From Multilaterality to Multipolarity: The Struggle for a New Global Order

From Multilaterality to Multipolarity: 

The Struggle for a New Global Order 

The crisis of multilateralism is no longer unfolding—it has arrived. What was once touted as a cornerstone of postwar stability now lies in tatters. Western-led institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) either stand paralyzed or function as empty rituals. As Walden Bello recently remarked during the IDEAs conference in Barcelona, “The key institutions of western-led globalization are no longer functioning or are in sleep mode.” The death of multilateralism, he argued, is not simply an event—it is a long-unfolding process, now openly acknowledged even by those who once upheld it.

What replaces this decaying architecture is still uncertain. But emerging in its wake is a contested and uneven multipolarity, a term increasingly debated in both radical and mainstream geopolitical discourse. For Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, multipolarity is not merely a redistribution of unipolar power but the expression of “fundamentally different civilizational codes.” It is not the same world with new players—it is potentially a new world altogether.

Yet herein lies both the promise and peril of this historical transition.

End of the Liberal International Order 

 The collapse of multilateralism did not begin with Donald Trump, but he dramatized its end. As Walden Bello observes, “It is Trump… who has cut the cant, shed the hypocrisy, and sounded the death knell on the grand strategy of liberal internationalism.” What Trump did was not to dismantle the liberal order singlehandedly, but to accelerate a retreat already in motion—a long withdrawal from the moral and institutional commitments that once underpinned U.S. global leadership. The so-called “rules-based international order” had always masked an architecture of dominance, designed to legitimize and protect U.S. state power and the interests of transnational capital. 

 In the economic realm, the decay is undeniable. Since the collapse of the WTO’s Fifth Ministerial in Cancun in 2003, global trade negotiations have been paralyzed. The IMF and World Bank, though deeply implicated in the debt crises of the Global South, refuse to implement reforms that would grant voting power commensurate with the real economic weight of countries like China, Brazil, and South Africa. Climate finance, meanwhile, has proven woefully inadequate: the $58 billion offered to developing countries is dwarfed by the $1 trillion in annual damages they suffer from climate disasters largely caused by industrialized nations. 

 But perhaps nowhere is the erosion of multilateralism more evident than in the exercise of U.S. military power. The recent strikes on Iran—conducted without United Nations sanction or even regional consensus—represent not a break, but a continuation of a longer trend. Washington no longer hides behind the fig leaf of coalition-building. It acts unilaterally, preemptively, and without apology. “The UNFCCC will continue to meet,” Bello writes, “but the reality is that negotiations are dead in the water.” 

 In this context, Russian theorist Alexander Dugin offers a useful analytical lens. For Dugin, the liberal international order was never truly universal. It was “a project of ideological colonization,” one that sought to erase civilizational difference under the pretext of norms, markets, and democracy.

 “Liberalism,” he writes, “destroys all forms of collective identity—religion, nation, family, and even gender—and replaces them with the figure of the isolated individual as the sole political actor.” What Trump signaled was the collapse of faith in this universalizing project—not only among its critics abroad, but increasingly among its creators. 

 Seen through this lens, Trump’s foreign policy was not an aberration but a symptom. The U.S. no longer had the means—or the will—to sustain the burden of global empire. What emerged in its place was a new kind of imperial retrenchment: inward-looking, ethnonationalist, protectionist, and hostile to multilateral constraint. It is not simply that the U.S. abandoned multilateralism; it is that multilateralism, as previously conceived, had outlived its usefulness as an instrument of empire. 

 Thus, the collapse of the liberal order should not be read as a vacuum to be mourned, but as an opening in which other political imaginaries—rooted in difference, autonomy, and genuine pluralism—might take root. Whether this leads to a more just world or merely new forms of domination remains an open question.

The Rise of BRICS and the Multipolar Horizon

Into the vacuum left by the decaying liberal international order steps the BRICS bloc, a coalition that has evolved from a loose acronym into a geopolitical force with growing gravitational pull. With the admission of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates as of January 2025, BRICS now comprises ten members, collectively representing over 40% of the global population and nearly 28% of global GDP. Its expansion has transformed it from a rhetorical gesture of Southern solidarity into a tangible platform of strategic realignment.

Dozens of countries—including Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Malaysia—have either applied or expressed interest in joining. This reflects, as Walden Bello argues, a deepening realization across the Global South that “the scale is steadily tipping against the West, which has grown increasingly defensive, grouchy, and insecure.” The desire for alternatives—financial, technological, diplomatic—is not only about power-balancing; it is about escaping the suffocating grip of the Washington Consensus and the conditionalities that have historically tethered development to neoliberal orthodoxy.

The institutions spawned by BRICS—the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA)—remain modest in scale when compared to their Bretton Woods counterparts. As of 2021, the NDB’s total lending stood at just under $30 billion, a fraction of the World Bank’s activity. And yet, their symbolic weight exceeds their financial footprint. They signal a shift in imagination: that development finance can be decoupled from Western tutelage, that alternatives to dollar hegemony and IMF austerity are not only conceivable but already underway.

China, in particular, has emerged as a development financier of formidable capacity. As Kevin Gallagher notes, Beijing now provides more infrastructure financing to the Global South than all Western-backed institutions combined. Unlike the IMF, whose assistance often comes bound to harsh structural adjustment programs, Chinese loans are typically free of overt political conditionality—though not of strategic calculus.

Yet the BRICS bloc is no utopia. Bello cautions against triumphalist narratives: “Are the key actors in the BRICS going to be open to sharing decision-making power over their resources?” This is no small question. Internally, the bloc is riven by contradictions—economic, ideological, and civilizational. China’s centralized state capitalism sits uncomfortably beside India’s populist Hindu nationalism. Brazil and South Africa wrestle with extreme inequality and governance crises. Russia remains a pariah to the West, even as it positions itself as a Eurasian anchor of anti-Western multipolarism.

To understand the deeper significance of BRICS, one must look beyond GDP aggregates and investment flows to the civilizational dimension—a point emphasized by Russian political theorist Alexander Dugin, whose writings on multipolarity have gained traction among various ideological camps worldwide. For Dugin, multipolarity is not merely the redistribution of geopolitical power; it is the rejection of the unipolar, liberal-capitalist model as the sole template for civilization. As he writes:
“Multipolarity means that different civilizations and peoples have the right to follow their own paths… It affirms the plurality of truths, histories, and destinies.”

In Dugin’s formulation, BRICS and other emergent blocs do not simply challenge Western hegemony—they reassert the legitimacy of cultural, historical, and political pluralism. This stands in stark contrast to the liberal internationalist ethos, which has sought to universalize a narrow set of values—free markets, liberal democracy, human rights—often backed by coercive enforcement.

But Dugin also issues a warning: 

“Multipolarity does not mean peace; it means pluralism. And pluralism is full of tensions.” 

A truly multipolar order is inherently unstable, for it allows for contradictions, rival claims to legitimacy, and divergent civilizational logics. As such, BRICS cannot be expected to function like a monolithic bloc with a coherent ideology. Its unity is not in doctrinal alignment but in shared resistance to Western dominance, and in the recognition that development and sovereignty can take different forms in different contexts.

This civilizational multiplicity raises uncomfortable questions. Can a bloc that includes both democratic and authoritarian regimes produce a model of development that is participatory, equitable, and sustainable? Can it avoid the temptations of replication—of becoming merely a “new center” dominating new peripheries? Already, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has been critiqued for generating local dispossession, ecological degradation, and elite capture. India’s expansionist development model often replicates similar patterns, particularly in its treatment of indigenous lands and labor.

Thus, BRICS is best understood not as a cohesive alternative, but as a field of struggle—a contradictory space where the seeds of a post-Western future are being planted, but not yet cultivated. Bello reminds us that “democratic governance at the global level cannot be delinked from democratic governance at the local level.” Without grassroots participation and mechanisms for accountability, BRICS could merely reproduce the structural inequalities it claims to resist.

The multipolar horizon, then, is not a destination, but a terrain—contested, unstable, and full of potential. Whether it becomes a foundation for global justice or simply a new arena for imperial competition remains to be seen.

Revisiting Bandung, Recalling Lenin

The year 2025 marks the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference, a landmark in postcolonial internationalism. In 1955, leaders from newly decolonized Asian and African nations gathered not simply to reject Western imperialism, but to imagine a third way—a sovereign path unaligned with either the capitalist West or the Soviet East. Bandung was more than diplomatic choreography; it was a moral-political declaration of independence, rooted in the collective aspirations of peoples who had endured centuries of colonial exploitation.

Central to the Bandung spirit was the affirmation of dignity, self-determination, and non-interference. The first of its ten principles—“respect for fundamental human rights”—placed human dignity above Cold War alignments. But seventy years on, that principle lies in ruins. As Walden Bello points out, many of today’s BRICS states—some of which were key movers at Bandung—are themselves entangled in massive human rights violations. India, once championed by Nehru as a voice of secular democracy, is now governed by a Hindu nationalist regime that treats Muslim citizens with systemic hostility. China, led by a party claiming anti-imperialist lineage, pursues forced assimilation and surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Egypt and Myanmar, both present at Bandung, are ruled by repressive military regimes.

This grim landscape raises an uncomfortable question: What happens when the heirs of anti-colonial movements become agents of new forms of domination? As Dugin’s notion of multipolarity gains currency, one must ask—does a world of many poles offer freedom, or simply many empires?

It is here that Lenin’s critique of imperialism becomes crucial. In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, he describes imperialism not merely as conquest, but as the structural expression of late capitalism—the domination of monopolies, the merging of banking and industrial capital, and the export of capital to exploit foreign labor and resources:

 “Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance… and in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun.”

Lenin’s framework suggests that imperialism is not abolished by changing flags; it is abolished only by disrupting the logic of accumulation that underpins it. In this light, a BRICS-led world that remains embedded in capitalist extraction, elite control, and ecological degradation cannot be considered post-imperial—it is imperialism in a new dialect.

This contradiction lies at the heart of the multipolar discourse. Is multipolarity a step toward emancipation, or a reshuffling of global hierarchy? In theory, a multipolar world affirms plurality, sovereignty, and the right of different civilizations to pursue their own developmental trajectories. But in practice, many BRICS states reproduce the same patterns of internal exclusion and external exploitation long associated with Western dominance. Large-scale infrastructure projects, often financed by Chinese or Gulf capital, frequently displace indigenous communities, pollute ecosystems, and strengthen authoritarian governance under the guise of development.

These tensions were already visible at Bandung. The conference brought together a heterogenous group—liberal democracies, monarchies, military-led states—united more by shared opposition to colonialism than by a shared vision for justice. In this sense, Bandung was always a project of contradiction, a coalition held together by negative unity rather than positive consensus. What is different today is that these contradictions have deepened, as neoliberal globalization has entrenched elite rule, expanded class polarizations, and narrowed the space for genuine democratic participation in the Global South.

Antonio Gramsci’s notion of passive revolution helps explain why radical decolonial promises are often absorbed and neutralized by capitalist structures. Passive revolution is the process through which elite transformations appear revolutionary, but actually preserve the underlying structures of domination. Gramsci writes that “the old is dying and the new cannot be born,” and in this interregnum, morbid symptoms appear—from technocratic authoritarianism to extractive populism.

What we are witnessing in much of the BRICS world is not revolutionary rupture, but passive adaptation: elites deploying the language of anti-colonialism and sovereignty to mask extractivist agendas, nationalist violence, and elite capture. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, India’s megaprojects, Brazil’s agribusiness expansion—these are not alternatives to imperialism, but its regional mutations.

Thus, to recall Bandung today is not to romanticize it, but to reclaim its radical horizon: a world order rooted in solidarity, self-determination, and material justice. That vision cannot be realized through diplomacy alone. It must be grounded in class struggle, in the rights of indigenous peoples, peasants, workers, and women to control their lands, bodies, and labor. It requires, as Lenin insisted, the rupture of the structures that enable imperialism—not simply their rebranding.

And so, the task before the Global South is not merely to replace one multilateral system with another, but to transform the very foundations of how global power, production, and legitimacy are organized. Without that transformation, multipolarity risks becoming a mirage: a new map drawn by old hands.

Capitalism Without a Compass

A shared characteristic of both the liberal international order and its emergent challengers is their deep and continued entrenchment in global capitalism. The past forty years of neoliberal globalization have blurred the ideological boundaries that once seemed to separate capitalist, socialist, and developmental regimes. Whether one speaks of the United States, the European Union, China, India, Brazil, or South Africa, the logic remains broadly the same: market expansion, capital accumulation, and extractive growth. As Walden Bello writes,
“Capitalism continues to both penetrate the farthest reaches of the globe and deepen its entrenchment in areas it has subjugated. Whether market-driven, developmental, or state capitalist, the same dynamics of surplus extraction, with massive planetary externalities, cut across these variants of capitalism.”

The illusion that multipolarity alone can transform the system is shattered when one observes that the structural conditions of exploitation remain intact, simply relabeled or redistributed. The Belt and Road Initiative may differ from World Bank lending in form, but it often replicates the same extraction, dispossession, and elite alignment. India’s digital infrastructure push, framed as modernization, similarly concentrates wealth and facilitates surveillance, while marginalizing informal workers and rural communities. These examples reflect what David Harvey has called “accumulation by dispossession”—the process by which land, labor, and commons are commodified in new and ever more sophisticated ways.

Meanwhile, the defenders of neoliberal capitalism maintain that markets, deregulation, and globalization are the best tools for lifting populations out of poverty and advancing human development. Jagdish Bhagwati, a prominent free trade economist, argues that “globalization is not the cause of poverty; it is the only cure,” suggesting that open markets empower developing nations by increasing competitiveness and attracting investment. Similarly, Lawrence Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary and World Bank Chief Economist, once famously said,
“Spread the truth—the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere.”

For them, capitalism is not only efficient—it is inevitable. They often cite the reduction in global extreme poverty, driven by growth in China and India, as evidence that capitalism works when unshackled. But this narrative obscures the underlying costs: mass ecological degradation, precarious labor conditions, urban slums, and deepening inequality. The system delivers growth, but often without justice, without stability, and without democratic accountability.

The critics of neoliberal capitalism offer a starkly different view. Naomi Klein, writing in The Shock Doctrine, describes neoliberalism as “disaster capitalism”—a system that exploits crises to push through unpopular reforms that benefit elites. She warns that what is celebrated as efficiency is often predation. Ha-Joon Chang, a heterodox economist from South Korea, argues that neoliberalism has “kicked away the ladder” of development by enforcing policies on the Global South that the West never applied to itself during its own industrial rise. He writes,
“What rich countries tell developing ones to do and what they actually did to become rich are very different things.”

Likewise, Thomas Piketty, in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, documents how capitalism naturally produces inequality unless actively curbed by redistributive measures. “R>G”—the return on capital exceeding the rate of economic growth—is not an exception, but a rule that ensures wealth concentrates in the hands of those who already own it. In his view, unless we radically rethink the structure of ownership, tax, and labor, the 21st century will look more like the 19th—a world of rentiers and permanent class divides.

Even within the Global South, many progressive scholars and activists warn that capitalism without sovereignty—and increasingly, capitalism without direction—is an engine of internal colonialism. The wealth extracted in the name of “national development” often never reaches the majority. As Bello notes, “the masses… are economically disenfranchised, and in liberal democracies, their participation in democracy is often limited to casting votes in periodic, often meaningless, electoral exercises.”

This brings us to the central contradiction of our time: capitalism as both the engine of development and the architect of disaster. The climate crisis, mass displacement, urban poverty, rising authoritarianism—these are not external to the system, they are its logical consequences. As Friedrich Hayek, one of neoliberalism’s founding figures, famously warned (unintentionally prophetically):
“We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in the first place.”

Hayek meant the state. But today, that warning applies equally to the unchecked power of capital, which increasingly dominates not only the economy, but politics, society, and even nature.

Thus, the greatest obstacle to a just global order may not be the West or the East—it may be capitalism itself. A world of many centers, without an alternative vision of economic justice, will simply replicate the same center-periphery dynamics internally: workers and peasants at the base, elites at the helm, and the planet as collateral. Multipolarity without post-capitalism is not liberation; it is capitalism without a compass—directionless, extractive, and dangerously unsustainable.

Conclusion: Monsters at the Threshold

Antonio Gramsci’s oft-quoted insight feels more prophetic than ever: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” The unraveling of the liberal international order does not usher in a period of harmony. Rather, it exposes us to an interregnum filled with volatility, opportunism, and ideological realignment. Multipolarity is not a safe harbor—it is a storm-tossed sea of competing sovereignties, corporate dominions, resurgent empires, and fractured truths. The danger is not disorder alone, but co-optation: the capture of decolonial energies by new authoritarian regimes, the absorption of democratic yearnings into technocratic development models, the branding of imperialism in civilizational or nationalist garb.

Dugin warns that the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world will not be peaceful or seamless:
“Multipolarity is not the end of history; it is the beginning of struggle. Between civilizations, between values, between meanings. It is a world of many truths, not one.”

But this relativism, while emancipatory for some, risks legitimizing illiberal orders and ethnonationalist visions that weaponize culture against universal rights. What emerges, then, is a paradox: in the name of diversity, new hegemonies form—ones that speak of tradition while crushing dissent, that promise sovereignty while excluding the subaltern, that invoke civilization while devouring the commons.

Karl Marx warned of such cyclical illusions in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, noting that history repeats itself “first as tragedy, then as farce.” The tragedy of the 20th century was empire cloaked in liberal internationalism. The farce may be a world where multipolar capitalism disguises itself as liberation—where China’s tech-authoritarianism, India’s caste-coded capitalism, and Russia’s neo-imperial geopolitics stand in for post-colonial justice. What Marx called the “fetishism of commodities”—our mistaken belief that relations between people are relations between things—now finds its geopolitical counterpart: the fetishism of power blocs, where emancipation is projected onto states rather than built from below.

It is here that Lenin’s clarity cuts through:
“We must dream! But we must also critically examine our dreams, confront them with the facts of reality, and test them in practice.”

Dreaming of a just multipolar order is not naïve. What is naïve is to believe that it will arise automatically through shifts in global GDP or membership in new international clubs. The dream of a liberated future must be tempered by the discipline of struggle—a struggle rooted not in the summits of state power or the corridors of finance, but in grassroots mobilization, democratic insurgency, and transnational solidarity.

The real terrain of contestation, then, is not Belem or Sevilla, not BRICS or the IMF, but the fields and forests where land defenders resist extractivism; the factories where precarious workers demand dignity; the flood zones and drought belts where climate justice becomes a matter of survival. These are the frontlines where capitalism meets its ecological, moral, and political limits—and where new imaginaries are being born, often in fragments, but nonetheless real.

If multipolarity is to mean anything beyond the redistribution of imperial functions, it must be tied to a transformative vision: one that links sovereignty to justice, pluralism to equity, decolonization to democracy. This requires the active construction of a radical internationalism—a politics that is not about siding with powers, but empowering the powerless; not about naming new centers, but dismantling the logic of the center-periphery divide altogether.

To quote Dugin once more, with caution:
“In multipolarity, we are not seeking stability—we are seeking meaning. The world must rediscover meaning through difference.”

But meaning without justice is merely myth. And difference without equality is hierarchy by another name.

Multipolarity is not a destination. It is a terrain. A battlefield between the ghosts of empire and the seeds of liberation. As the world shifts into this new configuration, one question remains: Will this be a reorganization of global power, or a reimagining of global freedom?

The Dilemma of Filipino Nationalism: Sovereignty vs. Subservience

The Dilemma of Filipino Nationalism: Sovereignty vs. Subservience 

In the face of rising tensions in the West Philippine Sea, Filipino nationalism is once again at a crossroads. China’s growing maritime assertiveness has forced the Philippines into an increasingly precarious position, compelling the government to seek stronger military ties with the United States. Under the recently expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the Philippines has opened nine sites to U.S. military access, including new locations in Cagayan, Isabela, Zambales, and Palawan. These additions are being framed as strategic countermeasures to deter Chinese aggression and bolster the country’s defensive capabilities. 

At first glance, this might seem like a prudent decision. After all, Beijing has continued to ignore the 2016 arbitral ruling in favor of the Philippines, harassed Filipino fishermen, and conducted increasingly brazen maneuvers near Philippine-occupied territories. In such a dangerous environment, some argue that reinforcing alliances with the United States—the Philippines’ long-standing defense partner—is not only logical but necessary. 

However, a deeper look reveals a troubling trend: the Philippines may be reinforcing a historical pattern of subservience disguised as pragmatism. By integrating itself further into America’s Indo-Pacific strategy—especially within the U.S. “first-island chain” encircling China—the Philippines risks transforming into a forward operating base for a conflict it did not choose. This militarization bears striking similarities to America’s presence in South Korea and Japan, where U.S. bases persist amid deep-seated public resistance and sovereignty concerns. 

In this light, the Philippines’ recent decisions represent more than just military logistics. They are a test of national identity. 

Nationalism and the American Shadow 

Filipino nationalism has long carried an anti-colonial, and by extension anti-American, undercurrent. Born out of resistance to Spanish and later American rule, the nation’s sense of identity has always been tethered to the struggle for independence. From the Philippine-American War at the turn of the 20th century to the eventual removal of U.S. bases in the 1990s, the nationalist imagination has consistently viewed American influence as a challenge to full sovereignty. 

Despite this historical backdrop, many today argue that anti-American sentiment must be shelved in favor of strategic necessity. The threat from China is tangible, immediate, and increasingly aggressive. By contrast, American presence is seen as stabilizing—a lesser evil. But this line of thinking imposes a dangerous binary: it reduces Filipino nationalism to a choice between two imperial patrons. It implies that sovereignty can only be preserved by compromising it to one power in order to fend off another. 

Such logic is not only flawed—it is a betrayal of the very ideals Filipino nationalism claims to uphold. 

Symbolic Patriotism vs. Real Sovereignty 

Over time, nationalism in the Philippines has been reduced to symbolic acts: wearing the barong Tagalog, speaking in Filipino, commemorating national heroes. While these expressions are culturally valuable, they do little to address the structural dependence that keeps the country tethered to foreign interests. True sovereignty cannot exist without economic and political independence. 

The post-war “Filipino First” policy under President Carlos P. Garcia was one of the few serious attempts at asserting economic nationalism. It prioritized Filipino businesses over foreign ones, seeking to build a self-reliant industrial base. However, it was short-lived and largely dismantled by subsequent administrations more amenable to foreign capital. Critics dismissed it as protectionist and oligarchic, while foreign corporations—especially American—regained dominance in key sectors such as mining, energy, and telecommunications. Today, Chinese firms have joined the fray, especially in infrastructure and construction. 

Instead of building strong domestic industries, the Philippine economy remains heavily reliant on foreign investment, remittances, and imports. Successive governments, including the current Marcos Jr. administration, have continued to open up the economy under the guise of development, while failing to nurture local productivity. Wall Street influences financial policies, while the Pentagon shapes defense priorities. The result is a country locked into the global economy without the safeguards or leverage to assert its own interests. 

A Global Reassessment: Even Americans Are Pulling Back 

Ironically, as the Philippine government embraces deeper military cooperation with the U.S., there is a growing movement within the United States calling for an end to its role as the “world’s policeman.” A significant portion of the American public is increasingly skeptical of overseas military interventions. Many now demand that their government focus on domestic issues—healthcare, infrastructure, education—rather than funding endless wars and maintaining hundreds of military bases abroad. 

In Japan and South Korea, where U.S. military presence is deeply entrenched, there is growing public backlash. In Okinawa, for example, mass protests against American bases have persisted for years, with locals decrying crimes, environmental degradation, and land grabs. South Korean civil society groups have repeatedly demanded greater autonomy from U.S. influence in both domestic and foreign policy. These are not marginal sentiments—they reflect a deeper global reassessment of military alliances born in a different geopolitical era. 

If more prosperous and militarily capable nations are questioning the wisdom of hosting U.S. bases, why should the Philippines, with its history of colonization and current vulnerabilities, embrace this arrangement so readily? 

The False Choice: China or the U.S.? 

The current discourse presents Filipino nationalism with a false dilemma: either align with the U.S. to contain China or fall prey to Chinese expansionism. But real patriotism demands rejecting this binary. The Philippines is not fated to be a pawn between superpowers. Instead, it must reclaim its sovereignty by asserting an independent foreign policy that genuinely prioritizes national interests. 

This means investing in the self-sufficiency of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, not to wage war, but to credibly defend national territory without depending entirely on foreign powers. It means building industries that generate local wealth and employment, rather than continuing to serve as a cheap labor market for multinational corporations. It means resisting the temptation to outsource national security and development to those who ultimately answer to their own capitals, not to Manila. 

History has shown that nations caught in the crossfire of great power rivalry suffer the most—Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine stand as stark reminders. Should conflict erupt between the U.S. and China, the Philippines’ proximity to flashpoints like Taiwan and the South China Sea, combined with its strategic EDCA locations, would make it one of the earliest and most vulnerable targets. 

Toward a Nationalism of Action 

Filipino nationalism must evolve. It can no longer be a hollow invocation of heroes or a passive reliance on foreign alliances. It must become a living, breathing framework for national renewal. 

This means: 

Establishing a clear roadmap for industrial development that prioritizes Filipino entrepreneurs and workers.

Renegotiating foreign agreements that undermine sovereignty or bypass local consultation.

Demanding transparency and accountability from government officials involved in security and economic policymaking.

Educating the public on the long-term costs of military dependence and foreign-led development.

The struggle for sovereignty is not merely diplomatic—it is economic, cultural, and psychological. It requires courage, vision, and above all, political will. 

Conclusion: A Nation at a Crossroads 

The Philippines today stands on a precipice. It can choose to double down on dependency, allowing foreign powers—whether East or West—to define its future. Or it can take the more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding path of genuine independence. 

This choice must be made not just by politicians, but by every Filipino who dares to ask: what does it truly mean to be free? 

The real enemy is not any one country, but the idea that the Philippines must always be someone else’s protectorate. The question now is not whether to kneel before China or the U.S., but whether Filipinos are ready to stand on their own. If nationalism means anything at all, it must begin with that decision.   

The Incompatibility of Multipolarity with the Neoliberal Imagination

The Incompatibility of Multipolarity with the Neoliberal Imagination

For those firmly invested in the ideology of neoliberal capitalism and globalization, democracy is tolerated only insofar as it does not impede market imperatives and capital accumulation. Within such a paradigm, the notion of multipolarity—a world shaped by multiple centers of political, economic, and cultural power—becomes ideologically inconceivable.

“Rules-Based International Order”: A Legal Fiction or Alibi? The expression “rules-based international order” is frequently invoked as though it were a neutral framework of universal norms. In reality, it often functions as a legal fiction—an ideological alibi to legitimize Western unipolar dominance.

As noted on Reddit:

“Rules based order in short is – जियो और जीने दो... Might is right at the end of the day…the West…contains the richest and most powerful nations on the planet” .

This blunt admission exposes how these “rules” were crafted by and for the powerful, not as impartial constraints.

Legal scholars like John Dugard affirm this critique. Dugard argues that the “rules-based international order” often stems from tacit arrangements among Western states alone, and affords them a unilateral license—one not available to non-Western actors.

Critics from TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) go further, contending:
“The regime of international law is illegitimate. … a predatory system that legitimizes, reproduces and sustains the plunder and subordination of the Third World by the West”.

TWAIL scholars view international law not as a neutral code of global governance, but as a colonial project serving Western interests.

Historically, Western interventions—such as in Kosovo, Iraq, and Libya—have flouted legal norms in the service of declared higher purposes, revealing a double standard.

Multipolarity as Epistemological and Political Challenge

Multipolarity fundamentally challenges the neoliberal frame. It does not merely redistribute geopolitical power—it redefines legitimacy, norms, and global discourse.

Amitav Acharya, a prominent advocate of plural global order, observes that:
“Emerging powers cannot be simply co-opted into the existing liberal international order…mutual accommodation” is required—meaning deep institutional reform, regional legitimacy, and normative pluralism.

He warns that many non-Western states see the existing order as “narrow, unilateral, and Western‑centric,” and therefore in need of radical transformation.

What Acharya terms a “multiplex world” is neither return to past multipolar systems nor simple Western hegemony. Rather, it is a decentered, heterogeneous global order shaped by multiple actors, layers of institutions, and historical legacies.

Reclaiming Democracy Beyond Market Logic

Reviving democracy in a meaningful way—beyond its current subordination to market forces and hegemonic legalism—requires two intellectual tasks:

Decolonizing global discourse: We must reject the conflation of Western unipolar dominance with universal legality. As Acharya and TWAIL scholars remind us, the current “rules-based order” is structured, framed, and sustained by a narrow bloc of Western powers.

Reimagining power as plural: Multiplexity involves accepting diverse normative orders as legitimate. This means democratizing global institutions, acknowledging civilizational pluralism, and embracing mutual accommodation—rather than enforced adoption—of norms and structures.

Conclusion

The invocation of a “rules‑based international order” as a universal norm is, upon closer scrutiny, a rhetorical alibi—designed to preserve Western unipolar dominance under the guise of legality. Multipolarity, or better yet multiplexity, represents not just a shift in power distribution but a challenge to the very terms of global legitimacy.

Only by confronting this ideological fiction, and by committing to a plural democracy not subordinated to market imperatives, can we begin to conceive of a world shaped by multiple equal centers of power, legitimacy, and possibility.

References:
Acharya, A. (2016). Interview – Amitav Acharya.E‑IR. Retrieved from …
Acharya, A. (2017). After Liberal Hegemony: The Advent of a Multiplex World Order. Ethics & International Affairs, 31(3), 271–285.
Acharya, A. (2025, April 13). US‑led world order is going through a big shift… The Times of India.
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A Note on Freedom: Independent, But Still Becoming

A Note on Freedom: Independent, But Still Becoming 

 Issued on the 126th Anniversary of Philippine Independence 

June 12, 2025 

 This is a note—not a declaration. Not a decree. Simply a note, offered quietly from the folds of a nation’s heart. 

 The Philippines is an independent country. That much is fact. The flag was raised, the anthem sung, the colonizer’s rule ended. On paper, sovereignty was secured. But even now—over a century later—there remains a quiet truth that cannot be silenced: this country is still fighting to become a nation that truly determines its own path. 

 What is independence without dignity? Without agency? Without the power to shape policy, economy, and identity on its own terms? 

 There is freedom, yes—but it is partial, conditional, and often borrowed. For all the beauty of its islands and the strength of its people, the Philippines still struggles under the weight of foreign dependence and domestic inequality. Its seas are encroached upon. Its workers are shipped abroad. Its resources, extracted. Its decisions, too often shaped by interests beyond its shores. 

 And so this note speaks—not to celebrate with fanfare, but to remind with quiet resolve: sovereignty is not a single moment, but a continuous motion. 

 It is in the rice farmer asking for fair compensation. In the student demanding education that liberates. In the worker who stays not because they must, but because they choose to. In the leader who serves the flag, not their own pocket. 

 It is easier to say that the Philippines is independent. Easier still to celebrate it in parades and fireworks, with the illusion that the matter is settled. But a harder truth shadows the page: for all its legal sovereignty, the nation often behaves not like a republic charting its own course, but like a cultural community waiting for permission—beholden to the very powers it once defied. 

 Unlike Taiwan, which despite isolation chooses self-definition and stands firm in the face of pressure, the Philippines too often trades resolve for reassurance, policy for patronage. It invokes democracy while deferring to interests that neither vote here nor suffer the consequences of their influence. It speaks of people power, yet waits for others to validate its direction. At times, the question echoes uncomfortably in the national conscience: is the Philippines truly a sovereign state—or has it accepted a softer identity, closer to that of a postcolonial Puerto Rico, where the forms of freedom are present, but not its full weight, nor its responsibility?

 This is not to condemn, but to call. Independence must be more than an inheritance; it must be a decision remade every generation. A republic that forgets how to act as one may find itself adrift—not colonized, but not fully free either. So let this June 12 not mark a finish line, but a call to continue. Let it remind every Filipino—at home and abroad—that independence is not merely about being free from something, but about being free for something: for justice, for truth, for dignity, for nationhood that is lived, not just proclaimed. 

 And if that journey is uphill, then let it be climbed with the same courage that once lit the fires of revolution. This is the note. It is not loud. But it is clear. 

Loose Sand or Rising Soil? - The Filipino’s Search for a National Soul

Loose Sand or Rising Soil?

- The Filipino’s Search for a National Soul

On the 126th anniversary of Philippine independence, the nation pauses to celebrate its freedom. Flags wave proudly, speeches echo in city halls, and parades march with rehearsed precision. Yet beneath the surface of festivity lies a question that time and symbolism have never truly resolved: has the Filipino people grown into their freedom—or merely worn it like an inherited costume? 

A century ago, in 1924, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen observed with brutal honesty that his people, despite their ancient civilization, lacked a national spirit. “They are just a heap of loose sand,” he said. A people divided, vulnerable, and carved up by outside forces. “Other men,” he lamented, “are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat.” It was a chilling metaphor of a country consumed by others because it could not yet stand for itself. 

Today, observers look at the Philippines and see troubling parallels. For all its modern trappings—the skyscrapers, digital infrastructure, and globalized lifestyle—the country remains haunted by old patterns. Power continues to serve entrenched elites; poverty lingers despite decades of development plans; and the national will, if not absent, remains easily fragmented by regionalism, patronage, and personal ambition. 

Like China once was, the Philippines too often appears as an appendage to the interests of others—both local and foreign. Pretentious agreements are signed in glittering rooms, while unjust deals rob the nation quietly in the background. The majority of the population benefits little from the promises of trickle-down economics. Instead, they survive on the margins, in the shadow of a system where opportunity is too often inherited rather than earned. 

To some, this is not a new observation. The early 20th-century writer Miguel Lucio Bustamante described the Filipino character in extremes: the simple farmer content with his carabao and land, and the educated man who, after schooling in Manila, returns to the province full of arrogance, only to bring misfortune upon his household. In both cases, what is absent is ambition for the nation—a larger purpose beyond self, family, or class. 

Despite access to modern education, global networks, and democratic space, the Filipino often remains hesitant to build a cohesive national vision. There is pride in culture, but little unity in direction. Protests are loud but fleeting; elections are passionate but cyclical. The country exports its best labor to care for others abroad, while struggling to uplift its own. 

To compare the Philippines to early 20th-century China may seem harsh—perhaps even accusatory. Yet such comparison is not meant to shame, but to awaken. Sun Yat Sen’s words were not a resignation but a call to transformation. China, after all, did not remain loose sand. Through immense hardship, ideological struggle, and a vision of collective destiny, it forged a new path, however contested or imperfect. 

The Filipino question is therefore not one of capability, but of will. What binds the fisherman in Leyte to the student in Makati, the teacher in Bukidnon to the caregiver in Milan? Where is the national spirit—not as performance, but as daily commitment? What is the dream that unites, not just entertains? 

Too often, it seems, the Filipino identity is reactive—proud in moments of crisis, loud in moments of scandal, but quiet in the long, hard work of nation-building. As a result, the country remains vulnerable to external manipulation, internal exploitation, and generational fatigue. 

And so the central question endures—this Independence Day more than ever: Will the Filipino remain this way? 

Will the people continue as a heap of loose sand—dispersed by every gust of scandal, every wave of imported influence, every political tide? Or will they, at last, become rising soil—solid, fertile, capable of holding a nation’s weight? 

True independence is not merely declared. It is cultivated. 

And the time to cultivate it is now. 

THEY STABBED JUSTICE IN THE BACK!

THEY STABBED JUSTICE IN THE BACK!

In the stillness of night, behind curtains of privilege and velvet impunity, eighteen senators have laid their daggers not only into the Constitution—but into the throat of the Republic itself. 

 They were summoned by duty. They responded with betrayal. They were called to trial. They chose surrender. 

 They have abdicated their role as judges, and embraced the robes of accomplices. They did not follow the Constitution—they abandoned it. They did not seek truth—they extinguished it. What was demanded was judgment. What they offered was complicity. 

 The Constitution said: FORTHWITH. Not RETURN. Not DEFLECT. Not DELAY. And yet they’ve said: “Let the House reconsider.” “Let the next Congress decide.” “Let the courts handle it.” They pass the burden like cowards pass blame. In doing so, they have not only betrayed the people—they have dishonored the very meaning of law. 

 They hide behind procedure like tyrants hide behind banners. 

 And let this note speak clearly: this is no procedural motion. This is a political consolidation. It is the Senate surrendering itself to the Duterte faction. It is the Senate preferring silence over scandal, subservience over struggle, treachery over truth. 

 “Audacity, more audacity, always audacity!” cried Georges Danton before the National Convention in 1792, when the French Republic itself was in peril.[¹] That is what justice demands in times of crisis—not this Senate’s pale cowardice. Danton was calling the people to rise against kings. We call now the people to rise against traitors in suits. 

 And when Robespierre declared, “The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant,”[²] he foresaw what is now being done to us: the suffocation of political memory, the erosion of constitutional obligation, the silencing of the Republic’s conscience. 

 What the Senate has done is not a failure of deliberation. It is a betrayal of people's trust. And through this process is what the Constitution was meant to preserve: a peaceful, principled mechanism for removing those who abuse power. The vice president is accused of high crimes. Instead of proceeding to trial, the Senate slammed shut the doors of judgment and told the people to wait—to forget—to move on. 

 The people will not forget. 

 Tonight’s vote proves that the powerful do not fear guilt—they fear exposure. They do not fear the law—they fear the people watching them uphold it. 

 Let it ring from every rooftop and every street: this is not procedure. This is a putsch in slow motion. This is a crisis in legislative disguise. 

 They did not vote. They stabbed. 

 And the wound will not close—not until the people rise, not until the voice of justice drowns the whispers of cowardice, not until those who worship power are exiled from the temple of democracy. Let justice roar—not whisper. Let the people rise—not wait. Let the traitors tremble—for the Republic remembers. 

 REFERENCES: 

 [¹] Georges Danton, speech to the National Convention, September 2, 1792: “De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace, et la Patrie est sauvée.” (“Audacity, more audacity, always audacity, and the Fatherland is saved.”)

 [²] Maximilien Robespierre, speech to the Convention, 1793. The quote is often paraphrased as: “The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” (See: Robespierre: Political Writings, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, 2007.) 

LOUIE JALANDONI, 90

 LOUIE JALANDONI, 90 

February 26, 1935 – June 7, 2025 

By Kat Ulrike

 It is with profound revolutionary mourning that the passing of Luis "Louie" Jalandoni is announced. A stalwart of the Filipino people’s struggle, a diplomat of the downtrodden, and a beacon of internationalist solidarity, Ka Louie passed away peacefully at 9:05 a.m. on June 7, 2025, in Utrecht, the Netherlands (3:05 p.m. Philippine time). He was 90 years old. 

 In his final moments, he was surrounded by his lifelong comrade and beloved wife Ka Coni, family members, and comrades forged across decades of struggle. His departure marks the end of a historic era—but not the end of the movement to which he devoted his entire life. 

 Born on February 26, 1935, on Negros Island, into a family of landlords and sugar barons, Ka Louie broke from the privileges of his birth. His political awakening came not through theory alone but through contact with sugar workers and peasants in the Visayas. He chose the difficult road of struggle over the comfort of inherited wealth. 

 As a Catholic priest, he served under the Church in the Barrios program, ministering to the poor in the countryside. This path would bring him to a deeper understanding of structural injustice—and into the heart of the people’s movement. He was a founding figure in the Christians for National Liberation (CNL), a courageous group of clergy and religious workers that stood in firm resistance to the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship.

 In 1972, Ka Louie joined the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The following year, the CNL became a founding allied organization of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). As Marcos declared Martial Law, Ka Louie went underground, aligning his life permanently with the revolutionary cause. 

 In 1973, he and Ka Coni were arrested and imprisoned at Fort Bonifacio. For nearly a year, Ka Louie was held in a dark, airless cell, crammed with six or seven others. But repression could not silence the movement. Campaigns by religious and international human rights groups led to their release in July 1974. 

 Exile followed, but not retreat. In 1976, facing renewed threats, Ka Louie and Ka Coni were granted political asylum in the Netherlands, becoming the first Filipinos to receive such recognition. From there, a new phase of struggle began. In 1977, Ka Louie was named international representative of the NDFP, tasked with building solidarity networks, exposing the crimes of the dictatorship, and articulating the vision of national liberation to the world. 

 In 1989, he became the chief negotiator for the NDFP in peace talks with the reactionary Philippine government. In every round of negotiations—from Cory Aquino to Duterte—Ka Louie held fast to the movement’s line: peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice. His work at the negotiating table was never a retreat from struggle, but an extension of it—firm, principled, and unwavering. 

 He endured the collapse of talks, political betrayals, arrests of consultants, and state perfidy with calm resolve and dialectical clarity. Never once did he compromise the integrity of the people’s demands. His commitment to a just peace remained unshaken until the end. 

 Ka Louie’s contributions—diplomatic, strategic, moral—cannot be overstated. He stood as one of the most enduring figures of the Filipino people’s revolutionary history: a priest who became a militant, a detainee who became an exile, and an exile who remained forever bound to the people he served. 

 His life reminds all that to commit to revolution is to surrender not hope but illusion. His death is a loss—but also a legacy. What he helped build cannot be buried. What he stood for continues to rise.

 Ka Louie Jalandoni lives on—in every clenched fist, in every barrio meeting, in every principled stand taken against tyranny. His memory strengthens the movement that shaped him and that he, in turn, helped shape.