Perhaps 2026 is the time when Southeast Asia can unite and align in support of regional stability and the de-escalation of conflict in the South China Sea and the West Philippine Sea. With the Philippines as this year’s chair, the archipelago has a pivotal opportunity to spearhead the effort by pushing for collective action and regional cooperation in Asean. Manila is armed with seemingly unending evidence of aggressive and coercive behavior by China, including heavy foreign malign influence, the likes of which could fill a whole library, if not more.
The Philippine Chairmanship offers a unique platform to reframe the South China Sea issue, emphasizing that the stability of this trade corridor is existential not just for Manila, but for the wider ASEAN economy. This approach requires strategic minilateralism through two prongs: maintaining the momentum of the Asean-China Free Trade Area and other development partnerships, recognizing China’s primacy in regional trade, while simultaneously drawing a hard line on regional security. True partnership, however, relies on consistency; it is difficult to improve state relations when Beijing engages in economic courtship on land while exercising coercion at sea. Manila’s challenge, therefore, is to steer Asean’s complex interests without allowing the urgent concerns of the West Philippine Sea to be sidelined by the allure of economic convenience.
While the Philippines currently stands at the forefront of this struggle, the strategic implications extend far beyond its waters. Should the South China Sea fall under the de facto control of a single power, this maritime commons would effectively transform into a strategic choke point, granting Beijing the capacity to regulate the pulse of global commerce. In such a scenario, the economic sovereignty of neighboring states would be hollowed out, leaving their prosperity contingent less on market forces and more on the degree of their diplomatic deference to China.
Situated at the epicenter of this geopolitical friction, the Philippines serves as both the primary witness to coercion and the vanguard of the response. The 2026 Chairmanship presents a strategic opportunity for Manila to translate these localized tensions into a broader call for cooperative security solutions. The success of the country’s transparency initiative—which systematically exposes grey-zone tactics such as China’s water cannoning and hazardous maneuvering, and now includes foreign malign influence operations—has already galvanized a coalition of support from partners such as the United States, Japan, and Australia.
These allies have been increasingly vocal in their condemnation of such destabilizing acts, lending crucial diplomatic weight to Manila’s defense of the rule of law. To sustain this momentum, Manila must enshrine the West Philippine Sea issue as an existential priority for Asean rather than a transient political agenda. Domestically, the issue must be shielded from political infighting and recognized simply as a fight for the nation’s future. By projecting this internal resolve, rooted in a principled defense of international law, the Philippines can hopefully foster the necessary solidarity to drive collective action within Asean.
Ultimately, the defining challenge for Manila will be to persuade a hesitant Asean to view the South China Sea issue not as an isolated legal tussle for the Philippines, but as a common transnational imperative. For the first time, the bloc is led by a chair standing directly on the frontline of coercion and information warfare, with a willingness to assert its sovereignty. Manila must utilize this vantage point to address the critical battleground of the information domain, where Beijing’s dissemination of false claims and manipulated narratives is calculated to fracture regional resolve and unity. If left unchecked, these false claims regarding the West Philippine Sea will succeed in paralyzing the bloc. The Philippines’ task, therefore, is to guide its neighbors to a stark realization: that silence in the face of disinformation and aggression is not neutrality, but a precursor to a fragmented and vulnerable Asean.
Erik Chua is the co-founder and director for strategic partnerships and programs of the Center for Information Resilience and Integrity Studies (CIRIS).
