President Marcos has now inexorably swung our foreign policy and national security concerns towards the US and its proxies in the region
Even after his (President Marcos’) January state visit to Beijing last year, both Chinese militia and coast guard have had several “encounters” with Philippine vessels, whether lowly fishermen or our own coast guard and its privately-contracted supply vessels.
In what we call the Ayungin Shoal, we have beached since Pres. Estrada’s time, an old and dilapidated Philippine Navy vessel, the BRP Sierra Madre where a dozen naval personnel guard that lonely outpost to which we periodically send food and other supplies.
Of late, a former presidential spokesman, lawyer Harry Roque, claimed there was a verbal agreement between FPRRD and Pres. Xi on the fate of the BRP Sierra Madre, which was immediately denied by yet another former spokesman, lawyer Salvador Panelo.
Best to dismiss their conflicting rants.
Meanwhile, in the latest encounter between a Philippine supply boat escorted by our coast guard, Chinese vessels sent strong volleys of water cannons on our hapless countrymen, some sustaining minor injuries.
These “encounters” have been going on for years, heightened since our president allowed additional sites for the American military under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, most of them in the northernmost part of the country facing our Luzon Strait which divides us from Taiwan.
It is as if nothing cordial came about since the president visited Beijing 15 months ago.
Meanwhile, too, we have sought help from our allies, principally the US of A, Japan and Australia, gaining “sympathy” from other Western states as well as Japan and South Korea in East Asia, while being greeted with silence from our ASEAN counterparts.
In a few days, our president will confer with US Pres. Joe Biden and Japanese PM Kishida in the White House, the main topic of their conversations being the worsening security situation in the South China Sea.
And just before Easter, Malacanang issued EO 57, “strengthening our maritime security and maritime domain awareness,” creating a National Maritime Council with broad powers, including what Sen. Imee Marcos warned as a “Trojan horse” of foreign interference, Section 7 of EO 57, where the Council is allowed to accept “donations, contributions, bequests of gifts from … foreign sources” to strengthen our security capabilities.
The senator warns “such largesse has been the fuel to never-ending conflict as we still see in Ukraine and Gaza,” and adds “declarations of support lack credibility where a rules-based international order is loudly invoked amid the mute refusal to ratify the UNCLOS,” clearly referring to the US of A which, to this date, has not ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the principal arguments we utilize against China’s claim on almost the entirety of the SCS.
Meanwhile, too, American “security experts” from its think-tanks to Pacific military commanders have been warning about an “imminent” invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army, with dates stretching from 2027 to 2030.
While former president Duterte insisted on an independent foreign policy which leaned towards China more than to America, President Marcos has now inexorably swung our foreign policy and national security concerns towards the US and its proxies in the region.
I recall that during the 2022 campaign, in a televised DZRH interview, then candidate Marcos Jr. said if we invoke American assistance in the face of the conflicting claims on the SCS with China, “that would mean war.”
The volte face from the candidate’s position then to the winner’s now is lost on our short memories, even as we chide him for “20 peso-per-kilo rice.”
Clearly, China is bristling, and it will continue it’s “bullying” of our vessels short of a fatal encounter in the WPS.
It is the same tactic it has been using in Taiwan, tiring the defense capabilities of what it calls its “renegade province” while raising up the ante on threats of an eventual take-over.
With lesser defense capabilities than Taiwan, it is much easier to “tire” us, and probably making the population, now strident in its anger over Chinese intrusions, into a state of numbness. “Manhid na,” a new normal takes over.
But EO 57 and our overtures to the US of A, Japan, Australia and others seek to strengthen those capabilities, in much the same way the timetable to operationalize the EDCA sites in Cagayan, Isabela and Palawan could prod the overlords in China to hasten its timeline to annex Taiwan “by force if necessary.”
Bear in mind that Xi Jinping cannot “lose face” before the hundredth anniversary of the Communist Party of China, while Biden faces a November election where his chances are imperiled by the resurrection of the “un-hinged” Trump.
How the two powers navigate through their own geo-political timelines and their political interest bears close watching in the months and a few years to come.
Many will claim China’s economic problems will deter it from spoiling the uneasy peace, but history has shown in other countries that recession actually increases the prospects of war over peace.
Unfortunately, our country has positioned itself into what Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong has speculated upon as a “battleground for war.”