_{8 June 2019}

_{OF LAW AND POLITICS}

PHILIPPINES- RUSSIA RELATIONS

Jaime S. Bautista

On June 12, both the Philippines and Russia will celebrate their national day.  Our national flags fly the same tricolors of white, blue and red, representing the common values and aspirations that our flags display. 

Because of these, the Philippines should be open to striking a strategic relationship with Russia, in line with the provisions of the Philippine Constitution that the Philippines “adheres to the policy of peace, equality, justice, freedom, cooperation, and amity with all nations “ and that “The State shall pursue an independent foreign policy.”

Russia is a Pacific Power and Permanent

Member of UN Security Council

Russia can be a valuable friend.  Consider that Russia was a former superpower, with great accomplishments in the field of defense, and particularly in science and technology.  Russia was the first country to conquer space with its Sputnik.  The transfer of S & T is of special interest to the Philippines.  

As the successor state of the Soviet Union, Russia is a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council.

Russia is also the successor of Tsarist Russia, with its Christian traditions and Eurasian culture.  A greater part of Russia is in Asia.  Russia’s eastward expansion was driven by its objective of obtaining an ice-free port in the open sea.  With Vladivostok, Russia became a Pacific Power and our maritime neighbor. 

In the 1990s, Russia actively engaged the Philippines at the multilateral level.  With Philippine support, Russia became an ASEAN Dialogue Partner, a member of APEC and of ASEM (Asia-Pacific Meeting).  In the political dialogue between Asia and Europe, Russia chose to speak as part of Asia.

Russia also became a member of the Asian Regional Forum (ARF).  ARF is ASEAN’s forum for official consultations on peace and security issues.  Its membership includes ASEAN’s ten Dialogue Partners as well as Papua New Guinea, Mongolia and North Korea.  ARF is unique in that it is involved in both track one (official) diplomacy and track two diplomacy, involving experts and scholars.

PH has rich history

Like Russia, the Philippines has a rich history. Philippine culture is similarly Eurasian, with influences from both the East and the West.   Thus, the Philippines is also multi-cultural and Filipinos profess different faiths.

The Philippines was an original signatory of the UN Charter, the first democracy in Asia, and was a founding member of ASEAN, together with Thailand and the three maritime countries of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore bordering the South China Sea.

PH Soft Power

The Philippines’ soft power is based on its large population, strategic location and natural resources, and large diaspora in different continents.

The Philippines has the thirteenth largest population in the world and the second largest in ASEAN.   The Philippines is the “P“ of the so-called VIP (Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines) countries of ASEAN, whose economies are among the fastest growing in the world.

The Philippines is strategically located along the busiest highway of the seas, and is the backbone of the shipping industry.    It is at the center of the Archipelagic Continent, which extends from Japan in the north of this continent to the south in Indonesia.  The Philippines possesses the second most biodiversity of species in its maritime parks,

Moreover, the Philippines has global interests with a diaspora spread all over the world.  I was amused by a Spanish film which had the following conversation between a woman and her estranged husband: “I will not allow my children to be educated by a Filipina.”  The script was alluding to the influence that Filipina yayas may have over the children they care for.  Yaya means grandmother in the Catalan language.

And the Philippines has established its credibility within the UN and its organizations, by promoting and supporting peace initiatives and working to put development at the center of the UN agenda.

No conflict of interest

Russian Ambassador to the Philippines Igor Khovaev has noted that that there is no conflict of interest between Russia and the Philippines. 

Nevertheless, our bilateral relations have not yet fully matured, lacking a certain dynamism, and needing more mutual awareness and trust.  The Cold War is to blame for this since Filipinos for many years viewed the Soviet Union as the godless ideology threatening our security. 

Still, there is need to counter this perceived mistrust through confidence-building measures, and to put more resources to provide better information and promote greater understanding of each other’s aspirations. 

Holy Russia

The Communist regime of the Soviet Union tried to remove religion from the Russian psyche.   Soviet policy toward religion vacillated between extreme hostility and reluctant tolerance.  When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin was forced to use religion to mobilize Russian resistance.  “Priests were asked to bless the troops and offer prayers for the defense of ‘Holy Russia.’ .”  (B. Smith, Soviet Politics, Continuity and Contradiction, Gordon, p. 312)

Officially, Russia has ceased to be a communist state.  The 1993 Russian Constitution promoted by President Boris Yeltsin provides that: “In the Russian Federation, ideological diversity shall be recognized…No ideology may be established as State or obligatory one. (Art 13, 1 and 2). 

The Communist Party failed in its coup attempt against Yeltsin in 1993, and then failed to unseat him in Presidential elections and later to impeach him in Parliamentary proceedings.  

With the rejection of the communist ideology, Russia struggled to find its national identity in the new post-Cold War period.  The Russians have repeatedly discovered that the Christian Orthodox religion is embedded in the Russian psyche. 

Despite virulent anti-religious campaigns, it was estimated in 1988 that religious believers in the Soviet Union constituted as much as one-half of the Soviet population. The Russian Orthodox Church at that time claimed to have more than 50 million members. (Idem, p. 312-313)

Today, the 1993 Russian Constitution provides that Russia is a secular State and that “No religion may be established as a state or obligatory one (Art. 14,  1).

Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that Andrei Fursenko, as Minister of Education and Science, refused to ban the compulsory teaching of religious subjects in schools.  Minister Fursenko, now retired, was an industrialist from the Academe when I interviewed him to be our first Honorary Consul in St. Petersburg.

UNCLOS and 9-dash-line

Russia takes no sides with respect to the claims to the Spratlys but supports a peaceful solution in accordance with international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

On the other hand, the Arbitral Tribunal of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has ruled that China’s 9-dash-line has no basis under international law.

The 9-dash-line encroaches on the exclusive economic zones and continental shelves of the Philippines and the other ASEAN maritime countries bordering the South China Sea.  It also violates the rights of countries to the high seas, and to the Area and resources underneath the High Seas, which pertain to all countries of the world, whether coastal or landlocked, under the principle of the Common Heritage of Mankind.

In this context, President Rodrigo Duterte recently remarked that he might ask President Xi Jinping whether it is fair that one country should claim the whole China Sea.

The 9-dash-line was first published by the Kuomintang regime in 1947 as an 11-point-line and it passed on to the People’s Republic of China, which reduced it to a 9-dash-line at the behest of Premier Chou Enlai.

Because of the tension in the South China Sea provoked by the 9-dash-line, this issue is of special interest to Russia as a Party to the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea and as a maritime nation in the Pacific, with a special responsibility to project its influence as a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council.