Foreign policy rebalancing should not mean that we swing the pendulum to the other extreme, that we dump old friends for new suitors.

We should practice big-tent diplomacy, welcoming all, and shunning no one. The national interest is served by extending amity to all, and hostility to none.

In rewriting the country’s foreign policy playbook, the President can perhaps pick up a few pointers from his Facebook team.

These are : You need not unfriend someone to befriend another. If you don’t like him at the moment, you can unfollow him without unfriending or blocking him so that you retain the option to follow him again.

Any drastic shift in our foreign policy direction should be well-thought-out and not simply blurted out. It should be a product of deep study and wide discussion. Because of its far-reaching implications, it cannot be an announce now, study later thing.

Crafting an independent foreign policy requires introspection, not impetuousness. This is all the more true object if the object of the President’s pique is not a backwater failed state, but a nation that is home to the largest number of Filipinos abroad, the biggest source of foreign exchange remittances, one of the biggest ODA donors, a major market of our products and services, like the BPO.

Yes, our relations with the United States may not be perfect. But a country which has illegally built a great wall of sand in our seas is not, and far from, the epitome of a good friend either.

By all means, let us push all the reboot buttons with all countries but without having to blast to pieces some of the good relations our nation has nurtured for generations.

As to our joining Russia and China in a new axis, let us fix our traffic first before we insert ourselves in the power games of nuclear states.