A few weeks ago, I had an interesting experience being interviewed by a Singapore news channel on the formation of Asean, in particular, the role of Narciso Ramos, prewar legislator, one of our pioneer diplomats (and father of former President Fidel V. Ramos) in the negotiations setting up the organization. I said he was uniquely positioned to contribute to the successful conclusion of the negotiations because of three things.

First, as a prewar legislator, he was conscious of the Philippines’ formerly leading role in articulating pan-Malayan solidarity. Second, as a pioneer diplomat from the formation of our foreign service in 1946, he had extensive experience; and again, because of his prewar prominence and postwar career, was literally one of the main implementers of a foreign policy that remained virtually unchanged even prior to independence. With the exploration of Philippine claims to the Spratlys, and subsequent efforts, including the original claim to Sabah in 1946, all diplomatic efforts were done under the principle of the Philippines subscribing to, invoking, and defending international law and institutions to accomplish Philippine aims.

Under former President Diosdado Macapagal, the Philippine claim, despite an alliance with Indonesia, which had its own claims on North Borneo, did not prosper; in fact, it failed, because a United Nations referendum in Sabah resulted in residents voting for incorporation with Malaysia in 1963. Appointed Secretary of Foreign Affairs by his nephew, then President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., in 1965, Ramos had the advantage of working for a new administration not saddled by the Macapagal-era failure, while Indonesia itself had emerged from Sukarno’s era of konfrontasi, into a new regime under Suharto by 1967, allowing both the Philippines and Indonesia to negotiate with Malaysia.

This was a brief window of opportunity; in the same year Ramos was helping to negotiate the formation of Asean, Marcos was embarking on his brand of imperialism by planning the invasion of Sabah, the bungled training for which led to the Jabidah Massacre. The fallout was extreme: rebellion in Mindanao, and the Malaysian policy of supporting Moro secession as a way of bogging down the Philippines and preventing more adventurism at Malaysia’s expense.

I have a theory—and it’s only that—that Ramos’ stint as foreign affairs secretary ended in December 1968 over fallout from Malaysia’s breaking off diplomatic relations with the Philippines in July 1968. Marcos would be forced to the negotiating table in 1971, and in 1977, Marcos announced the country was giving up its claim to Sabah, an announcement confirmed by then Foreign Affairs Secretary Arturo Tolentino in 1980.

However, Malaysia demanded that the 1973 Constitution’s provision asserting the claim be deleted, resulting in an impasse. In 1987, the new Constitution adopted a language that neither asserted nor dropped the claim, according to Constitutional Commissioner Joaquin Bernas. Lingering Malaysian concerns were addressed by 2009, when amendments were made to the baselines law removing mention of the Sabah claim–until the Supreme Court, in 2011, asserted that the claim remained, but this was less problematic in light of sustained efforts by succeeding administrations to improve relations with Malaysia, which itself lost enthusiasm for supporting secession in Mindanao as it could spill over to Sabah.

After 1986, Philippine government efforts shifted to encouraging the heirs of the defunct Sultanate of Sulu to unite, while supporting their claims to financial compensation from Malaysia, which was increased until followers of Jamalul Kiram mounted a disastrous expedition in Lahad Datu in Sabah in 2013. After that, Malaysia ceased all payments to the heirs.

But as Bernas skillfully navigated in 1986, though the country both lost a United Nations plebiscite—honor bound for us to accept if we were, indeed, a responsible member of the family of nations—and officially abandoned the claim in 1977, just because we had lost, the emotional appeal of the claim remained and no government has had the political will or legal chops to really set it aside; so much so that it continues to hang over us in other arenas.

A lot of time and energy is spent fussing around with old maps when what the Philippines helped establish, and continues to benefit from, is a more enlightened basis for determining things such as the use of measurements from coasts and continental shelves. To assert, this late in the day, claims based on “historic title,” is counterproductive since our West Philippine Sea and other policies are based on upholding the arbitration decision; modern international law looks at historical claims–like China’s so-called “nine-dash line,” with skepticism if not outright hostility.

But here we are again, asserting the claim, provoking the Malaysians, and along the way undermining our own resistance to the People’s Republic of China in its efforts to assert its “historical” claims; we cannot seem to commit to what had formerly been a core principle in our early republic: that our interests lie in helping craft, and upholding, international law on modern principles instead of poring over old maps and contradictory texts of treaties by defunct powers.