America only has to blink once
China can always backpedal but America can't
A phrase that has entered our political phrase book in recent years is “strategic patience,” more vividly expressed by Amang Rodriguez two generations ago when he exclaimed, “In the long of time, we shall success!” This is is essentially what the People’s Republic of China has going for it in the face of the much shorter political cycles of both the Philippines and the United States.
This week’s The Long View:
THE LONG VIEW
Divide and conquer
By: Manuel L. Quezon III – @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:13 AM November 01, 2023
Sooner or later when it comes to the People’s Republic of China, the “Art of War” will be quoted. It’s a smorgasbord of useful ones: “Next best is to disrupt his alliances,” (3.5); “Do not allow your enemies to get together,” (3.5, Tu Yu); “When he is united, divide him,” (1.25); and specifically, these two: “Look into the matter of his alliances and cause them to be severed and dissolved. If an enemy has alliances the problem is grave and the enemy’s position is strong; if he has no alliances the problem is minor and the enemy’s position weak,” (1.5, Wang Hsi); and “Sometimes drive a wedge between a sovereign and his ministers; on other occasions separate his allies from him. Make them mutually suspicious so that they drift apart. Then you can plot against them,” (1.25, Chang Yü).
These quotations have to do with President Joe Biden reiterating that the American commitment to mutual defense is “iron-clad,” and the ramping-up of opposition, within the ruling coalition, to the President’s restoring the traditional security relationships of the country. For his part, Biden was referring to increasing aggressiveness on the part of China when it comes to Filipinos on the high seas, and an overall deterioration in the relationship between the two countries. America, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the EU have demonstrated increased solidarity with the Philippines as it stands up to China. In contrast to this has been the very public courtship of Beijing by both ex-president Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter, the Vice President, and the high-profile visits of their associated social media influencers and mass media allies, also to Beijing.
But Biden’s guarantee comes at a time of great strain for the United States, as pointed out by Niall Ferguson and Jay Mens in a recent commentary on the Middle East: “No one can read the mind of Xi Jinping, but there should be no doubt that China is watching all this and calculating. With crises afoot in Eastern Europe and now the Middle East, the Pentagon’s nightmare is a third crisis in the Far East, the region where the stakes are highest. It is not hard to imagine a Chinese blockade of Taiwan—perhaps with January’s election there as the pretext. The United States, which no longer has the vast military-industrial complex of the first Cold War, would be torn between three simultaneous conflicts, each making demands on a finite stockpile of weapons and munitions.”
While Biden’s recent statements are something Filipino leaders have been wanting to hear for decades—and until quite recently, American administrations had refused to be categorical—there will always be suspicion over how firm that commitment is.
Many reasons are given for this, but they generally fall into one of two: what I like to call the American sobriety test: Americans are skeptical of Filipino maturity which made it impossible for them to trust Filipinos not to drag Americans into trouble by reckless misuse of an American security guarantee; the other is the Filipino belief that America is a fickle and unreliable ally, born of repeated disappointments dating back to World War II and most recently, the Obama administration’s leaving the Philippines in the lurch when China violated an agreement brokered by Washington between Beijing and Manila.
China can always backpedal; it loses nothing when it does so, as it can apply pressure again in the future. But the moment the Americans backpedal, or leave allies in the lurch, their credibility is shot, and so is the effectivity of any Filipino administration that puts its faith in an American security guarantee.
In 1988, according to an official who was there, President Corazon Aquino, meeting with China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, raised the question of the Spratly Islands. He waved it aside, saying they need not discuss it for 25 years. That was at a time, of course, when the US bases still existed in the Philippines and were scheduled for renegotiation and renewal in 1991. It was likely no one at the time expected it not to be renewed for another quarter-century. In recent years, the official Chinese version is that he said to her, “In view of the friendly relations between our two countries, we can put aside the issue for some time being and take the approach of joint development.”
Benito Lim once wrote an interesting exploration of Philippine-China relations from Corazon Aquino to Fidel Ramos, in which he identified a bias for Taiwan as a constant irritant during the Aquino presidency finally settled by Ramos—only for Ramos to be confronted with increased aggressiveness by the Chinese in the Spratlys—which suggests the Deng timetable became obsolete after the removal of the US bases.
Related readings:
Start with Why the rusting wreck of a second world war ship is so important to China and then the recent Washington Post editorial, China’s naval provocations are getting too blatant to ignore:
With the Biden administration rightly focused on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, there is always the danger of a new overseas crisis emerging in a different part of the world — say, a rival power taking advantage of the distractions to flex its muscles or cause mischief.
That seems to be what’s happening now in the Pacific, with China as the key trouble maker.
And this may be too gentle a description for China’s dangerous actions in the disputed South China Sea. Better to say that Beijing appears to be engaged in deliberate acts of provocation, testing the United States and one of its chief regional allies, the Philippines.
The South China Sea has long been seen as the likeliest potential flash point between the United States and China — which is why we have argued on these pages the importance of resuming military-to-military contacts as quickly as possible, including a crisis communications hotline, to avoid accidents or unintended mishaps from escalating into all-out conflict. There appeared to be some small hope for restoring those ties with the announcement that the Defense Department will be sending a representative to Beijing for an international three-day gathering, known as the Xiangshan Forum, hosted by the Chinese Defense Ministry, starting Sunday.
China’s conduct in recent days in the South China Sea seems neither accidental nor unintentional. On Oct. 22, Chinese vessels deliberately collided with a Philippine coast guard ship and a supply vessel sent to resupply a small Philippine marine detachment stationed on a rusting World War II-era transport ship being used to stake the Philippines’ claim to a contested outpost known as Second Thomas Shoal. China claims the shoal — and in fact, all of the South China Sea — as its own, and was trying to block what Beijing called the movement of “illegal construction materials” to the isolated reef.
The Philippines rightly condemned China’s “dangerous, irresponsible and illegal actions” in staging the collision. Beijing’s actions amount to a de facto blockade of the remote shoal and cannot be allowed to stand. The Philippine detachment guarding the shoal needs to be resupplied.
China has also stepped up its provocative maneuvers directly against U.S. aircraft flying in international airspace over the disputed South China Sea. Just two days after the incident with the Philippine ships, a Chinese J-11 jet attempted a reckless nighttime intercept of a U.S. B-52, flying above and below it and coming within just 10 feet of the bomber. The U.S. military released a grainy video of the near midair collision, accusing the Chinese pilot of flying in an unsafe and unprofessional manner.
Perhaps this is President Xi Jinping’s way of diverting his people’s attention from growing domestic problems — a faltering economy and a leadership crisis. He just officially sacked his defense minister, Li Shangfu, missing for weeks, and he formally stripped his ousted foreign minister, Qin Gang, of his last remaining official title, pointing to serious fissures within the ruling Communist Party. While these dismissals might be seen as Mr. Xi taking a firmer hand against corruption, the purging of such men, who he himself had promoted, raises the specter of an isolated autocrat unable to trust his own chosen subordinates — but eager to scapegoat them.
Mr. Xi might be assuming the United States is too focused on Israel’s war with Hamas and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to pay attention to the Chinese military’s increasingly confrontational moves. Chinese officials, masters at gaslighting and projecting their government’s own actions onto others, of course accused the U.S. military of making a provocative move with a Navy warship. Beijing released its own video to back up its specious claim.
Whatever China’s precise rationale might be, it’s imperative that the administration send constant reminders to Beijing and to America’s allies in the region that the United States is a Pacific power and can deal with multiple crises at once. President Biden, speaking this week alongside Australia’s visiting prime minister, sent the right signal, emphasizing that the United States’ defense commitment to the Philippines “is ironclad.” He added that any attack on Philippine vessels, aircraft or troops would trigger the 1951 mutual defense treaty between the two countries, which commits the United States, in the event of such an attack, “to meet the common dangers in accordance with its constitutional processes.” Restating this deterrent commitment is the right way to reinforce it. And reinforcing it is the right way to make sure China is not tempted to test it.
For the contemporary official Chinese view see Keynote speech by Amb. Huang at Webinar On China's development and China-Philippines relations from 2020. An interesting look at how the Americans may be taking a more holistic approach (even as Filipinos have been taking a more strategic one) can be found in Broadening the US-Philippines Alliance: EDCA Sites Are Just the Beginning. For background on the past, see my 2005 notes (“Transactional Foreign Policy” section), The Republic of the Philippines and U.S. Interests—2014, Donald Trump’s Peace Through Strength Vision for the Asia-Pacific, U.S. Relations With the Philippines and The Duterte Administration’s Foreign Policy: Unravelling the Aquino Administration’s Balancing Agenda on an Emergent China.
A word on the Barangay/SK polls:
Quick thoughts on the recently-concluded elections, including related readings and viewings. The President was candid about the political importance of the polls, since barangays are the bedrock of political machinery. Much of the dysfunction of our democracy is revealed by them.
Back in 2017 in "Bamboozled by the barangay," I traced their institutional origin and how they have morphed into pretending to be something they're not --apolitical-- and why this has contributed to the atrophy of national parties In the “Spoiled spoils system” I looked at how the barangays and the House are essentially blocs that wait until a winner is known and who then transfer their allegiance wholesale —but at a continuing (and heavy) price. This leaves the senate as the vestigial barometer of public opinion with the midterms.
In #ProyektoPilipino as part of the exploration and appreciation of civics, we've spent a lot of time looking at the barangay, to see the differences between the ideal role its supposed to play and the actual functions it fulfills.
You'll find our first and second discussions with a 35-year veteran barangay official (and now DILG official) quite frank and eye-opening. We also discussed the hows and whys of the past bad practice of repeatedly postponing barangay polls. We looked at families, politics, at the most basic level of our governance. We looked at the SK from the perspective of one of those elected to it and the practical problems they encounter.
Which brings me back to the recently-concluded polls. The President's campaign was anchored on a very traditional approach grafted on to his successful social media campaign. One that in many ways fundamentally discarded even the (increasingly purely) ritual role of national parties and concentrating on regional/local parties and building a coalition of them; here mayors and governors matter more since congressmen and senators are acquired only after victory, anyway. If 2010 marked the end of the even decorative role of national platforms, 2022 was very much an end to demanding even a nod to a national organization beyond that of the individual candidate(s). It's a kind of electoral federalism when you think of it, discarding the unitary pretensions of national parties with the passing from the scene of premartial veterans.