CROSSROADS was where the Philippines was when President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. began his administration in 2022. The reference was to the seeming need of the country to choose between China and the United States of America in their struggle for world domination. Which to take for instance, America's rules-based world order and freedom of navigation operations in whichever sea in the world, or China's world community of shared future for mankind, and particularly in the disputed region of the South China Sea, noninterference by Western powers in the settlement of the dispute.
Largely on China's initiative, Asean countries had agreed with it to enforce the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. Of the 10 countries comprising Asean, only the Philippines has not joined China in acceding to the code. Instead, President Bongbong Marcos has chosen to side with the United States and its Western and Asian allies, signifying their war readiness against China through media propaganda and actual war exercises in the disputed sea.
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