After three days of briefings in Manila with all kinds of sharp people, I found myself thinking about some of the bigger implications. To be clear, I am not an Indo-Pacific expert, so some of this might be common knowledge, widely accepted wisdom, or incredibly dim, uninformed stuff. But that is why this is a Semi-Spew--no lit reviews, all half-baked thinking. You let me know which ideas have merit, please.
1. Canada could get sucked into a Philippines-PRC conflict. People worry about a PRC-Taiwan war having global implications and rightly so, but the Philippines has been involved in a steady escalation of tensions. It could be that despite their best efforts, things get hot. The PRC already essentially owns the South China Sea aka West Philippines Sea, and they could push harder or ultimately cause some deaths while enforcing "their sovereignty" over this space. With Canadian naval vessels visiting 4 times a year, it is not far fetched for Canada to be caught in the middle of something. Canada is not an ally (only the US is), but it is a partner and a significant one. I am not saying Canada should flee, but I am saying folks need to be thinking about this.
2. Who is asymmetric now? China is now the strongest player in the region with the US distracted and with China far more committed. Plus the US Navy can't even feed itself right now. Before Pearl Harbor, everyone in the higher levels of the US armed forces knew that if Japan attacked, it would hit the Philippines early and hard and the US would not be able to save them. The successful first strike at Pearl made that more obvious, but it was always the case. Now? If China attacked the Philippines, it would take time for the US to really respond (which it wouldn't under Trump). So, just as Ukraine was on its own in February of 2022, the Filipinos need to be creative about how to make the Chinese miserable. Being the most powerful makes one the most extended and ironically quite vulnerable.
3. Can they count on Canada? One slide had a bullet on about working with the Canada in the long term with consistent planning and such, and I had to wonder: can Canada be consistent? Not just a matter of the Conservatives coming to power and focusing elsewhere, but also the Liberals are focused on cutting spending and, yes, the car deal with China may lead Carney's government to try to avoid offending China at the expense of the interests of the Philippines. I would not bet a lot on Canada's staying power here. On the other hand, the same force keeping Canada engaged in Ukraine could work here--diaspora politics. Lots of Filipino-Canadian voters--about one million Filipinos in Canada.
4. In one briefing, the Filipinos discussed one of the things Canada brings is expertise on HADR logistiics--humanitarian assistance/disaster relief. This runs directly counter to the priorities of the Canadian Armed Forces. The CAF find emergency operations to be a distraction, a drain, and would like to get out the business. The mantra of being a last responder, not a first responder. Provincial-federal burden sharing problems will not go away, so the CAF is stuck. So, they might just consider how their experiences doing this home and abroad is actually an important bit of capital that is handy when Canada wants to be seen as relevant. The military is an instrumental of national power, as they all know, and it turns out a component of their power is their domestic ops/HADR experience. Maybe value it rather than try to dodge it.
5. Canada keeps trying to get the big trade score: China, then India, then China. There are more than 100 million people in the Philippines, hundreds of millions in Indonesia, and so on. Rather than putting all of Canada's trade eggs into one big unreliable, coercive basket, how about trying to have a portfolio of trading partners here. Spend less political capital on the impossible big score and focus more on managing improved trade with a bundle of countries, none that can engage in significant coercion against Canada. Just a thought.
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