PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. clearly laid out his foreign policy in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) the other day, as he has done in several other speeches: 'Our independent foreign policy — a friend to all and enemy of none — has proven effective. We formed strategic alliances with our traditional and newfound partners in the international community.'

'Traditional partner' is obviously the US, but 'newfound' obviously refers to the People's Republic of China, which the foreign affairs department and our ambassador to Washington Jose Manuel Romualdez have all been treating as an enemy, with the latter repeatedly calling China a bully, an expansionist power.