Prepare to defend our country

In the midst of our Independence Day celebration and turmoil in the Senate, we may have overlooked a major crisis looming in our horizon. During the recent Shangri-la Dialogue, a gathering of defense officials and analysts held annually at a hotel in Singapore, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth outlined America’s new Asian strategy.

Under the Obama and Biden administrations, the US followed a strategy which they termed as a pivot to Asia. Under this strategy, the two administrations tried to build a coalition in the Indo-Pacific region which stretched from South Asia to the United States and Chile. At the core of this strategy was an alliance called the Quad, which was made up of America, Australia, India and Japan.

America’s new strategy seems to be one of retrenching from this pivot to Asia. Instead of focusing across the whole Indo-Pacific region, the new American strategy seems to be a focus on the “first island chain” which includes the countries immediately confronting China. These are Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.

This has led to a downgrading of the Quad in Hegseth’s speech at the Singapore dialogue. He did not mention the Quad and any reference to the pivot to Asia. In a recent visit of President Trump to Beijing, the US was attempting to normalize relations between the two countries. However, it seems that the tension between the two countries over the issue of Taiwan was not fully settled. There were also hints that China believed that their country would someday overtake the United States.

During Xi Jinping’s speech in front of President Trump and other officials, Xi referred to the Thucydides Trap. This is a political theory that states that when a rapidly rising power threatens to displace an established ruling power, the resulting “structural stress and mutual fear” often make war the expected, if not inevitable, outcome. Thucydides (460-400 BC) was an Athenian general and historian.

Although Xi indicated that both countries should avoid this “Thucydides Trap,” political observers note that Xi was referring to China as the rising power and America as the ruling but declining power.

There are several places where conflict could lead to major confrontations. This includes the South China Sea and the West Philippine Sea. The most possible immediate cause of conflict, however, is the growing volatility in the Taiwan Strait and China’s threat of invading Taiwan. Even President BBM has said that if China invades Taiwan, it may trigger a Philippine involvement because of the geographic proximity of Taiwan to the Philippines.

There is also the fact that there are more than 200,000 overseas Filipino workers in Taiwan.

China’s 2005 Anti-Secession Law sets out specific conditions under which Beijing may resort to “non-peaceful” means to resolve the Taiwan question. The first conditional threat is if Taiwan declares independence. The second is if all possibilities for peaceful reunification are completely exhausted.

While China has not declared any imminent invasion of Taiwan, the Taiwanese government has just declared that it considers itself as a sovereign nation.

Aside from the Philippines being dragged into this conflict, in 2025 Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi created a controversy when she said that Japan could become involved in a conflict over Taiwan under certain circumstances.

It should be remembered that Taiwan was a colony of Japan for 50 years, from 1895 to 1945. The island was ceded to Japan by China’s Qing Dynasty following the first Sino-Japanese War.

In the minds of many geopolitical observers, Taiwan’s ties are closer to Japan than to China. This historical background is very similar to that of the Philippines in the sense that the Philippines may have been a Spanish colony for 300 years, but it became an American colony from 1901 to 1945, and Filipinos feel closer to the United States than to Spain.

One of the most disturbing aspects of Secretary Hegseth’s Singapore speech was when he said: “You can have all the rules you want and rules are great, but if you can’t back them up with hard power, the rules are not worth the paper they are written on.” The disturbing message seems to indicate that the American stand is that military power can overcome even international treaties and laws. This puts countries like the Philippines at a disadvantage when dealing with superpowers like China.

Preventing a deadly confrontation between China and the United States is, of course, beneficial to the world. However, countries like the Philippines must hope that this does not come at the expense of our country. Nevertheless, the Philippines must strengthen its alliance with like-minded countries like Japan, Australia and South Korea, and its Southeast Asian neighbors. More important, it must strengthen its own defensive capabilities to the extent that it would discourage any country from invading our country.