Delicate

When the Arbitral Court handed its decision July 12th, almost entirely in favor of the Philippine position, there was every reason to be happy. But there was no reason to be sloppy.

The person who just had to keep his poise, by the nature of his job, was Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay. This was a moment pregnant with so many possibilities – mostly slip-ups. It was, well, a delicate moment.

The purveyors of hate, the hackers and bloggers, in a word, the amateurs did not grasp that. They mistook Yasay’s quiet demeanor for cowardice. They thought his low-key approach to diplomacy was the equivalent of breaking and running.

They were wrong. That is why they are better called amateurs.

Unfortunately for them, diplomacy is not about dancing in the streets. It is about building positions, reinforcing them with patience and seeking allies to amplify our voice.

Let the amateurs dance in the streets. Foreign ministers have more important things to do.

For better or for worse, Yasay is a quiet and deliberate man. He may never have been in the foreign service, but in three weeks he slipped rather comfortably into the job.

In Vientiane the other day he scored the points he needed to score. He managed the relevant language in the joint communiqué that allowed Manila to skirt around the staunch resistance of Cambodia and Laos to any mention of the South China Sea dispute.

Now it is cast in stone. Beijing may hew and haw, push its regional allies around, and rant all it wants. The language will not change. It is the language of diplomacy after all.

From hereon, our diplomacy must move through more treacherous straits.

Slowly, and without loss of face, we have to convince Beijing on a number of things. We have to draw them closer to the legal framework provided by the Arbitral Tribunal. We have to invite them to a dialogue, without yielding to the language of “bilateral negotiations” Beijing wants us to accept. We have to attract them more closely to the ideal of a “code of conduct” in the disputed territory.

In a word, we have to lead the dance. Beijing can no longer dictate the steps. They lost the right to do that after the Arbitral Court decision – specifically upholding our exclusive economic zone and dismissing China’s “Nine-dash line” as a piece of historical fiction.

This is not a process that will happen overnight. It could not even happen during this administration.

But there are certain things going in our favor. One is Jun Yasay at the DFA. The other is Fidel Ramos’s acceptance of the role of special emissary to Beijing.

Some might resort to ageism and dismiss Ramos as being too old for the job. But they will certainly agree that he is a thousand times more preferable to Antonio Trillanes, who reached for the role and flubbed the job.

Ramos has the gravitas no one else has. He can call up Chinese leaders and invite them to lunch.

Fortuitous

I am not sure if it is Rodrigo Duterte or Jun Yasay who holds the lucky bag.

As Yasay flew in from Vientiane last Tuesday, the Supreme Court handed down its decision upholding the constitutionality of the Expanded Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). A couple of former senators and several militant groups raised constitutional issues against the agreement. Those issues are now academic.

Then yesterday morning, US Secretary of State John Kerry, flying in from the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting, called on both Yasay and President Duterte. That is perfect opportunity to explore all the possibilities in this new episode of our partnership.

By some stroke of chance, the President had scheduled a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) yesterday afternoon. That meeting will bring together the former presidents, leaders of both chambers of Congress and senior officials of the new administration.

Recall that former president Noynoy Aquino never once convened the NSC. This might explain why our foreign policy during his time seemed to lack a strategy.

At any rate, we hope the NSC could arrive at a consensus about what exactly our “China strategy” will look like. It is important that our leaders work as a team on a subject that looms so large on our horizon.

China, after all, is a multi-dimensional question for us. The South China Sea issues are actually a small part of our joint future with the superpower. We have a thousand things to sort out, from trade issues to joint exploration. We cannot allow just one dimension of the relationship supersede the others.

The delicate task of “managing” our China relationship requires an all-of-government approach. That is putting it lightly.

Remember that apart from the territorial dispute, there are other issues now thrown in the burner by the new administration.

Last Monday, as if throwing all caution to the wind, Duterte called for a unilateral ceasefire with the CPP-NPA. That declaration apparently caught the communist leadership by surprise. As of this writing, they have not arrived at a coherent response.

Over the last weekend, the new President toured military camps in Basilan. The tour was clearly intended to encourage the other groups to more decisively sever ties with the bandit groups. It could well signal the opening maneuvers for crushing the bandits.

On Tuesday, right after the SONA, the President paid a visit to Fort Magsaysay. Here he wanted to reassure the military of his support.