MANILA, Philippines – A few weeks back, there was little doubt about the United States’ commitment to its treaty-ally, the Philippines. Things were looking up even as the second Donald Trump presidency began startling its friends in the West.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo was the first official phone call that State Secretary Marco Rubio made after the latter sat down with his counterparts from Australia, Japan, and India in Washington DC in January. Manalo and Rubio then met in person last month on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. also met with National Security Adviser Mike Waltz in DC in January, and had an introductory phone call with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
And amid its pause and audit of all foreign aid, the US waived that policy for its military assistance to the Philippines.
“In all of these engagements, there was a reaffirmation of the alliance and of shared interests in the Indo-Pacific region,” said Philippine Ambassador to the United States Babe Romualdez on Monday, March 3, in a forum organized by foreign correspondents based in Manila.
“Given President Trump’s appreciation for personal connections, I believe that an in-person meeting with President [Ferdinand] Marcos would be crucial in furthering bolstering the US’s continued support for the Philippine-US relations and continued presence in the Indo-Pacific region,” he added.
That a meeting in the White House between Trump and Marcos is being arranged is old news. It could happen in late March, or anytime in the Spring.
But plans for Marcos to visit Trump in the White House and talk of America’s commitment to its traditional partners and allies are now seen within the context of Trump’s disastrous meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 28.
Much has been said about it. Before a gaggle of White House press pool (now controlled by the White House itself), Trump and US Vice President JD Vance tag-teamed to scold a visibly tired and war-worn Zelenskyy after he challenged the US administration’s approach to “peace” and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.
Trump, in turn, claimed Zelenskyy was risking World War III. Vance chastized the Ukrainian President for not saying “thank you” to Trump during the meeting. He also accused Zelenskyy of “[campaigning] for the opposition in October,” referring to the campaign for the 2024 presidential elections.
Regardless of where you stand in the political spectrum, the meeting was no doubt a disaster, and brought to question America’s commitment elsewhere in the world — the Indo-Pacific and the Philippines included.
Trump’s stunning dressing-down of Zelenskyy and the US-sponsored resolutions on the “Russia-Ukraine conflict” in the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council have been making Filipino diplomats and officials take a pause.
Romualdez, who’s been the Philippines’ top envoy to Washington DC since the previous Duterte administration, tried to temper these concerns.
Iron-clad? For how long?
Asked how confident he was that the US would continue — or even add to — the remaining $336 million in foreign military financing given Trump’s “America First” policy, he said: “It’s a question of really just pointing out the importance of this kind of investment, what the United States wants to do, in terms of helping other countries, is to help them to become a real partner. And that’s exactly what we’re saying.”
“We are going to be a real partner if we have the wherewithal and the resources to be able to do it. And obviously this investment coming from them is what will help us in becoming, you know, like if anything happens, which I hope will never happen, we can be depended upon to be able to defend ourselves and be, again, a defense treaty partner of the United States,” he added.
Romualdez frames it this way: This is not the Philippines merely asking for money. It’s the Philippines promising that America’s investment will be worth it. “We’re asking for this investment because we want to be part of a partnership. And this is what we call the give and take,” he added.
Politico, in its piece “Macron’s told-you-so moment,” traces the long and sordid history behind French President Emmanuel Macron’s years-old call for “strategic autonomy” for the European Union. Foreign Policy’s Anchal Vohra, in a 2023 piece, described Marcon’s policy push as one “that flatters France and annoys everyone else.”
The skepticism and hesitation are understandable.
Defense News, which Politico’s Laura Kayali and Marion Solletty cite in their piece, estimated that it will take give years for Europe to “build up most of the critical defense enablers needed to deter or defeat Russia without US support.” The timeline comes with a caveat, however: the “political will to invest” should be there all throughout.
After the Zelenskyy was told to leave the White House without signing the critical minerals deal that he was supposedly there for in the first place, the Ukranian leader flew to London to meet European leaders. There, leaders created a Ukraine peace plan that would be presented to the US. European leaders, according Reuters, “agreed they must spend more on defense to show Trump the continent can protect itself.”
Remember Scarborough?
In Manila, skepticism towards America’s commitment to its treaty-ally has lingered in the aftermath of the 2012 Scarborough standoff, even if the White House, the State Department, and Pentagon have since repeatedly insisted that their commitment to the Philippines is “iron-clad.”
After all, in those many years when the US believed China would play by the rules, America helped negotiate a deal that was meant to see both Chinese and Filipino ships withdraw from the contested shoal.
Manila withdrew its ships. Beijing did not. And China has controlled access to the shoal since.
Manila eventually won the 2016 Arbitral Award, which Beijing refuses to recognize. The US, along with Japan and Australia, had led a coalition of “like-minded” countries in criticizing Beijing over its harassment moves in the West Philippine Sea.
Under the first Trump presidency, the US affirmed that the Mutual Defense Treaty would cover incidents in the South China Sea. Under former president Joe Biden, Manila and Washington found a cozy point of mutual interest — Marcos’ push to enforce Philippine rights and claims in the West Philippine Sea, and the US’s strategic competition with China.
There’s no doubt that the Philippines needs to increase its spending on defense. Romualdez himself emphasized as much, although that also ties back to the hope that the US would help the Philippines modernize its armed forces.
Retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio, an expert and advocate for defending the Philippines’ sovereign rights and claims in the West Philippine Sea, has called on Philippine lawmakers to waive their discretionary funds and use that money instead to modernize the military. It’s much easier said that done, considering Congress slashed P15 billion from the P50 million that the Marcos administration proposed for the 2025 modernization budget.
Yet, defense spending is no longer a question of if, but of how much more and how soon — for Europe as much as it is for America’s less-equipped allies such as the Philippines. — Rappler.com