Wenceslao: Pivot to pirouette?

THE biggest news for Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit to be held in the Philippines next week is the scheduled attendance of United States President Donald Trump. And one of the highlights of Trump’s attendance would be his talks with President Rodrigo Duterte. This will be the first face-to-face meeting between the two controversial leaders.

Duterte is a different leader when it comes to Trump compared with the leader he was when he dealt with Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama. Which is not surprising because Obama and Trump are different characters and hold different world views, aside from them belonging to two outwardly different parties. Obama’s criticism of the president’s war against illegal drugs reflected his nature and world view and his being with the Democratic Party. Trump is Republican.

But the difference, though is merely outward because both Obama and Trump are part of the same establishment with interests that haven’t changed through the years. Trump may not be as vocal in his criticism of the Philippines’ human rights situation as Obama but he could not veer away substantially from his government’s official policy on the matter. That’s why the world is watching how President Duterte’s meeting with Trump will turn out.

But I think human rights is not as big an issue to Trump as the one on South China Sea. Trump has not altered Obama’s policy of a US pivot towards the Pacific to counter China’s growing influence here, which means that his gracing the Asean Summit can be a form of flexing US muscle in Southeast Asia. We all know that China’s claim to almost all of the South China Sea overlapped with the claims of many Southeast Asian states.

What makes this interesting for us is the Duterte administration’s announced policy of a “pivot” to China and away from the US, a long-time ally. When Obama was president, the new policy had the president issuing harsh remarks against the US while praising China. The biggest shift was in the refusal by the Duterte administration to use an international court ruling favoring our claim to territories in the West Philippine Sea.

The president’s tone softened, however, in the past few months, especially during the siege in Marawi City by Maute group and Islamic State (IS)-loving militants. The Armed Forces of the Philippines’ offensive against the militants got a boost from the information, equipment and tactical help from the US considering its experience in dealing with militants in the Middle East. That proved that the Duterte administration cannot just fully drive the US away from its sight.

In a way, US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster could be right. In a recent interview with Rappler’s Maria Ressa, McMaster has expressed confidence that US-Philippines relations will remain strong despite President Duterte’s pronouncements. “The US is confident that that pivot could turn into a pirouette,” he said. Which seems to be starting to take shape now: the Duterte administration moving away from the US and sidling close to China, then spinning around to sidle back to the US.

Or can the Trump meeting fully realize the Duterte foreign policy pirouette?

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