To reclaim West PH Sea, look to 3rd French Republic

“Wishful thinking” was how Sen. Grace Poe labeled presidential spokesperson Harry Roque’s statement that the Philippines will benefit from China’s construction of artificial islands in the West Philippine Sea, and that we will someday take over these islands.

Many have criticized President Duterte’s foreign policy, without indicating what it should be. The issue must be addressed based on the fundamental tenet that in the conduct of diplomacy, a small power has limited options and a superpower has many options. If the Philippines were a superpower, it could in the current dispute send an ultimatum to China to dismantle its artificial islands, as then US President John F. Kennedy told Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 when the latter installed nuclear missiles in Cuba. Or we can blow up the artificial islands with smart bombs, sink China’s supply ships, etc.

Given our limited options, our diplomacy should be patterned after that of the Third French Republic. An outcome of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 was France’s loss of Alsace-Lorraine to the Germans. By 1870, Germany had become the dominant power in Europe, the main reason being there were then 60 million Germans against 40 million Frenchmen. France viewed Germany’s possession of Alsace-Lorraine as a continuing threat to France. Thus, French diplomacy was based on one constant: Germany was France’s permanent enemy.

France as the weaker power played the traditional balance-of-power game by forming alliances with other countries, mainly the Triple Entente with Great Britain and Russia, to offset German power. France regained Alsace-Lorraine after World War I, ceded it back to Germany early in World War II, and then regained it permanently after that war. It took 74 years — from 1871 to 1945 — before France achieved its goal of regaining Alsace-Lorraine. Even more important, the French foreign policy that was centered on Germany as its permanent enemy survived the turbulent politics of the Third Republic. Whichever administration held office in France, whether left or right, maintained the same foreign policy.

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