What they can say

What more can they say?

That was US Ambassador Philip Goldberg, sighing in a TV interview that he could not add anything more to President Barack Obama’s assurance of America’s “ironclad” commitment to protect its treaty ally the Philippines from external attack.

There is, in fact, something that Filipinos had hoped Obama would say (but he did not). It is something that Goldberg can add to his president’s attempt at reassuring an ally, but the ambassador likely won’t say it: the United States is prepared to end the blockade of Ayungin Shoal by Chinese maritime forces.

 It will be even better if US officials can say (but they won’t) that they will drive out the Chinese from Mischief or Panganiban Reef, and stop further Chinese incursions into the Philippines’ 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

 These are assurances that no US official seems prepared to give. Next time we should be more specific. We asked a question, but not the right question.

Under our Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), both countries are mandated to come to each other’s defense in case of armed external attack.

So far, however, Beijing has not launched an armed attack or declared a small-scale war against this tiny, “unruly” country that some Chinese believe is merely “pretending to be weak.” Instead the Chinese have “attacked” our forces with water cannons and imposed a blockade around our ship.

 To assert its territorial claims, no matter how loopy, what China does is plant markers first on reefs or shoals, then install pylons to support huts that quickly metamorphose, when no one is looking, into concrete structures for its maritime forces.

Next time we should ask US officials specifically if the MDT and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) bind them to assist Filipino troops in confronting a Chinese naval blockade, including being hosed away from our Marine detachment. Does the MDT include defense against what Philippine officials have described as a “creeping invasion”?

The answer will say a lot about the nature of this alliance.

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Last Saturday, the Chinese blockade was evident as Philippine forces, accompanied by journalists, were left with no recourse but to airdrop supplies, including Jollibee chicken joy, to those courageous soldiers manning the BRP Sierra Madre. The rusty tub was grounded in 1999 on Ayungin or Second Thomas Shoal, 105 nautical miles west of Palawan, after the Chinese occupied Mischief Reef 130 miles off Palawan in 1994, or two years after the US bases here were shut down.

The shoals and reefs have been traditional Filipino fishing grounds, and Pinoys took it for granted that these were part of the country’s territory while we were under the American security umbrella. When the Senate voted to kick out GI Joe, no one expected the Chinese to assert their claim over the entire South China Sea, probably because non-Chinese thought the absurd claim was a joke. The Chinese grabbed Mischief when our troops were away during the monsoon season, and lied to Manila that they simply built shelters for their fishermen. The “fishermen’s huts” are now a military garrison.

If our troops built such “shelters” anywhere within 130 miles of China’s coast, they would be blasted out of the water, no questions asked.

Obama did not mind antagonizing Beijing in the case of Japan’s claim over the Senkaku Islands, which lie in waters where the EEZs of China, Taiwan and Japan overlap.

US officials reportedly believe that the two cases are different. While China claims to have controlled the islands since the 14th century, Japan had control from 1895 until the end of World War II, when the US took over administration of the Senkakus. In 1972, the US returned control of the islands to Japan.

The Senkakus were under US control when Washington and Tokyo signed their Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security in 1951, binding the two parties to defend each other against armed attack including “in the territories under the administration of Japan.”

It was the same year that the Philippines-US MDT was signed. Washington reportedly believes that at the time, the Philippines had not yet made a formal claim to any part of the Spratlys, so the MDT does not cover Ayungin, Reed Bank, Mischief Reef and Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal.

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Does the EDCA cover these spits of rock and coral? Here the US answer is clearer: resolve overlapping territorial claims first.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has pointed out that the MDT binds the US to defend the Philippines from armed attack on its “metropolitan territory” plus  “the island territories under its jurisdiction in the Pacific or on its armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific.” The US, according to the DFA, considers the South China Sea part of the Pacific – not the ocean, but the military command jurisdiction, although we have yet to hear this directly from US officials.

Each nation acts in its own enlightened self-interest. In 2001, we needed help to end the Abu Sayyaf’s kidnapping spree while George W. Bush needed to scour the planet for every participant, supporter and admirer of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

So our government invited US troops back after kicking them out a decade earlier, with little protest from our usually noisy politicians. America moved on from the shutdown of its bases and deployed its troops to Mindanao in 2002.

This time what do we – and the US – expect from the EDCA? We know what the US wants: access to Philippine military facilities for quick responses in its pivot or rebalancing to the Pacific.

What do we expect to get? The Philippines has been derided for its “cash register diplomacy,” but this is an inaccurate observation. If all we want is foreign aid, why didn’t we ever tap the $1.8 billion in tied loans that China made available for the Philippines? Until about two years ago, Chinese diplomats were telling me that the Philippines got the biggest allocation of their concessional loans among all countries and the $1.8 billion remained available.

With EDCA, additional US military aid is certain. Less certain is deterrence. We may get additional military muscle thanks to Uncle Sam, but if no one is willing to flex it, Beijing won’t be deterred from more shoal-grabbing.

What’s certainly not going to happen at this time is the US shooing away the Chinese from Ayungin, Mischief and other Philippine-claimed territory.

If this is what we want US forces to do, we may have to renegotiate the MDT.