DFA chief shares new take on PHL foreign policy

FOREIGN Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. has summed up the government’s updated foreign policy—early on described by President Duterte as an “independent” one. The updated foreign policy, said the country’s top diplomat, is “Friend to friends, enemy to enemies, and a worse enemy to false friends.”

In a lecture at the inauguration of the New Chancery of the Philippine Embassy in Berlin on Monday, February 18, the c ountry’s top diplomat added,“But the key is telling the difference; that is a work in progress that is never finished.”

Locsin said this updates the Duterte administration’s previously stated foreign policy: “Friend to all, enemy to none.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) chief elaborated: “In my watch we have moved on from that trusting attitude in the changing realities that increasingly resemble the interwar years in Europe.”

The former three-term Makati City legislator had said in his first address on the country’s foreign policy upon assumption of office that,“a truly independent foreign policy should be pursued.”

The former journalist and presidential speechwriter and legal counsel had said, “It is not independent foreign policy if you simply switch the master before whom you are kneeling. You are still on your knees before another master. An independent foreign policy means getting off your knees and on your feet—and standing up for your country. That is true independence.”

Locsin’s updated foreign policy addresses the fears expressed by some diplomats, including critics, that President Duterte had gone too soft on China and had ignored the favorable July 2016 ruling of a UN arbitral tribunal before which Manila had filed a claim against China’s “excessive” claims in the South China Sea. Manila had asserted its right over disputed shoals and maritime features in the West Philippine Sea.

The critics had claimed the Duterte administration had bartered its sovereignty for financial considerations, referring to the Chinese promise of soft loans to finance the President’s ambitious infrastructure program.

However, Locsin pointed out, the country was able to manage its disagreements with China over maritime features “recognized as ours by international law.”

He then added, “But we do so without retreating an inch from our rightful and inalienable ownership of everything within the widest extent of our sovereign reach in history and international law.”

The Harvard-trained lawyer also noted there are continuing disputes and differences regarding the South China Sea, not only with China but with Vietnam and Taiwan.He said one must expect more disputes, which are inevitable in politics among nations. He said these disputes may settle themselves with time or they may never be resolved, like the Philippine claim to Sabah.

Still, he said, “these differences need not stand in the way of mutually beneficial cooperation in other areas of common endeavor.”

According to Locsin—previously posted as the country’s ambassador to the United Nations—he got brilliant advice “on a tightrope-walking foreign policy from the Kazahkstan UN Ambassador [Kairat] Umarov,”whose neighboring “Tans”are menaced by Russia and China.

“I said; what do you do about that, and what should we do?”apparently referring to the country’s dilemma in maintaining a fine balance between a longtime ally, the United States, and an economically and militarily growing China.

Locsin recalled that Umarov replied: “What should you do if a bear is running toward you? Do you run? It will overtake you and maul you, exasperated because you made it run. Do you stand and fight? It will maul you worse for your insolence. What you do is run toward the bear. And hug it tight. Of course it can crush you against its chest. But it will not if you hug it really tight—and dance with it.”

‘No debt trap’

The DFA chief, likewise, addressed fears raised in some quarters that China was plying the Philippines with loans at notso-concessionary terms for ill-conceived projects and the country might suffer the same fate as Sri Lanka or Ecuador which got stuck with white elephants and humongous loans.

“We have no fear of a Chinese debt trap,” Locsin boldly announced; “we survived the far worse debt trap of the New York banks and the WB/IMF.”

He said the West went into paroxysms of ecstasy over the 1986 People Power Revolution—which was a rebuke to communism as a way forward. Yet, he added, it did not put its money where its mouth was by supporting the restored democracy with vital financial support.

He said our new democracy was threatened with financial destruction—if it did not pay every dollar of our foreign debt, “lent by Western banks to the dictatorship which stole every cent of it; and then deposited quite a lot of it in Western banks.”

Locsin mused, “It seems that the victory of democracy is good for a Western pat on the back; but not good enough for debt forgiveness.”

Peace in region

ON the other hand, he pointed out, the Philippines in the Association of Asian Nations keeps the peace in the region. “We outlawed nuclear weapons and signed on to the UN universal prohibition of nuclear weapons.”

He said the Philippine Republic is a story of unceasing struggle for independence: “to gain it, to keep it; to regain it when lost; and expand its freedom of action and scope.”

Locsin added: “Following independence, the struggle continued as a striving for an independent foreign policy.”

Reviewing a bit of history, he said the country beat the Spaniards (with) help from America; and then fought the Americans in the first of the bloody Asian wars of liberation, prefiguring Vietnam.

“The first though short-lived Republic in Asia, the Philippines was the model for freedom struggles in half the world— Chinese, Indochinese, Malays and Indonesians were inspired by it and adopted our heroes as their own.”