IN school we learned about Pax Romana, Latin for “Roman Peace.” It meant a 206-year golden age of relative stability, economic prosperity, and imperial expansion within the Roman Empire — from 27 BCE under Emperor Augustus until after the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 CE.
It was a time of “peace through strength,” which allowed Rome to focus on trade, infrastructure, and culture rather than in-fighting.
But while there was relative quiet inside Rome, nothing prevented it from conquering new territories. It was during this period that the Roman
Empire achieved its greatest territorial extent. Its population peaked at 70 million, or one-third of the world’s population.
More generically, the concept has been referred to as pax imperia or
hegemonic peace. The concept of Pax Romana was highly influential, and there were attempts to imitate it... “ Some variants include Pax Americana, Pax Atomica, Pax Britannica, Pax Europaea, Pax Hispanica, Pax Sovietica, Pax Tokugawana, etc. (Wikipedia)
The Philippines recently joined Pax Silica, a US-led international strategic initiative to secure global supply chains for semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI) computing infrastructure and critical minerals needed for technological advancement. It has an economic-security framework to reduce reliance on adversarial economies.
“Silica” refers to the base material for semiconductors and electronic components essential to AI.
An April 22 Inquirer editorial said, “The Economic Security Zone (ESZ) is part of a broader strategy to surge production for inputs vital to US supply chains... and can leverage the Philippines’ geographic centrality in the Indo-Pacific, its young and technically skilled workforce, and its deepening alliance with the United States.”
The editorial quoted Finance Secretary Frederick Go, “Our mineral resources and strategic location are not simply supporting global industries from the margins, but are actively harnessed to build the industries of the future.”
The Philippines is known to have significant reserves of nickel, copper, chromite, and cobalt that are necessarily vital to the production of semiconductors and chips with high computing power for use in AI applications.
US Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg said, “If the 20th century ran on oil and steel, the 21st century runs on compute and the minerals that feed it.”
Having the critical minerals in Philippine soil gives us the leverage to ensure that the ESZ within the Luzon Economic Corridor will generate jobs, logistics and manufacturing facilities, and other advantages for the country.
But the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas characterizes Pax Silica as a “massive sellout” of the country’s land, minerals and sovereignty, and raises fears that the project would “intensify land grabbing, resource extraction, and militarization.”
The Makabayan Bloc in the Lower House has similar concerns. It pays to be vigilant.
Potential benefits
There are potential benefits from Pax Silica. The Philippines badly needs investments that can create jobs and provide opportunities for young Filipinos to adopt skills in AI and other emerging technologies.
The country could draw an initial $10 billion investment in Pax Silica, and help prop up its economy affected by the Iran War.
Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) head Joshua Bingcang said, “That would be just the start of high-end investments from technology and other companies the Philippines aims to attract to a 4,000-acre site that’s envisioned to be its version of Silicon Valley. For us, it’s a way to catch up in terms of industrial activity. For the longest time, we are a service-oriented economy dependent on importation.”
The 2026 first quarter foreign direct investment inflows fell by 16.97 percent to $1.717 billion from $2.028 last year, “likely stemming from global uncertainty, not driven by weaker investor sentiment," according to my friend, economist Robert Dan Roces of SM Investments Corp.
In a four-year period starting 2021, the Philippines got the least foreign FDI net inflows among the Asean six: Singapore, $579.566 billion; Indonesia,
$91.588 billion; Vietnam, $72.23 billion; Malaysia, $58.785 billion; Thailand, $43.991 billion; and the Philippines, $39.33 billion.
A June 14 commentary reported that Pax Silica will likely stimulate investment and employment. In addition, “it could jumpstart the country’s minerals processing industry.”
Today, the country largely exports raw minerals. With Pax Silica, the Philippines “could capture more value from its mineral resources.”
Lastly, “the country stands to benefit from infrastructure initiatives associated with the Luzon Economic Corridor (LEC)... and address infrastructure gaps that have long hindered Philippine manufacturing.” (Lianne Angelico C. Depante, Frances Dominique V. Ho, Kirsten Mae C. Dedase, and Leo Mendel D. Rosario, researchers from Tokyo’s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, and the University of the Philippines, June 14, 2026)
In the recent past, huge foreign investments and jobs from Samsung, Nike, etc. went to Vietnam instead of the Philippines. This time, let Pax Silica work for us!
Ernie Cecilia is chairman of the human capital committee and the publications committee of the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines; chairman of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines’ TWG on labor policy and social issues; and past president of the People Management Association of the Philippines. He can be reached at [email protected]