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[av_heading heading=’The Russian question’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY JED JALECO DEL ROSARIO
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Sunday, February 26, 2017
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LAST WEEK, President Duterte met with Russian delegates led by Nikolay Patrushev to discuss issues concerning national security and defense. This is nothing new, of course. Duterte has met with high-ranking Russian diplomats and representatives, including Vladimir Putin himself, since last year and the implications of such meetings are easy enough to understand: Duterte’s friendliness towards the Russians is part of his attempt at moving the country away from American influence, or at least diversifying the country’s geopolitical supporters.
However, forging closer ties with the Russians is easier said than done. For one, they have limited direct geopolitical interests in our region, at least for the moment. So whatever ties the Duterte administration will be able to forge with Russia will be secondary to Russia’s primary geopolitical goals, which are mainly focused in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Another potential issue is that the American “Deep State” (a euphemism for a network that includes NGOs, the mainstream media media, the intelligence community and various other special interest groups in the United States) may not take look too fondly at stronger ties between Russia and the Philippines, and may exert more pressure on the Duterte administration (or if that doesn’t work, attempt to destabilize it).
Finally, stronger Russian-Philippine relations can potentially complicate Chinese plans with regards to the West Philippine Sea. After all, China wants to attain regional hegemony by pushing the United States out of Asia, and so the Chinese may not look too favorably on a situation where the Russians start forging closer ties with their neighbors. Friend or not, the PRC may not like another major power moving in on their turf.
Can Duterte and his Russian counterpart overcome these challenges? It will be interesting to observe how the situation will play out.
Despite these challenges, however, closer ties with Russian offer substantial benefits to the Philippines. First of all, Russia has the potential to become a great trading partner, particularly in areas of heavy industry, energy and services.
Second, Russia’s leadership, unlike the mainstream Western political establishment (with the exception of right-wing figures like Trump), is relatively nationalistic. For Duterte, who seems to oppose the globalistic Western establishment, this is a good thing, as he gains an important ideological ally for his policies.
Finally, Russia has its own network of allies such as Iran, the Assad government, the PRC and Central Asian countries for example, and the Philippines may be able to forge stronger ties with these pro-Russian countries via our ties with Russia.
In short, we can be certain that stronger ties with Russia will have a lot of serious implications for the country, both good and bad, and the country needs to be ready to adapt to the challenges posed by a stronger relationship with the Russian Federation./PN
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