Scarborough Shoal forever

 

Mostly rocks just below water at high tide, the Scarborough Shoal about 123 miles west of Subic Bay has become a rallying cry for born-again Filipino patriots. Led by a U.S.-based group who call themselves USP4GG, or U.S. Pinoys for Good Governance, these misguided flag-waving loyalists from the United States and Canada will be staging international protests wherever there are Chinese consulates in the world against China’s bullying tactics particularly against the weaker and smaller Philippines.

One self-proclaimed leader in the Filipino community in Toronto even has the gall to ask those who have not participated in a rally in their life to savour their first opportunity to join the protest on May 11 in front of the Chinese consulate. As if many of us have not experienced a protest march or anything similar during our younger days in the Philippines, to deplore the Marcos martial law regime for instance, or to protest rising tuition fees when we were university students. As if joining their protest would be a transformative highlight in our lives, awakening us from our docile nature to become freshly-anointed political activists. Perhaps, they are the ones who had never walked before in sweltering heat or rain on the streets of Manila to show their indignation to a government that had betrayed its people.

Follow link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voj-uiyvfR0&feature=related
to view interview with Chito Sta. Romana, former ABC News Beijing Bureau
Chief, on Scarborough Shoal stand-off.

Such a charade of love of country just for a few rocks submerged under the sea. Rocks which are uninhabitable and incapable of sustaining human habitation or economic life, that the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the very law that the Philippines is anchoring upon its territorial sovereignty claim to the Scarborough Shoal, describes these rocks as having no exclusive economic zone (EEZ) or continental shelf. Well, it happens that the Philippines is the closest country to the Scarborough Shoal and, by common sense, according to these people, these rocks must be ours. This commonsensical thinking is now pushing us to the brink of war.

Interestingly, these new Filipino nationalists are trying to match up with the Chinese in a war of words. However, there’s a wrinkle to this Filipino bravado. At the same time that they would issue provocative statements against China, they would also shamelessly beg for American help, asking for more aircraft, boats and radar systems which the Armed Forces of the Philippines can use in the face of an escalating territorial dispute with China. Again, as if the United States would do them the favour even if there was supposed to be a mutual defence pact between the two countries. On the contrary, U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton has said that the U.S. will not take sides in the conflict, stressing that it prefers a peaceful settlement instead of the use of violence in resolving the impasse.

The Scarborough Shoal or Scarborough Reef was named after a tea-trade ship, Scarborough, which was wrecked on the rock with everyone perishing on board in the late 18th century. To the Chinese, the shoal was known as Huangyan Island while to Filipinos, it was called Panatag Shoal or Bajo de Masinloc. Like most land formations in the South China Sea which include the Paracels and the Spratlys, these groups of islands or rocks have been the subject of competing territorial sovereignty claims. Both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan) lay claim to the Scarborough shoal after the Chinese Civil War. In 1997, the Philippines joined in this dispute, making its claim to the shoal. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo enacted the Philippine Baselines Law of 2009 (RA 9522) which classifies the Spratly Islands and the Scarborough Shoal as a regime of islands under the Republic of the Philippines.

As I have written in my earlier posts about the disputed claims in the South China Sea, the dispute is more than a mere squabble over territory. The enormous reserves of oil and natural gas in these islands and  around their waters are fueling the territorial claims of these countries. Whoever is successful in establishing its sovereignty claim will have the potential to produce over a billion barrels of oil.

The UNCLOS, contrary to popular belief, is not the controlling law in the determination of sovereignty over land formations in the sea. It is concerned only with maritime waters and delineation of boundaries, not with sovereignty issues.

Under the UNCLOS, and this is what is commonly misunderstood, the country that holds valid legal title to sovereignty over their islands have exclusive right to exploit living and nonliving resources within twelve miles of their territorial sea and 200 miles beyond known as the exclusive economic zone (EEZ). But even if the Scarborough Shoal or the Spratly Islands is within the Philippines' EEZ from its coastline, it is not enough to acquire jurisdictional rights. It must first satisfy the sovereignty conundrum. At the core of the dispute is the question of territorial sovereignty, not law of the sea issues.

The competing sovereignty claims of six different countries to the Spratly Islands and now the stand-off between the Philippines and China in the Scarborough shoal have important ramifications to the United States insofar as its intention to remain a power in the Asia-Pacific region. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently declared that America was pivoting to Asia, a critical foreign policy decision now that the U.S. has lost its military bases in the Philippines which were closed in 1992.

In shifting its attention to Asia, the United States is restructuring its military strength in the region from establishing a new submarine corps base in Port Darwin in Australia to rotating military presence in the Philippines. This has the effect of making China the specific target for Pentagon’s global security programs, very much similar to America’s previous design of creating a missile interception network in the whole of Europe, which unnerved the Soviet Union during the Cold War between the two superpowers.

From a practical point of view, the Chinese are not about to rush to any military confrontation with the United States. China is in no position to challenge the U.S. because of the huge disparity in power. All signs, however, clearly indicate a new cold war is emerging as both countries try to avoid any direct confrontation in the high seas.

The United States is much more interested in dealing with the issue of human rights violations in managing its relationship with China, which Beijing suspects was aimed at challenging the ruling legitimacy of the Communist Party. Right now, the U.S. is in a deep predicament about its tense diplomatic situation with China concerning Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese dissident lawyer and human rights activist who sought refuge in the American Embassy in Beijing. Although Mr. Chen has left the embassy in order to be treated in a hospital in central Beijing, he told reporters that he and his family feel insecure in the hands of Chinese authorities, and would like to go to the United States. To date, the U.S. government has offered a visa for Mr. Chen to pursue his studies in the United States.

Mr. Chen’s fate remains in the centre of this diplomatic firestorm between China and the United States. President Barack Obama is already on his re-election campaign mode and whatever happens to the negotiations between the two countries regarding Mr. Chen’s future will surely be exploited by the Republican Party presumptive presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, as political ammunition against the current administration’s ineffective or inconsistent record of dealing with China’s human rights violations.

Philippine protesters over Scarborough shoal belonging to the Akbayan party.

So, what is it that these new Filipino patriots in the United States and Canada really want to achieve with their global protests against China? For certain, the United States has already made known its position that it will not take sides in the Scarborough shoal stand-0ff, with or without the Mutual Defence Treaty with the Philippines. Raising the level of rhetoric against China will not bring other nations to the side of the Philippines, especially in view of its shameless mendicancy to the U.S. policy of re-establishing its hegemony in Asia and the Pacific region, something that doesn’t sit well with the other members of the ASEAN.

The Philippines risks itself of becoming a pariah in its own backyard. Rejected by the United States, its wishful ally, and treated with suspicion by its neighbours.

All that the protesting Filipino patriots in the U.S. and Canada could accomplish is to rally well-known personalities to their cause: former politicians, civic society leaders and movie and entertainment stars. These are the people the organizers of the protest are all too willing to shove into the limelight, not the ordinary people who would really carry their protest placards and march in the sweltering heat of a noon-hour protest. As if these personalities would be ready and willing to play heroes—to offer and sacrifice their bodies to the enemy in order to defend our country’s territorial sovereignty for a few rocks submerged in the sea.

No gain, no respect

 

Never been tested since it was signed in 1951, the Mutual Defence Treaty (MDT) between the Philippines and the United States is a relic of the Cold War. In the language of the treaty, both countries are bound to support each other if either was to be attacked by another country.

The closest the treaty has been invoked was during the 1960s when Malaysian troops threatened to attack the Philippines for its claim over Sabah in the island of Borneo. Declining to assist the Philippines under the MDT, U.S. officials claimed that Malaysia was also an ally and that the American government would not interfere.

Just like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the MDT was designed to stave off the spread of communism, particularly from the Soviet Union. With the dismantling of the Soviet Union and effectively reining Germany’s appetite for military aggression, NATO now is an alliance in search of a common enemy and a clear purpose. NATO cannot survive simply by aligning itself with Washington’s security policies and its seemingly endless war against the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, so many of its member nations are now veering towards less dependency on American military protection.

MANILA (Nov. 16, 2011) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is greeted by Cmdr. Brian Mutty, commanding officer of the guided-missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald. Secretary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Harry Thomas, Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert del Rosario, and Philippine Secretary of National Defense Voltaire Gazmin signed the Manila Declaration, commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Philippines-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty, aboard the ship in Manila Bay. (U.S. Navy photo) Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXY34r8vvDw to view BAYAN'S statement "60 Years is Enough."

The threat of an armed attacked in the Pacific, which the Philippines and the United States had in their minds when they signed the MDT, never materialized. While North Korea remains belligerent to its southern neighbour, its military ambition has been effectively checked beyond the 38th parallel. Vietnam has been unified after its costly war with the United States and is not a threat to attack any of its neighbours or countries in the Pacific. Other wars in the regions have been localized and there is no danger of them spreading to other countries, much less to the Philippines. Japan has been effectively neutralized and we’re not going to see the re-emergence of an imperial Japanese power in the near or distant future. China is now the second largest economy in the world after the United States but is not likely seen as an imperialist power.

Thus, many Filipino nationalists have demanded the termination of the MDT because it has become a moribund instrument. For the Philippines in particular, the MDT is a useless treaty because it is the U.S. Congress which has the power to commit the United States to an armed conflict and therefore is never an assurance that the U.S. will come to the aid of the Philippines during a foreign attack on its territory.

Whether the United States through Congress or the U.S. President as commander-in-chief would deploy its troops to support the territorial claims of the Philippines over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea remains more illusory than real. The United States cannot afford another big war. It has decided to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan and to help in the Arab Spring revolt in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya through leading by following, a much more indirect way of involvement.

Although it has publicly stated its new foreign policy pivot in Asia and the Pacific, the U.S. is not likely to be directly involved in any military conflict in the South China Sea. The most the United States would do, if the current impasse in the South China Sea escalates in a limited military confrontation, is to use the Philippines as its proxy in its emerging Cold War with China. In fact, President Benigno Aquino III is already on record, not as a do-nothing President, but as a willing and able spokesman and “fanboy” for the United States.

Out of the South China Sea conflict between the countries claiming territorial sovereignty over its islands and the waters around them, a new Cold War is coming into view.  These competing nations know in their hearts that military confrontation with China is an invitation to destruction. Show of force to reinforce their claims will plainly be a show, and nothing more.

The United States has seized their opportunity in the South China Sea to engage in a proxy war with China by using the Philippines as its fugleman. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already committed to President Aquino to help the Philippines in its territorial sovereignty claim to the Spratly Islands.

Using the MDT as its cover, the United States is sending decommissioned military equipment to the Armed Forces of the Philippines such as old ambulances, old Huey helicopters, fighter and cargo planes, which the U.S. had used extensively during the Vietnam War. Lately, the U.S. has sent to the Philippines a decommissioned battleship for reconnaissance and patrol use in the South China Sea.

The U.S. military is also using the Visiting Forces Agreement between the two countries for conducting joint Balikatan training exercises to prepare Philippine troops for armed confrontation in the South China Sea, in addition to helping the Philippines combat the local communist insurgency and the Moslem separatists in Mindanao.

Philippine and U.S. soldiers conduct raid during 2012 Balikatan Exercise
 under the Visiting Forces Agreement at Fort Magsaysay. Photo by DVIDSHUB.
 Click  link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUZgO8Dnnv4&feature=relmfu
 to view "Spratlys Emerging Cold War."

So, the MDT has found a useful purpose for the United States to continue its involvement with the Philippine military, although not in accordance with the treaty’s original objective of helping each other during a foreign attack.  There is no foreign attack yet, which is unlikely to happen, but the U.S. government is directly involved in running the Armed Forces of the Philippines just the way it was before.

If this is how the MDT should be enforced, then the United States is virtually meddling with the Philippines in protecting itself from future external armed attack. For a sovereign country to allow a foreign power to dictate how it should prepare in case of foreign aggression, the Philippines is showing its true colours not only as a dependent state but as a middling puppet as well.  But then again, this is nothing really new.

The MDT has been the basis for several agreements between the U.S. and the Philippines such as the US-RP Military Assistance Agreement, later renamed as US-RP Military Advisory Group, the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Mutual Logistics Servicing Agreement. Even the U.S. military bases agreement which was finally abrogated in 1991 also traced its roots from the MDT. Thus, the MDT is known to many Filipino nationalists as the “mother of all unequal military treaties and agreements” the Philippines agreed to accept since achieving independence in 1946.

More than 60 years have passed since the MDT was signed, yet the Philippine military still remains dependent on the advice of the U.S. military for sourcing of materials, logistics and equipment, and training. The treaty never helped the AFP modernize. It only enhanced the false dependence of the Philippines on American military protection.

With the current impasse in the South China Sea, the United States is exploiting the MDT as an instrument for meddling in the conflict by using the Philippines as its proxy in the emerging Cold War with China. The U.S. State Department has officially stated that the Mutual Defence Treaty between the United States and the Philippines continues to serve as “cornerstone of our relationship and a source of stability in the region.”

The increasing threat of Chinese hegemony in the South China Sea has worried the United States—that its navy may not have full use of the sea lanes necessary for its strategic presence in the area—and its effect, too, on commercial ships that navigate from south to north of the China Sea. The U.S. does not expect, however, to be directly engaged in any military confrontation with the Chinese, which the latter can ill-afford given the state of their national economy. The American military has already been overstretched to the limits with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and another big overseas war would wreak more havoc to U.S. economic recovery.

A Cold War between the United States and China would be the best scenario for the U.S. to remain a powerful presence in Asia and the Pacific. With support from allies like Japan, Australia and the ASEAN nations, a Cold War will help the United States in the containment of China’s rise as a Pacific power.

The Cold War would simply be carried through military alliances, strategic conventional and force deployments, appeals to neutral nations and extensive aid to the countries in the region, but never direct military action. The United States and the Soviet Union have fought proxy wars before in Latin America and the Southeast Asia. It will be China’s first foray in a Cold War and the United States will take advantage of the Chinese lack of experience.

Right now, the U.S. is using as its proxies countries like the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and Australia to stem the rise of Chinese hegemony in the region. The Philippines, in particular, plays a significant role because it has the MDT and other military agreements with the United States that enable the U.S. military to deploy its troops and warships in the guise of helping the Philippines. There are already American special forces stationed on Philippine soil and they are conducting war games with the Philippine military in waters close to the disputed area of the South China Sea.

The Philippines is drawing out the Chinese superpower to a cat-and-mouse game in the South China Sea by deploying its newest warship, courtesy of the United States, while China has responded by sending their powerful boats. This is a scenario that would be repeated many times over in the future and unless China and the other competing nations agree to a negotiated settlement of their territorial claims, the United States would only be too happy to stay in the background contented that China’s rise is at least contained at the moment.

It’s not going to be a win-win situation for the Philippines. It has already derogated its sovereignty to the United States with the MDT and other unequal military treaties, to the detriment of its own capacity to develop a self-sufficient military and to an inevitable erosion of respect from its ASEAN neighbours for its inability to stand alone.