Might v Right In The South China Sea: The Intricacies Of International Relations

There are only two realistic ways for the Philippines to get what it wants.

Negotiations with China or win a war with the US.

For negotiations, the Philippines has nothing to offer in the areas of economy, defense, or diplomacy. Which means it can only negotiate with the only real leverage it has, its strategic geography.

For negotiations, China won’t give up something permanent like territorial concessions for something temporary, even with a China-friendly Filipino admin, when a new one might come in 7 years and completely reverse policy.

So the Filipinos will have to either trade with removing the US completely and committing to neutrality, like Vietnam with its ‘3 NOs’, and more importantly convincing the Chinese, or trade by inviting in PLA bases instead. Seems unlikely to me, not a lot of leaders that can pull off this kind of hardcore realist policy, not to mention convincing domestic politics to follow along. Also it’s kind of risky, the US will respond to this, I think probably in a real hysterical manner. Gone are the cold war realists, now only modern ‘liberal’ idealists remain.

The oher way is to switch sides right before a conflict, maximizing leverage. Some path forward as war though.

The Philippines would invite the US to establish more permanent bases in the Philippines. In order to either maximize leverage for negotiations, or greatly improve the US position in a conflict.

In any case, in my opinion, the Philippines is getting the worst of both worlds right now.

1.No negotiating with China to get what it wants.

2.Admin looks weak because of weak responses to skirmishes and the US won’t help directly right now.

3.Too pro-US, so it can’t play the sitting on the fence game to try to extract max concessions from either the US or China during peacetime.

4.Not pro-US enough to really accelerate progress on more US permanent bases, especially missile bases, airbases, ports, and pre-stockpiled logistics.