Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte likes to present himself as the world’s ultimate strongman, a leader who doesn’t simply defeat his opponents but publicly humiliates them. The narrative is an inversion of reality.
When it comes to communist China, the greatest opponent facing the Philippines, Duterte is a happy lapdog. Evincing as much, Duterte’s defense secretary announced on Tuesday that the navy of the Philippines will no longer participate in any South China Sea military exercises outside its 12-mile sovereign maritime borders. Delfin Lorenzana justified the decision by saying that “if one country’s action is considered belligerent by another, tension will normally rise.”
But this isn’t about keeping tensions low. Rather, it is just another attempt by Duterte to earn a pat on the head from Chinese President Xi Jinping. And boy, a 12-mile limit on naval exercises surely deserves such a pat. That limitation means that Duterte has basically turned the navy of the Philippines into a beach patrol.
China has put significant pressure on the Philippines, a traditional U.S. ally, to avoid participation in escalating U.S. military exercises in the South China Sea. Frustrated by the increasing willingness of other allies to participate in such exercises, Beijing fears the presentation of an international alliance that shreds Xi’s claim that China seeks only mutual respect. It’s likely that Xi has offered Duterte some kind of significant investment deal or other favor in return for announcements such as this one.
Regardless, what Duterte is doing here is at once pathetic and, from the perspective of the Philippines, utterly idiotic. China is actively stealing the near-entirety of the South China Sea. Xi wants total control over the energy and fishing resources and transit routes in these waters. This control would strengthen China’s economy while allowing Beijing to extract political deference from all nations seeking to transit those waters. It’s feudalism 101: the extraction of loyalty in return for a right to work the land (or, in this case, water). And it’s a foretaste of the global order that China ultimately aims to impose.
Preferring the no-questions-asked patronage of Chinese communists over a democratic alliance with the United States, Duterte is a natural ally to this feudalism. The strongman is willing to sacrifice his national interests for Xi’s personal favor. Until the next election in 2022, we shouldn’t expect much change. Duterte will keep looking for Xi’s pat on the head, and his nation will be worse for it.
