The Iran conflict has accelerated the emergence of a more multipolar global order, compelling U.S. allies such as the Philippines to reassess their foreign policy priorities. Facing mounting energy and economic pressures, Manila is exploring greater engagement with China while pursuing a more independent, interest-driven approach to great power competition.
Barely weeks after signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to officially end its war against Iran, the United States has relaunched a new wave of attacks aimed at degrading Tehran’s ability to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz. This coincided with the U.S. President Donald Trump’s participation in the NATO Summit in neighboring Turkey, where he lambasted allies for not contributing to his ill-conceived war. It’s hard to understate the devastating impact of the US-Israeli war on Iran. Thousands of ordinary civilians, including school children, have been killed in the past month. Tens of billions of energy infrastructure have been damaged across the region. And the price of major raw materials, including fertilizers and semiconductor metals, have spiked amid the de facto shut down of arguably the world’s most critical chokepoint, the Strait of Hormuz. The resultant global economic shock could push additional 45 million people into acute. There is a real prospect of a global recession and years-long economic scarring. As European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde recently warned, the markets are "overly optimistic" by failing to account for long-term aftershocks "beyond what we can imagine at the moment”.
No wonder then, top European allies have refused to pitch in, with some even closing their military bases and airspace to U.S. operations against Iran earlier this year. Crucially, some of America’s frontline partners are reassessing their foreign policy altogether. Perhaps no country better represents this dramatic shift than the Philippines, a former U.S. colony, which has been at the forefront of constraining China’s maritime ambitions in Asia.
Under the Ferdinand Marcos Jr administration, the Southeast Asian nation has welcomed expanded American military presence on Philippine soil; signed a plethora of defense agreements with other Western powers; and adopted an uncompromising stance on the South China Sea disputes by, inter alia, deploying a ‘transparency initiative’ aimed at exposing threats to its sovereign claims in the area.
The Iran war, however, has forced the Philippines to recalibrate its foreign policy in dramatic ways. Not long after Manila began purchasing Russian oil and Marcos Jr. admitted that his country had to “restructure” ties with China to head off an energy crisis, top Filipino statesmen have stepped up their criticisms of Washington and, crucially, welcomed engagement with America’s rivals. Filipino Senator Panfilo Lacson, a staunch supporter of Philippine-US alliance throughout the decades, lambasted the US President Trump for his “narcissistic arrogance” and “brinkmanship” that extinguished chances of a diplomatic resolution of the Iran crisis in the past year.
Meanwhile, Lacson and other prominent senators have also backed efforts by the Philippines to engage Iran in order to secure access not only in the Strait of Hormuz but also to the Middle Eastern country’s vast energy resources. Confronted by an existential economic crisis, the Philippines will likely reassess its long-term posture towards the major powers in order to preserve its national interest in an increasingly uncertain global order.
The Suez Moment
A month into the conflict, the Trump administration’s endgame remained far from clear. Was it about Iran’s nuclear program, which the U.S. president claimed to have “obliterated” last year? Or was it about the Middle Eastern nation’s missile capabilities, which were supposedly almost entirely degraded in the opening weeks of the war, if not during Israel’s “12 Day War” attacks last year?
What’s clear to many observers, however, is the limits of American military power in spite of its humongous conventional superiority and qualitative edge in every domain of warfare. And yet, Iran managed to decimate a dozen American bases across the region; shut down dozens of U.S. aircrafts, including much-vaunted fighter jets; and, most crucially, exercise de facto control over the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, even neoconservative historians such as Niall Ferguson, who enthusiastically backed the Iran War earlier, have warned of “Suez Moment” akin to the collapse of the British and French empires following their il-fated assault against Nasserite Egypt amid the nationalization of the Suez Canal. That episode showed that a Western power can lose a conflict politically and risk its global empire even if it wins every major conventional battle.
America’s military failure becomes even more acute when put into a bigger context. In the opening days of the conflict alone, American and Israeli forces deployed over 5,000 munitions, rapidly diminishing their Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles as well as ship-launched Tomahawk stockpiles. The extremely high burn-rate raised alarm bells across the West, with German defense tycoon Armin Papperger publicly warning that air defense stockpiles of NATO could soon turn “empty, or nearly empty…[with] nearly no missiles available [if the war continues for long].”
With high-end interceptors overwhelmed by waves of Iranian drones and missiles, and high-end THAAD and other defense systems hammered across the Middle East, top weapons experts such as Eric Heginbotham of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) similarly cautioned: "No one really calculated on using up large portions of the inventory on an unrelated war, or a war of choice, especially one of this scale." Replenishing the weapon stockpile could take years, assuming the West could even access the raw materials, which are apparently systematically dominated by China-led supply chains.
A Strategic Restructuring
The success of Iran’s ‘saturation strategy’— steady deployment of cost-effective, mass-produced drones and missiles — has shown the limits of American-style conventional warfare. It also provides a laboratory for Chinese strategists, who have an even larger defense industrial base and varieties of high-end drones and missiles at their disposal.
It’s not only the mystique of American military power that has diminished. Many Global South countries are also questioning Washington’s leadership. A recent authoritative survey – polling respondents from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya – found that almost a third of people in key Global South nations found the United States (29%) responsible for the current crisis, and only 18% seeing the U.S. as promoting regional stability.
Emerging powers such as Brazil are doubling down on their country’s defense buildup, most recently unveiling the South American nation’s first locally-produced F-39E Gripen fighter jet. Brazil’s president has called for shoring up military capabilities and more defense cooperation among Global South powers. In Asia, meanwhile, frontline American allies such as the Philippines have been forced to recalibrate their foreign policy.
Shortly before declaring a state of energy emergency, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos said that a reset in relations with China was “certainly going to happen”, since the globally cataclysmic war in the Middle East is forcing America’s Asian allies from Manila to Singapore to confront a “a very, very serious restructuring” in their foreign policy in order to preserve “peace and the[ir] national interest”.
To underscore the urgency of the energy crisis, and the need to de-escalate geopolitical tensions amid perilous uncertainties, the Filipino president also proposed reopening negotiations with China over the exploration of disputed energy resources in the South China Sea. “That's something that we've been talking about for a great deal. But the territorial disputes will get in the way of that. Maybe this will be — provides impetus for both sides to come to an agreement,” the Filipino president added.
It remains to be seen whether Manila and Beijing can overcome manifold historical, legal and political hurdles in pursuit of a joint exploration deal in the contested waters. Earlier attempts were constitutionally challenged in the Philippines, but much will depend on the exact location and legal nature of any deal. What’s clear is that Manila is now under pressure to adopt a more pragmatic approach towards China, which could force the Marcos Jr administration to reconsider closer defense ties with the West on Taiwan and even South China Sea disputes. We’re entering a more multipolar global order driven by a la carte diplomacy, as even America’s closest allies pursue more independent approaches to preserve their national interest.
