By Ricardo Saludo
WHAT should we do about the flotillas of maritime militia sent by China to disputed areas in the South China Sea (SCS), including waters near Pag-asa Island, Ayungin Shoal, and other spots occupied by our forces?
How about training, arming and sending 200 militia of our own? That’s the plan of the Philippine Navy, deploying civilian troopers from the Citizen Armed Force Geographical Units (Cafgus) supervised by the Army.
Well, that should deter Chinese encroaching on our territories, right, including our exclusive economic zone (EEZ), 200 nautical miles from our main islands, and our extended continental shelf (ECS), 320 nm from shore.
Is that snickering bubbling from the readers’ gallery? Security experts would join the levity — if the Navy’s Cafgu plan weren’t fraught with no little risk of grave incidents on the high seas.
From Cafgu to EDCA and Quad
Picture this: Filipino and Chinese maritime militia packing high-powered guns get close and careless. Shots exchange, blood spills, fingers point. Media, military and ministers erupt, and Beijing, Manila and Washington trade accusations.
As they did after the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident, Filipino politicians and commentators across the political spectrum call for increased deployment of United States and other allied forces in the archipelago to deter Chinese aggression.
US President Donald Trump or Joseph Biden promptly pledges to defend Asia from Beijing’s aggression and offers to accelerate the roll-out of the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) now stalled by President Rodrigo Duterte.
With mounting public outrage and alarm over the firefight and elections looming in May 2022, the Duterte government agrees to fully implement the EDCA. The accord gives the US access to five bases of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), exposing Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, Palawan and Central Luzon ricelands to Chinese attack.
Nuclear-capable US warships, subs and planes pour into the Philippines, able to hit most of China from our territory, as well as all its shipping, including tankers carrying half of its oil imports.
In response, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) beefs up deployment in the SCS, including arms buildup at its reclaimed island bases in the Spratlys. Even Scarborough Shoal is ringed with PLA naval vessels and declared off-limits to all fishing.
As war fears escalate, fanned by dominant Western media, Washington gets more Asian nations joining its Quadrilateral Alliance against Beijing’s regional ambitions. Rising tensions erode business confidence, slowing Asia’s economic recovery.
How’s that for a Philippine Navy plan to make the nation more secure?
Nuclear-capable US warships, subs and planes pour into the Philippines, able to hit most of China from our territory, as well as all its shipping, including tankers carrying half of its oil imports.
In response, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) beefs up deployment in the SCS, including arms buildup at its reclaimed island bases in the Spratlys. Even Scarborough Shoal is ringed with PLA naval vessels and declared off-limits to all fishing.
As war fears escalate, fanned by dominant Western media, Washington gets more Asian nations joining its Quadrilateral Alliance against Beijing’s regional ambitions. Rising tensions erode business confidence, slowing Asia’s economic recovery.
How’s that for a Philippine Navy plan to make the nation more secure?
A new Asian arms race
Is the foregoing scenario far-fetched?
Well, think: Would Chinese and Filipino militia take absolute care to avoid confrontation? Would politicians and media here and abroad avoid nationalistic bias, grandstanding and sensationalism if there is shooting?
And would America not exploit Filipino anger and alarm for its Pivot to Asia plan to move 60 percent of its naval assets to the region, mostly based in our archipelago?
This massive transfer of US might, the biggest peacetime redeployment of its armada, has become more urgent with rising tensions over not just the SCS, but also Taiwan, Hong Kong, and North Korea, which just paraded its new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of hitting America.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeyo swung through the region this week, repeating his warnings about China. He met with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and chided China for reportedly massing 60,000 troops near India four months after some 20 soldiers died in clashes between Chinese and Indian border forces in June.
In its regional defense buildup to counter China, the United States sees the Philippines as an ideal platform for military action across potential flash points in East Asia.
Indeed, for its first EDCA construction project, Washington chose not the Puerto Princesa air base, closest to the Spratlys; and not Cebu or Cagayan de Oro, best for disaster relief. Instead, in January last year, the US broke ground at Cesar Basa Air Base in Pampanga — ideal for operations in Taiwan, Korea and Japan.
Courting nuclear attack
For sure, there is need for big powers to balance the might of the PLA, the largest military on the planet. But putting massive nuclear-capable US forces here makes the Philippines a strategic threat and potential target for China, North Korea and other potential US adversaries, even in conflicts where we are not even involved.
President Duterte was right to adopt an independent foreign policy and distance the Philippines from the US after six years of his predecessor’s pro-American, anti-China stance, which even helped Washington’s campaign to prod the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) toward an adversarial approach toward Beijing.
Now, what’s needed is an independent defense policy, to reduce our republic’s three-quarters of a century reliance on US protection for external defense.
Thankfully, the AFP is moving in that direction, though Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana admitted last week that the Armed Forces modernization program has bee delayed due to the realignment of funds this year and next to address the pandemic.
Still, it is welcome that the country is acquiring maritime patrol aircraft, air defense systems and anti-ship missiles — the anti-access and area-denial assets recommended by US defense experts soon after the loss of Scarborough Shoal, but which the US itself did not help the AFP to obtain.
These assets include India’s supersonic BrahMos anti-ship projectile, a hard-to-target mobile system which can defend our entire EEZ. India is selling the missiles to Vietnam. If we buy them, there is a billion-dollar Indian export credit available, as well as well over P100 billion in Malampaya gas royalties, which, budget officials have said, can be spent on weaponry to defend our offshore energy resources.
What about the Navy’s maritime militia plan? If the aim is to stop Chinese boats swarming our EEZ, this is best addressed in bilateral talks with Beijing. And if they’re smart, the Chinese will pull back their militia rather than have ours confronting them — and possibly triggering incidents that could be used to build up America’s regional alliance against China.
(Ric Saludo is president of the Center for Strategy, Enterprise and Intelligence, devising risk management and new-normal initiatives. Email: ric.saludo@censei.asia.)
Source Manila Times 15-10-2020