Time to drop landlubber mentality

When we visualize our national survival, our minds instinctively wander landward. We worry about shielding crowded economic hubs, securing land borders, and stabilizing volatile political centers.

Yet, for a nation bound by a complex maze of over 7,000 islands, our true destiny and our gravest vulnerabilities have always been written on the water. It is time to smash a generation of strategic myopia and confront a fundamental truth that the physical survival of our Republic is inextricably linked to our vast maritime domain.

I was recently reminded of this urgent paradigm shift when my high school classmate, Capt. Benjo Negranza, invited me to speak before the intellectual and operational core of the Philippine Navy.

The volatile shifts unfolding daily within the West Philippine Sea demand our absolute attention. On 24 September 2026, a routine humanitarian rotation and resupply mission to the BRP Sierra Madre at Ayungin Shoal was blocked and suspended due to aggressive Chinese interference.

These dangerous confrontations have become a perilous routine. They serve as a stark reminder that this is neither a drill nor an academic discussion for scholarly journals. It is the clear frontline where we must defend our country’s territorial integrity and sovereign rights.

For too long, our national geopolitical imagination has been stubbornly land-bound. We have treated our vast surrounding seas as mere edges or empty moats, rather than the strategic core of who we are. To put it bluntly: we cannot afford to be a maritime nation with a landlubber’s mentality.

Our baseline for this fight must always be the law. We hold an indisputable, monumental legal shield: the 2016 Arbitral Award. Handed down by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, this historic ruling decisively dismantled Beijing’s expansive, unlawful “nine-dash line” claim, declaring it completely devoid of historical or legal basis.

It legally solidified our exclusive economic zone (EEZ), affirming that the Filipino people have sovereign rights over the West Philippine Sea. While international law does not draw borders or award territory, it establishes our unassailable, permanent right to fish, explore, and manage the maritime resources that are rightfully ours.

Thankfully, our budget is finally beginning to match our legal authority and geography. To actively back the Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept, the national defense sector’s budget sits at a substantial P430.87 billion. More importantly, the Philippine Navy’s dedicated budget scales to P59.4 billion, heavily backed by a P40 billion allocation for the Revised Armed Forces of the Philippines Modernization Program.

This financial muscle isn’t just for show. It is designed to fuel our critical transition from a reactive, brown-water coastal force into a capable, blue-water power projecting credible deterrence across our EEZ.

But we aren’t steering through these turbulent geopolitical seas entirely alone. Armed with the moral clarity of the 2016 ruling, the Philippines is aggressively leveraging robust regional partnerships.

From enhanced maritime joint exercises to strategic hardware cooperation with traditional allies like the United States, Japan and Australia, as well as deepening defense dialogues with global maritime leaders like the United Kingdom, we have become a significant partner in building a united front for Indo-Pacific stability.

These alliances don’t replace our self-reliance; they multiply our strength.

Securing our waters is not just about the technical logistics of naval warfare or tracking procurement timelines. It is about securing our economic lifelines, our ecological treasures, and the rich blue economy that will feed future generations of Filipinos. If we lose the seas, we lose the country’s major income source.

Our maritime forces stand at the cutting edge of this existential struggle, keeping the Republic steady against relentless regional encroachment. This reality is a clear warning to those policymakers who continue to question our unified West Philippine Sea strategy: your political posturing only serves to demoralize the frontline troops holding the line.

The nation must stop looking inward and firmly turn its gaze toward the horizon.