John Hay, soon to be United States Secretary of State, called the war with Spain a splendid little war, and by the scoreboard he was right. It lasted fewer than four months and ended with the US occupying Cuba, and owning Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, the last purchased from Spain for US$20 million. The crowd went home satisfied and Hay lives on in Baguio City as the name of Camp John Hay, an American military rest camp that became a mountain resort.
The crowd had been watching the wrong game. Within two months of the Treaty of Paris, American soldiers were fighting the Filipino forces that had been their allies against Spain. The Philippine War was declared over on July 4, 1902, and estimates of Filipino civilian deaths run well past 200,000. Cuba was the reason for the war. Manila was its consequence, and the consequence outlasted the victory by almost four years. In fact, by more than 120 years.
Cheering for the winner of a war runs on the same instincts as cheering for a team. The result arrives quickly, it is easy to read, and the fan goes home with it. A game ends at the final whistle and a war does not. The result is recorded in the first months. The consequences are recorded over generations.
Energy intelligence firm Vortexa reports that Iranian seaborne crude exports fell from a 14-day average of 230,000 barrels per day at the start of September 2026 to zero by the second week of the month, and they had not recovered as of October 15. About 83 million barrels of Iranian crude sit aboard tankers, 43 million of them trapped west of the Strait of Hormuz. ‘The blockade is doing what years of sanctions never managed,’ said Claire Jungman, Vortexa’s director of maritime risk and intelligence. The International Monetary Fund projects that Iran’s economy will shrink 7.6 percent this year. By the scoreboard, the US is winning.
Spectators follow the score because spectators do not receive the bill. Russian crude now makes up 80 percent of the high-risk exports Vortexa tracks across Iran, Russia and Venezuela. China needs Iranian crude less urgently now because Russian barrels have filled the gap. Oil flows from the rest of the Gulf have recovered to just over 81 percent of pre-war levels. In the US, gasoline prices rose 9.1 percent in September alone, the energy index rose 5.2 percent, and annual inflation reached 3.7 percent, against 2.4 percent in February. Diesel, which moves farms, freight and ships, is up 70 percent since then.
Manila stands further down that line than Washington does. The Philippines draws between 95 and 98 percent of its crude from the Middle East, depending on the estimate, and September inflation reached 7.2 percent, the highest since March 2023 and well above the 1.7 percent of a year earlier. For the poorest 30 percent of households it reached 9 percent. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has raised its policy rate three times this year to 5.0 percent, Brent crude trades around US$100 a barrel, and the peso sits above P62 per US dollar, weaker than the record low it set in May.
The same war threatens the remittance line as well. About 2.4 million Filipinos work in the Middle East, and they sent home roughly $6.5 billion in cash remittances in 2025, about 18 percent of the national total. Some estimates put potential job losses among those workers at 200,000 to 340,000 if the war continues. A country that buys its fuel from one region and sends its workers to the same region has made one bet twice.
In July 1898 the Philippines was a footnote to a victory. Footnotes are where a war files its long consequences, and the footnotes of the Hormuz blockade are being written in pump prices in Metro Manila, in BSP rate decisions, and in remittance corridors that run to Riyadh and Dubai.
How much of the bill Manila pays depends on four decisions Manila controls: where it buys crude, how much of its fuel it refines at home, how much of its electricity runs on imported fuel, and which countries it sends its workers to. None of them has to wait for a ceasefire, and none of the decisions can be handed to the winner.
Hay was right about the scoreboard. The people who paid were never in the stadium.
E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis provided by AAA Southeast Equities Inc.