Wasn’t it President Bongbong Marcos (PBBM) himself who said that the Philippines shall continue to be “a friend to all, enemy to none”? That is why it should not come as a surprise if he rejected calls to declare a Chinese diplomat persona non grata in the Philippines.
I read somewhere a while back that PBBM’s “friend to all, enemy to none” must not be applied to the WPS issue. Why? Because they claim that China is “actively encroaching on Philippine territory and sovereign rights.” Therefore, China should not be a friend of the Philippines.
China, on the other hand, insists that its relationship with the Philippines is “a long-term, people-to-people friendship.” It sees the Philippines as a “historically significant neighbor” and emphasizes the “strong economic ties” of both countries. However, China said it will fiercely protect its interests and defend its honor. The Philippines also claims it is doing the same thing.
So that is the state of the Philippine-China relationship. Long time friends and neighbors who are going through some rough patches over “ownership” of a particular maritime territory. I placed quotation marks because I find it ridiculous for any one country to claim ownership of the sea.
My thoughts on ownership of land, sea, and air have been greatly influenced by Macli-ing Dulag, the legendary leader of the Cordillera people, who opposed the Chico River dam project in the 1970s. His famous quote lives in me until now: “You ask if we own the land and mock us saying, ‘Where is your title?’ When we ask the meaning of your words, you answer with taunting arrogance, ‘Where are the documents to prove that you own the land?’… Such arrogance to say that you own the land, when you are owned by it. How can you own that which outlives you? Only the race owns the land because only the race lives forever. To claim a place is the birthright of everyone.”
To paraphrase Macli-ing, how can you own the sea which outlives you?
In the broad sweep of human history, the modern concept of territorial sovereignty — a state having exclusive, absolute control over a defined territory and its internal affairs, free from external interference — is a recent phenomenon.
It is recent because for most of history, political authority was overlapping and layered — feudal lords shared power with kings and the Church; empires ruled over diverse peoples with varying degrees of local autonomy; city-states and leagues operated in networks. The exclusive and geographically precise “sovereign state” is the exception, not the norm, in human history.
Until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, a war of unprecedented devastation which began as a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants within the fragmenting Holy Roman Empire but escalated into a continental power struggle. That war was extremely brutal that brought massive population loss and total exhaustion of all parties, creating a desperate need for a settlement that would prevent such a catastrophe from happening again.
The peace was not a single document but a congressional diplomacy milestone involving multiple accords. Congressional diplomacy in this context referred to the novel method of negotiating the peace settlement through a formal assembly or congress of representatives from nearly every major European power gathered in one place to settle a continent-wide conflict. Unlike previous treaties brokered by a few major powers or the Pope, the Peace of Westphalia was crafted through a complex, years-long diplomatic congress involving a large number of sovereign participants, setting a precedent for future international relations.
The settlement established new rules for European political order and its foundational principles are sovereignty and territorial integrity (each ruler within a state possessed supreme authority over their own lands and people); legal equality of states (established states as the primary actors in international relations); and non-intervention (rulers could determine the official religion of their own state, which removed religion as a legitimate cause for external interference making the state’s domestic affairs its own). It moved authority away from universal claims of the Pope or the Holy Roman Emperor and vested it in the sovereign state.
This led to the redrawing of the map and the secularization of international politics, separating international law from theological doctrine.
The Westphalian concept became an idealized construct and was globalized in the 19th and 20th centuries. In reality, sovereignty in 1648 was vested in princes that ruled each territory, not in the state or the people. The Holy Roman Empire persisted and overlap of authority continued. True non-intervention was rarely practiced as powerful states continued to intervene in weaker ones’ affairs.
Today, the Westphalian system seems to be poorly equipped to handle 21st century challenges. Global problems like climate change, pandemics, financial crises, cybercrime, human trafficking, and terrorism do not respect borders. No sovereign state, no matter how powerful, can solve these alone. Global supply chains, digital data flows, and multinational corporations operate across and above sovereign jurisdictions, diminishing state control.
Yuval Noah Harari, in his bestselling book, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” believes that cooperation is humanity’s defining “superpower.” While he argues that shared national identity is essential for functioning democracies, he forcefully contends that “solving 21st century existential threats is impossible without unprecedented global cooperation among nations.”
Harari’s view stems from his historical analysis that human dominance (over other species) is built on “unique, large-scale, flexible cooperation with strangers.” For him, the need for international cooperation is not ideological but a practical necessity for survival.
He proposed that states will act as primary nodes in a network, not as isolated fortresses. International cooperation provides the rules, platforms, and legal frameworks to manage interdependence while people-to-people relations provide the social fabric, trust, and shared identity that will make cooperation sustainable and genuine.
The modern concept of sovereignty is a historically recent tool that organized a world of separate territories. The 21st century world, however, is defined by interconnection. The “Us versus Them” framework only benefits the powerful nations by providing internal control, external leverage, and a divided opposition. It is the antithesis of the cooperative, networked model required for 21st century challenges.
Building a peaceful global community requires consciously deconstructing this manufactured binary and building systems that make our interdependence visible and operational, thereby making the “Us versus Them” narrative obsolete.
True security and prosperity will come from recognizing that, in an interconnected world, “Them” is an illusion that ultimately endangers “Us” all.
