(Welcome remarks by Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. at the 2019 Global Conference of Heads of Posts (G-Chop) held on October 11, 2019 at the New World Hotel in Makati City)
Welcome to G-Chop. I just got in; Amy Aquino is just leaving Moscow; Ambassador Sorreta is wrapping up after the President’s successful visit. I didn’t have time to go over my welcome remarks. I like it but I’ve heard a bit of it before from myself. That is not what G-Chop is about. It is about getting reactions from our foreign posts on developments where they have been serving, and their reflections on the broader implications of those developments in the conduct of Philippine foreign policy throughout the globe.
There is Brexit, the Korean peninsula and the promise and threat of its Bismarck Moment of unification and power…or not; and regional war which I think far fetched.
There is the tragedy of potentially the richest but in actuality the most tragic and wasted continent: Africa.
There is the lighted fuse of the Middle East that keeps flaring up after being repeatedly stamped out. There is the South China Sea. And the US-China trade war that is too important to leave just to the economists and trade experts. And there is Hong Kong; and my warning to the Cabinet that everytime the last rites are performed over Hong Kong, that city tends to bounce back and bite its detractors.
The Butterfly Effect is clearly in full swing; what’s been happening in one place will generate ripples around the world, however small, but which in turn…you know the drill.
We ourselves are in a cyclone that started from the faint beating of small wings as a new China broke out of its bamboo shell less than three decades ago. The Dragon’s wing span increases every year. And it’s getting fatter. It raised 800 million out of destitution — I saw for myself. Meanwhile, it feels at times that the Eagle’s talons are retracting into its wrinkled claws despite the fact no one comes anywhere close to challenging its global hegemony. And I mean no one and even if the rest of the world combined against it.
Philippine foreign policy is all spelled out in the Constitution, you cannot add or subtract to it. So we are not here to chart the Republic’s foreign policy. It has to do with being independent in making our foreign policy choices, but always in favor of our national interest first and foremost; our international commitments in universal and bilateral agreements next because those are part of the law of our land; and finally all of that taken in the context of current and most likely future circumstances.
Every elected administration interprets independence or doesn’t because it hasn’t the time or the space to give a new spin to the old turn. Or it cannot improve on the continuation of the past.
All our presidents have wanted an independent foreign policy; some waited for what could not happen given the representative democracy we adopted at our birth and in successive rebirths. In the teeth of historical disappointments, it remains a constant of Philippine politics that the vast majority of its people across all generations are intensely pro-American.
Being a logical people we’ve never adopted the self-contradictory constitution of a dictatorship despite the inspiration of Constitutional Dictatorship. The time of autocracy is well over; all states have to be democratic even if the democratic choices are not always too liberal liking and thank God for that. The world needs a respite from weaklings. The greater safety for populations lies in strong government and not in weak ones that invite multilateral intervention. What autocracies big and small still exist have an approaching expiry date. Fukuyama was right: this is the age of democracy even if not always a liberal one and the end of history is not anywhere in sight. Democracies have fought each other in the past. I just can’t think of one example.
Words matter, preeminently the words of our Constitution; and create binding ties, foremost as the basis of intelligible discourse not least between government and those who accept to be governed; and among states. Words count.
Marcos made the first concrete turn to an independent foreign policy when he faced the country towards the Soviet Union and Red China. Those were bold moves but they came to nothing because it was too soon. Still, he gets A for effort. The country wouldn’t turn its face away from the West and still won’t. Even if the West is increasingly not there.
The rest of our presidents before and after him quietly strived for the same independence but gave up for the same reason of prematurity; they stuck to continuity for stability. That was not a cop out. The opposite of continuity is whimsicality and that weakens the international impression a state must make that it is not a hodgepodge of extemporaneity. This administration has been remarkably consistent and vociferously insistent on its own take of an independent foreign policy but always conceding that it will not go farther in that direction than the people are inclined to follow. And clearly our oldest military ally enjoys the widest popular edge.
Of course, no administration can have its own take on what constitutes our national interest: that is obvious and is gleaned from our history. Getting elected gives you a mandate but it does not confer a supernatural insight into what is good for our country. Only we, the people, decide that and we are famously whimsical as well.
We are a friendly, warm and welcoming people; exceptional for our hospitality; outstanding in our humanity: we took in all the rejects of the world without conditions: White Russians fleeing the Red holocaust in Russia and Jews fleeing European holocausts; Nationalist Chinese when they fled the Red holocaust in China with whom, despite the nonsense, we never had historical ties that bind except for recent mythologies. The passing Chinese pirate on a sailing junk is not a diplomatic exchange. At best it was an exchange of musket fire.
True we inspired the Nationalist revolution in China and gave refuge to its heroes. But we never joined the frenzy of the Cold War hatred of Red China. Our journalists, I among them, were the first to break through the Bamboo Curtain to see the reality behind it at the prompting of Felix Greene’s groundbreaking book. We took in Indians, Vietnamese and Iranians following in the wake of political upheavals in their countries; and lately persecutred Rohingya with regard to whom we made a very public commitment to take them in—to the shame of their co-religionists throughout the region and the rest of the world.
And above all and ubiquitously today: the ugly appearance of forces out to rob states of their legitimacy by denying their ability to protect their populations against religious fanaticism and organized crime: violent non-state actors. And the deceptively attractive appearance of non-violent but equally subversive non-state actors of civil societies with uncivil purposes.
But that is as far as it goes. We don’t offer the marital bed as part of our hospitality and we tend to get very ornery when someone makes himself too much at home in our house. We are always polite but the guest cannot fail to see, behind our forced smiles, the air of impatience for his departure.
Our national interest can never be the same interest as that of a foreign power. And I’ve always been wary of pursuing projects for mutual benefit between weak countries and big powers. The terms of endearment may seen fair but the nature of the relationship is ultimately one-sided and detrimental to the weaker party. Let them get close enough to caress you and they’re too close for comfort because they can as easily strangle you.
Mutually beneficial relationships, especially in defense, can be safely pursued only between equals or between unequals separated by great distances. Why we went to Russia to even things up over here. Of course our national interest can in some aspects have much in common with another nation’s interest. That’s okay. We are part of the community of nations, civilized or not.
But our national interest cannot be sold or compromised either by surrender or by the foolhardiness of jumping into a conflict we are sure to lose; and in losing thereby lose our national interest. One way to lose a sovereign aspect is to lose a foolhardy war in its affirmation. So we bide our time for the time of assertion…or not; if, on second thought, it still seems hopeless. But when our vital interests are attacked we must set aside our constitutional repugnance to war as an instrument of foreign policy and take ultima ratio regis tightly to heart.
But the genius of our Constitution is that it provides for a single term administration. A single six-year term may not be able to do all the good it wants to; but it limits all the bad that government is capable of given more time. Power enables but with too much time degenerates into absolutism and bottomless corruption. Even in the short tenure of his adminisration, this President has conducted purges of his officialdom. In Cabinet meetings the President never stops stressing that time is running out to get the good parts of governance done. So let’s forget the mischief.
The next administration will have its own take on what constitutes an independent foreign policy based on —and I don’t think it can be improved: “Friend to friends, enemy to enemies, worse enemy to false friends.” This is a significant improvement in the direction of realism on the earlier “Friends to all, enemies to none.” That is like a comely woman or a handsome young man walking into a dark alley with a big man, perhaps a biker in the latter case, that they took a fancy to in a bar; and expecting to step out into the light at the other end with their clothes still on…if they get out at all. If he or she is exceptionally naive, perhaps wondering in the words of our President: “Is that what friends do?” Some of our so-called friends might think so; so be careful, boys and girls, who you walk out of a bar with. Truth is the daughter of time; let’s take our time knowing our true friends.
What we are here in G-Chop for is not to chart foreign policy but to draw out the implications of the absolute one in the Constitution and the current administration’s take on it; a take that continues to evolve and may therefore be kindly called a work in progress. And that is why I rejected out of hand the proposal to draft a manual of Philippine foreign policy; not least because I was not sure it would be in English. We can accept a manual of Philippine foreign policy that will be written only in retrospect from the distant future—if anyone cares to write a quaint history of the foreign policy of a small republic as fleeting as that of the princely states of 15th century Italy but without the brand names today.
So we are here not just to listen to our distinguished experts from abroad but from each foreign post. No one back here in our crumbling ADB building— we’re getting out in January next year — can safely substitute his guesses for the personal experiences of their colleagues and the latter’s professional take on those experiences as members of our foreign service abroad.
Thank you so much for the long trip here. It won’t be all work; we have left time for recreation and reunion. Let me end with words from Freddie Mercury: “I thank you all” — for the honor and privilege of working with you.
And to borrow more from Freddie Mercury, “We here in Manila love you all out there.” If it doesn’t seem like that at times; blame the rules of a prudently hidebound foreign service. Allowances can be made on a case-to-case basis. But allowances couldn’t be made if they were the rule; they are possible only with hard rules in the place. To quote again the epigraph to The Mouse Trap with Nathan Hale, “A world without string is chaos.” Without rules, government service would be self-service.
To our distinguished foreign guests, may I present you to, in words from the Bohemian Rhapsody: “Their Majesty, the Department of Foreign Affairs.”
Let’s give each other a round of applause. Thank you.