WHOEVER wins, US foreign policy will remain basically the same.

If President Obama gets re-elected, we hope Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton decides to stay on. She has given us a lot of moral support in our struggle to defend, by words,

diplomacy and civil action, our sovereign territory, our islands, islets, reefs, shoals and seas, that the People’s Republic of China claims and has in fact colonized. When, in an effort to literally and psychologically assert our sovereignty, we started calling the South China Sea the West Philippine Sea, Secretary Clinton publicly used that name which now appears in our latest maps.

President Obama and Secretary Clinton instituted the “pivot to Asia” policy, which benefits us Filipinos but disturbs China. The USA has never turned away from its allies and friends in Asia.

But it became busy—mainly militarily—in the Middle East and paid more attention to Europe than Asia these past two decades, allowing China to think that it could count on American indifference to its unrelenting rise to superpower status and its incursions into other countries’ sovereign territory.

The USA did not make its moral presence felt when China took over our reefs and islets in the years before President Obama became president. Today, the US government is more positively involved in helping improve our naval capabilities.

The Obama administration’s pivot to Asia has also increased American economic and maritime ties not just with the Philippines but also with most of our fellow members in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Will these positive improvements in our ties with the United States change if former governor Romney gets elected? We pray not.

The pivot to Asia policy is a logical aftermath of the USA’s decision to leave Iraq and Afghanistan, a decision that would also have been made even if Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate against Mr. Obama, had won. Perhaps, Mr. McCain would have done the departure better. But the policy to reduce America’s presence and involvement in Middle East wars would still have been the same.

What about the other foreign policy fronts?

Syria
What is the Obama administration’s policy in Syria? It’s a developing one and it has not been given a name. But it is similar to the US stand in Libya, where despite the Obama White House’s decision to embrace the so-called Arab Spring, it could still be called by its enemies “leading from behind.” The new foreign policy doctrine that’s emerging in Syria, is one of clever restraint and dependence on the locals and allies in the region.

America in Syria and earlier in Libya is no longer the gung-ho savior of the oppressed, world policeman and democratic nation builder of the liberated population. This policy applied in Syria is to provide the rebels against the Assad regime with moral and arms support and at the same get the region’s other players to work. In Syria, the USA’s friend and ally is Turkey. The Saudi Arabs are also there. They want Iran’s Assad regime ally to fall.

Iran
So the US is giving money and arms to the rebels and encouraging and even partly financing
Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian rebellion, while at the same time pressuring Iran with UN Security Council sanctions. The sanctions not only ruin the Iranian economy (and maybe make it more expensive for it to continue with the nuclear development program). The sanctions also make it more painful expensive for President Ahmedinejad to help the Assad regime.

The US foreign policy now is to achieve the goals of undermining Iran and its allies without being engaged militarily in any war theater in the Muslim world. This must be the reason, and not just electoral politics, that made President Obama, Secretary Clinton and their subalterns to stoutly deny—to the point of engaging in a cover up—that a well-armed Islamist terrorists linked to al-Qaeda perpetrated the pre-planned attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Admitting that there were no demonstrators railing against an anti-Muslim video, would have given the lie to the Obama line that al-Qaeda is dead because Obama had killed Osama bin Laden. Admitting that al-Qaeda is alive all over the Muslim world would mean being preoccupied with security, special forces, armies and drones, which could end up in being involved in a war.

Israel
On Israel, Romney and Obama agree that the Israel-America alliance should be maintained. But Obama is probably less willing to be feely-touchy with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because he is after all the son of a Muslim and even went to a madrassa in Indonesia as a child.

Both agree that the United States should not let Iran have nuclear weapons.

Are both Obama and Romney willing to see Israel strike Iran’s nuclear development sites? Both will probably be drawn into supporting Israel after striking Iran if it decided to go it alone. But neither Obama nor Romney would give Netanyahu the go signal to attack.

What either would be doing after the elections is to make the sanctions against Iran tougher.

The sanctions have already damaged the Iranian rial, causing street riots in Tehran. Both Obama and Romney are most likely willing to wage a more serious campaign to stop nations that are still trading with Iran to quit.