In comment today
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has declared his country’s economic and military separation from the United States, choosing instead to strengthen relations with China and Russia. Tom Clifford examines what that means for the world,
International diplomacy is not normally a place where romance blossoms, but it is not difficult to think that the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, is head over heels about his country’s new relationship with China.
The change of heart for both the Philippines and China has come quickly. In July, an international tribunal ruled overwhelmingly in favour of the Philippines and against China’s expansion in the South China Sea. China reacted with scorn. Now China seems to have won Mr Duterte’s heart. Having assumed office in June, Mr Duterte has just sent the United States a “Dear John’’ breakup letter following a four- day state visit to Beijing.
China’s maritime expansion has cost it friends in the region, but if Beijing can wrestle Manila from Washington’s embrace or even drive a wedge between America and the Philippines, it will be seen for what it is – one of the most outrageously brilliant diplomatic coups in recent times.
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, a man revered in China for his role in the ice-breaking visit to Beijing by president Richard Nixon, could well be proud as well as deeply concerned.
For the Philippines it means money. Chinese investment in transport and other infrastructure is sorely needed – as is Chinese demand for Philippine exports.
But there is also another issue here that is worth raising. Let us look at Mr Duterte’s words. “I announce my separation from the United States both in military but economics also. America has lost,” he said last week.
“I mean, I realigned myself in your ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world: China, Philippines and Russia.”
Now that is a pivot. As a statement of intent, it makes it difficult for the US to use its bases in the Philippines to engage in military activity. Consequently, president Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia is severely compromised.
Without a shot being fired and to the sound of the clinking of glasses at the official receptions for Mr Durterte in Beijing, we have entered a new age in diplomacy. The relationship between China and the Philippines will be tested, and Mr Duterte’s move may not be too popular in the broadly US- sympathetic Philippines. It may even be that nothing much will come of it.
Words are cheap at the first flush of any romance. But no adult Filipino or Filipina is unaware of the brutality that heralded US colonial rule at the beginning of the last century and a Philippine president taking an independent line from Washington is not the most unpopular thing a resident of the president’s abode, Malacanang Palace, could do.
After 500 years as a Spanish colony and 50 as an American one, history has not been kind to the Philippines. Centuries in a convent, decades in Holly- wood. However, the people of the archipelago are not anti - American.
Far fewer Philippine citizens want to work or live in China than in the US. Culturally, the Philippines, a largely Catholic country, is much closer to the US than it is to China. But something has changed, and changed utterly. The dependability of the Philippines for the US can no longer be taken for granted. And that will please many in the Philippines even as they harbour doubts as to just what exactly Mr Duterte is up to. Tom Clifford is a journalist in China