View from Manila: A shock in New York, pressure from Beijing

MANILA, Philippines — It was with silent shock and a touch of disbelief that the Philippines, after four rounds of secret balloting from 10 pm on June 3 to 1 am on June 4, lost to Kyrgyzstan in its bid for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

The Philippines is a founding member of the United Nations (UN), its participation in the international body has been consistent and outsized, and it has long been a staunch believer in multilateralism and the rules-based order that many continue to champion, even when it has been a victim of rule-breaking and the lack of order in its maritime domain.

The Philippines would have been a “typical” choice in the secret ballots.

In 2003, or the last time the Philippines sought and won a seat in the UN SC, it garnered 178 votes out of the 182 votes and 7 abstentions cast in secret that day. The world in which the United Nations, the United States – where the UN General Assembly is headquartered – and the Philippines exist in 2026 is anything but typical.

With each round of voting, the votes dwindled — from the initial shock that was 85, to 81 in the second round, a dramatic drop to 68 in the third round, and an even more dramatic 48 — as Kyrgyzstan finally cinched its first seat in the council with 142 votes. 

Back in Manila and in many other corners of the world, both diplomats and observers were still surprised. The Philippines had gotten more than 100 pledges of support — most of them written, a handful verbal.  So a paltry 85 in the first round was a shock not because a cocky Manila thought it was a sure win, but because of the sheer number of countries that had apparently reneged. 

There is no way to know who changed their mind or where or when the apparent change of heart happened. Kyrgyzstan, as a Central Asian nation, had much going for it, too. When its term starts on January 1, 2027, it will be the second from its region to sit in the UN SC after Kazakhstan a decade ago. Bishkek also boasts of close ties to China and Russia — an orientation, perhaps, that might resonate in the zeitgeist.  

It would be easy to turn inwards, point fingers, and play a blame game over who fell short during the years-long campaign. But as the campaign was a whole-of-nation and whole-of-government effort, so too should the defeat. (Manila made official its intent for the seat in 2013, although campaigning only went into full force in 2022, under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.)

Palace press officer Undersecretary Claire Castro has blamed political turmoil at home — “obstructionist” actions by political foes in the Senate, among them — for the loss. “All the political tensions affected the bid. The whole country and the whole world can see the impression the Philippines is making,” she said in a June 4 press conference.  

There’s no doubt that many at the UN headquarters caught more than a whiff of the chaos in Pasay City. After all, it’s not every day that a sitting senator is wanted by the International Criminal Court and is caught on CCTV evading arrest twice. For good measure, a shootout occurred between those two escapes.

The Senate now is a chamber of struggle, especially on the part of a now-sacked Senate president who insists he’s still in power.  

But it’s hard to imagine a world where chaos, even in the upper chamber, could single-handedly make more than 20 countries (much more, if the pledges are to be believed) change their mind over the Philippines’ membership in the powerful council. 

Perhaps it would be more fruitful for Manila – that is to say, all agencies engaged in diplomacy, and not just the Department of Foreign Affairs – to think more deeply about the changes in the world order from which the Philippines has both benefited and suffered, the kind of United Nations that reflects those changes, and the place it wants to take in a world whose final order, at least for now, has yet to be determined.

Germany, the fourth-largest contributor to the UN regular budget after the US, China, and Japan, lost out to Austria and Portugal. Germany’s foreign minister has blamed Russia for the defeat (“our first support for Ukraine”) and its “special responsibility for Israel in the Middle East conflict” as having cost votes.

Philippine diplomats have made no such pronouncements — at least in public.

It would be silly to ignore the China-shaped dragon in the room that was the UN SC vote. Through the years, Beijing has grown in its influence and deepened its engagement with the UN. At the same time, the United States has been scaling back, withdrawing from or ceasing engagement with several key UN bodies, including the World Health Organization, under President Donald Trump.

The US-Israel war on Iran, no doubt, has only further eroded what little faith many other countries, especially in the Global South, had left in America.

That’s not to say that there’s proof of China’s pressure on the UN SC vote or that the Philippines’ US alignment is solely to blame for the loss either.

The answer, should Filipino officials want to seek it, is likely to be anything but simple. It might be boring. It’ll likely be complicated, just like the world we live in. The solution would be just as complicated. 

It’s a loss that isn’t just about the 48-142 defeat in the fourth round. It’s a loss in confidence, in varying degrees, on a system and a community the Philippines has or had placed so much faith in. 

Manila has, especially in recent years, been a champion for the rules-based order even if the hard-fought 2016 Arbitral Award has not affected the kind of change in the West Philippine Sea many were expecting. It’s not a lonely belief. 

Other middle powers and smaller nations continue to hold on to the idea of a rules-based international order – one in which might should not make right – as it had in the past, because, while it is a system with flaws and shortcomings, it is the only alternative to chaos that humanity has come up with so far.

That’s been the refrain of many, even at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where top security and military officials meet yearly. But a common call at Shangri-La was also that the order needed to be reviewed and made better, fairer — both in their premise and in its implementation. 

Manila, of all countries, would know how useless these rules are when a superpower like China refuses to follow it. 

It’s happening before our very eyes, or at least through satellite.

The Philippine military says there are structures inside the lagoon of Bajo de Masinloc or Scarborough Shoal, an atoll in the West Philippine Sea that Beijing has controlled since 2012. On June 8, military chief General Romeo Brawner Jr. said structures that were first observed in late May 2026 are still there, possibly floating around.

At best, it’s China flexing its control of the shoal and exploiting what’s left of the lagoon inside it. The worst-case scenario would be that it’s the beginning of island building on a feature that’s a high-tide elevation and therefore creates its own territorial sea. 

While on paper, sovereignty over Bajo de Masinloc is contested, China has been controlling access to it and the waters around it since the standoff in 2012. That means there’s a large, over 30 nautical mile zone in the middle of the West Philippine Sea, just some 100 nautical miles off the coast of Zambales, where China practically exercises control. 

Speaking of 2012 — that’s a sore point between the Philippines and the US, especially for top Filipino military and security officials who lived through that standoff. There was no military intervention to be had from the Americans then. A deal supposedly brokered by the Americans resulted in Philippine ships leaving and Chinese vessels staying. China has not once left. It was not until March 2019, or after the 2016 Arbitral Award, that Washington DC made explicit that the Mutual Defense Treaty includes the South China Sea. 

On the economic front, Beijing has been applying not-so-subtle pressure, too. In a clunky statement on June 4, the embassy in Manila laid out its own premise.

So went the “question” as released by the embassy: “If the Philippine side does not stop its unwarranted detention of Chinese citizens, China may launch a series of law enforcement operations against Filipino nationals illegally working in China, including Hongkong and Macau, as a reciprocal response. Should the situation deteriorate further, China will impose economic sanctions against the Philippines, including suspending the import of Philippine agricultural products and the export of urea fertilizer and refined oil. Could the Chinese Embassy confirm these reports?”

The first part of the long question was about supposed sanctions on Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. over a law enforcement operation that targeted Chinese nationals. 

“China will take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the safety and lawful rights and interests of Chinese citizens and institutions in the Philippines,” was the embassy’s curt reply to its own kilometric question. 

The weekend before the statement, Teodoro had warned the crowd over negotiating with China. “For the PRC, therefore, in the Philippine experience, negotiations are therefore not a path to conflict resolution but a means of gaining advantage,” he said. – Rappler.com