Insights and Analysis

Insights feature analytical articles and strategic commentary on peace, security, governance, and regional dynamics affecting the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and the Indo-Pacific. These pieces are intended to inform public understanding, support policy discussion, and encourage thoughtful engagement with complex security issues.

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

    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.

  • Making the Total Force Real: Reserve Integration in Western and Central Visayas

    This article examines how reserve forces in Western and Central Visayas were deliberately integrated with Regular Army units during recent disasters, transforming episodic mobilization into a campaign capability. It traces how years of command-driven alignment led to the Philippine Army’s first division-level handbook on reserve force employment, supporting the shift toward Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense.

  • The Last Mile: Why Peace Requires More Than Military Victory in the Philippine Insurgency

    Military victory can silence guns, but it doesn’t finish the job. The real “last mile” of peace is governance that delivers—roads that get completed, schools that open, services that reach the far barangays, and justice people can trust. Without that follow-through, security gains fade, and communities remain trapped between fear and broken promises.

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

    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.

  • Serving the Nation: Rethinking NSTP and National Defense

    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.

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

    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.

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