Quiet for a change: the Marcos approach so far

14 April 2023

Since assuming office in May 2022, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has avoided the use of agitating language about regional security. The Philippines, he suggests, should maintain a careful distance from US-China competition. His favoured aphorism — “The Philippines should be a friend to all and an enemy to none.” — features repeatedly in speeches to both domestic and international audiences.

While the language has stayed calm, the situation in the South China Sea itself has been less so. The president admits that developments in the region keep him up at night. This is not surprising: Chinese Coast Guard and maritime militia harassment of Philippine vessels is a regular occurrence. In February 2023, the Philippine Coast Guard reported that a Chinese Coast Guard ship had used a “military-grade laser” to blind the crew of a Filipino vessel. In 2022, the Philippines quietly lodged nearly 200 diplomatic protests against China.

This ‘quiet’ communication style is no small change. Marcos’ immediate predecessors, Rodrigo Duterte and Benigno S. Aquino, were known to draw attention with their remarks. Instead, his diplomacy is finding its edge in a different direction. On the one hand, the Marcos government is restarting the country’s stalled defence relationship with the United States. On the other, it is downplaying rather than highlighting that fact in an apparent effort to preserve an environment conducive to doing business with China.

The strategic position

More than a metaphor, the Philippines’ position between China and the United States is a geographic reality that its foreign policy cannot ignore. Manila is pinched between the efforts of Beijing and Washington to assert their perceived rights and improve their defence postures in the Pacific area vis-à-vis each other. Chinese enforcement of the nine-dash line — without legal basis under the 2016 Hague tribunal ruling on the Philippines v. China case — manifests concretely in their harassment of Philippine fishing boats.

When it comes to China, Marcos has been more provocative than Duterte but also more discreet than Aquino.

There could be a silver lining. An optimistic view holds that rising antagonism between the US and China increases the desirability of the Philippines as a partner to either country. In principle, American and Chinese openness to cooperating with the Philippine government could translate into other benefits for the Philippines: for example, the joint exploration of mineral resources, new export prospects, and infrastructure financing. The results of these efforts have been lacklustre so far, but it is premature to conclude that opportunities have been exhausted.

Marcos believes that he is walking a tightrope in the name of the national interest: “I don’t work for Beijing, I don’t work for Washington DC”. He must maintain broadly friendly relations with China to keep channels open for business to continue and to prevent a steep deterioration in access conditions in the South China Sea. At the same time, he needs to prevent permanent losses of Philippine interests in its Exclusive Economic Zone and do his part to address the country’s long-term underinvestment in offshore security.

The economic position

On the campaign trail last year, then-presidential candidate Marcos acknowledged that a zero-sum perspective had taken hold in Beijing and Washington: “If you let the US come in, you make China your enemy”. He hoped the Philippines and China could make diplomatic progress on their disputes as difficult relations between them could be disruptive to their economic ties. China is still the Philippines’ largest trading partner and a key source of investment.

If possible, the Philippines would isolate its maritime disputes from the remainder of its relationship with China. However, under the previous two administrations, the Philippines had seen the economic relationship become the site of both positive and negative drivers. For instance, acrimony was high in the Aquino years (2010-2016). Following the 2012 Scarborough Shoal stand-off between Chinese and Filipino vessels, Philippine banana exporters complained about Chinese officials’ alleged retaliatory application of phytosanitary rules to fruit deliveries. The Duterte administration’s (2016-2022) warm overtures to Beijing prompted a reversal in the exporters’ fortunes. After then-President Rodrigo Duterte’s state visit to Beijing in October 2016, exports of bananas and other tropical fruit to China reportedly soared.

The fruit trade may become a particularly important space to watch. As president, Marcos has chosen to personally run the Department of Agriculture. Agriculture’s welfare, he says, will be important to the Philippines’ post-pandemic economic recovery. As luck would have it, China has recently opened its market to more Southeast Asian durian and specifically agreed to accept USD 2 billion worth of durian from the Philippines as part of a ‘durian protocol’ struck during Marcos’ state visit in January. These moves could also appeal to other influential domestic circles. For example, over 70 per cent of the durian grown in the Philippines is produced in the Davao region, home to the Duterte dynasty. Sara Duterte, daughter of Rodrigo, now serves as Marcos’ vice president.

The defensive position

Despite his otherwise careful tone, Marcos is welcoming a more active role for the United States in the region. His latest step is the most significant so far: restarting the implementation of the US-Philippines Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), a 2014 deal struck between the Aquino and Obama administrations. The agreement, side-lined in the Duterte years, had been promoted as the basis for US support for improving military infrastructure at five bases in the Philippines and increasing combined training between the two countries’ forces.

Marcos has gone further than Aquino by allowing the US to access four additional military sites. These nine locations in the Philippines can be used to host rotating US troops and equipment. Both the US and the Philippines have been vague about the purpose of the expansion, saying only that it will allow for better support for humanitarian disasters and for the two countries to respond to other “shared challenges”. Nevertheless, the timing of the expansion (proposed in November 2022 and announced in February 2023) and the selection of three of the four new locations in Cagayan and Isabela provinces in the north of the country — closest to Taiwan — hints at what is on the minds of the countries’ defence planners. The fourth location is an island in Palawan province, on the western coast of the country bordering the South China Sea.

From the outside, it is not clear whether the vague treatment is a necessary pretence to avoid stoking Chinese hostility, or a sincerely held belief that Manila can shape Beijing’s views on Washington’s influence in the country and the region. Regardless of Philippine intentions, China is not convinced. The Chinese embassy’s statement following the EDCA-related announcements said that “creating economic opportunities and jobs through military cooperation is tantamount to quenching thirst with poison and gouging flesh to heal wounds. Such cooperation will seriously endanger regional peace and stability and drag the Philippines into the abyss of geopolitical strife and damage its economic development at the end of the day”.

Now what?

When it comes to China, Marcos has been more provocative than Duterte but also more discreet than Aquino. In these respects, the present approach responds to the loudest criticisms levied against each of the past administrations. On balance, the Marcos approach has hewed closer to Aquino’s than many had imagined when he was elected. One major element, a reinvigorated role for the United States on Philippine shores, is unmistakable.

Still, it is not the same playbook. Other Aquino-era elements, such as confidence in the compelling authority of international judicial bodies or the persuasiveness of countries speaking in concert, have yet to appear — and seem unlikely to do so. Instead, Marcos appears to retain Duterte’s perceived pragmatic approach to improving relations with Beijing. The door appears to be open to friendly discussions and there is an unextinguished hope for ‘win-win’ diplomatic results to be reached bilaterally.

It is too early to say whether Marcos’ choice of a quieter style is a durable one. That will be tested when crises emerge in the open ocean. For now, it should allow the Philippines’ defence and commercial relationships to proceed uninterrupted and preserve a higher level of manoeuvrability than might otherwise be expected. For now, ‘quiet’ may be a good way forward.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Angelica Mangahas is a PhD candidate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) where she is a student of Southeast Asian politics. Her research is focused on the domestic sources of support for the US-Philippines alliance. She was previously a senior research associate at the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute and deputy director for research at the Manila-based Stratbase-Albert Del Rosario Institute. Image credit: Flickr/World Economic Forum.