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In 2016, Greg Poling wrote “The U.S.-Philippine Alliance Is Stronger Than You Think,” where he argued that despite then-President Duterte’s embrace of China and negative posture toward the United States, the U.S.-Philippine alliance was durable. Nine years on, we asked him to reflect on his argument given how much has changed both in the Philippines and around the world.Read more below:Image: U.S. Marine Corps, Cpl. Hilda Becerra via the Department of Defense.Since your article in 2016, much has changed in the U.S.-Philippines relationship, regional security dynamics, and Philippine domestic politics. Then, you argued that the U.S.-Philippine alliance was stronger than it seemed despite President Duterte’s anti-United States rhetoric. Nearly a decade later, how do you assess that claim? Were there any aspects you underestimated or overestimated?Rereading the article, I am surprised at how prescient it was. That was in part due to China’s aggression throughout the Duterte administration, undermining his ability to pivot away from the United States. But it was also because of the hard work of the bureaucracies in both Washington and Manila and the well of public and elite support on which they could draw. The alliance proved remarkably resilient, and China was unwilling to make the types of concessions to Manila it would have needed to really fracture the U.S.-Philippine relationship.It also helped that the first Trump administration finally abandoned the public ambiguity that previous U.S. presidents had maintained over the scope of the Mutual Defense Treaty. When then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Manila in 2019 and affirmed that any attack on Filipino armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft anywhere in the South China Sea was covered by the treaty, he took away one of Duterte’s favorite angles of attack on American credibility. That reassurance was continued throughout the Biden administration, facilitating the remarkable modernization of the alliance