The Duterte Problem

How to Deal with Rodrigo Duterte

by Whitney Ahn

Yesterday, on the 20th of October 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines announced that he wants to end his nation’s relationship with the United States, and conduct a pivot to China (a pivot already more successful than President Obama’s attempted Asia pivot). This comes just one day after a police van rammed into anti-American protesters outside the U.S. embassy in Manila, after months of seemingly insane human rights abuses from the police, and after months brutally public and blatantly anti-American rhetoric from the Filipino leader. He even went so far as to call President Barack Obama what roughly translates to “a son of bitch”.

These should incredibly concerning, because the Philippines are an absolutely key ally of the United States. Together with Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, the Philippines are a major counter-balance to Chinese power in East Asia. In addition, they export to the United States everything from computer parts to coconut oil to textiles to automobile parts, and, in terms of natural resources that a positive relationship with the United States could lead to American exploitation of, they also have about twenty-two billion metric tons of metals. Beyond just the erosion of a major alliance, the cavalier attitude that Rodrigo Duterte has publically held for the United States is damaging the reputation of our nation. Other allies wary of America suddenly find themselves in a situation where they have the option to disavow the United States completely. Irreparable damage has been caused, so crisis management skills need to come into play here.

If the Filipino anti-American sentiment is dissolved, the support for Rodrigo Duterte may also dissolve. In addition, because American culture is more empathetic to the less fortunate than Asian cultures often are, a reshaping of Filipino culture to be more American-like would most likely result in less support for the Duterte’s hyper-violent tendencies and policies. Thus the initial solution to the problem of Rodrigo Duterte’s negative influence on the Philippines relationship with human rights, and also with the United States, must be a cultural shift. Thus, the next question must be: How does the United States go about shifting the Philippines’ culture to be more pro-Western, and, more specifically, more pro-American? One potential proposal could be a simple yet effective solution: waging a propaganda war.

While the United States government needs to work a lot more at changing the Filipino view of the United States by investing more into a public diplomacy, another important step for the United States to take is to cause further rifts in their relationships with China. The South China Sea seems like an obvious place to start. By increasing military drills and patrols in the region, the United States could force the focus of all the nations in the region to return to that conflict, distracting from the Filipino-American rift and reigniting the Filipino-Chinese rift. After all, the Philippines would be forced to either side with China, effectively ceding their territorial claims, or side with the United States and its allies, forcing a return to the normal alignments of states.