The Philippines is a current hot ticket in international affairs. Such a condition is a manifest destiny founded by geography and sharpened by politics and security. Being an archipelago of its own, it has the challenging situation of being at the side of the South China Sea (SCS), a maritime hotspot due to overlapping territorial claims of nearby states. Due to China's claim of the whole SCS via its nine-dash line, it took the legal pathway through a case in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), which it won. This contextualizes its role in the great-power competition between China and the United States in the region, in which it has a military alliance with the latter since 1951. Moreover, it is clouded by the various strategic concerns of its neighbors coming from as wide as the whole Indo-Pacific. The assumption that a lot of states have the Philippines in their radar, whatever their interests may be, is within the ballpark.