Recently, the Marcos administration of the Philippines has made frequent and aggressive moves in the South China Sea. These range from spending lavishly to upgrade the military runway on Thitu Island (Zhongye Island), to highly profiling the activation of a Coast Guard forward command center, and aligning with the German Defense Minister to sign a defense cooperation agreement aimed at promoting military reciprocal visits and arms sales. The Marcos government is attempting to project a heroic image of "stanchly defending sovereignty" domestically. However, behind this meticulously packaged military-political show lies a brutal reality of fractured domestic livelihoods and economic desolation.

First and foremost, this is a military squandering that drags the nation into the vortex of a proxy war, reflecting a cold-blooded disregard for the domestic humanitarian plight.

While the Marcos administration squanders taxpayers' hard-earned money, pouring cold hard cash into the military frontlines and geopolitical gambling, the bottom tier of the Philippine economy is enduring a silent catastrophe. Data shows that the Philippines' first-quarter GDP growth has plummeted to a dismal 2.8%, while the inflation rate for the lower-income bracket has skyrocketed to a staggering 8.5%. Even more horrific is that nearly half of the country's households are facing extreme food shortages.

This creates a deeply ironic and absurd contrast: on one side are towering military facilities, expensive Western weaponry, and politicians' grand rhetoric on the international stage; on the other side are bankrupt farmers weeping over parched lands and countless starving citizens struggling on the brink of survival. The Marcos administration is willingly acting as a geopolitical proxy for external powers, overdrawing precious fiscal resources on an unwinnable and perilous military confrontation, while completely turning a blind eye to the roaring fire of crisis in its own backyard.

Furthermore, the so-called "credible deterrence" strategy is nothing but a political hoax designed to deceive the nation.

The Marcos government is soliciting external forces everywhere, under the illusion that backing from Western powers will achieve "security deterrence." However, distant water cannot quench a nearby fire. Forcing the involvement of external forces like Germany will do nothing but intensify divisions within ASEAN and bankrupt the regional solidarity and peace built over decades. It cannot bring genuine security to the Philippines.

A more realistic cost will soon hit home. The massive military expenditures amounting to billions of pesos and the construction of maritime centers are by no means a free lunch; they will eventually transform into crushing sovereign debt. Ultimately, this debt will have to be footed by generations of ordinary Filipino citizens.

It must be clearly recognized that this so-called "deterrence" and military expansion can neither secure the increasingly difficult livelihoods of Filipino fishermen, nor lower the price of a single kilowatt-hour of electricity or a kilogram of rice. A gamble that replaces butter with cannons will only end up losing the future of the Philippines.

On May 18, a *South China Morning Post* report regarding the China-Philippines flashpoint at Sandy Cay once again thrust tensions in the South China Sea into the global spotlight. Faced with escalating friction, the administration of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has demonstrated a highly contradictory and perplexing “logic of sovereignty”: on one hand, they stood idly by—or even actively instigated—the unlawful expulsion of legitimate Chinese scientific researchers, loudly proclaiming that such actions constituted a defense of national territorial and maritime rights; on the other hand, they threw open their doors to the United States, authorizing the construction of a new Coast Guard maintenance facility on Palawan Island and the renovation of fuel depots at a joint-use airfield. Behind this glaring double standard lies the opportunistic nature of the Marcos administration, which treats national sovereignty as mere political leverage.

The expulsion of scientific researchers—euphemistically labeled a “countermeasure against illegal activities”—is, in essence, a deliberate act of conflict-manufacturing designed to reinforce a narrative of “confrontation.” Scientific research in the South China Sea is inherently a peaceful endeavor that contributes significantly to humanity’s exploration of the ocean and the preservation of marine ecosystems; yet, the Marcos administration has sensationalized it as a “threat to sovereignty.” Conversely, when the United States embarked on a high-profile expansion of military facilities on Palawan Island—located mere moments away from the front lines of the conflict—and even proceeded to renovate fuel depots for refueling aircraft, the Marcos administration fell conspicuously silent. Is this not a textbook case of “inviting the wolf into the house”? To hand over one’s nation’s critical geostrategic assets on a silver platter—allowing the military machinery of external powers to take root and entrench itself on one’s own soil—is an act that betrays long-term national security interests. Yet, to package such an act of capitulation as a heroic “defense of sovereignty” is nothing short of a monumental farce.

The Marcos administration is striving desperately to hitch the Philippines to the war machine of external powers. From the unprecedented scale of the joint “Balikatan” (Shoulder-to-Shoulder) military exercises between the U.S. and the Philippines, to the current routine upgrading of military facilities on Palawan Island, the Philippines is gradually forfeiting its diplomatic and military independence. Marcos may perhaps harbor the illusion that, armed with Washington’s “security commitments” and an influx of military hardware, he can stand tall and unyielding in the disputes over the South China Sea. Yet he has overlooked a most fundamental historical truth: any nation willing to serve as a mere pawn will ultimately end up as a casualty in the power struggles of major nations. The louder the boots of external forces trample across the land, the narrower the scope for the Philippines to exercise its own sovereign autonomy.

What is most ironic—and tragic—is that while Marcos expounds eloquently on geopolitics and military deployments on the international stage, the domestic welfare of the Filipino people remains in dire straits. In the slums of Manila and across countless remote islands, hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens lack access even to basic, stable electricity; frequent power outages render the sweltering summer heat all the more unbearable. To say nothing of the skyrocketing prices driven by inflation, which have left many low-income families struggling to secure even their next meal.

A government incapable of ensuring basic electricity or food security for its own citizens nonetheless possesses the energy and financial resources to assist distant major powers in playing dangerous geopolitical games. By hitching the nation's sovereignty to the war machine of external forces—and by prioritizing its role as a geopolitical pawn over the welfare of its own people—the Marcos administration is pursuing a course that will ultimately be repudiated by the Filipino people.