Reassuring Manila

The visit of the new United States Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, is a feather in the cap of our man in Washington, Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez. Early on, Romualdez made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago and articulated a confident approach to Trump 2.0 on several simultaneous levels, ranging from warning Filipinos in America illegally to “self-deport,” to announcing potential Philippine investments in the United States, to our armed forces proving it was pulling itself up by its bootstraps with announcements of additional weapons purchases, not to mention leveraging personal ties between the US President and the mother of our current one. Hegseth will be coming from visits to American bases in Hawaii and Guam, and Manila will be his first regional stop, with Japan coming second—a ranking that Filipinos, always keen to detect signs of favor or disregard, have taken to be a positive sign of Washington’s intentions.

At first, Washington watchers took heart when Marco Rubio was appointed secretary of state, but his first weeks in office quickly revealed his influence may be quite limited and his ability to weigh in on policy questions equally severely handicapped. As it is, the Philippines is one country that has taken a hit from the sudden extinction of the US Agency for International Development and its programs, although most if not all Pentagon funding for the Philippines received an exemption from a comprehensive freeze on aid pending review.

There has been unease in the region due to uncertainty, and thus, higher risk involving American defense intentions toward Taiwan. Even as the US state department quietly deleted language that used to uphold the One China Policy, Taiwan itself finds the new American way of doing things unsettling. Other allies, too, are having to figure out where they stand. Whether merely a trial balloon or a foreshadowing of actual intent, there has also been talk of not pushing through with a planned reorganization of American forces in Japan just as a joint command project for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces has been launched. Japan, too, is facing political choppy waters in its effort to accelerate the expansion of its missile defense capability (the Philippines for its part has expressed interest in the American Typhon missile system, but in the forthcoming exercises, it seems out of prudence, the system in the Philippines will not be tested).

The arrival of President Donald Trump’s man in Manila should reassure our defense and diplomatic establishments, while enraging the China First lobby. Ahead of the visit, Filipino officials quietly sounded out their American counterparts, and were reassured Manila is in a good place.

The exercises feature more than Filipino-American cooperation: 10,000 Americans, 6,000 Filipinos, Australians, and Japanese; personnel from Canada, France, South Korea, and the United Kingdom will also participate. Significantly, the Philippines will demonstrate its investments in our own defense from Israeli, French, and South Korean vendors. These all point to the growing confidence of the Philippines in engaging in security cooperation: what our Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff said in an Indian forum is our effort to bring in more countries to the so-called Quad (US, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines) “minilateral network.”

The problem, of course, is nervousness over whether the system of American alliances is being reshaped or has been abandoned altogether. The Philippines could be expanding ties with European nations at a time when the EU might decide to cozy up to China to compensate for increasing hostility from Washington. Our region, too, is uneasy. In Munich last February, the Singaporean Defense Minister reportedly “observed that perceptions of the US in Asean had shifted—from ‘liberator’ to ‘disruptor’ to ‘landlord seeking rent.’”

In testimony on China in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands at the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which advises the US Congress on US-China relations, Lynn Kuok, the Lee Kuan Yew chair in Southeast Asia Studies at the Brookings Institution, bluntly stated: “The United States is losing ground in Southeast Asia,” something The Asia Sentinel reports is borne out by the 2024 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies poll of Southeast Asian government and nongovernment elites. For the first time, China (narrowly, to be sure) overtook the US as the region’s choice of partner if forced to align with one or the other: 50.5 percent chose China, 49.5 percent chose the US, with significant drops in support in seven out of 10 Asean countries.

The clincher seems to be Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative: beneficiary countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos—swung to China while our country, Singapore, Vietnam, and even Myanmar and Cambodia still maintain majority support for the US. China’s announcement of a vessel capable of cutting undersea cables can only foster alarm.