THE world's attention has been on Southeast Asia over the past couple of weeks as countries in the region hosted consequential meetings of world leaders. President Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr. represented the Philippines at the Asean summit in Cambodia and in the APEC forum in Thailand. In between those conferences, Indonesia hosted the G20 meeting. The Philippines does not belong to the G20, which is the group of the 20 wealthiest countries in the world, at least not yet.Mr. Marcos hopes to lead the Philippines into becoming an upper middle-income country like Indonesia, and for that, he needs to work with the community of nations. Prosperity requires a peaceful and stable environment to bear fruit. But the world has been disrupted by a pandemic and then by the war between Ukraine and Russia that exacerbated problems in global food distribution, triggered an energy crisis and drove up inflation. As many have said, the Philippines faces external headwinds.In a remarkable initiative, G20 leaders condemned the war in Ukraine. 'Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy — constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening energy and food insecurity, and elevating financial stability risks,' according to the Bali declaration. 'There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions. Recognizing that the G20 is not the forum to resolve security issues, we acknowledge that security issues can have significant consequences for the global economy.'