How Will Marcos Define His Foreign Policy?

When Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. won the Philippine presidential election in a landslide on May 9, he became the sudden foreign policy steward of a country positioned between the United States and an increasingly assertive China.

Marcos, the son of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, expressed a desire to strengthen ties with China throughout his presidential campaign. Shortly after securing a mandate of more than 30 million votes, Marcos spoke with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in what he described as “very substantial” talks. His country’s ties with China will “shift to a higher gear” once he takes power, Marcos said. He is expected to be inaugurated on June 30.

The president-elect is in a situation familiar to his predecessor, the outgoing Rodrigo Duterte, whose policies – especially early in his tenure – were widely seen as moving Manila toward Beijing and away from Washington. But that assessment is only half true, and most experts assume Marcos likewise has no plans to fully abandon the United States.

Upon taking office, Duterte allowed China to occupy contested waters in the South China Sea. He argued, essentially, that the Philippines had no options for standing up to China in the disputes, even though an international court had ruled the waters belonged to the Philippines. His administration also signed deals for several China-backed infrastructure projects, including the controversial Kaliwa Dam, that could potentially give China control over the projects should the Philippines default on its loan payments – a similar fate to projects in Sri Lanka and Ecuador.

Duterte also started the process to withdraw the Philippines from the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States, which allows the U.S. military to visit and train their Philippine counterparts, and hinted at potentially terminating the Mutual Defense Treaty, which stipulates that the Philippines and the U.S. would support each other in any attack from an external party.

But Duterte quickly reversed his call to withdraw from the VFA, which was an unpopular decision among military generals used to training with and buying weapons from the United States. The promised China-backed infrastructure boom slowed dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic, and Duterte began warning China to stay out of Philippine waters.

Duterte, unwittingly or not, had managed to play Washington and Beijing against each other, to great effect. The U.S. approved billions in potential weapons deals, and both superpowers have mostly looked the other way as Duterte’s police and military killed thousands of drug suspects, activists and political dissidents.

Marcos has plenty of motivation to try the same gambit. Sure, building relations with China is unpopular in the Philippines, but Marcos isn’t – and as long as Marcos does not appear weak on the issue of sovereignty in the South China Sea, the experience of Duterte proves the new president should receive a fair amount of leeway in other dealings with China.

Crucially, Marcos might be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism by the United States, which supported his father during his brutal campaign of martial law. The Marcos family fled to Hawaii after his father’s dictatorship was toppled, and in 2011, a U.S. court issued a contempt order against the younger Marcos, instructing him to pay human rights victims around $2 billion of the wealth his family had stolen from the Philippines. Marcos has refused to answer questions about the contempt order.

The U.S. can hold the order against Marcos, who may in turn threaten to strengthen ties with China to force other concessions, such as favorable arms sales, from the U.S. Washington and Manila played a similar game of chicken with the VFA, which Duterte initially canceled after the U.S. sanctioned Duterte ally and former police chief Ronald dela Rosa for his role in civilian deaths caused by the country’s drug war.

Marcos may attempt to forge a bilateral agreement with Beijing that settles territorial disputes in the South China Sea. If he manages to do so without angering the Philippine public, it would clear a major hurdle toward deepening ties with China across the board. Analysts also believe Marcos may try to renegotiate the Mutual Defense Treaty or other pacts with the U.S. and extract better terms.

Everyone agrees, however, that Marcos is negotiating from a position of power. The Philippines sit within the “first island chain” bordering China’s east coast, and they are strategically crucial to both of the world’s major superpowers. If Marcos follows the lead of his predecessor, and his father before that, by trampling upon human rights, he’s unlikely to face much international opposition.