Here’s my case against SFR Philippines having Sabah.

  1. All it will do is create a third front (possibly yet another invasion or worse, a fourth front) to fight against. The Philippines will be fighting a protracted anti-communist insurgency in addition to separatists in Mindanao and Visayas. Filipino military assets (especially naval) would already be depleted by this point so there’s no point in having Sabah in the fold because either we would lose it anyway from a Malaysian counter attack or get fucked over by a blockade. All we need is to stop and deter a western intervention and retaking Sabah will only be a pretext for it. We do not want yet another front to fight against.

  2. Once again, Indonesia. Even if Malaysia’s going to give up Sabah by some magical stroke of luck, the Philippines will now have to share a land border with Indonesia. This is bad because now it will further alienate them by virtue of sharing a land border with a communist state, which spells bad news because if you look at this map, you will know how important Indonesia is strategically to the Philippines and why it’s the biggest potential threat from my perspective.

That’s at least 10 potential trade routes that can easily be blocked hence my willingness to trade with Iran and Syria and the need for naval defenses. A minor reason that falls here is anti-communist spies easily crossing back and forth across the border.

  1. Finally, rebuilding the country would already be extremely expensive and adding Sabah into the fold would increase the costs by a huge marging. Hundreds of millions of dollars (possibly up to a billion) would be lost due to the civil war to the point that even with help from China, it would take years just to rebuild the pre-war infrastructure, not even counting other areas affected like internal displacement. The Sabah Blockade mentioned will only worsen things because the navy would have to deal with Indonesian and Malaysian warships constantly, which will drive up costs.

TL;DR: Sabah would be an economic and national security burden.