On the edge: The intensifying Philippine-China maritime disputes

The South China Sea disputes have entered a dangerous phase in recent months, with both China and the Philippines taking an increasingly uncompromising stance. Over the past year, Chinese maritime forces have employed increasingly aggressive tactics to disrupt Philippine patrol and resupply missions in the disputed waters. The former used water cannons on as many as five occasions, while ramming Philippine coast guard and resupply ships on three occasions. The latest incident, whereby Chinese maritime forces rammed then forcibly disarmed Philippine naval personnel, was particularly alarming.

 

It had come just weeks after China unilaterally imposed new maritime regulations, empowering its coast guard forces to arrest and detain any ‘foreign trespassers’ within Beijing’s across the South China Sea basin. Crucially, it also came shortly after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. warned, during his historic keynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, that “If a Filipino citizen is killed by a willful act, that is I think a very, very close to what we define as an act of war and therefore we will respond accordingly.” Crucially, the Filipino leader also implied that his country’s sole treaty ally, the United States, would be involved in any military countermeasure should the disputing parties ‘cross the Rubicon’ in the disputed waters.

The latest incident near the Second Thomas Shoal, a low-tide elevation within Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone also claimed by Beijing, saw at least one Filipino serviceman suffer physical injury. Had the Filipino troops actively resisted China’s actions, an armed confrontation would have most likely ensured. The Philippines has exercised control over the contested shoal for the past quarter-century after establishing a de facto base atop the grounded BRP Sierra Madre vessel. China’s aggressive actions in recent months came in response to Manila’s decision to fortify the heavily corroded naval facility, thus thwarting Beijing’s plans to overtake the strategically located land feature near the Spratly group of islands.

Perturbed by the prospect of military escalation, however, the Marcos Jr. administration downplayed the latest incident as a ‘misunderstanding’ and ‘accident’, thus refusing to invoke the Philippine-US Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT). If anything, Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin reiterated that the matter “can easily be resolved very soon” between Beijing and Manila through diplomacy.

 

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Manila’s muted response, however, was likely a reflection of doubts over America’s alliance commitments. But both the US and the Philippines are preparing for potentially more dangerous scenarios, including China directly taking over the Second Thomas Shoal in the near future.

 

Strategic Ambivalence

It’s hard to understate the importance of the South China Sea to global peace and security. The contested waters host close to $3.4 trillion of global trade annually, while  billions of dollars in energy and fisheries resources.  Although the stakes are high, the Philippines has not always been on the same page as its chief ally, the US, which has adopted a historically more neutral and reserved position.

Beginning in the late-1960s and early-1970s, then Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. upped the ante by actively enforcing his country’s claims in the disputed areas. Cognizant of the strategic and economic value of the Spratly group of Islands, his regime pressed ahead with establishing administrative control over more than half-a-dozen disputed features, culminating in the construction of a modern airstrip on the Thitu Island. Throughout this period, Manila leveraged state-of-the-art American weapons systems to intimidate its neighbors and impose its will across the disputed areas.

Troubled by the possibility of getting dragged into the conflict, American officials actively resisted direct involvement the South China Sea disputes. On his part, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made it clear that the Philippine-US Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) should not apply to Manila’s claims in the area, since “[we] do not see legal basis at this time, however, for supporting the claim to Spratlys of one country over that of other claimants” and that “there are substantial doubts that [Philippine] military contingent on island in the Spratly group would come within protection”.

At best, he only vaguely offered “helpful political actions” and, crucially, underscored that the MDT “may [only[ apply in event of attack on [Philippine] forces deployed to third countries,” but not in case “where [Philippine military] deployment is for purpose of enlarging Philippine territory.” By and large, the Kissinger doctrine in the South China Sea was embraced by US presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, thus Washington’s refusal to militarily intervene in behalf of its Southeast Asian ally when China took over Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef (1995) and Scarborough Shoal (2012) in past decades.

 

Recalibrating the Alliance

America’s strategic ambiguity on the maritime disputes emboldened China, undermined the Philippines’ strategic position, and began to alienate growing number of Filipinos. The pro-Beijing Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte rose to power against this backdrop in 2016 by deftly exploiting simmering grievances in the bilateral alliances as well as fears of self-destructive conflict in the South China Sea. An authoritative survey conducted in late-2016 showed that close to half of all Filipino respondents remained skeptical when asked if their country’s “security/defense relations with the US have been beneficial to the Philippines”.

To address fissures within the alliance, the Trump administration adopted a policy of strategic clarity on the South China Sea disputes and, accordingly, publicly clarified that any “armed attack” on Philippine troops, public vessels, and aircrafts would automatically trigger the MDT. The Biden administration has echoed its predecessor on the matter, thus creating an element of continuity and dynamism in the alliance. Nevertheless, China has successfully circumvented the MDT by adopting ‘gray zone’ tactics, namely usage of watercannons, boat collision, swarming by militia vessels, and potential hand-to-hand combat.

The upshot is growing pressure on Washington to revisit the parameters of its mutual defense treaty obligations in order to more effectively deter China’s aggressive tactics. Previously, legal experts at the  Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) in Honolulu, Hawaii, released an unclassified report where they argued that mutual defense obligations should transcend ‘kinetic action’ alone and also apply to “illegal use of force [which] could also include non-kinetic attacks that result in death, injury, damage, or destruction of persons or objects.”

So far, however, the Biden administration has not signaled its intent to, in consultation with the Philippines, adjust the threshold and guidelines for invocation of the MDT, which entails provisions on mutual consultations, international mediation, and likely congressional approvals before escalating into any potential armed confrontation with China or any hostile third party in the South China Sea.

China’s increasingly aggressive tactics are driven by a combination of frustration and anger, largely thanks to the Marcos jr. administration’s (i) adoption of a more assertive ‘transparency initiative’, which has exposed the former’s aggressive tactics in the disputed waters; (ii) rejection of any ‘secret agreement’ under the Duterte administration, which reportedly promised not to fortify Philippine position in the Second Thomas Shoal; as well as growing involvement in the Taiwan crisis by granting US basing access in northernmost Philippine military facilities.

 

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To restore diplomatic communications, the Marcos Jr. administration will likely have to dial down its ‘transparency initiative’ as well as American military presence in Philippine provinces close to Taiwan. Crucially, it will also have to enhance its deterrence capability by, inter alia, seeking more direct American assistance, including speedy transfer of warships and resupply boats, as well as clarification of the parameters of the MDT.

Ultimately, the US has to restore an element of deterrence by making it clear that any forcible Chinese takeover of the Philippine military facility in the Second Thomas Shoal — and elsewhere across the South China Sea — would be met with robust joint response by Philippine and American forces. Otherwise, China will be encouraged to continue to push the envelope, thus raising the risk of armed confrontation in the world’s most important waterway.