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SPAIN, PHILIPPINES & INDO-PACIFIC: Instituto Cervantes Speech
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Richard Heydarian VLOGS
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Run time: 10:37
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00:00.0
In primer lugar, first of all, muchas gracias por la amable invitación, as the only one of Nor, it's really a pleasure to be here, but it's really a special place, I just noticed that I'm among few who's neither a government official nor a businessman who's here, so I'll be more like the don't feel about that character here and more honest and open, hopefully one day I'll be either polite enough to be a diplomat or rich enough to be a businessman.
00:28.0
I know I'm in Instituto Cervantes but let me quote Charles Dickens or rather paraphrase Charles Dickens when he said those were the best of times and the worst of times, I would rather say these are the worst of times but also the best of times.
00:41.0
The worst of times because actually last year at this point, I was also in Europe but for the UN Security Conference, only a few days later, we really saw what historian Adam Fuss calls poly-crisis, the convergence of multiple engines of crisis, each of them with their own dynamic, we have never had something like that, we had the Great Recession in 2008, 2007, we know that the engine was in the US,
01:05.0
and of course later on we had the sovereign debt crisis here, I can see you guys have fully recovered, so the engine was here, but now we see multiple centers of crisis converging, of course as far as the Indo-Pacific is concerned, it's a new Cold War between US and China, and it doesn't take shooting down a balloon with F-22 for us to know how serious the situation here is.
01:29.0
Just very quickly, four points, of course I'm going to cheat and say if you really want to know about my ideas on the Indo-Pacific, you can read my book, the title is the Indo-Pacific, it's quite easy to find on Amazon, but first of all let me, so four quick points, first of all, as far as the Philippines and Spanish relations is concerned, we always say it's a special relationship, but we want to make sure it's not the kind of special relationship that United States and United Kingdom have, a very asymmetrical special relationship,
01:57.0
we want to make it as symmetrical as possible, and we want to make sure that Spain takes Philippines on its own terms, not a gateway to China, and we want to take Spain on its own terms and not just talk about Spain as one of those guys in the European Union.
02:13.0
Now the thing about Spain, and I always found this fascinating, is the transformation you have made in the past few decades into becoming really a full-fledged industrialized country and really a progressive democracy.
02:28.0
I usually visit Barcelona, I can see how Galatista, Marxista, all of them are having a great time, and I wonder when we're going to have that back in the Philippines. And we know that not long ago, just half a century ago, the situation in Spain was not very different from the situation in the Philippines back then, you had your own Codillo, we had our own Codillo, so this transformation is something that I think can serve as a role model for the Philippines as we try to also become a much more full-fledged democracy,
02:56.0
stable, and more industrialized country. Now which brings me to the second point, if you look at the Philippines today, it's no longer a marginal country. For a long time we said the Philippines is special because of our geographic position, but actually what makes the Philippines more special nowadays is our geopolitical position.
03:13.0
But even before discussing that, let's just look at the Philippine economy. One of the interesting trends that Philippine economists like Rishi Sharma have noticed is that over the past few years, Asia, particularly ASEAN, is less dependent on China as a source of growth.
03:27.0
So for instance, the World Bank said a single point deduction in China could lead to a 0.4 deduction in Indonesia, a 0.2 deduction in the Philippines, but we're not seeing any more evidence of that. It's progressively going down because ASEAN countries like the Philippines, like Vietnam and Indonesia are becoming growth engines on their own terms.
03:44.0
Last year we grew at 7.6%, the fastest we have experienced. The last time we grew as fast, paradoxically or interestingly, was under Marcos Sr. in the mid-1970s, and now Marcos Jr. is overseeing one of the fastest growth. I have a lot of good things to say about our country.
04:02.0
Now the thing also with the Philippines is that we're one of the engines of an emerging ASEAN market. So if you look at the combined ASEAN market, this is going to be in the top five biggest economies in the world, and Indonesia alone by the middle of this century could be the third or fourth largest economy in the world.
04:18.0
Really the competition is India, China, and to a certain degree the United States. So the Philippines is in that growth mode and sustaining that growth even in spite of the slowdown in China, the threats of recession in the United States, and of course the energy crisis that we have here in Europe, and we want to continue with that.
04:36.0
But what makes the Philippines more special to you guys from Spain, and Don Emilio talked about it a while ago, is the infrastructure issue. We are transitioning from a $100 billion infrastructure plan under President Duterte with a certain degree of success, and now we're talking about a $320 billion infrastructure development plan which NEDA Secretary Balisaca, among others, unveiled in their visit to Frankfurt not long ago.
05:03.0
Now interestingly, while the previous GILBIL bid was much more reliant on government financing and ODA, now thanks to the return of Secretary Balisaca we're looking at more public-private partnerships, and I think that's where we create a lot of opportunities for us to work with our good counterparts in Spain and look forward to the next sessions on business and economics to learn more about this thing.
05:26.0
But the other thing that makes also the Philippines very interesting is other sectors that we don't pay attention to. For instance, the fintech sector in the Philippines is going to be $44 billion strong by next year. I know a lot of people talk about C in Singapore, Gojek in Indonesia, but watch out for the Philippines. We're making huge moves.
05:44.0
Just look at ANCAS, for instance, by our good friend George. Just in the past three years, now it's in a good position to be a unicorn in the coming years, and much, much more is to come as digital economy transforms the Philippines and its place in the world.
05:58.0
But this is where let's go to the more interesting part. Now, if you look at the Philippines, I've written a lot, probably 2,000 articles just on the Philippines alone over the past 10 years. I've criticized almost all presidents, but let me put it this way. I think thanks to all of our three presidents in the past decades, the Philippines right now is in a strategic sweet spot.
06:21.0
Aquino proved to the world that the Philippines can be a responsible stakeholder and also a middle power in its own right. Our arbitration case in South China Sea is very much a denouement of that. President Duterte at the same time showed that the United States can no longer take us for granted and that the Philippines has to be won over and that we have other options.
06:41.0
And now thanks to President Marcos, Jr., we are in a position to launch what we call multi-vector diplomacy. No one cares about us, but this is going to be more and more how the Philippine foreign policy is going to look at it.
06:55.0
But at the same time, of course, we know that as much as the Philippines is in a strategic sweet spot, we have also made some major decisions that is going to make us more relevant to the West, including the recent decision to grant Americans access not only to key bases close to the South China Sea, but also key bases close to Taiwan.
07:13.0
We just don't know how far north this is going to go. Is it just going to stop in Cagayan and Isabela in the northern Philippines, or is it going to go all the way to Fuga Island and Memolis, which are very, very close to the southern shores of Taiwan?
07:26.0
So as much as we are diversifying, trying to build relationship, golden era with China, great relationship with the United States, we are very much pivotal to the future of America's strategy in the region. And this is also important for us because we want to have leverage when we deal with China.
07:43.0
We want to have a say and to be prepared for whatever contingency could come in the South China Sea and Taiwan.
07:49.0
And last point, this is where middle power diplomacy comes into picture. If you look at it, both Spain and the Philippines actually very much match the basic definition of what is a middle power.
08:00.0
Middle powers essentially are not big enough to be superpower, but they're just big enough to have a certain degree of strategic autonomy. More than that, they have a certain level of influence and prestige and respect that they enjoy, and they have coalition-building capabilities.
08:14.0
I think the Philippines has proven that. I think our good friends in the DFL have proven that on so many fronts over the past six and seven decades.
08:21.0
And we often forget the central role that the Philippines played in the development of the global human rights regime, for instance, in the United Nations.
08:28.0
And even with the changes of the administration, you can see, in fact, the Philippines is the only country in ASEAN that consistently favored Ukraine as far as any major vote came up.
08:39.0
Thanks to our current secretary and former ambassador to the UN, Manalo, so we really took a principled position as far as the Ukraine issue is concerned without unnecessarily, of course, antagonizing Russia, which shows the sophistication that the Philippines is bringing to the diplomatic picture.
08:55.0
As far as Spain is concerned, you're already a $1.4 trillion economy. You're pretty large, even slightly larger than Indonesia, so you're not a small player or you're no longer a small player anymore.
09:05.0
And you're part of the G20 as an extension, and you have a lot to offer us on the infrastructure front but also on the geopolitical front.
09:11.0
I mean, I got to know that the major now is Ambassador-at-Large for Indo-Pacific since last year. I'm very excited for this because we noticed a lot when France did that, right?
09:18.0
Now we see Spain as part of the picture. Now the good news is that if you look at President Marcos, Jr., yes, he has made a big decision on the ECA front, and I've argued that this is going to lock us into almost America's integrated deterrence strategy.
09:30.0
But I'm also very sure that President Marcos, Jr. is someone who wants to ensure that we don't become overly dependent on the United States and that the entirety of our foreign policy is not defined by the new Cold War competition among superpowers.
09:44.0
And that is why I'm very confident that President Marcos, Jr., in the coming months and coming years – I think a visit to Elysee Palace would also be in the works after his visit to the White House later this year – he's going to reach out to Europe, and he's going to reach out to you, our friends here in Spain and all others,
09:58.0
because we want to make sure that our foreign policy is as diversified as possible and that we make sure that we can make the most out of the EU's own pivot to the Indo-Pacific as you guys recognize an important region.
10:11.0
So in short, I think we're in a distinct position to recognize each other's merit on our own terms. Philippines on its own terms, it's no longer just a marginal country, just a gateway to China, and also Spain on its own terms as we get to talk about it more.
10:25.0
Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to more discussion.