By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

September 12, 2025 Forum

As we speak, Taiwan is coming under increasing pressure from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for reunification to formally formal end a civil war that started 98 years ago on August 1, 1927.

On December 17, 1987, President Corazon C. Aquino issued Executive Order 313 which prohibits all government officials from visiting Taiwan, receiving visiting Taiwanese officials, or carrying out any official activity relating to Taiwan without clearance from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), in recognition of the One-China policy that we signed up to in a treaty known as the 1975 Joint Communique between President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos Sr and Premier Zhou En Lai.

But last April 15, under Memorandum Circular No. 82, signed by Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, the travel ban now applies only to the president, vice president, secretary of foreign affairs, and secretary of national defense.

Beijing has criticized Manila for manipulating adherence to the One-China principle, following remarks by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in an interview by Firstpost managing editor Palki Sharma, while visiting India: “To be very practical about it, if there is a confrontation over Taiwan between China and the United States, there is no way that the Philippines can stay out of it, simply because of our physical geographic location.”

The problem is the statement is not isolated.

Patterns of indiscretion

Last April 1, Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, was caught on video telling troops to prepare themselves for an invasion of Taiwan.

But it is actually Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad who blew the whistle last May, on a changing context of our Taiwan relationship emanating from the Department of National Defense and not the Office of the President or the Department of Foreign Affairs: “Talks are underway to regularize warship transits across the Taiwan Strait, a development that could lead to formal joint military activities between the two neighbors (Taiwan and the Philippines) and thus reshape the strategic calculus in the region.”

In an interview by the Washington Post, Secretary Gibo Teodoro openly confirmed that “It would be hiding from the obvious to say that Taiwan’s security will not affect us,” after endorsing a Japanese proposal to view the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula as a “single theater” of battle.

This was followed by Stratbase (Albert del Rosario) Institute’s hosting of a closed-door online meeting last May 27 focusing on key geopolitical issues in the Indo-Pacific, particularly on the Taiwan perspectives. It was jointly organized by Taipei’s Prospect Foundation, whose Chairman Dr. Tan Sun Chen is a former minister of Taiwan foreign affairs and Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office represented by Michael Lee, a retired Lieutenant General in the ROC Armed Forces. On the Philippine side there were also joiners from our National Security Council and the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency.

In reciprocity, Coast Guard Commodore Jay Ariella and Navy Rear Admiral Trinidad himself, traveled to Taipei last July 2 for a “thumbs-up” meeting with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, that included discussions on countering Chinese hybrid warfare strategies. In a strongly worded letters dated July 4 sent to the Department of National Defense and the Philippine Coast Guard, Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Theresa Lazaro said the two traveling high officials had not acted prudently and dealt damage dealt to our good standing with China, proof-positive that their travel was not cleared and coordinated with the DFA.

Meanwhile, China has accused the Philippines of reneging on its commitment to the One China principle, saying that there would be a “price to pay” for purportedly allowing a Taiwanese diplomat into the country.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun urged Manila to “stop sending wrong signals to Taiwan independence’ separatists” amid reports that Taiwanese Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung visited the country on the last week of August with a business contingent led by the US-Taiwan Business Council. In a hearing with the Senate foreign relations committee, DFA Secretary Lazaro told Senator Imee Marcos that her office had no official knowledge of the protocol violation but requested for an executive session to explain details.

In a Global Times editorial last August 9, the China perspective was very explicit about Marcos’ statements in India on the Taiwan question. The newspaper finds the pattern as revealing the Philippines’ true intent: to actively involve itself to curry favor with the US. Even third parties can clearly see this new tactic masking its political recalculations under the disguise of humanitarian concerns and “feigning innocence” on the international stage.

In 2023, the Philippines nearly doubled the number of military bases opened to US forces, including three facing Taiwan island. In April this year, it eased restrictions on interactions with officials of Taiwan authorities, including allowing Philippine officials to visit the island. Later, the Philippines and Taiwan authorities discussed about conducting joint patrols in the Bashi Channel besides building fortifications in one of the islands of Batanes.

War footing

Global Times said evacuation of Filipino nationals in Taiwan, exposes deliberate efforts to create preemptive friction that creates public opinion space in advance for future coordination with US forces regarding port and airspace usage – a geopolitically sensitive position. Mocking Marcos, it said the level of risk is not entirely determined by “geography”; that “there is no predetermined geopolitical destiny for the Philippines and the key lies in its own choices.”

Let’s face it. The way Marcos frames it, we are already on war footing with China.

If Manila keeps going on the path, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy – the Philippines could very well become the next flashpoint and a troublemaker igniting regional instability.

In the face of Marcos’ frame of mind, bordering from naivete’ to lack of sobriety, there will be no need for Balikatan exercises, as there will be no beach landing reminiscent of World War II to happen. In about fifteen minutes, all American bases and installations in the Philippines will be reduced to cinder.

To make the picture clearer, recalling Iran’s retaliation against Israeli attacks, no Chinese boots are expected in our grounds unless Americans escalate the warzone by sending their troops here, which is highly unlikely.

Why because anything that moves or threatens within the five island chains from China to Guam in the east, to East Africa on the west, are already compromised under the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS).

China has unveiled the DF-26D, the latest variant of its long-range ballistic missile family, sparking intense global attention. First spotted during parade rehearsals in Beijing, the DF-26D is already being called the “Guam Killer” because of its 5,000+ kilometer range. Unlike earlier versions, analysts believe this new model could incorporate advanced guidance systems, multiple re-entry vehicles, or even hypersonic glide technology—features that would make it extremely difficult to intercept.

With its ability to strike both land installations and moving naval targets, the DF-26D could reshape strategic planning across the Pacific. In this episode, we explain what makes the DF-26D so special, why it caught experts by surprise, and what lessons it signals for the future of long-range systems.

Article 51 of the UN Charter provides that under imminent threat of an attack; China can invoke the right of preemptive strike to protect and defend itself. At speeds up to Mach 10 at its final stage, and its ability to dance to evade interdiction, nothing has yet been invented to stop its multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) from hitting its intended target.

China will not target Filipino civilian populations. Their imminent war is not against the Philippines. But there is no way serious collateral damage can be avoided because EDCA presence is mostly in thick urban locations. I would estimate that on the first hour of hypersonic missile attacks, no fewer than 200,000 Filipinos will be lost.

The American handle over the proxy government of Marcos is the “west Philippine sea”, our ambitious carving of a mythical portion of the South China Seas at the south, west of Palawan in the Spratlys. to west of Zambales at Scarborough up to the north to the Bashi Channel cum Luzon Strait, south of Taiwan, in order to facilitate a maritime expressway for the Americans, who are not even members of the UN Convention on Law of the Sea.

We are clearly being used as a pawn by the United States. The problem is nobody is watching our back?

Changing winds

For those who have worked abroad in the diplomatic corps, especially in the United States like me, and who have not adapted to any ideological bias, know the relative significance of Rand Corporation to the development of US foreign policy, especially relative to Taiwan.

In war Rand’s war gaming, current Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby has criticized Taiwan for “showing an alarming lack of urgency in dramatically strengthening its defenses.” Why should the United States defend Taiwan if Taiwan won’t defend itself?

Rand calls the real problem The Politics of Paralysis, not the will to fight.

The real obstacle is political polarization stemming from a weakness in Taiwan’s political institutions despite its overall strength. Shielded within local strongholds, parties can appeal to narrow constituencies and ignore broader public opinion. From that platform, politicians have fueled skepticism of U.S. support as Taiwan’s opposition parties have attacked the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s attempts at defense reform.

The Kuomintang has accused President Lai Ching-te of provoking war for personal political gain and preparing to send children to die on the battlefield/

The United States can help and its role is not limited to supplying arms. But the Trump administration, itself, has not yet resolved what to do.

In October 2004, Karishma Mehta and Hunter Stoll asked “Must America’s approach to its role on the international stage be one of two extremes, or can it be more nuanced?”

Retrenchment is the strategy designed to reduce a country’s international and military costs and commitments. Pulling out would indicate that the United States—and by extension, the American people—no longer believe, value, or are invested in the world that they spent decades helping construct. This policy would also provide the United States’ competitors and adversaries with a vacuum to fill.

Internationalism, on the other hand, is the strategy that advocates for greater political and/or economic investment in and cooperation among states and nations. In an era of costly defense budgets, the United States can no longer afford to project its power everywhere all at once. The resources needed to execute the purely internationalist vision are astronomical and unsustainable in the long term.

A middle of the road, dynamic foreign policy approach may be the best option to ensure the United States maintains its strategic vision while not stretching its resources too thin.

By employing a nuanced, dynamic foreign policy approach—one that empowers its allies and partners across the globe, especially in their own backyards—the United States can strengthen its reputation, reduce costs, and counterbalance its competitors and adversaries.

In the light of our geopolitical environment, another Rand Corporation paper published March 2025, Jude Blanchette and Gerard DiPippo wrote “The combination of a new U.S. administration and a more assertive China present Taiwan with a daunting new reality.

“It must adopt assertive measures to hedge against the risk that the current—or a future—U.S. administration might regard Taiwan’s challenges as a distant concern.

Consequently, Taiwan finds itself in a position similar to Europe, compelled to reevaluate its relationship with its historical security patron, but is at a serious disadvantage in its playbook, for three reasons:

First, Taipei doesn’t have formal diplomatic relations with Washington, which severely limits the ability of the Taiwan government to directly interact with President Trump himself. While talks with U.S. trade representatives are possible, such channels are substantially less effective than direct dealings with the president.

Second, Taiwan knows that any U.S.-Taiwan trade deal could trigger retaliation from China.

Third, Taipei believes that any economic talks with the Trump administration could be subordinated to, and maybe depend on, Washington’s talks with China.

Acceptance of a multipolar world

Following the September 3 military parade in China commemorating the 80^th anniversary of the end of World II, the Pentagon has released a paper deprioritizing China’s threat and focusing on the Western hemisphere – a striking reversal from the military’s years of focus on the so-called Chinese threat.

A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow.

Hegseth could still make changes to the plan. But in many ways, the shift is already occurring.

The Pentagon has activated thousands of National Guard troops to support law enforcement in Los Angeles and Washington, and dispatched multiple warships and F-35 fighter planes to the Caribbean to interdict the flow of drugs to the U.S.

The Pentagon also has established a militarized zone across the southern border with Mexico that allows troops to detain civilians, a job normally reserved for law enforcement.

Remember Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief? He is leading the strategy. He played a key role in writing the 2018 version during Trump’s first term and has been staunch supporter of a more isolationist American policy. Despite his long track record as a China hawk, Colby aligns with Vice President JD Vance on the desire to disentangle the U.S. from foreign commitments.

Colby’s policy team is also responsible for a forthcoming global posture review, which outlines where U.S. forces are stationed around the globe, and a theater air and missile defense review, which takes stock of U.S. and allies’ air defenses and makes recommendations for where to locate American systems.

The Pentagon is expected to release both reviews as soon as next month.

US as an unreliable ally

I do not have to enumerate a litany of how many Filipinos died in the hands of the Americans from 1898 to 1902 in their so-called War of Insurrection. You can access this in history.

But for everyone’s fine tuning, let me bring you inside a State Department meeting at about 3 pm on January 31, 1974, presided by Secretary Henry Kissinger, on discussions about applications of the Mutual Defense Treaty in the South China Seas, with 17 of his senior staff, particularly Arthur Hummel who was deputy assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific Affairs. In the interest of brevity, I have omitted other remarks by others in the room.

MR. HUMMEL: The question has been raised about whether our Mutual Security Treaty with the Philippines would be invoked in the event that the Philippine forces know the Spratlys are attacked by the Peoples Republic of China if they move there. The lawyers have come up with what Bill Sullivan describes as a somewhat waffly position, but negotiating this treaty gives us apparently a number of outs.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: So, this is where we stand on the Philippines? Have we notified the Filipinos? The question is: Did we volunteer to them the information that we would not let them invoke the treaty, or did they first ask us whether we considered them to be covered by the treaty?

MR. HUMMEL: I’m sorry, sir.  I don’t think it was ever that clear-cut. First of all, our reply was not a flat no that the treaty could not apply —

SECRETARY KISSINGER: My question was: Did we volunteer it or did they first ask us? — because this, I think, would make a psychological difference. That, to me, is the only interesting question. I agree with the fact that we should not invoke the Mutual Security Treaty. I wonder whether it’s in our interest to show excessive eagerness in volunteering reluctance to take on the Chinese when we haven’t been asked — whether that might not actually trigger things, the way things leak out there.

MR. HUMMEL: Well, at the same time, sir, our governmental spokesman has been saying repeatedly that we take no position on Southeast (Asia).

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Yes; but that isn’t the question of what we would do if a Philippine garrison was attacked — which was the issue before us. I don’t think we want to encourage the PRC in believing that they have a free shot at military moves, and we don’t want to encourage our allies there to believe that we are needlessly panicky.

Our answer is the right answer. I do not think that we should have indicated that we would defend (the Philippines) The question is whether we should have left some ambiguity in other people’s minds, not in ours.

(End of staff meeting)

The Kissinger Doctrine

A year later, on dire request of Ambassador William Sullivan for the State Department, Henry Kissinger finally promulgated the official policy and the US legal position in a memorandum dated June 9, 1975 that was only declassified on July, 2006. [See document: https://aad.archives.gov/aad/createpdf?rid=172445&dt=2476&dl=1345]

This indicated first that “Spratly Islands all fall outside Philippine territory as ceded to us by (our) 1898 treaty with Spain. US Government maps accompanying presentation of MDT also exclude Spratlys from territories covered by MDT.”

Second “We are not aware of any Philippine-administered territory falling within (the second) category…of trust territories” such as Okinawa. The memo even clarified that while granting that the position adopted in the preceding category “does not mean [the] Philippines could not expand territory over which it is sovereign”, the State Department “do not see legal basis at this time for supporting the claim to Spratlys of one country over that of other claimants.”

Kissinger defined the preeminent principle as customary law which is presently favorable to China – “Continuous, effective and uncontested occupation and administration of territory is a primary foundation for establishing sovereignty in absence of international settlement, but Philippine occupation could hardly be termed uncontested in face of claims and protests of Chinese and Vietnamese.”

On invoking the third category of Article V of the MDT, in the event of Vietnamese or Chinese attack on Philippine garrisons in the Spratlys, “we do not believe this aspect of treaty gives either party carte blanche to deploy forces anywhere in the Pacific… commitment in the event of attack on forces must be construed in context of overall purpose and provisions of the treaty” citing its Article I where parties undertake to refrain from ‘threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with UN charter.’

Secretary of State Kissinger specifically cited a decisive irony, “we have also not recognized [Philippine] sovereignty over the islands… (and) while the US would not term Philippino occupation as illegal invasion of another state, neither can we term this deployment as aspect of collective defense purpose of Mutual Defense Treaty.”

Rather, he said, we view purpose of [Philippine] garrison as establishing and enforcing a claim to sovereignty over openly disputed territory. “MDT does not obligate us to support this type of deployment in event of armed attack.”

Kissinger emphasized, “We would emphasize as well that in our view territorial defense commitments of parties are embraced in first two categories of Article V. We do not consider that commitment in event of attack on forces can be boot-strapped into commitment for defense of territory not included in first two categories by deploying forces in such territory.”

Driving the final nail of realpolitik, he concluded, “As a practical matter, we see precious little chance Congress or the American people would support US intervention in Spratly dispute.

“If the [Philippine] garrisons ever were attacked, it seems to me less harmful politically to deny our obligations on legal grounds, than to leave unfulfilled an acknowledged commitment.

 “Furthermore, contrary interpretation would also create difficulty for us if [Philippines] ever tried to invoke MDT with respect to Sabah (North Borneo) …”

Conclusion

The near future is not new to us. We have seen that Americans cower when asked reassurances for reciprocal compensation for their bases, and lack of equitable interest when pressed for economic assistance.

Bilateral negotiations were still ongoing for the renewal of the RP-US Military Bases Agreement, when Mt. Pinatubo erupted on July 1991. Fearing cataclysmic damage to Clark and Subic, the Americans left the table and unilaterally pulled all its assets from the Philippines, leaving the Philippine Senate no choice but to abrogate the historical agreement.

The closure of the US bases in the Philippines created difficulties for the U.S. by eliminating its primary naval repair and logistical hub in the Western Pacific, forcing the dispersal of functions to other, less optimal facilities and increasing reliance on facilities in Guam. So by1999, it successfully negotiated for a Visiting Forces Agreement, which graduated into the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2014 for five sites, increasing to at least nine by 2023.

This is where we find ourselves today, burdened by heavy security commitments that embargoes our bilateral economic relationship with China, in 127 years of humiliation from US colony to proxy, from 1898 to 2025.

If Marcos does not wise up, our country, added to the great corruption scandals we are facing today, will be on its knees before his term ends. The winds of regime change are in the air. As to whether the conclusion ends up making us further slaves in favor of a declining foreign power or in the hands of the Filipino, only time can tell.

Meanwhile we swim in the dung of our own making.

   

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