Manila Can Convene the Great Powers. It Cannot Outvote Them.

In April 2026, the Philippines did something that is hard to square with the image of a country deepening its defense ties with the United States: it asked Washington for a sanctions waiver to import Russian crude oil. Energy Secretary Garin made the logic plain.

Diversification is necessary so that we are not dependent on just one country. — Sharon Garin

The same month, Iran designated the Philippines a "non-hostile country" and granted its tankers safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz — a remarkable arrangement for a US treaty ally, secured through bilateral diplomacy led by Foreign Secretary Lazaro ^[1]. Two months earlier, American and Australian warships had conducted joint naval drills with the Philippine Navy in the West Philippine Sea, the exercise shadowed by two PLA Navy warships ^[2]. Manila was buying oil from one rival, securing safe passage from another, and drilling for conflict with a third — all while anchored in a US security alliance. The defense architecture only deepened from there. In March, the Philippines signed its first-ever European visiting forces agreement, with France ^[3]. In June, Japan and the Philippines launched formal maritime boundary negotiations east of Taiwan, explicitly framed as countering Chinese military expansion ^[4]. The same month, Manila and Vietnam elevated ties to an Enhanced Strategic Partnership ^[5]. By July, the Quad foreign ministers — from the US, India, Australia, and Japan — were meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN gathering in Manila to reaffirm Indo-Pacific maritime security, all under a Philippine chair ^[6]. At the same time, Manila kept a functional channel open to Beijing. In January, the Philippines and China resumed bilateral political dialogue in Cebu City after a year-long hiatus ^[7]. By July, Manila was signaling openness to restarting joint oil and gas exploration with China — even as it protested a Chinese floating structure at Scarborough Shoal and accused Beijing of assaulting a navy member near Second Thomas Shoal ^[8]. Military chief Brawner issued his own warning in June.

We will not allow an incident before to happen again, where a small structure was built and later on, it grew into an artificial island. — Romeo Brawner Jr.

The Philippines was confronting China and talking to it in the same month, sometimes the same week. The chairmanship itself became a crisis-management engine. Marcos personally mediated Thailand-Cambodia border talks at the Cebu summit in May, with the Armed Forces of the Philippines leading the ASEAN observer team on the border ^[9]. Foreign Secretary Lazaro, serving simultaneously as ASEAN special envoy to Myanmar, pressed for direct access to Aung San Suu Kyi and planned a humanitarian mission ^[10]. In March, ASEAN called for an immediate Middle East ceasefire under Philippine leadership ^[11]. In April, the bloc ratified a petroleum security deal to counter supply disruptions from the Iran conflict ^[12]. The same month, ASEAN called for permanent US-Iran peace and Strait of Hormuz access, and Lazaro proposed an ASEAN foreign ministers' crisis communications protocol ^[13]. Marcos scaled the summits down to what Executive Secretary Recto called a "bare bones" format focused on petroleum, food security, and migrant workers.

It is a bare bones Asean Summit… We will be talking about three main subjects — about the supply of petroleum and petroleum products, about the supply … and the price of food, and migrant workers. — Bongbong Marcos

The Cebu summit in May was the switchboard at full capacity: an energy contingency plan, the Thailand-Cambodia ceasefire, Myanmar discussions, Timor-Leste's integration, and coordination to evacuate over a million Southeast Asian nationals from the Middle East — all under a deliberately stripped-down format ^[14]. Lazaro supplied the metaphor himself. At the 10th anniversary of the South China Sea arbitral ruling in July, he cast the Philippines as a beacon for international law.

When the waters grow turbulent, when unilateral claims cloud the horizon and when the shadow of coercion looms, nations need something far more permanent than political convenience. — Tess Lazaro

The strategy's limits became visible the moment the venue shifted from one Manila controlled to one it did not. In March, Marcos traveled to New York to campaign personally for a UN Security Council seat, framing it as giving "developing countries a voice in the highest forum of global peace and security" ^[15]. In June, the General Assembly voted. The Philippines lost to Kyrgyzstan, 49 to 142 — its first failed UNSC campaign since 1957. Analysts cited South China Sea tensions as a decisive factor; both China and Russia backed Kyrgyzstan ^[16]. The vote exposed the asymmetry. At the ASEAN table, Manila could set the agenda, convene the rivals, and keep every channel open. In the General Assembly, China and Russia could marshal opposition across the developing world, and the Philippines had no chair's gavel to shape the outcome. Functional multi-alignment worked where Manila controlled the room. It failed where its rivals did. The Philippines is not neutral, and it does not pretend to be: 79 percent of Filipinos view China as the greatest external security threat, and 60 percent say the country should not trust Beijing ^[17]. The multi-vector approach is not about equidistance. It is about keeping every channel that can deliver a concrete benefit — oil, safe passage, a ceasefire — open for as long as possible, while the alliance architecture hardens beneath it. The switchboard that connected everyone in Cebu went dead in the General Assembly.