AS conjectured in my column (TMT, Jan. 21), Venezuela has slipped from the headlines, eclipsed by Trump’s designs on Greenland. A larger stage opened, and the world’s showman arrived — not to seek permission, but to overwhelm. Davos became theater; power became performance. Attention, not consent, is now the currency of influence.

The world of 2026 has crossed the threshold into a new order. The retreat of Arctic ice has exposed a deeper truth: The “pleasant fictions” of international law are yielding to a raw, transactional politics of power. Greenland, Davos and Manila are not separate stories but a single geopolitical parable. They reveal how sovereignty is priced and how alliances are renegotiated in public.

Small nations must relearn an ancient lesson: When rules melt with the ice, survival depends on power and resolve, not promises. The moral architecture of the postwar world is fracturing. For the Philippines, this is not distant theater — it is a mirror. What is rehearsed in the Arctic may yet be performed in our waters.

Davos debacle

The 2026 Davos World Economic Forum will be remembered not for grand bargains but for a geopolitical farce. Fresh from a campaign to “acquire” Greenland, Trump arrived with AI-generated memes of American flags draped over ice sheets. He spoke of sovereignty as if it were a deed, of territory as if it were inventory — assets to be acquired, priced and moved at will.

When Denmark and its European allies resisted, Trump responded not with diplomacy but with menace. He threatened 25-percent tariffs on eight NATO states, treating a security alliance less as a covenant than as a protection racket. It was power as reality TV: the strongman’s bluff, broadcast to the world.

Then came the collapse.

Defied by a unified Europe and credible whispers of an EU “anti-coercion bazooka” — including a coordinated US Treasury holdings sell-off — Trump abruptly folded, ruling out force, suspending tariffs in exchange for a vaporous “framework of a future deal,” which NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte diplomatically described as having “a lot of work to be done.”

TACO

Thus, was re-enforced the nickname circulating in diplomatic corridors.

The mockery is deserved. But the danger lies not in Trump’s retreat; it lies in the pattern. Bluff. Threaten. Fold. Repeat. This rhythm does more than bruise credibility; it shatters the very idea of “automaticity” in alliances — NATO Article 5. Defense becomes conditional. Commitments become bargaining chips. Guarantees acquire an asterisk.

For Manila, the implication is chilling. A presidency that treats Greenland as a property may one day treat Ayungin Shoal, or Bajo de Masinloc, as line items in a grand bargain with Beijing. An ally who prices territory can trade it. An ally who improvises strategy can improvise abandonment.

The end of pretend rules

Against this spectacle stood a quiet intellectual counterweight. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney invoked Václav Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless,” likening the “rules-based international order” to the greengrocer’s sign in the window: a ritual everyone knows is hollow, yet everyone continues to perform.

Canada, Carney declared, is “taking the sign out of the window.” The old rules no longer restrain the powerful. Trade, finance, technology and supply chains are now instruments of coercion. Great powers weaponize interdependence. Pretending otherwise is not idealism; it is self-deception.

In place of illusion, Carney proposed “value-based realism,” a posture that remains anchored in sovereignty and human dignity, yet unsentimental about the decline of American reliability. It does not abandon values. It abandons naiveté.

For middle powers, his message was stark: If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.

He urged a “variable geometry,” issue-specific coalitions that bypass paralyzed institutions. Canada will double defense spending, diversify trade away from America, and weave a dense web of global partnerships. Sovereignty, in this world, is no longer guaranteed by rules. It is earned by the capacity to withstand pressure. It was not a speech of comfort. It was a manual for survival.

The Arctic as the North’s South China Sea

Greenland and the West Philippine Sea (WPS) are separated by oceans yet bound by logic. The Arctic is fast becoming the North’s SCS/WPS — a maritime frontier where geography is rewritten by presence, and legitimacy follows occupation. The parallels are haunting:

– The shield of law. Both Greenland and the Philippines rely on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos). Both discover its fragility. Just as Beijing ignored the 2016 arbitral ruling, Washington’s casual disregard for Danish sovereignty reveals that “national interest” overrides law — even among friends.

– The strategy of presence. In the WPS, China deploys maritime militias and concrete reefs into permanence. In the Arctic, Russia and China plant “scientific” outposts. The BRP Sierra Madre stands as our lonely pathetic sentinel; Greenland’s Inuit patrols play the same role. In a transactional world, unoccupied space is deemed vacant.

– Strategic real estate. Greenland is the cork of the North Atlantic. The Philippines is the hinge of the First Island Chain. Both are viewed less as nations than as buffers. Our debate over EDCA mirrors Greenland’s fear that too much military presence invites annexation by proxy.

Geography has become destiny again. The map is no longer drawn by treaties. It is drawn by who arrives first and who stays longest.

PH’s mandate: Diversify or subordinate

The Greenland climbdown teaches Manila a harsh lesson: Transactional alliances are unstable foundations. The Mutual Defense Treaty has long been treated as ironclad. Trump’s conduct suggests otherwise. Protection now comes with a price — and a mood.

The Philippines must adopt its own version of Carney’s realism. We see its outline already:

– Multi-alignment. Security ties with Japan, Australia and Europe create a flexible web of defense. No single capital becomes a point of failure. Alliance is no longer monogamy; it is architecture.

— The value of strength. Defense modernization is not just about hardware. It is about raising the cost of coercion — for Beijing and for a transactional Washington. Vulnerability rouses appetite.

– Regional solidarity. Asean must evolve from a forum of caution into a coalition of consequence. Southeast Asia must act as a collective middle power rather than a gallery of pliant clients competing for favor.

This is not defiance. It is adulthood.

Living without illusions

As Arctic ice melts, the map of power is redrawn. The age when small nations slept beneath the blanket of a benevolent order is over. Davos 2026 revealed a divided world: those who weaponize chaos, and those who build resilience.

Trump’s TACO diplomacy is not an aberration. It is a symptom of a deeper American transformation. To remain masters of our seas, we must look beyond the horizon of the 1951 MDT. We must take our own sign out of the window. Name the world as it is. Strengthen what is ours.

Weave ourselves into those who still believe sovereignty is worth defending.

In an age where ice retreats and seas rise, power belongs not to those who wait for the world they wish for but to those who learn to navigate the world that is.

The Senate President crowed yesterday that the party he nominally coheads, PDP-Laban, has a “pleasant problem” — too many potential senatorial candidates. Koko Pimentel’s estimate is they have up to 20 possible choices for the 12-person slate for the 2019 senatorial race. But his list includes the five administration-affiliated senatorial incumbents up for reelection next year. This is a group that has made noises that, much as it prefers to remain in the administration camp, it is unhappy with the way PDP-Laban has been designating its local leaders and candidates, and therefore prefers to strike out on its own, perhaps in alliance with the other administration (regional) party, Hugpong ng Pagbabago, headed by the President’s daughter and current Davao City mayor, Sara Duterte.

Setting aside, then, the five-person “Force,” the administration-oriented but not PDP-friendly reelectionists (Nancy Binay, Sonny Angara, Cynthia Villar, Grace Poe, and JV Ejercito), what Koko’s crowing over is a mixed bag. Some of them have been floated by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez (with whom Mayor Duterte clashed in recent months): six representatives (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who is in her last term in the House of Representatives; Albee Benitez, Karlo Nograles, Rey Umali, Geraldine Roman, and Zajid Mangudadatu), three Cabinet members (Bong Go, Harry Roque, and Francis Tolentino), and two other officials (Mocha Uson and Ronald dela Rosa), which still only adds up to 11 possible candidates (who are the missing three?).

Of all of these, the “Force” reelectionists are only fair-weather allies of the present dispensation; their setting themselves apart is about much more than the mess PDP-Laban made in, say, San Juan where support for the Zamoras makes it extremely unattractive for JV Ejercito to consider being in the same slate. Their cohesion is about thinking ahead: Creating the nucleus for the main coalition to beat in the 2022 presidential election. The contingent of congressmen and congresswomen who could become candidates for the Senate, however, seems more a means to kick the Speaker’s rivals upstairs (at least in the case of Benitez and Arroyo) and pad the candidates’ list with token but sacrificial candidates, a similar situation to the executive officials being mentioned as possible candidates (of the executive officials, only Go seems viable, but making him run would deprive the President of the man who actually runs the executive department, and would be a clear signal that the administration is shifting to a post-term protection attitude instead of the more ambitious system-change mode it’s been on, so far).

Vice President Leni Robredo has been more circumspect, saying she’s not sure the Liberal Party can even muster a full slate. The party chair, Kiko Pangilinan, denied that a list circulating online (incumbent Bam Aquino, former senators Mar Roxas, Jun Magsaysay, TG Guingona, current and former representatives Jose Christopher Belmonte, Kaka Bag-ao, Edcel Lagman, Raul Daza, Gary Alejano and Erin Tañada, former governor Eddie Panlilio and Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña) had any basis in fact.

What both lists have in common is they could be surveys-on-the-cheap, trial balloons to get the public pulse. Until the 17th Congress reconvenes briefly from May 14 to June 1 for the tail end of its second regular session (only to adjourn sine die until the third regular session begins on July 23), it has nothing much to do. Except, that is, for the barangay elections in May, after a last-ditch effort by the House to postpone them yet again to October failed.

Names can be floated but the real signal will come in July, when the President mounts the rostrum and calls for the big push for a new constitution—or not. Connected to this would be whether the Supreme Court disposes of its own chief, which would spare the Senate—and thus, free up the legislative calendar—to consider Charter change instead of an impeachment trial. In the meantime, what congressmen do seem abuzz over is an unrefusable invitation to the Palace tomorrow — to mark Arroyo’s birthday. An event possibly pregnant with meaning.

Here’s a striking statement about love shared with me by an English college mentor. “Love knows no grammar. How it works can’t be measured by any parts or figures of speech. It goes beyond the literate and illiterate. The sad reality is that, even a fool who has got no philosophy is not spared of its harsh reality.” After almost three decades, I reminded him through a private message of his words. Here’s what he said. “Thank you, Jord. This statement about love is searing to the heart. And, yes, fools do fall for it too. But I thought that we as well speak of the beauty that it gives and not so much focus on the harsh realities. After all, our country has had enough of the negativities.” Thank you, dearest Sir Eugene.

In these decisive times when our nation trembles under the weight of corruption, inequality, and disillusionment, it is you―the youth, burning with idealism, courage, and an unyielding sense of right―who must stand at the forefront of CHANGE. The future of the Philippines hangs in the balance, calling not for silence or apathy, but for unity, conviction, and action. Let your dreams be the spark that ignites renewal; let your voices thunder against injustice; let your hands build the nation our forebears envisioned but never fulfilled. Now is the hour to awaken, to rise, and to lead the march toward a just and transformed Philippines.

Remember, the pages of our history resound with the triumphs of youth who dared to dream and act. From the Propagandists who wielded the pen against tyranny to the Katipuneros who took up arms for freedom, it was always the young who ignited revolutions and rebuilt nations. As Dr. Jose Rizal declared, “The youth is the hope of our motherland,” but that hope is not a gift to be passively claimed; it is a duty to be earned through courage and purpose.

Today’s generation must transform awareness into action―to confront corruption with integrity, to challenge inequality with empathy, and to counter apathy with participation. The time for mere commentary has passed. What the nation demands now is commitment, creativity, and collective resolve. When the youth stand united in conscience and conviction, no obstacle is insurmountable, no reform impossible. The power to redeem the nation’s promise lies not in the hands of the few, but in the awakened spirit of the many. Rise, therefore, as one generation with one objective―to forge a Philippines worthy of its people’s deepest hopes. And to those who were once the torchbearers of youth but have since laid down their fire―hear this call.

The nation does not forget its veterans of hope, those who once believed that change was possible but have since grown weary in the long twilight of disappointment. Thus far history grants no sanctuary to resignation. It demands of every generation the same unrelenting duty―to defend what is right, to confront what is wrong, and to labor still for what remains unfinished.

Now is the moment to rise again. Let not caution disguise itself as wisdom, nor comfort as peace. The courage that once stirred your youth still flickers within; rekindle it, and let it burn anew for the sake of those who follow. Your experience, tempered by time, must now join hands with the fervor of the young - to guide, to mentor, to strengthen.

Together, let the wisdom of the seasoned and the passion of the rising coalesce into a single, indomitable force for renewal. For the task of nation-building is not bound by age, but by conviction. The call of the motherland resounds to all who still believe that the story of the Filipino is not yet complete―and that redemption, though delayed, is still within our grasp if only we choose to act once more. And to those whose hands have long gripped the levers of power―hardened by privilege, dulled by entitlement―hear this with clarity: the era of self-preservation must yield to the dawn of selfless service.

The nation can no longer afford leaders who mistake possession for stewardship, nor governance for dominion. The time has come to relinquish the throne of complacency and make way for the custodians of vision, courage, and renewal.

To step aside is not to surrender, but to honor the sacred rhythm of nationhood―to allow new voices, new hearts, and new minds to breathe life into institutions that have grown stale from neglect. True leadership is an act of stewardship, and stewardship demands humility―to know when to lead, and when to pass the torch. Those who have ruled long enough must now become mentors, not masters; guides, not gatekeepers.

To the youth who will inherit this burden and blessing alike, the call is equally profound. Lead not with arrogance, but with awareness; not with impulse, but with integrity. Let optimism be your discipline―a conscious act of faith in the nation’s capacity to rise again. Lead with inclusivity that unites rather than divides, with courage that reforms rather than destroys, and with resilience that endures when hope seems frail.

For the measure of a new generation’s greatness lies not in its defiance alone, but in its wisdom to build where others have failed. Let your leadership become the living testament that the Philippines, once disillusioned, has learned at last to believe again―through you.

Now, the Filipino youth stand at a defining crossroad of history. The echoes of the past and the murmurs of the future converge upon this moment, and in your hands rests the fragile, however formidable promise of a nation reborn. You are the inheritors of unfinished dreams and the architects of what is yet to be. United in thought and deed, strengthened by the wisdom of history and the fire of conviction, you possess the power to shape a Philippines anchored in justice, animated by democracy, and sustained by the collective flourishing of its people.

The mantle of responsibility has passed to you. Do not falter beneath its weight; bear it with courage, for it is through your resolve that the nation will rise from the ruins of complacency. Let your unity transcend boundaries of region, class, and creed. Let your integrity redefine leadership, and your compassion restore faith in the Filipino spirit.

This is your hour. Let this narrative be not merely a call to awaken, but a solemn commitment―to the country that nurtures you, to the people who believe in you, and to the generations who will follow your example. Stand firm, for you are the heartbeat of a nation yearning to live with dignity once more. Speak right and shine!

Rise, Filipino youth, and let history remember that when your time came ―you stood unwavering, and the nation moved forward.