Why Political Change in the Philippines May Mean Trouble for the U.S. 

By Rodney Faraon

Rodney Faraon is a former senior CIA China analyst, including two years on the President’s Daily Briefing Staff for two administrations. He was also the founding director of Global Intelligence and Risk Analysis for The Walt Disney Company.

OPINION — Domestic geopolitics matters. The recent departure of Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio from President Bongbong Marcos’s cabinet, though unexplained, reveals a policy schism with major ramifications for U.S. defense strategy in the Indo-Pacific. Since winning the Presidency in 2022, Marcos has unambiguously aligned himself with Washington on security, expanding and enhancing the ability of U.S. forces to defend Taiwan, the Philippines, and the South China Sea from Chinese coercion.  

Duterte-Carpio, not so much. 

Under Marcos, the Philippines and the United States established new Bilateral Defense Guidelines that expanded the right of access by U.S. forces to nine Philippine naval and air bases. The reestablishment of the Philippines’ “unsinkable aircraft carrier” on the south flank of the Indo-Pacific enables the U.S. to project force into the disputed South China Sea—a shipping lane through which one-third of global trade flows. It also enables air superiority over the strategic Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the north Philippines—a narrow, 90-mile-wide passageway deep enough for submarines which offers access to Taiwan’s largest port and its eastern shore. (This channel, incidentally, is also the location of undersea cables that form the backbone of Internet and other communications data that are critical to East Asia and the world.)

Renegade Duterte-Carpio is a top candidate to succeed Marcos, who is term-limited to leave office in 2028. She enjoys higher public approval ratings than Marcos; June polls, which preceded her break from the administration, put her at 69 percent (approval) and 71 percent (trust) and rising, as compared to Marcos’s 53 percent and 52 percent, respectively.  

The daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, Duterte-Carpio is a scion of a nascent political dynasty that includes her older brother Paolo—currently serving in the Philippine Congress—and her younger brother, the current Mayor of Davao, the family’s political base in the politically important Mindanao region of the southern Philippines. Her father and brothers will all run for the 24-member Senate in 2025.


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If the Dutertes win next year, and Duterte-Carpio becomes President in 2028, continued support for the U.S. military presence is not assured. Her father was ambivalent toward relations with the United States during his Presidency and pushed to improve relations with China, the big power in the neighborhood and the Philippines’ largest trade partner. Indeed, when Rodrigo Duterte took office, he set aside the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration case involving disputed maritime claims in the South China Sea, which ruled in favor of the Philippines and denied China’s “historic rights” to sovereignty and jurisdiction.  Duterte even looked to Beijing, not longtime ally Washington, to buy arms and materiel for his military. Later, in response to American criticism of his human rights record and the denial of a U.S. visa for a key Senate ally behind Duterte’s drug war in 2020, he went so far as to cancel the 20-year-old Visiting Forces Agreement that authorized and governed temporary deployments of US military personnel in the country. 

Of course, Duterte didn’t align fully with China. Toward the end of his administration, Duterte in 2021 reinstated the VFA after meeting with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Perhaps not surprisingly, this came when Chinese forces intensified pressure and violence against the Philippine presence in the South China Sea, embarrassing Duterte and proving the folly of his turn toward Beijing.  

Vice President Duterte-Carpio had been silent after skirmishes in 2021 and 2023 between Chinese and Philippine Coast Guard and naval forces over the Second Thomas Shoal, a submerged reef in the South China Sea that both countries claim but is occupied by a Filipino garrison. The Chinese have been careful to use less-than-lethal force such as water cannons to stop Philippine resupply missions to its garrison, but late last year things escalated when a Chinese ship intentionally rammed and boarded a Philippine Coast Guard vessel on another resupply run. For a time both sides seemed to have put the contretemps in hiatus; then, in August, Chinese coast guard ships rammed Philippine vessels near a different shoal. Both sides have traded dire warnings: Manila and Washington affirmed the view that the death of a Filipino serviceman because of the clashes could trigger the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States, potentially bringing America into war with China. 

Duterte’s reticence on all of these matters suggests she is following in her father’s footsteps, which would signal that her support for a strategic relationship with Washington cannot be relied upon or taken for granted. For its part, Beijing is salivating over this opportunity, as it is in Chinese interest to create a breach in hopes that U.S. forces are denied access to Philippine naval and airbases, a change that would weaken American deterrence against a possible Chinese military move on Taiwan. Already Chinese malign covert influence operations have introduced new propaganda lines to exploit this split, with accounts on Philippine social media pushing readers to believe that Marcos is a weak lackey, doing America’s bidding without regard for the Philippines’ own national interest. 


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What the U.S. should do 

The solution, however, is not to isolate Vice President Duterte-Carpio or hope she and her family are defeated in the next election. Rather, Washington must make a stronger and more visible effort to develop a relationship with her and her political allies now, and convince other skeptics that maintaining the U.S.-Philippine relationship is important.  

American diplomacy has been Manila-centric over the decades. As a young U.S. Government official working in East Asia, I took personal leave to visit family in Davao in 2004. Then-Mayor Rodrigo Duterte heard about my arrival and insisted on meeting me to deliver a message to the Bush Administration about his steadfast support for the U.S. in its Global War on Terror. There was no consular presence in Davao to speak of. Duterte noted that his contacts with U.S. officials had been sparse, and that they knew nothing about what he had achieved in Davao to advance the security and prosperity of his constituents. More than a decade later, when he became President, it seemed that American officials did not know how to deal with the populist and profane Duterte, which created unnecessary antagonism with Washington from the beginning. 

Of course, developing a relationship with the Dutertes must go beyond diplomacy and moral suasion. Washington must demonstrate its support for the Philippines by incentivizing broader engagement by American businesses in areas that Philippine politicians care about, particularly in agriculture, mineral extraction, and reliable sustainable energy. This is especially true for the central and southern Philippines, where the Dutertes enjoy broad support. 

America must also prove that its commitment to the defense of the Philippines is genuine and substantial. Currently, Beijing is making the case to the Philippine public and political stakeholders that affirmation of the Mutual Defense Treaty and the stationing of U.S. military assets is more for Taiwanese than Philippine interests, or that it’s a political chip for the U.S. to one-up the Chinese in their global competition. A tangible demonstration would be the sale of American weaponry to the decrepit Philippine military that advances an asymmetric defense strategy. Economic circumstances make it impossible for Manila to buy the F-35 or grow its naval force architecture. Instead, Washington should take lessons learned from Ukraine and provide paths for Manila to acquire intelligence and battle management tools and sea and air-based drones that can deter or defeat Chinese naval and air assets. This would help make the interoperability and integration of the Philippine military into American military strategy a reality, and not just for show.  

It would also help the long-term strength of a crucial American relationship. 

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. 

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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