The choleric president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte (the one, in case you’ve forgotten, who called Barack Obama “a son of a whore”), recently announced his “separation” from the United States, and a pivot to China. Why? Well, it obviously makes sense, in an era of spastic and ineffective American foreign policy, for a small nation on China’s doorstep to seek good relations with its powerful neighbor. There is, however, more to the story — as Mark Yuray explains, here.