Misguided Filipino patriotism and the new American thrust in the Pacific

 

 

Last week, I happened by chance to read two articles on the Internet written by two Filipinos about the Tubbataha Reef incident involving a wayward US navy ship and the claim of the Philippine government for ownership of certain islands and rocks in the South China Sea, namely the Spratlys and the Scarborough Shoal.

 

What prompted me to read the said articles was the faint hope that I would be reading something interesting, intelligent and informative, perhaps, a new insight on the ongoing South China Sea dispute between China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. This nearly-half-a-century dispute had caught my interest way back when I was enrolled in a course in international law in Toronto.



On January 17, 2013, the USS Guardian ran aground on Tubataha Reefs in the
Sulu Sea, causing significant damage to the marine environment.

One article was written by Perry Diaz, a Filipino-American based in the US while the other by Ducky Paredes, a Filipino columnist of Malaya, a Manila-based newspaper, and both articles appeared in the former’s Global BALITA website. To my dismay, I found both writers without any clue about the legal arguments in the dispute, both being non-lawyers and who were simply expressing their opinions out of raw emotions of love of country and headstrong notion of nationalism. Not that there’s anything wrong in expressing their individual points of view, but the aforementioned articles smack of pretence of knowing what the complex legal issues are.

 

What is being disputed in the South China Sea is not necessarily law of the sea issues as many have been led to believe, thus, the public misconception that all that matters here is where a country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) lies, or what essentially covers the length and breadth of the continental shelf. Or which country is closest in distance to the disputed territories, the nearest having the most logical putative claim.

The South China Sea. Map courtesy of wikipedia. Click link to view "Standoff at
Scarborough Shoal" by AlJazeera,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R28-b-nNtR0

The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is by itself a very complicated legal document that codifies maritime jurisdictional principles which member countries must adhere to. But international legal experts are in unanimous agreement that UNCLOS does not confer a legal title of sovereignty over territories in the oceans. The issue of sovereignty is to be determined by international case law, past decisions, and precedents.

 

I am not going to regurgitate my personal views on the South China Sea dispute for I have already expressed them in previous blogs. My only concern is the impudent tendency for others like Messrs. Diaz and Paredes to lose objectivity in their arguments and let their emotions rule instead of reason, and for them to invent a version of the facts that is farthest from the truth.

 

In the first article, “A Tale of Two Reefs,” Perry Diaz peddles the falsehood that the Philippine government decided to bring the dispute to UN arbitration because it is unable to defend its territories and recover those already lost to China’s aggressive de facto occupation. If you believe Mr. Diaz, you would imagine Chinese troops having landed on Philippine soil, raised the Chinese flag, and occupied and exercised control over some of its territories. Everyone knows this is not true, yet if you tell Mr. Diaz that what he’s saying is inaccurate, he will call you a traitor (a Makapili, to use his words) and pro-Chinese. Exactly what he told me when I sent my comments to his article, even suggesting that I look foolish because of my arguments, which perhaps was only the first time he has ever heard of contrary opinions to his writings on the web. Mr. Diaz has the temerity to even suggest that perhaps I didn’t know where the Spratly archipelago is, in addition to belittling my knowledge of the facts and the law about the ongoing dispute.

 

When it comes to the USS Guardian, an errant minesweeper that ran aground and damaged the Tubbataha Reef in the Sulu Sea, Mr. Diaz did not hesitate to laud the efforts of the US Navy to repair the damage and its willingness to pay the fine for unauthorized entry. The Tubbataha Reef is a protected marine habitat and considered a World Heritage Park by UNESCO since 1993. It is home to more than 1,000 endangered coral and fish species and marine vessels are prohibited from entering the area.

Explore the beauty of one of the world's natural wonders by visiting the Tubbataha
Reefs Natural at http://www.tubbatahareef.org/home, "The Spell of Tubbataha."

Mr. Diaz even thumbed down President Noynoy Aquino’s initial reaction to the incident while attending a conference in Davos, Switzerland, which was obviously made for its sound bite that the United States government should comply with Philippine laws. That the wayward US warship violated the country’s ecological laws, so the US government must pay for damages.

 

Mr. Diaz also chastised some progressive groups in the Philippines, which he brands as “leftist,” for quickly condemning the United States for the incident as a violation of Philippine sovereignty and demanding a review of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between the US and the Philippines. Yet these groups, Diaz said, have been astonishingly quiet about China’s aggression against the Philippines. On his part, President Aquino had toned down his earlier pronouncement and clarified that the US warship was in Philippine waters not as part of military exercises between the two countries under the VFA. Of course, this was contrary to reports that the USS Guardian had just come from Subic and was on its way to conduct patrol operations near Palawan where US warships often sail within Philippine territory.

 

Interestingly, Mr. Diaz would ask “What would they [the leftist groups] do if one day they wake up to see an armada of Chinese warships in the Sulu Sea on their way to Puerto Princesa?” I thought Mr. Diaz already admitted earlier that the Philippines was helpless in defending its territory and recovering those it already lost to China, that it had to ask the United Nations to intervene.

 

In his article “The enemy within,” Ducky Paredes would repeat the errors of Mr. Diaz in concocting lies in order to stir up anger and rage against those who happen to disagree with their opinions. Mr. Paredes would call these Filipinos as the fifth column of the Chinese Army.

 

Mr. Paredes wrote: “I really do not mind any Pinoy demonstrating against the Americans. If that makes them feel good about themselves, they should just go ahead, But we are in a dangerous situation today. China looks very much like it is preparing for war and, if it is, we must be wary of our local Communists who would probably prefer their comrades taking over this country from the Filipinos….China has disputes with Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and us. Without the US, the People’s Republic could take us all over—in the Philippines, with the help of its local band of gangsters—the New People’s Army. Wake up, Philippines!”

 

This is pure and simple anti-communist hysteria, the kind of dirty propaganda waged by the government after the Japanese occupation of the Philippines up to the time of martial law under Ferdinand Marcos. It didn’t work then; it will never work now. When truth can be manufactured, it is not difficult to discern the real truth from falsehood.

 

According to some reports, the USS Guardian ignored the warnings over the radio of the Tubbataha Park Rangers. When the ship ran aground, American soldiers trained their high-powered weapons at the rangers who approached the US warship and barred them from coming near the ship or boarding it.

 

The Tubbataha Reef incident is not the first time US warships have violated Philippine waters. In fact, today US warships roam freely all over the country under the VFA to conduct military exercises and patrol operations. To Messrs. Diaz and Paredes, this is perfectly all right because the US ships are on Philippine waters to protect us from Chinese aggression.

 

Military confrontations have already flared up between China and Vietnam, and between the Philippines and China, because of the South China Sea dispute. If such provoked skirmishes continue, they could possibly trigger a regional war, or even a war on a global scale. While ASEAN countries have been trying to achieve a peaceful resolution of the South China Sea dispute, the United States, however, has declared a foreign policy pivot which it called the “American Pacific Century,” boosting American military presence in the Philippines, Australia and the South China Sea region.

 

To most observers, the growing military presence of the US in the South China Sea is part of America’s policy of containment to encircle China which would set limits on China’s growth as an economic, political and military power. China has been reacting to the US military build-up by becoming more aggressive in its claims over the disputed areas in the South China Sea, thus increasing the possibility of future hostilities between the countries in the region.

 

The Philippine government, however, is being duplicitous in making its sovereignty claims over territories in the South China Sea and denouncing China’s aggressive tactics while allowing US military intervention and giving the United States Navy carte blanche to use the Philippines as the base for its anti-China operations. Under the Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States, President Noynoy Aquino has allowed the US to regularly dock its warships, station and operate its surveillance drones, set up its communications infrastructure, carry out intelligence and combat operations, support and participate in counter-guerrilla warfare—all in outright violation and contempt of Philippine sovereignty.

 

For their part, Messrs. Diaz and Paredes have both shown their willingness to fully embrace American intervention in the South China Sea as if only the United States has the wherewithal to make peace in the region. Aren’t we hearing from the US declaration of the “American Pacific Century” the echoes of the not-too-distant past of America’s Manifest Destiny that made us the first colony of the United States? Are we sliding backwards to assimilate another attempt by America to re-colonize us?

 

What the Philippines should do is to continue building solidarity with ASEAN countries to advance a regime of neutrality and demilitarization in the whole region and the pullout of all US troops from the Philippines, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and in the entire Asia-Pacific. Not to kowtow with the most powerful country in the world in an effort to contain the rise of another superpower, not only in the Asia-Pacific region, but one that could rival its hegemony in the world today.

Seeking a compromise in the Spratlys

During the Q&A at a forum on the Spratlys dispute in Toronto recently, a Filipino diplomat and former Consul General of the Philippine consulate in Toronto brought up the idea of a “sharing agreement” between the competing states as a possible solution to the current impasse in the South China Sea. Stressing that such agreement was within the realm of possibility, the diplomat referred to the example of the Ruhr Agreement which was adopted after the end of the Second World War in order to control the coal and steel industry in the Ruhr Area in West Germany.

The diplomat, however, failed to mention that the agreement was reached by the Allied powers as a condition for permitting the West Germans in establishing the Federal Republic of Germany. The agreement was signed by the United States, United Kingdom, France, and the Benelux countries.

Sculpture depicting hard life of coal miners in the Ruhr valley.
Photo  courtesy of silwittmann.

At the time, France was seriously concerned with keeping Germany weak and restricting its civilian industries of military potential. France wanted to place the coal-rich Ruhr area and the Rhineland under French control, or at a minimum, to internationalize them, that is, to subject the German coal and steel industry to an international authority led by the Allied powers.

The Ruhr valley became the centre of the German economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s because of the heavy demand for coal and steel. After 1973, however, Germany suffered from the global economic crisis with its soaring oil prices and persistent high unemployment, and the Ruhr region was the hardest hit. German coal became no longer competitive and the Ruhr steel industry went into sharp decline. The coal mines and hot metal furnaces that transformed the region into Europe's industrial engine a century ago have long since shut down, destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs.

I was struck by the diplomat’s comparison of the current stalemate in the Spratlys with a totally different Germany after it was defeated by the Allies during the Second World War. Finding no possible connection between the two, the diplomat perhaps was simply being tactful in offering a negotiated solution to the problem. In any case, his notion of a “shared agreement” is just right in the neighbourhood of possible options for settling the Spratlys dispute.

The complexities of overlapping claims and the Spratlys dispute’s long history are making the determination of the sovereignty question extremely difficult. Although the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) allows states to choose whatever means they wish to resolve their disputes, China and Vietnam appear not interested in bringing up the dispute to arbitration, presumably for fear of an unfavourable outcome to their claims. This led one observer to describe the current situation in the Spratlys as one of “leaking status quo” or an unstable “do nothing” approach.

But the current impasse is not desirable for all the competing states. By steadfastly insisting on their territorial sovereignty claims, claimant states are holding up the enormous potential that could be derived from exploration and exploitation of the natural wealth of Spratlys and its seabed and waters around it.

That is why the Timor Sea Treaty, which was the most recent example of a joint collaboration between two competing sovereignty claims over the resources of a continental shelf, is the closest model of conflict resolution that comes to mind.

The joint petroleum exploration of the Timor Sea by Australia and East Timor allows both countries to benefit from the resources of their continental shelf without determining issues of sovereignty and maritime boundaries. Both countries are bound by their treaty to refrain from asserting their claims to rights, jurisdiction or maritime boundaries, in relation to the other, for 50 years. That is a long time, and who knows after all the oil is gone, if either country would still be interested in pursuing their sovereignty claim.

Sunset at Timor Sea. Photo courtesy of Pepiloo.

A proposal was already made to establish a Spratly Resource Development Authority which could probably ease the pressures of conflicting sovereignty claims in the South China Sea. Such a cooperative arrangement could pool the financial resources of all the claimants into a joint effort to develop the area’s natural resources within a politically stable and demilitarized environment. There will be no more war of words or stoking fears that China might use its military power to impose itself on the region. Allies of the United States would also stop abetting and encouraging the U.S. government to keep its military presence in the South China Sea to counterbalance the threat of China’s rising hegemony.

In other words, the Spratlys situation should be turned into an opportunity for unity among the claimant states, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a whole—instead of division, threats of military confrontation, or the emergence of a new cold war.

So, the diplomat who said that a “shared agreement” like that of the Ruhr Valley could be right after all, although that arrangement was conceived for an entirely different purpose and under contrasting circumstances.

Compromise, as U.S. President Obama has asked his opponents in Congress to consider in trying to reach a middle ground on their policy differences, has surprisingly become the new buzzword in American politics, although it is as old as the U.S. Congress itself. Perhaps, it is also about time that each claimant state in the South China Sea consider making a compromise for the benefit of the region as a whole.

U.S. proxy war with China imminent in the Spratlys

 

Of all the competing claims for territorial sovereignty to the Spratlys, the Philippine claim is the strongest and most compelling.

Based on the criteria of discovery, occupation and settlement, and jurisdictional rights outlined under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), the Philippines can make a more solid case than either China or Vietnam, the two other countries that are also asserting their claims over a potentially oil-and-other-minerals-rich Spratlys.

Filipinos in Toronto rally before the Chinese Consulate, July 8, 2011, to protest
China's encroachment in Philippine territory in the Spratly Islands. Click link to
view :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qTkQSbYmJU (Spratly Islands).

Recent reports that China is shipping a giant oil rig to start drilling in the hotly-contested Spratly Islands have enraged concerned Filipinos, particularly those living in the United States and Canada, to protest on the streets in several cities which observers believe could draw U.S. involvement in the escalating South Sea China conflict.

With China’s recent aggressiveness near the Spratly Islands, the Philippines ran to the United States to invoke the moribund 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty which made it obligatory for one to defend the other, when the latter is being attacked.

The United States government, with its usual diplomatic double-talk, made reassurances that it will not abandon the Philippines should the Spratly conflict further intensify. Senator John McCain publicly exhorted his government to extend stronger diplomatic support to an ally in the face of China’s bullying tactics.

During a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario, Secretary Clinton committed to defend the Philippines and emphasized that the U.S. would provide the Philippines with reliable military hardware so it can upgrade its capability to defend its territories in the South China Sea.

U.S. to beef up military response

It must be recalled that when the United States closed its military bases in the Philippines, China declared the whole of the South China Sea in 1992 as a part of its internal waters. The U.S. reaction was ambiguous as it stressed its neutrality on the Spratlys issue. It only changed its posture when the Chinese occupied the Panganiban (Mischief) Reef in 1995, prompting the U.S. to fashion a new type of military response through the Philippine-American Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) to justify the presence of American troops conducting joint and combined military exercises with the Armed Forces of the Philippines in its territories.

The global war on terrorism in 2001 further gave impetus to American military presence on Philippine soil. China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea is now viewed not only as a security challenge but more of a military threat.

Map of Spratly Islands, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1996. Click link
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKgh-ydvXqo&feature=relmfu,
to view "The Meaning of Military Exercises in South China Sea."

It was in this context that many observers interpreted Secretary Clinton’s robust commitment to defend the Philippines in the South China Sea as a clear indication of the U.S. intent to remain and exert a strong military presence in the region.

China, on its part, has asked the United States to stay away from the regional conflict, thus signalling what many have observed as the beginning of a US proxy war with China in the South China Sea, particularly on Philippine battleground.

What is a proxy war?

A proxy war is not really a full-scale war and it works best during a Cold War, when there are no real armed hostilities. It results when opposing powers, such as the United States and China, use a third party like the Philippines as a substitute for fighting each other directly. A proxy war does not necessarily lead to full-scale armed hostilities, especially when two superpowers do not wish to fight each other directly and would not risk an escalation to a bigger and more destructive conflict.

From a strategic perspective, some political observers in the region are viewing the ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea as not just a battle for maritime rights over oil and other mineral resources.

Many affirm that these disputes pose a real test to the emerging regional structure dominated by an ever-growing Chinese influence due to its robust economy, on one hand, and the shrinking U.S. clout in the region, on the other.

Security, in addition to oil, is another incentive in the Spratlys dispute. The Spratlys have long been considered as strategic bases for sea-lane defence, interdiction, surveillance and potential launching sites for land attacks.

The United States has very significant national security interests in maintaining unimpeded transit rights—on the surface, in the air and under the sea—throughout the South China Sea, especially to protect Japan in the event of hostilities. It seems unlikely for the U.S. to voluntarily accede to China’s supremacy over this part of the world without getting major concessions that will enhance its security interests. U.S. involvement becomes even more imminent due to pressures from its allies like Australia, Japan, and South Korea to counter the growing threat of a Chinese hegemony in the Asia-Pacific.

Daixu, a strategic analyst at the Chinese Energy Fund Board, has written that a Sino-U.S. proxy war is absolutely not alarmist. Quoting from the work of the American scholar Wei Lianen, he wrote that “expansion through war is in the nature of the United States….it has been transformed into a belligerent Sparta state.”

Popular opposition to China’s intimidating behaviour toward the other claimant countries in the South China Sea augurs well for American involvement in the regional conflict. It provides the United States with the opportunity and justification to enter into the fray, thus ensuring its strategic economic and military presence in the region.

A study conducted by Rand Corporation has recommended that the U.S. government beef up its military forces in the region and shift its security strategy from north to south. The Rand proposal envisions the integration of the Philippines into a new comprehensive security partnership along with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and Thailand to prevent the rise of a dominant regional power (like China) that could undermine America’s role in the region.

Philippines caught in tug-of-war

U.S. involvement in the Spratlys dispute will further entrench the PHL-U.S. Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and deepen the participation of the Philippines in American military operations in the region. Since the VFA was signed in 1999, several war exercises between the two countries have been conducted in Palawan or just a few kilometres away from the disputed Spratly islands, which Beijing protested as an indirect offense to China.

In August of this year, the Philippines and the United States are meeting to review their little-used mutual defence pact and consider U.S. access to its former military bases in the country. According to many observers, all these can be viewed as U.S. initiatives to revitalize and entrench its military involvement in the region.

Filipino demonstrators march during a protest rally in front of the US embassy in
 Manila,  opposing  joint military exercises. Photo by Francis R. Malasig/EP. Click
link to view http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66V8JQRKDxI&feature=relmfu,
" The Balance in the South China Sea."

Loud and boisterous protests by overseas Filipinos against China’s aggressive stance in the South China Sea are playing into the hands of the U.S. government. Global Filipinos are giving the United States a welcome invitation, which if not carefully dealt with, could undermine or short-change the long-term economic interests of the Philippines in the Spratlys.

Need to assert national sovereignty

During the Philippine celebration of Independence Day last June 12, Vencer Crisostomo, chairman of the national youth group of Anakbayan, denounced Philippine president Noynoy Aquino for begging for U.S. intervention in the Spratlys dispute. The youth leader said, “Their script is predictable: on the grounds of China’s bullying, we will ask for help from our supposed long-standing ally, the U.S. First, we will be given more arms, then more U.S troops, and then eventually the return of U.S military bases.”

“We should assert our national sovereignty on our own terms, instead of allowing ourselves to become the battleground of a U.S proxy war with China,” Crisostomo added.

The trajectory of Filipino protests against China, therefore, must be redirected, not against China’s show of military muscle in the region, but against its continuing refusal and arrogance in refusing to recognize the claims of the other nations, and its bull-headed objection to a multilateral settlement of the conflicting territorial claims. China’s intransigence is the cause of the present stalemate. Absent China’s cooperation, however, the disputes will remain for generations and this could engender a de facto military occupation by whoever has the military wherewithal.

Promoting a multilateral solution

At the same time, the protests should also target American entrenchment of its military goals and operations in the region. Continuing U.S. presence will only exacerbate the tense atmosphere in the South China Sea, which could potentially trigger a military confrontation in the region.

Instead of hyping up the Spratly Islands conflict by issuing provocative and agitative statements, the Philippines can take the lead in promoting a peaceful and multilateral resolution of the Spratlys dispute by the Southeast Asian nation-claimants, without U.S. intervention.