duterte. The slow drip of revelations that he hatched some sort of secret deal with Beijing to keep things relatively stable has stunned but still remains somewhat confusing — what exactly was agreed to and when? While Duterte and Beijing have both acknowledged it, Marcos is very vocally perplexed to have found no documentation at all: “Why is there not one single document that contains that agreement? Why, when we took the transition period between the previous administration and this administration, did no one mention a secret agreement?” 

For his part, Duterte sat down with, uh, Global Times to clear the air. He said in an exclusive interview that when he took power in 2016 he explicitly wanted to get the Philippines away from the US, whose influence he thought was not a great thing for Filipino foreign policy.

“But America, from a foreign policy standpoint, appears to be very hostile. So if you stick with America, if you identify yourself with America, then everything becomes blurry with our relations with China and the rest of the ASEAN countries,” he said. You must read the interview in full, some moments of clarity and others of jaw-dropping lines — just like his whole six years in office. 

I was particularly struck by this line: “I must reiterate that I do not have a quarrel with the America. I just don't like their behaviour. Their behaviour is because at one time or another, they were imperialists. After Spain, they also occupied my country. And even though they say that it was good for the Philippines that they came and educated us, that's nonsense.”

Hiding deals over the South China Sea from the country and his successor is one thing, but this line above is another entirely. It’s very easy to write off Duterte because he was a bloodthirsty nutbag, but in this I suspect he’s probably not alone and it’s a different question for DC to grapple with from security alliances and economic programs. 

Similarly: “But I do not think that America will die for us. And yet America has so many bases in the Philippines now; I objected to it when the US wanted to build a military base in Philippines. Then with the consent of the president of the Republic of the Philippines, they have so many bases.”

Duterte was repeatedly accused of sidling up with China at the expense of Filipino sovereignty — a claim that may prove right! — but he’s going down swinging accusing Marcos of the same thing, just with DC.