China versus Edca

Politically correct Filipinos are caught in a bind. On the showdown with Beijing in the West Philippine Sea, the nationalist position is to oppose China’s aggression, expose its outrageous “nine-dash line,” and resist its creeping conquest of contested islands. But on strengthening the Philippines’ military alliance with the United States, nationalist Filipinos have not forgotten the demeaning reminders of our colonial past, and instinctively reject any role for Uncle Sam in our national security.

Perhaps it’s time Filipinos confronted the ironies of political correctness and considered the reality that careful and calibrated cooperation with the United States is better than outright loss of national territory and energy deposits to China.

It’s a difficult choice, but there it is. Politically correct Filipinos may agonize about ideological compromise, but when China starts landing its jets on the newly reclaimed “islands,” driving away our fishermen and oil exploration vessels, and indeed demanding that our navy first get its permission to access our own islands, all that the ideologues will say is that military self-reliance is the key.

Last week in Washington, Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario launched the US-Philippines Strategic Initiative, a partnership among Manila-based think-tank Stratbase ADR Institute, the business group Philippines Inc., and the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The CSIS was the first group that raised the alarm over China’s stealthy construction of artificial islands, and posted the disturbing photos on its website. The Obama administration has announced its “pivot to Asia” strategy, now renamed “rebalance to Asia.” The Initiative seeks to ensure that the Philippines is, not a passive partner in this rebalancing, but a proactive and coequal participant.

A few days later in Beijing, US Secretary of State John Kerry called out China for the pace and scale of its reclamation activity and expressed America’s concern over its military implications. Other US government officials announced that they were considering sending military aircraft and ships to assert freedom of navigation in the area of the reclamation, to leave “absolutely no doubt that the [United States] remains committed to maintaining freedom of navigation” in this part of the world.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi responded: “The determination of the Chinese side to safeguard our own sovereignty and territorial integrity is as firm as a rock, and it is unshakable.” He said China would not back down because the reclamation “is something that falls fully within the scope of China’s sovereignty.”

China’s strident attitude is why the Strategic Initiative wants the Philippines to move forward with the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (Edca) with the United States, which, as the Initiative points out, makes the US commitment unmistakably known to China.

The Edca, against which there are pending petitions in the Supreme Court, provides for the “storage and prepositioning of equipment, supplies and materiel” to ensure quick access when needed, whether for military or humanitarian and disaster-relief situations.

But the Philippines must also abandon its America-centric defense position and broaden the alliance to include Japan, Australia and other like-minded states that can all benefit from access to the “prepositioned” materiel should we consent.

The Philippines must, as the Department of Foreign Affairs has already done by filing suit in The Hague, recast the debate as a legal contest to be decided according to fixed rules, and not as a turf fight between warring bullies.

Finally the Philippines must add a new, environmental dimension to the debate, erstwhile solely a matter of defense and security. It must ask not just who owns the islands, reefs and islets but who cares about them most and nurtures them best. It must sound the clarion call to environmentalists the world over to stop China’s reclamation and systematic harvest of endangered species for commercial use. Greenpeace once sent its flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, to disrupt French nuclear testing in the Pacific (the vessel was bombed and later sunk). Mao’s now fattened successors may have yet to meet their match in the tree-huggers’ guerrilla tactics.

The Philippines, according to its best interests, must strengthen its present defense needs against China and its united front with other nations likewise threatened by the Chinese behemoth.