JOSE Romualdez, our ambassador to Washington, D.C., has been implementing not Philippine foreign policy but that of America, which he confuses as our foreign policy. Especially as the US capital is the most important diplomatic post in the world and since he is the most talkative member of our foreign service corps, Romualdez has and will be reversing the gains in instilling nationalism among Filipinos made by late Foreign Affairs secretary Blas Ople, and of course former president Rodrigo Duterte.

Romualdez himself obliviously revealed his American worldview in an interview with the Hong Kong-based news website Asia Times. The interview was conducted by his big fan, also a pro-US, anti-China writer, Richard Heydarian, who himself seems unaware of the fundamental divergence between US and Philippine foreign-relations policies.