December 18, 2025
MANILA – In June this year, after a meeting with then Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared on X: “The U.S.-Philippines Alliance is vital for a free and open Indo-Pacific region.”
Rubio added that he and Manalo “addressed China’s destabilizing actions in the South China Sea and found new opportunities for economic cooperation.”
A month later, after meeting President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in Washington, Rubio’s words, released by his office in a statement, were even more effusive, hailing “the importance of the ironclad United States-Philippines Alliance to maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.”
According to the statement, Mr. Marcos and Rubio “reaffirmed their shared commitment to deterrence and reinforcing freedoms of navigation and overflight in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
So much for “ironclad” ties.
The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) published by the Trump White House on Dec. 4, barely five months after Rubio’s paeans to the US-Philippines alliance, basically undercuts all that sweet talk by what the document doesn’t say.
Too ‘China-centric’
For starters, as analysts quickly noted, the NSS, which represents a consequential pivot in America’s national security doctrine, mentions the Philippines nowhere. Manila is a treaty ally and the country hosts nine Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement sites in strategic areas, allowing US forces to conduct exercises, rotate personnel, preposition matériel, and otherwise quickly mobilize in the region.
The Philippines has been at the front lines of tensions with Beijing, which seeks to increase its hegemonic control over waterways and areas in the region that are vital to the economic and security well-being of the US and the international community.
But for all that and more, the Philippines still got short shrift from a document that is too “China-centric,” according to China expert David Sacks, and that values countries in the Southeast Asian region only “insofar as they can help the United States win an economic competition with China and deter a conflict with Beijing.”
The NSS departs from its 2017 predecessor in its stance toward China. While the previous strategy warned about China and Russia seeking to “shape a world antithetical to US values and interests,” the new 29-page document now seeks to “rebalance America’s economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence,” and this it would do through an emphasis on “America First” policies—advancing US interests at all costs while observing noninterference in other countries’ conduct.
‘Might is right’
Specifically, the document reaffirms the “might is right” principle: “The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations,” it said.
The Marcos administration needs to clarify posthaste Washington’s stance on its relationship with and obligation to the Philippines, because as things stand, the implications are worrisome for the country if Beijing takes the NSS at its word.
How should the noninterventionism policy the US now espouses, for instance, stack up against the commitments and responsibilities the US agreed to do as a formal defense ally of the Philippines under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, which obligates both parties to team up against armed attacks on either side in the Pacific?
The latest word on China’s continuing aggression in the West Philippine Sea points to such a looming dilemma. In an escalation of their vile tactics of harassment and intimidation, Chinese coast guard ships fired water cannons a few days ago at Filipino fishermen near Escoda Shoal, which is well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
Delicate balancing act
As usual, Beijing blamed the Filipino side with their unarmed wooden boats as the instigators of the incident, which left three fishermen injured. The Department of Foreign Affairs has fired off another one of those diplomatic protests that China routinely ignores, which means a repeat of the incident, perhaps one graver and more dangerous, is not far-off.
Unless told off by a country bigger and more powerful than it is, China will simply continue to run roughshod over not only the Philippines but also other countries in the region. Unfortunately, the rest of Southeast Asia is likewise ignored in US President Donald Trump’s NSS. And if Manila, already a treaty ally, would now be hard-pressed to count on Washington’s mutual help in the face of China’s belligerence, how would the region fare as the giant bully in their midst is given tacit space by the new US security order to flex its “outsized influence”—as long as “good and peaceful commercial relations” with America are maintained?
The Marcos administration needs to do the most delicate balancing act: Press the US to restate and honor its treaty commitments, while ensuring that the Philippines is not treated as a bargaining chip in Washington’s transactional approach to China.