United States Secretary of State Michael Pompeo announced that US$ 300 Million will be allocated for the Indo-Pacific region, as part of their commitment to advancing regional security. This assistance includes $290.5 million in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to strengthen maritime security, humanitarian assistance/disaster relief, and peacekeeping capabilities, and $8.5 million in International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INCLE) funds to counter transnational crime. The security assistance funding will cover projects in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nepal, the Pacific Islands, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and others.

Read more ...

The Asia Transparency Initiative (AMTI) at Washington’s venerable Center for Security and International Studies recently released a report of its South China Sea Expert Working Group entitled a “Blueprint for Oil and Gas Production in the South China Sea. ” Having wrestled with these issues some 20 years ago to little avail, I would welcome a politically feasible solution or a pathway thereto. The “Blueprint” is an important contribution to thinking about interim solutions to these seemingly intractable disputes. However I am afraid it will fall afoul of reality and be ignored by the principals just as so many well-meaning proposals before it.

Read more ...

Abstract:

In his much-acclaimed historical account of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides concluded that it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this event inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable. The probability of conflict ensuing between the emerging and established powers has been referred to by war scholars as the ‘Thucydides’ trap’. In the contemporary Asia-Pacific context, the fault lines leading to this trap can be attributed to the continuing strategic competition between a seemingly declining United States and a rising China. Failure to circumvent this trap can ultimately result in a ‘war of all against all, as the world tumultuously shifts from one superpower to another.’ Against this backdrop, this paper examines President Rodrigo Duterte’s foreign policy and strategic doctrine using a neoclassical realist model. The doctrine has four main elements: cultivating a more favorable image for China; moderating the country’s American-influenced strategic culture; mobilizing state-society relations supportive of ‘sinicization’; and overhauling the country’s Western-based institutions to better accommodate Chinese pressures and incentives. At this watershed moment in the history of international politics, does Duterte’s China-centric approach give the Philippines an indispensable strategic capital to successfully navigate and exploit both the challenges and opportunities of the impending new order? Do the president’s differing rules of engagement toward Beijing and Washington reveal a calculated and forward-thinking strategic outlook rather than a defeatist and naïve stance? The paper answers these questions by examining the factors and dynamics underpinning the creation and implementation of the Duterte doctrine.

About the Author

Michael Magcamit, PhD is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Musashi-LSE Parallel Degree Program, Faculty of Economics, Musashi University, Tokyo, Japan. He is a recipient of the European Commission’s Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Award. In recent years, he authored “Small Powers and Trading Security: Contexts, Motives and Outcomes” (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); ‘Explaining the Three-way Linkage between Populism, Securitization and Realism: President Donald Trump and the Pursuit of ‘America First’ Doctrine’, World Affairs, 2017, 180(3); “Trading in Vain? Investigating the Philippines’ Development-oriented National Security and Free Trade Linkages.” Japanese Journal of Political Science, 2016, 17(1). He also co-authored “East and South China Seas Maritime Dispute Resolution and Escalation: Two Sides of the Same Coin?”. Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, 2016, 3(2). He may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Summary

• The Sino-US trade war is a symptom of strategic rivalry and great power transition
• The trade war has both risks (loss of profit margins for intermediate goods) and opportunities (trade diversion) for the Philippines
• The Philippines needs to diversify commercial markets and intensify free trade agreements to buffer the impact of trade wars
• The Philippines should employ means to make the country a more attractive investment destination
• The Fourth Industrial Revolution in conjunction with the trade war is another major disruptor that the Philippines should anticipate

Read more ...