Governance & Institutions - BalangAI Strategic Security Institute

From White Area to Gray Zone: Why Counterinsurgency Lessons Still Matter

BalangAI Strategic Security Institute / February 8, 2026

The Philippine Army’s counterinsurgency experience still matters because competition often rewards those who shape the environment, not just those who win firefights. “White area operations” showed how finance, political organizing, media narratives, and legal tactics can sustain conflict below open violence. Today, similar environment-first logic appears in gray zone competition—different actors, scale—making credibility, due process, and civic space decisive terrain.

Governance & Institutions

Honoring Brig. Gen. Quintin A. Alcudia: Building the Reserve Force Across Generations

BalangAI Strategic Security Institute / January 17, 2026

Before today’s Total Force posture, officers like Brig. Gen. Quintin A. Alcudia laid groundwork through quiet staff work. In 1977, he studied consolidating Regional Community Defense Units—modest but foundational. His son now commands RESCOM as Major General. Institutions are built through steady work, endurance, and multigenerational service.

Governance & Institutions

Serving the Nation: Rethinking NSTP and National Defense

BalangAI Strategic Security Institute / January 12, 2026

For over 20 years, the Philippines has debated mandatory ROTC versus optional service—a false choice that misses the real problem. The National Service Training Program (NSTP) was never completed as an operational system. While CWTS and LTS produced 11.15 million graduates from 2002-2012—eight times more than ROTC—these millions remain largely unutilized. ROTC students are routinely deployed for disasters and community events; CWTS/LTS students graduate and disappear. The issue isn’t whether to mandate military training. It’s whether we’ll finish building the integrated national service system the law created—or keep wasting our greatest strategic resource: our own people.

Governance & Institutions

Why a 1,000-Year-Old Boat Challenges the Myth of a Weak Philippines

BalangAI Strategic Security Institute / December 26, 2025

A thousand years ago, the Balangay was not an artifact—it was infrastructure. Built to move trade, people, and power across water, it anchored an outward-looking maritime system in Butuan. Today, its remains sit quietly in a museum, reminding us that the Philippines was never destined to be weak—only unprepared to remember how it once moved.