A grand strategy for the Philippines

Russia has only two allies—its Army and its Navy,” Czar Alexander III (1881-1894) infamously argued. “The others will go against us at the first opportunity.” More than a century later, it’s precisely the same unapologetically cynical, hopelessly self-help mindset that is driving Russia’s foreign policy. Spanning across 11 time zones and multiple continents, Russia is both a product of and in fear of imperial predation. Russia’s grand strategy, therefore, has been a bizarre form of aggressiveness driven by profound insecurity.

No matter how Putin and his impresarios seek to rationalize the ongoing war in Ukraine, the reality is that Russia is more isolated and enervated than ever. It has lost access to markets and technology in the West, and, worse, become dangerously dependent on China and India, its two biggest new markets. This is pure strategic folly since Russia could have become the ultimate ”swing state” of the 21st century. In the words of astute Russian analyst Alexander Gabuev: “Russia was well positioned to become a global power between East and West…”

In today’s impossibly complex, dangerously unpredictable, and increasingly multipolar world, however, ”grand strategy” is not the exclusive domain of major powers. If anything, less-than-great powers can and have every reason to develop their own versions. In the simplest terms, according to the political scientist Sulmaan Wasif Khan, grand strategy pertains to “the way in which [a state] marshals different forms of power to pursue national objectives.”

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In recent months alone, there have been at least two major works on the grand strategy of midsized Asian powers. One is Vali Nasr’s highly celebrated “Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History,” which provides a nuanced, diachronic, and multilevel analysis of the origins of Tehran’s foreign policy in the modern era. The other is “Japan’s Grand Strategy: Liminal Power in an Uncertain World” by Saori Katada and Kei Koga, which critically examines Tokyo’s foreign policy beginning from the Meiji Restoration period.

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Middle powers clearly matter in today’s world: both Ukraine and Iran successfully resisted military invasions by superpowers, providing valuable lessons for other nations, such as Taiwan, which confronts the real risk of invasion by yet another major power. A grand strategy for the Philippines should simultaneously maximize our distinct geography, but also recognize vulnerabilities that come with it. Unbeknownst to many, our coastline is almost as large as Russia’s. Straddling the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia, we are at the heart of both the First and Second Island Chains—an increasingly integrated theater of great power competition and the vortex of Chinese expansionism in the 21st century.

Let me lay out a “Three L” blueprint briefly. First, we need to optimize our world-class expertise in “lawfare” (legal warfare), thus building on our 2016 arbitral tribunal award victory, which gave us an unprecedented bargaining chip vis-à-vis China and, crucially, a baseline for adjudicating any claim in the South China Sea basin. Lest we forget, neighbors, such as Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, have drawn on our arbitration case to challenge Beijing’s expansive claims. It directly challenges Beijing’s claims to benign leadership in Asia and the broader Global South. More concretely, it provides a legal basis for proactive naval pushback by our allies, most notably America but also Japan, Australia, Canada, India, and key European powers.

Second, we need to become what veteran Philippine diplomat Jose de Vega has described as the “linchpin state”—namely, an Asian nation that leverages its deep roots to both Western democracies as well as to Latin America and the broader post-colonial world. Our shocking loss to landlocked Kyrgyzstan during our latest bid to rejoin the United Nations Security Council is a wake-up call. We need to credibly reposition ourselves as a key pillar of the Global South in spite of our military alliance with Western powers. Hint: Türkiye, a major North Atlantic Treaty Organization member, can serve as an inspiration.

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Finally, we should start producing “low-cost” but high-impact, high-tech weapons systems from drones to missiles, which have proven extremely effective in recent conflicts. This could also serve as a foundation for developing our own indigenous defense industry, which is vital to both our economy as well as our long-term national security. As we enter a new world disorder, we need to either go ”grand” in our national strategy or risk becoming a vassal of yet another arriviste superpower as in both the 16th and 20th centuries.

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