Philippine Intervention
delivered by
FOREIGN AFFAIRS SECRETARY TEODORO L. LOCSIN, JR.
during the
ASEAN Post-ministerial Conference Session with the United States
04 August 2021
Excellencies, good morning.
I am pleased to see you again, Secretary Blinken; now we see ourselves through a lens digitally, to borrow from Saint Paul; but one day face to face. At its best, this saves us jet lag; at worse static, silence and frozen faces on the screen. But one day “soon” we’ll be back to face-to-face.
“Soon” is now a year and a half. We are still in the pandemic that paused here and there only to get its second wind as the Delta variant.
In Southeast Asia we’re unanimous that vaccination is key to living through it and economic recovery; but it doesn’t depend on us only. Most of our trade is bilateral with the two giant economies. It won’t do to stand up to the virus and fight it; the virus is in and eating away at you the instant you put a bare face to it. But President Biden won’t stop fighting it on the only terms it can be beaten, with scientific invention and near wartime deployment. Abroad, he’s had more leeway to do it the sensible way. There are vastly more people out here who want to live and let others live than the opposite. We thank him. I thank you.
The United States has been more than generous with much-needed vaccines, directly and through COVAX. It has led with its support for the COVID-19 ASEAN Recovery Fund. Crucially, President Biden backed WTO’s proposal to waive intellectual property rights on vaccines. In an increasingly likely future of regular booster shots for COVID — like we’ve done for the common flu — this is a lifeline cast faster, farther, and wider than any alternative but prayer. And that’s had a spotty record in this pandemic.
The road to recovering what’s lost, regaining the formerly enviable the economic momentum of this region, and finally to a sustainable economy post-pandemic is not linear with a singular solution. It will have to be multi-faceted and many layered, involving varied global actors at opposite ends of the world. It’s like the other common cause: fighting climate change: we all pitch in or share the same fate.
Survival and recovery depend as much on American economic recovery as China’s. And while both can go each their own way, it won’t be as fast and sure as if they do it in sync. But ASEAN doesn’t have the luxury of choice. We need you and we’re not sure you need us. Here we all beat the pandemic and recover — or none without the world’s two biggest most competitive economies.
The causes of the rivalry are varied — and to each side justified. It may be Allison’s inescapable Trap or just power envy. It would be nice if both take pause.
Boxing matches come in limited rounds; free-for-all brawls are for bars. You’ve assured me that in the angriest exchanges both still left room enough to accommodate common concerns like commerce. My uncle was a varsity boxer; he told me the fiercest expressions are made for the cameras before the fight.
I told Asia Society that US-China rivalry feels like a fight between old merchant families Some things must be left untouched and kept going; or the fight isn’t worth the candle lighting the room. No one blows out the candle or they’ll be boxing the dark.
So we seek, in what we hope is a universal desire, to strengthen cooperation with the U.S. in stabilizing supply chains, increasing trade and investments and sharpening focus on digital technology; the least risky way to do business today.
That road includes climate action. We see its imperative in the increased frequency and intensity of fires across forests and plains, heatwaves withering crops, droughts parching farmlands; alternatively flash floods of uncommon scale swallowing cities.
No one’s preaching peace at any price; one ends up on the cross that way. But even competing powers must share this one cause — or there won’t be a worthwhile battlefield on a parched planet.
We expect China to get on board the same ship to Glasgow; she’s on the manifest anyway and has paid her way in renewable technologies. If climate action does not measure up to what is needed, we all face the same fate of diminished existence or extinction altogether.
It is in the spaces made for cooperation between the Great Powers — in the commons essential to human flourishing — that we want to situate ASEAN. And it is not to take from both opportunistically but to work with both for the greater benefit of the region and our inextricably connected world. Let us, for example, build on the ASEAN-US Smart Cities network; ASEAN has proposed more such networks, poising them for the ultimate connectivity between connectivities.
When we last met this way a few weeks ago, we agreed on the need to restart the ASEAN-US strategic partnership. We welcomed American efforts in upholding multilateralism and a rules-based international system, respect for sovereignty and the rule of law, support for the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, and maintaining ASEAN Centrality in the evolving regional architecture. Defense Secretary Austin told my President that America is not asking anyone to take sides; America is just asking help in the work of keeping level the playing field for competition. The old phrase is the balance of power; always a delicate and close-run thing.
We thank America for its clear reaffirmation of its obligations under the Mutual Defense Treaty. The alliance is vital to maintaining stability in the Asia-Pacific region. All the protagonists in the region, without a single exception I can assure everyone, see a strong US presence as imperative to peace and stability in Southeast Asia. We like to think it comes from the concluding plea of The Lord’s Prayer, “And lead us not into temptation,” when we feel too strong to resist the yen for domination. We have restored that balance by reinstating an improved Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States.
We took notice when the U.S. urged the cessation of provocative actions certain to provoke reactions by maritime militia in the South China Sea and renounced the excessive reach of China’s necessarily municipal Coast Guard Law. Such declarations reinforce the rules-based order and benefit all that use the vital artery that is the South China Sea.
We welcome the United States’ open support for the 2016 Arbitral Award. The Award is the Philippines’ contribution to strengthening the legal order of the seas. It must be seen for what it is: a benefit to all the world across the board. It singles out no one; was carefully crafted to be unusable as a weapon for disputation, and is most helpful in clarifying maritime issues. Only a bad conscience should feel aggrieved by it.
On Myanmar, we’re sticking fast to the swift implementation of the Five-Point Consensus. The Chair’s Special Envoy must be allowed to start working, so unhindered humanitarian assistance be provided. For dialogue amongst involved parties to be effective, we call for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, other political detainees and her foreign adviser. Constructive dialogue is what the Five-Point Consensus calls for. It can only happen when everyone concerned is at the table. Myanmar will decide the future credibility of our regional organization; whether it means something or nothing.
In the clash of conceptions of democracy — the real freedom to exercise it or the license that naked might confers to suppress it, the Philippines urges that the people of Myanmar be spared. They must be helped as generously as possible in this pandemic; never mind if that prolongs tyranny’s grip until the last Burmese standing is shot — and leaves the junta with a graveyard. It is welcome to call that peace.
Thank you, Hishammuddin Tun Hussein for your wise reflections. They touch us deeply