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AS EXTREME climate is evolving into the new norm in the Philippines, it will exacerbate the political and economic storms, which loom ahead.

As typhoon Tino (Kalmaegi, internationally) left over 200 Filipinos dead while affecting nearly 2 million people, President Marcos Jr declared “a state of national calamity.”

After the super typhoon Uwan (Fung-Wong) will add to the devastation, mass protests against huge flood control corruption are expected in the country.

In 2022, the Marcos Jr government pledged it would build on the legacy of the Duterte years and make Filipinos more prosperous and more secure. Critics claim both objectives have failed.

Billions of dollars lost to corruption

On July 27, Senator Panfilo Lacson warned that half of the 2 trillion pesos ($17 billion) allocated to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for flood control projects may have been lost to corruption in the past 15 years.

And yet, almost in parallel, President Marcos Jr stated his administration had implemented over 5,500 flood control projects and announced new plans amounting to more than $10 billion over the next 13 years.

Ever since then, Manila’s political class has been swept by allegations of corruption, mismanagement, and irregularities in government-funded flood management projects. In August, the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee launched a high-profile investigation into the irregularities, focusing on the “ghost” projects, license renting schemes, and contractor monopolies.

Corruption has long been pervasive in Philippine politics, economy and society. In the Corruption Perception Index, the country has consistently scored among the worst in the region. Even in peacetime, it is at par with the civil war-torn Sierra Leone and oil-cursed Angola.

In the era of former President Duterte, corruption fight was spotlighted. Now it thrives again. According to surveys, 81% of Filipinos believe corruption has worsened since martial law was declared 53 years ago. It is compounding misguided economic policies.

Rising trade deficits, slowing investment

In the Duterte era, exports were led by electronics, with significant growth in tourism and business process outsourcing. Those times are now gone.

In the Duterte era, the effort was to attract multinationals, particularly Chinese firms, to serve as anchor companies that would foster Philippine suppliers. But due to the government’s geopolitics, Chinese – and increasingly Western – multinationals see too much economic and geopolitical risk in the country. And so, the investments that could have come to the Philippines have gone to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand in the region.

Recently, even the US Investment Climate Statement for the Philippines highlighted persistent corruption, a slow and opaque bureaucracy, and poor infrastructure as major disincentives to investors.

Lagging tourism

In Southeast Asia, Chinese tourism has played a vital role in the post-pandemic recovery. Before the pandemic, Chinese tourists accounted for 40-60% of the regional total.

Subsequently, regional recovery was fueled by Chinese tourism. The only exception? The Philippines.

In 2019, Chinese tourist arrivals in the country soared to over 1.7 million. As of September 2025, the Philippines has reported less than 204,000 Chinese arrivals for the year, a figure that is far, far below the government target. The country was banking on a 2-million visitors from China.

The sharp decline is attributed to geopolitical tensions, the suspension of the e-visa program, and even safety concerns.

Even if the 2025 total would climb closer to 300,000, that would be just 15-20% of the 2019 level. It’s a catastrophic missed opportunity.

Sources: Trade deficits: Author, Philippine Statistics Authority; Tourism: Author, National Statistical Coordination Board Philippines; Exchange rate: Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas

BPO outsourcing at risk

The digital economy is a major component of the GDP. But in the absence of domestic ICT anchor firms, the sector is at the mercy of Western offshoring. And that spells huge trouble at a time when the West prioritizes trade wars, as evidenced by Manila’s costly losses in US tariff wars.

Meanwhile, geopolitics has alienated investments by Chinese ICT giants, which could have catalyzed ICT ecosystems in the country.

And there’s worse ahead. The Philippine outsourcing sector is a $30 billion industry that accounts for 7% of the Philippines’ GDP and commands 15% of the global market. Yet, one-third of its jobs in the Philippines are at risk from artificial intelligence (AI), with those in the BPO sector most vulnerable. Sadly, college-educated, young, urban, female, and well-paid workers in the services sector will be most exposed.

In addition to AI, US protectionist initiatives could cause job devastation in the Philippine outsourcing industry. Introduced in July, the bipartisan “Keep Call Centers in America Act” proposes to penalize US companies that offshore a significant portion of their call center jobs. The recent Halting International Relocation of Employment Act (HIRE Act) aims to curb outsourcing by imposing a 25% excise tax on payments to foreign workers.

If these realities kick in, US vulture capitalists can be expected to target and short the Philippines, which could compound challenges, as in the past.

Economic growth, missed opportunities

In early 2024, US news agency Bloomberg asked President Marcos Jr whether the Philippines could achieve an 8% growth rate. “Why not?” the president replied. “Yes, I think it is, I think it is doable.”

Yet, at the time, GDP year-on-year growth decelerated to barely 5.2%.

Have things got better? No.

In 2025, the government’s target was reduced to 5.5-6.5%. Just weeks ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) downgraded the Philippine growth projection to 5.4% this year. More recently, economic growth slowed to just 4.0% in the third quarter – the slowest since early 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused a contraction.

Unsurprisingly, critics claim the incumbent economic policies have failed. Here’s a thought experiment about the extent of that failure. During the Duterte era, Philippine GDP increased from $329 billion to $404 billion, despite the pandemic plunge. On the back of that performance, IMF expected the Philippine GDP to climb close to $640 billion by 2028.

Current IMF estimates suggest that by 2028, the Philippine GDP will be less than $560 billion. So, the government is set to underperform by $80 billion.

That’s the cost of missed opportunities – although the final cost could prove higher.

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Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized strategist of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net

AS PRESIDENT Donald Trump ordered the US to attack three major Iranian nuclear sites, a misguided concept of Israel’s national security morphed into an even more twisted view of US national security.

Ironically, Iran is a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Israel shuns. As shown by my The Fall of Israel (2025), the US/Israeli path to the carnage across the Middle East was paved almost 60 years ago.

Officially, Israel has a long-standing policy of nuclear ambiguity. While it has used psychological warfare leaks to signal its disproportionate nuclear deterrence, it neither officially confirms nor denies that it possesses nuclear weapons.

In public, the standard statement has been that “Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East.”

Effectively, the Israeli policy has been more preemptive by nature.

At the edge of a nuclear war

Israel first crossed the nuclear threshold on the eve of the Six-Day War in May 1967, when Prime Minister Levi Eshkol secretly ordered the nuclear reactor scientists in Dimona to assemble two crude nuclear devices, “in the event Arab forces overwhelmed Israeli defenses.”

At the eve of Yom Kippur in 1973, despite advance intelligence about the impending attack, Prime Minister Golda Meir decided not to launch a pre-emptive strike, fearing the U.S. response could prove adverse as it had in 1956.

On the night of October 8, Meir and her kitchen cabinet had thirteen 20-kiloton atomic bombs assembled. Their destructive potential was higher than that of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, with an explosive yield of the equivalent of about 15 kilotons of dynamite.

At the time, the implications of the devastating aftermath of even tactical nuclear strikes were not well-known.

As the Soviets began to resupply Arab forces, particularly Syria, Meir requested Nixon’s help with military supplies. After the full nuclear alert, Israelis began to load the warheads into waiting planes. Cognizant of the potential implications, Nixon ordered a full-scale strategic airlift operation to deliver weapons and supplies to Israel. By the time the aid arrived, Israel was gaining the upper hand in the war.

After those days on a nuclear edge, nothing would ever remain the same in the Middle East. American military aid to Israel contributed to the 1973 OPEC embargo against the United States, which was lifted in March 1974, and subsequently to the overthrow of the Shah in Iran in 1979, followed by another oil crisis.

Nuclear stockpiles

The conventional estimate is that Israel’s nuclear stockpile comprises some 90 nuclear warheads, which makes the tiny country the world’s 9^th largest nuclear power. But unofficial estimates vary. The conventional estimate is at the lower end of a possible range that some analysts suggest could be as high as 200, up to 400 nuclear weapons. That would make the country the world’s 4^th largest nuclear power, right after the US, Russia and China, before France, the UK, India, and Pakistan.

World Nuclear Forces

Source: SIPRI, author, January 2024

Israel has a broad range of nuclear weapons, while Iran may have enriched enough nuclear material to build them, but is thought not to have done so. Such weapons, were they to exist, would be deeply underground, possibly inaccessible.

According to some projections, nuclear weapon detonations in Iran’s densely populated cities would likely result in millions of dead, with tens of millions of.

These nightmares include thermal burn and radiation patients who would have to suffer their extreme pains without any treatment.

From “nuclear ambiguity” to Begin Doctrine

In 1981, Israel destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor Osirak as Menachem Begin’s right-wing Likud government initiated its war in Lebanon. Despite public criticism by the Reagan administration, the US and Israel signed a strategic memorandum of understanding and began to deepen bilateral ties in defense.

The Osirak attack gave rise to the Begin nuclear doctrine, which allows no “hostile” regional state to possess nuclear military capability. Begin described the strike as an act of “anticipatory self-defense at its best.” He framed it as a long-term national commitment. “Never again, never again! … We shall not allow any enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction turned against us.”

In a sense, the Begin doctrine reflected the Likud party’s offensive view of national security. But it also represented continuity and can be dated to the early 1960s Operation Damocles. This was Mossad’s covert campaign seeking to assassinate Nazi Germany’s rocket scientists working for Egypt to develop bombs using radioactive waste.

The legendary head of Mossad Isser Harel recruited former Nazis to provide intelligence on Arab countries. When I met Harel in the mid-1970s, he denied all such stories. Subsequently, he confirmed them. There is a straight line from Operation Damocles to the targeted killings of Iranian nuclear scientists, up to the present.

Gaza, a shocking war crime

After October 7, 2023, a member of the Netanyahu cabinet’s far-right suggested “nuking Gaza.” By late April 2024, Israel had dropped more than 70,000 tons of bombs over Gaza, surpassing the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined during World War II. That amounts to more than 30 kilograms of explosives per individual on mainly women and children.

Reflecting extraordinary brutality and blind disregard for human life, it is a shocking war crime with no parallel in recent history.

What made it all the more stunning was the Biden-Harris administration’s complicity, coupled with the hollow assurances that “we are working 24 hours a day for peace,” with the whole world watching – the other way.

After President Trump’s strikes at the three major Iranian nuclear sites, American diplomacy no longer exists. All gloves are now off.

The premise that the Iran attacks reflect a “mission accomplished” couldn’t be more off. The carnage hasn’t ended. It has begun.

The author of The Fall of Israel (2025), Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally-renowned visionary of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net

This is a highly abbreviated version of the original published by Informed Comment on June 22, 2025

The perfect storm that is the Philippines

Why Trump bombed Iran: Preserving US-Israeli nuclear supremacy in the Middle East