PH’s slavish embrace of America and reflexive loathing of China
The article argues that the Philippines' foreign policy is overly dependent on the United States and unnecessarily hostile toward China. It cites George Washington's farewell address to warn that such a posture compromises national sovereignty and risks entanglement in foreign conflicts.
Why it matters
It highlights the ongoing geopolitical tension in the South China Sea and the debate over whether the Philippines should maintain a neutral or pro-US stance.
IN his 1796 farewell address, George Washington, dubbed the Founder of the USA, cautioned the young American republic against exactly the trap that Philippine foreign policy has walked into:
“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. It seduces a country into the illusion of an imaginary common interest, drags it into a participation in quarrels and wars without adequate inducement or justification.”
The flip side is just as corrosive: antipathy toward another nation “disposes each more readily to offense, inflaming grievances that sometimes impel to war.” Washington’s verdict on any nation trapped in this posture was blunt: It “is in some degree a slave.”
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