Kishore Mahbubani’s talk at the Ateneo de Manila University’s Leong Hall Auditorium on Friday, Oct. 2, was about the China-US rivalry. Much of what he said was aimed at the Philippines.
The former Singapore ambassador to the United Nations told the audience that the contest between Washington and Beijing is structural. It is driven by shifts in global power, he said, more than by any one president. A quiet year does not mean the rivalry is over, and Southeast Asia should prepare for the next round of tension. He warned against simply piggybacking on a dominant power. He said major powers have historically applied international law selectively. He presented Ukraine as a warning about proxy dynamics, calling Russia’s invasion illegal while asking whether the slide into war could have been prevented.
His starkest point was about geography. Countries on a fault line, he said, can bear enormous human and economic costs while the rival powers stay insulated from the destruction. He pointed to Australia to show how hard balancing is, and to ASEAN as a model of keeping ties with competing powers.
None of this is new for him. In a 2015 Straits Times column, he noted that during the Cold War, Washington and Moscow avoided fighting each other directly and “instead, both sides used proxies to undermine the other’s power.”
Mahbubani has long argued that Southeast Asian countries should not be forced to choose between the two powers. The argument below goes further, and it is mine: the Philippines needs a foreign policy that starts from Filipino interests and is run from Manila.
Haven’t We Been Here Before?
We have, several times.
In 1898, the United States defeated Spain’s fleet in Manila Bay. In the Treaty of Paris that December, Spain agreed to sell the Philippines to the United States for $20 million. Filipino revolutionaries had already proclaimed a republic. Fighting broke out in February 1899, and the Philippine-American War killed more than 20,000 Filipino combatants. As many as 250,000 (up to 1 million in some estimates) Filipino civilians died from violence, famine and disease.
On Dec. 8, 1941, Japanese bombers struck Clark Field, roughly ten hours after Pearl Harbor. The Philippines was then an American commonwealth, and the American bases put it on the front line of a war it had not started. When American forces fought to retake Manila in February 1945, the city was destroyed. Historians put the number of Filipinos killed between 500,000 to 1,000,000 driven by military combat, massacres, famine, and disease.
During the Cold War, Clark and Subic became major support bases for American operations in Asia, including the Vietnam War. In 1966, Congress passed Republic Act 4664, authorizing a Philippine Civic Action Group of engineers, medics and security troops for South Vietnam.
Then, on Sept. 16, 1991, the Philippine Senate voted 12-11 to reject a treaty that would have kept the Subic Bay naval base for another decade. Clark was handed over that November. Whatever one thinks of that vote, Filipinos made the decision themselves.
In April 2012, Chinese and Philippine vessels faced off at Scarborough Shoal. According to then-Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, the United States brokered a deal for both sides to withdraw. The Philippines pulled out on June 15. China’s ships stayed, and Beijing later denied that any agreement existed. Analysts at the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative note that accounts of the talks differ. Either way, control of the shoal shifted to China.
Manila then went to court. In July 2016, an arbitral tribunal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea found “no legal basis” for China’s claim to historic rights within its “nine-dash line.” China called the award “null and void.”
Again and again, decisions about these islands were made in Madrid, Washington, Tokyo or Beijing, and Filipinos lived with the results.
Is the Threat at Sea Real?
Yes, and saying so takes nothing away from Mahbubani’s caution.
The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative has documented China Coast Guard ships using water cannons against Philippine resupply boats at Second Thomas Shoal. In one December 2023 mission, water cannons disabled a supply boat’s engines. Those are hard facts, and they put Filipino crews at risk.
The US alliance under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty has real value, and so does the 2016 award. Mahbubani himself has written that “the Americans are right in insisting that China must abide by international law” in the South China Sea. He has also argued that “the US cannot call on China to respect a treaty that the US itself has not ratified.” Both points can be true. Law and allies help, but the daily work of holding our waters falls to Filipino crews.
The lecture also raised the old “Yellow Peril” idea, and the possibility that cultural fears shape views of China alongside legitimate security concerns. That is a fair caution. A sound policy judges China by what its ships do, and it judges every partner the same way.
What Does Our Constitution Already Say?
We do not need to invent a doctrine. Article II, Section 7 of the 1987 Constitution reads: “The State shall pursue an independent foreign policy. In its relations with other states, the paramount consideration shall be national sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interest, and the right to self-determination.”
Section 8 adds: “The Philippines, consistent with the national interest, adopts and pursues a policy of freedom from nuclear weapons in its territory.”
The same charter, in Article XVIII, Section 25, says that after the bases agreement expired in 1991, foreign military bases, troops or facilities would be allowed only under a treaty concurred in by the Senate. That provision is why the 1991 vote mattered.
Who Has Done This Well?
Our neighbors offer examples. In 1948, Indonesia’s Mohammad Hatta said the best policy was one “which does not make us the object of an international conflict.” Indonesia still calls its approach bebas aktif, free and active. Vietnam’s 2019 defense white paper set out “four nos”: no military alliances, no siding with one country against another, no foreign military bases, and no use or threat of force in international relations. That has not stopped Vietnam from standing firm on its own maritime claims, AMTI noted.
Laos shows the other outcome. During the Vietnam War, the United States flew 580,344 bombing missions over Laos, the BBC reported. Monitors estimate about 50,000 casualties from air-dropped munitions there since 1964, most of them civilians. A small country beside a bigger war became the place where the bombs fell.
What Would an Independent Policy Look Like?
These are my suggestions, offered as opinion.
- Build our own capacity at sea. More coast guard ships, more surveillance, and better pay and training for the people who sail them, so that our presence at sea depends on our own decisions.
- Spread our partnerships. Keep the US alliance, and keep working with Japan, Australia, South Korea, India, Europe and our ASEAN neighbors, so that no single capital holds all our options.
- Keep the line to Beijing open. Hotlines and incident-management talks matter most when relations are bad.
- Use ASEAN for practical work. Fisheries are the obvious start. Shared stock data, joint science and protection for small fishers can move forward while sovereignty disputes remain.
- Keep invoking the 2016 award. It is our strongest legal asset, even if it does not enforce itself.
- Strengthen the economy at home. A country with diverse markets and steady energy is harder to pressure.
- Teach the history. Every Filipino student should know what happened in Manila in 1945, and why.
Mahbubani told his Ateneo audience to prepare for the next period of tension. When the next standoff comes, the decision on whether Philippine ships stay or leave should be made in Manila, by officials answerable to the fishermen of Zambales and Palawan.
