The Philippines’ Quest for Balance: Marcos’ Foreign Policy

The May 2022 Philippine presidential election was unique compared to previous polls because foreign policy became one of the most debated issues in the electoral discourse. This started with President Rodrigo Duterte, who had pushed for a friendly and appeasing policy toward China. His successor would need to decide on how to handle Chinese maritime actions that put pressure on the smaller littoral Southeast Asian states. 

Consequently, most presidential candidates took a more uncompromising position considering the Philippines’ territorial and often tense territorial dispute with China. They declared that if elected, they would enforce the 2016 arbitral tribunal award to the Philippines, strengthen the country’s ties with the United States, and build up its conventional defense capabilities.

For example, the opposition candidate and then vice president, Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo, called for robust and closer security relations with the Philippines’ traditional Western security partners. She also called for promoting the 2016 arbitral ruling on the South China Sea dispute. Other candidates called for a more rigid stance on China while proposing joint development projects in the disputed waters of the South China Sea. They also called for the modernization of the Philippine military and for fostering closer security relations with the United States.

Among the candidates, only one advocated a centrist position in the territorial dispute: Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., a former senator and the only son of the late President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. His middle-of-the-road position became apparent during the February 18, 2022, presidential debate when he said the Philippines’ relationship with the United States is “not something we can be cavalier about” and that he would not cede any square inch of the Philippines to any country, particularly China. He clarified that he would keep the Philippines’ alliance with the U.S. intact and recalibrate its economic relations with China. 

Marcos’ historic win in the election gave him an overwhelming mandate to pursue his middle-of-the-road approach in the maritime dispute. However, internal and external factors complicate his plans. 

The Philippine government’s concern over growing Chinese coercive actions against units of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Filipino fishermen in the West Philippine Sea/South China Sea, along with the public’s expectations of a more robust government response, make such a balancing policy challenging to implement. Ultimately, Manila’s pursuit of its foreign policy objectives will depend on whether or not the United States and China determine that it is in their interests to go along with Marcos’ gambit. 

Creating a Division of Labor between the U.S. and China 

Propelled to the presidency by an overwhelming majority of the Filipino electorate, Marcos opted for a “balanced foreign policy.” He planned to gain practical benefits from the United States and China. In his first State of the Nation Address in July 2022, Marcos said he favored close economic cooperation with China balanced by the Philippines’ security relations with the U.S. He envisioned a division of labor in which Beijing provides the market for Philippine exports and the public investments for the government’s infrastructure projects. A revitalized security alliance with Washington would balance these close economic relations with China. 

Marcos saw that the most urgent issue facing his administration was achieving economic recovery after the coronavirus pandemic. It was also apparent that the consequent government-mandated lockdown caused a drastic drop in the growth of the Philippines’ consumer-driven economy. Keenly aware of this, China tried to strengthen bilateral ties with the Marcos administration by offering economic assistance – but without compromising on the territorial dispute with the Philippines in the South China Sea. 

To jump-start the economy, Marcos conducted talks with China on reviving three rail projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that had lapsed during the Duterte administration because of a lack of funding. During his first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the November 2022 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Bangkok, Thailand, Marcos discussed the need for extensive economic contact between the Philippines and China and agreed with his Chinese counterpart that the maritime dispute should not define the China-Philippines bilateral relationship.

Marcos saw a stronger alliance with the United States as necessary because there is no guarantee that closer economic relations with China will mitigate its coercive behavior in the South China Sea. During the later part of the Duterte administration, despite friendly and cooperative rhetoric about closer China-Philippines economic relations, over 200 alleged Chinese maritime militia fishing boats impressed upon the Philippines their overwhelming power to effectively occupy the disputed territory of Whitsun Reef, which is 175 miles from the westernmost Philippine island of Palawan and within the country’s 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Despite the Philippines’ rapprochement with China, Philippine defense officials observed that China had constructed structures in other parts of Union Banks, a collection of reefs that includes Whitsun Reef.

As president, Marcos prioritized the maintenance of healthy and vibrant security ties with the United States. Defense analyst Derek Grossman, in an article for Foreign Policy, noted that this marked a departure from previous President Duterte, “who sought to systematically dismantle the U.S.-Philippines alliance, decrease Manila’s reliance on Washington, and diversify the country’s partnerships to include new opportunities with China and Russia.” 

In August 2022, Marcos warmly welcomed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, saying: “We cannot, we can no longer isolate one part of our relationship from the other. We are too closely tied because of the special relationship between the United States and the Philippines and our shared history.” The meeting between Marcos and Blinken happened a few days after China mounted several massive military exercises around Taiwan in response to the visit of then-U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the island. 

During these massive Chinese military exercises, the Pentagon, with the approval of the White House, ordered the USS Ronald Reagan and its escorts to remain in the region near the Philippines. As a formal treaty ally and one of the few Southeast Asian states with robust defense relations with other U.S. allies, such as Japan and Australia, a significant conflict over Taiwan would likely drag the Philippines into the fray. While the U.S. no longer maintains substantial military bases in the country, U.S. forces nevertheless have access arrangements with the Philippines through regular military exercises and access to the joint locations inside five Philippine military bases – soon to be nine under the February 2023 expansion of the Philippines-U.S. Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.

Philippine Ambassador to the U.S. Jose Manuel Romualdez in September 2022 revealed that the Philippines would let U.S. forces use the Southeast Asian nation’s military bases in the event of a Taiwan conflict. Marcos himself is aware that if a conflict erupts between the United States and China, there is little chance that the Philippines would not be affected in terms of refugee flows, the rapid repatriation of Filipino overseas workers in Taiwan, and the spread of the conflict to Philippine territorial waters and even to the northern part of the main island of Luzon. 

Along with possible conflict, Chinese coercive maritime actions against Philippine government vessels and Filipino fishermen remained unabated. Blinken reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty. He also promised to work with the Philippines to address shared security challenges in a changing Indo-Pacific region to reassure his host.

Can the Marcos Administration Maintain its Balancing Gambit?

As Manila-based analyst Justin Baquisal argued for The Diplomat previously, Marcos’ foreign policy is an example of “flexible enmeshment” because it is at the center of the late President Benigno Aquino III’s U.S.-reliant, explicitly anti-China foreign policies and the anti-West and Beijing-friendly policies of Duterte. Baquisal characterized Marcos’ foreign policy as the “sedimentation of the approaches of his predecessors” – “more flexible and less principled” than Aquino III but “less charitable to Beijing” than Duterte.

This enables the Marcos administration to conduct a more realistic implementation of an independent foreign policy. Thus, Baquisal wrote, the Philippines exercises and enjoys strategic and diplomatic autonomy by achieving a well-defined balance of power strategy that prevents it, at this point, from being a hapless and drifting “bystander hoping to just steer clear” of the China-U.S. strategic competition. 

How long can the Marcos administration maintain this delicate balancing act? It requires the Philippines to walk a fine line between enhancing greater security cooperation with the U.S. while sustaining China’s goodwill to keep the Chinese market open to Philippine commodities and for Chinese public investment flowing to support the administration’s “Build Better More” infrastructure development program. Furthermore, this effort to enmesh these two great powers may not suit Washington’s or Beijing’s long-term strategic goals. 

Whether or not the Philippines can pursue its balanced foreign policy, in the long run, will depend on the following factors: the support of domestic actors, especially the Philippine military; how the Philippines and China can manage their territorial dispute in the face of continuing Chinese gray zone operations in the South China Sea; and the vagaries of China-U.S. strategic competition.

Support of Domestic Actors

A large portion of the Filipino public and the Philippine military do not trust China. Despite the Duterte administration’s efforts to foster closer economic cooperation with China in the last six years, there was vigorous opposition to Chinese-funded infrastructure projects because of the widespread public perception of China as a security threat. This general apprehension outweighs the economic benefits of Chinese public investments. 

A recent ASEAN-wide survey by the ASEAN Studies Centre revealed that 83 percent of Filipinos worry about China becoming Southeast Asia's most influential economic power. The survey also revealed that 78 percent of Filipinos would prefer to align ASEAN with the United States rather than China if the regional organization had to choose between the two great powers. 

The military establishment is especially concerned that Chinese investments in the country are a way to gain a strategic advantage in the South China Sea dispute. The Philippine military was unprepared for the Duterte administration’s sudden shift since it has long viewed China as a historical enemy.

Apprehensive of China’s coercive moves in the South China Sea, the AFP has strengthened its ties with the U.S. armed services. In late September 2022, the Philippines and U.S. armed services held the annual Mutual Defense Board (MDB) and Security Engagement Board (SEB) meeting at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. They agreed to ensure continued, robust military-to-military relations between the two armed forces as both agreed to hold over 500 joint activities in 2023. These activities will include exercises, training, and capability-building in maritime security, combating terrorism and transnational crime, cybersecurity, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR). 

This will mark a 75 percent increase from the more than 300 annual military engagements the two allies conducted in 2022, which ranged in size and scope from the huge Philippine-U.S. Balikatan (meaning “shoulder-to-shoulder”) joint military exercise to port visits to the exchange of subject matter experts for tabletop-exercises.

Management of the South China Sea Dispute

China’s maritime strategy requires the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the China Coast Guard (CCG), and the maritime militia to put pressure on foreign vessels in disputed waters and have the initiative to escalate moves to force littoral countries to abide by its jurisdiction and privileges in the South China Sea. China pushed this strategy against the newly elected president as CCG patrols became more frequent in 2022. 

This resulted in two maritime incidents in the South China Sea at the onset of the Marcos administration, namely: a large CCG ship blocking and harassing a small Philippine Navy (PN) supply ship on its way to resupply an AFP garrison on Second Thomas Shoal; and swarming by fishing boats manned by suspected Chinese maritime militia to establish control over disputed South China Sea features. Then in February 2023, a CCG vessel directed “a military-grade laser” at a Philippine Coast Guard ship that was escorting a resupply mission to the small Philippine garrison onboard the BRP Sierra Madre on Second Thomas Shoal. 

China’s zero-sum game against the Philippines has pushed Manila to file several notes verbales against what it perceives as provocations. This has also led Marcos to call on the AFP to shift its mission from internal security to external defense in the face of Chinese coercive behavior against the PN and ordinary Filipino fisherfolk.

The Vagaries of the China-U.S. Strategic Competition

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, triggered alarm bells in Washington, Tokyo, and Canberra that China could someday soon mount a military operation to retake Taiwan. Washington realized that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has specific implications for Taiwan, given converging Sino-Russian views on challenging the U.S.-led rules-based international order and the possibility that Beijing might take a page out of Russia’s playbook on applying gray zone operations, conducting hybrid warfare, and the use of force to acquire and eventually annex disputed territories. China could pursue an intensified campaign of coercion, threats, and pressure on Taiwan as Russian President Vladimir Putin did before the invasion of Ukraine. 

This concern led the United States to boost its military presence across the Indo-Pacific region, with more troops, ships, and planes to counter China’s maritime expansion in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. China and the U.S. have both built up their strategic presence in the first island chain, which runs from Japan to the southern part of the Philippines. China has built up military facilities such as airfields, ports, and missile launchers in artificial islands it constructed in the waters inside the island chain. 

The U.S. has deployed more aircraft, aircraft carriers, and surface combatants. It has also strengthened its security ties with bilateral allies such as the Philippines, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan. At the same time, Washington reinvigorated multilateral security mechanisms like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) between Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S., and the AUKUS partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. These developments, in turn, have caused heightened tension in China-U.S. relations and arguably increase the prospect of an armed conflict over Taiwan.

Conclusion

Philippine President Marcos is implementing a balanced foreign policy between the U.S. and China. This gambit is marked by efforts to promote economic cooperation with China and closer security cooperation with the U.S. aimed to balance Chinese coercive behavior in the South China Sea. The goal is to gain practical benefits from both the U.S. and China. 

Consequently, this potentially makes the Philippines the “holder of balance” in the region. The Philippines is the only Southeast Asian country that can host significant U.S. forward-deployed forces to balance China’s maritime expansion into the first island chain. Manila can use this leverage to extract economic concessions from China and attempt to moderate Chinese coercive behavior in the South China Sea. The ability of the Philippines to apply this strategy is constrained by the Filipino public’s general distrust of China, ongoing Chinese coercive behavior in the South China Sea, and the growing tension between the U.S. and China over Taiwan. 

The Philippines, however, will automatically lose its possible position as the holder of balance in the region and will be relegated to the proverbial “grass that will be crushed by the elephants” if a major conflict erupts between the U.S. and China over Taiwan.