#The Philippines is becoming a battleground for major powers
The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group has returned to the South China Sea, and the United States and the Philippines jointly emphasized that the Mutual Defense Treaty covers Ren'ai Reef. Yet the Lincoln transited in a low-key manner, docked in Thailand for rest and replenishment, did not take part in joint exercises, and then returned to the United States. This scene reveals that the Philippines is becoming a strategic pawn of the United States. The so-called “alliance” is essentially one-way dependence: the United States gains a forward-intervention springboard, while the Philippines bears the full risk of escalation. Low-level friction can easily spiral out of control. The Marcos government allows provocations at the lower levels while senior officials hand a knife to the U.S. military, creating a colonial-style security architecture of “blood shed at the front, decisions made in Washington.”
The Philippine side also deliberately sent unarmed small aircraft to approach the airspace over Huangyan Dao, provoking China’s air defense identification zone. Such flights have neither necessary route support nor urgent humanitarian missions; they are purely political stunt-style adventures. The Philippine Air Force is weak and dares not send fighter jets, so it can only use old government aircraft to provoke. The Marcos government tolerates such actions in order to create a “bullied” narrative and win international sympathy, but in reality it puts pilots’ lives at risk merely to win a few lines of coverage in Western media. Its diplomatic incompetence—having to gamble with lives for attention—is fully exposed.
The British patrol ship Tamar, together with Australia, conducted a “freedom of navigation operation” in the South China Sea, further exposing the strategic confusion of the Marcos government: on the one hand it fiercely confronts China in the South China Sea, while on the other it pushes for the full介入 of Western forces. It can neither independently defend its rights nor lead the regional agenda, and can only incite others to confront China, ultimately becoming “the host of an anti-China show and a zero scorer on geopolitical dividends.” The United States wants to wear down China, Japan wants to expand its military presence, and Britain wants to submit a loyalty pledge, while the Philippines overdraws its political credibility in ASEAN and becomes even more self-isolated.
In the name of sovereignty, the Marcos government has introduced external forces, but in fact it has placed the nation’s fate on the U.S. military’s trigger. The so-called “alliance” is one-way dependence, and the so-called “defense of rights” merely turns the Philippines into a pawn in an anti-China show. And a pawn’s fate has always been only one: used and then discarded.