Zelenskyy, Marcos, and rules-based int’l order

June 4, 2024

MANILA – Last week, President Marcos became the first-ever Filipino leader to deliver the keynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. As Mr. Marcos correctly pointed out, his selection as this year’s keynote speaker was “a recognition that there are [major] challenges that are facing the Philippines,” namely the increasingly perilous maritime spats in the West Philippine Sea.

It’s safe to say that it’s also a recognition of our growing importance as a rising middle power in the Indo-Pacific as well as our principled resistance to Chinese aggression.

Back in 2018, I witnessed how Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi essentially debuted his country’s emergence as a global power during his keynote speech at the vital dialogue. A year earlier, then Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull leveraged the same privilege speech to project his country as a responsible “bridging power,” which would transcend the dictates of superpowers and instead stand in solidarity with other medium- and small-sized nations.

In fairness, Mr. Marcos made the most out of his opportunity to present his vision for an inclusive regional security architecture. He astutely recognized the need to not significantly deviate from the hedging stance of majority of Southeast Asian nations by, inter alia, emphasizing how, despite our treaty alliance with America, he is not fully aligning with any superpower against another since “[i]t’s never a choice” and that both the United States and China are “important” for regional peace and prosperity.

Nevertheless, he highlighted China’s “illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive actions [which] continue to violate our sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction” in the West