In January 2023, less than a year after assuming the presidency, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. signaled his administration’s decisive pivot to America by announcing that the United States would be given access to four additional military sites on Philippine territory.
This was a marked departure not only from his predecessor’s China-leaning posture, but also from his own earlier stance. During the election campaign, when he was still politically aligned with then President Rodrigo Duterte, Mr. Marcos had warned: “If you let the US come in, you make China your enemy.”
The expansion of basing access under the Philippine-US Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (Edca) was projected as an affirmation of the country’s abiding loyalty to its only treaty ally and former colonial master. Then President Joe Biden promptly recognized it as such and reciprocated with an invitation for the President to visit Washington in May that same year.
But what a difference a change in the occupant of the White House makes.
Barely two years later, in July 2025, Mr. Marcos was back in Washington, this time to negotiate better trade terms with America’s new president, the mercurial Donald Trump. We do not know how Mr. Marcos framed his request for lower tariffs, but Trump’s response could not have been what he expected. He bluntly dismissed the notion that special friendships carry benefits. “You dealing with China wouldn’t bother me at all,” Trump reportedly said. “The United States has a good relationship with China, too.”
With the recent release of the 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS), we now have a clearer sense of where that remark is coming from. The document reflects a United States that has recognized the limits of its global ambition even as it seeks to consolidate its hegemony closer to home. It asserts what it calls a “Trump Corollary” to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine: the Western Hemisphere—North and South America—will be treated as America’s core security perimeter, off-limits to external powers such as China and Russia.
This is a more selective, geographically bounded vision of American power, adapted to a globalized world in which no single state can dominate everywhere at once.
The section on Asia, tellingly subtitled “Win the Economic Future, Prevent Military Confrontation,” acknowledges China’s successful rise as a rich and powerful country—an outcome the document attributes in part to American complacency. The stated goal is to rebalance economic relations with China, emphasizing “reciprocity and fairness” in order to restore American economic independence and prevent allied economies from becoming subordinate to any competing power.
This is an unabashed America First agenda, centered less on values than on economic position. It commits the US to safeguarding freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and preventing any power from controlling sea lanes vital to global shipping. From this perspective, deterring a conflict over Taiwan becomes a priority—not so much for Taiwan’s own sake as for the systemic consequences of its capture.
Here lies the document’s most sensitive point. China regards such declarations as a direct challenge to its long-standing claim that Taiwan is part of its sovereign territory. Yet how far the US is prepared to go to prevent a unilateral change in Taiwan’s status remains deliberately ambiguous. Trump has repeatedly emphasized burden sharing, insisting that America’s allies must “step up and spend—and more importantly, do—much more for collective defense.” India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and even Taiwan itself are expected to shoulder a greater share of the cost.
Conspicuously absent from the NSS is any explicit mention of the Philippines—or of China’s increasingly aggressive maneuvers around the islands and maritime features we regard as part of our exclusive economic zone.
America no longer presents itself, in ideological terms, as the leader and defender of the free world. Implicitly, it is telling allies like us that we are on our own when it comes to development and, ultimately, defense—which is as it should be. But it is equally clear that the document views the Philippines primarily as territory astride the First Island Chain, offering access for rapid force projection in the event of a Taiwan contingency. The Edca facilities we have made available serve this strategic purpose above all else.
This places us in an uncomfortable position: exposed to the risks of a major power conflict, yet enjoying no special economic advantage and little say in setting the regional agenda.
It is time we revisited our own national security strategy.
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