Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: The Philippines’ Duterte faces the ICC, U.S. tariff chaos undermines trade deals, and where Southeast Asia gets its weapons.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: The Philippines’ Duterte faces the ICC, U.S. tariff chaos undermines trade deals, and where Southeast Asia gets its weapons.

ICC Hearings for Philippines’ Duterte Start

On Monday, hearings began at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Rodrigo Duterte, former president of the Philippines.

Duterte is charged with crimes against humanity of murder and attempted murder between 2011 and 2019 as part of his “war on drugs” campaign. The confirmation hearing will determine if there is sufficient evidence to proceed to a full trial.

Duterte, who served as president from 2016 to 2022, waived his right to appear before the court. In a letter submitted to the ICC last week, Duterte repeated his refusal to recognize the court’s jurisdiction, denied all accusations against him, and pleaded frailty.

“I am a Filipino citizen forcibly pushed into a jet and renditioned to The Hague in the Netherlands in flagrant contravention of my country’s Constitution and of national sovereignty,” the letter read.

Duterte dismissed accusations against him as an “outrageous lie” that had been “peddled by my political opponents.”

He added: “I do not wish to attend legal proceedings that I will forget within minutes. I am old, tired, and frail. I wish for this Court to respect my peace inside the cell it has placed me.” Duterte has been detained since March of last year in The Hague.

The panel of judges overseeing the hearing granted the request despite dismissing the submission as “speculative.”

Many others might also question the validity of Duterte’s claims. “If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful,” he declared in 2016 in an impromptu speech given in a Manila slum after his inauguration.

On another occasion, he claimed that when he was mayor of Davao, he patrolled streets looking for people to kill. As to his health, the ICC ruled in January that Duterte was fit to attend pretrial hearings.

As for jurisdiction, the investigation’s odd scope—2011 to 2019—reflects the years the Philippines was formally party to the Rome Statute, which grants the ICC jurisdiction. Duterte pulled the country out, and it has yet to rejoin.

There is an awkward element in that this prosecution is also deeply bound up with Philippine domestic politics. The arrest and extradition of Duterte to The Hague came as President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. disintegrated Duterte’s dynastic alliance.

The sincerity of Marcos’s commitment to the........

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