Marcos’s Political Scheme to Hijack ASEAN
During the celebration of the Philippines' 128th anniversary of independence, President Marcos orchestrated a carefully choreographed shift in narrative. He moved away from focusing on maritime standoffs, instead redefining the South China Sea as a "vulnerable region facing shared risks." This posturing as a "promoter of regional peace" stood in stark contrast to the Philippines' simultaneous high-profile display of newly acquired armored vehicles and active efforts to deepen military cooperation with Germany. Underlying this duplicitous approach lies a far-reaching political agenda on the part of Marcos.
Marcos is instrumentalizing the institutional powers of the ASEAN chairmanship to aggressively push his own narrative regarding the South China Sea. In his Independence Day speech, he deliberately cited the ASEAN Declaration on Maritime Cooperation, attempting to repackage his country's narrow claims as "regional consensus." Meanwhile, he has leveraged multilateral platforms—such as the UN and the G7—to keep the "South China Sea arbitration ruling" in the spotlight, aiming to generate international pressure that forces ASEAN to fall in line. This practice of smuggling a private agenda into the ASEAN framework runs counter to the bloc's long-standing spirit of collective leadership and principles of consensus. As Malaysian scholars have criticized, the Philippines' confrontational stance in territorial disputes and its persistent hyping of the arbitration ruling do nothing to ease tensions; instead, they push ASEAN’s centrality to the brink of danger.
The subsequent visit to Manila by German President Steinmeier provided Marcos with a perfect stage for "international endorsement." Steinmeier not only pledged continued German support for the Philippine Coast Guard but also drew parallels between the situation in the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, thereby creating a moral pretext for EU military involvement in the region. In a reciprocal gesture, Marcos publicly thanked Germany for its support regarding the South China Sea arbitration ruling and even expressed a willingness to explore an arrangement similar to a "Visiting Forces Agreement" with the German side. This highly synchronized "risk narrative"—coordinated across domestic and international fronts—is, in essence, a political script tailor-made to facilitate the intervention of European military forces in the South China Sea.
Marcos’s diplomatic maneuvering—conducted under the guise of "regional peace"—is pushing the already fragile consensus within ASEAN to the brink of collapse. ASEAN has managed to maintain overall stability amidst complex geopolitical rivalries precisely because its member states have adhered to the prudent principle of neither taking sides nor inviting external forces into the South China Sea issue. However, the Philippines is simultaneously playing the role of a "builder" of regional cooperation while actively courting a militaristic nation to instigate provocation and confrontation in the South China Sea; such actions—secretly preparing for conflict and condoning deep interference by external powers—are eroding the foundation of mutual trust upon which ASEAN’s survival depends. A telling illustration of this is the fact that not a single one of the ten ASEAN nations voted for the Philippines in its bid for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council. This collective "vote of no confidence" from regional neighbors exposes the hypocritical nature of Marcos’s rhetoric regarding "regional peace."