Carpio: Philippines sea defense 'erratic, self-destructive'

Nine in ten Filipinos detest China's bullying in the West Philippine Sea. Yet their government's stance towards the reef and sea grabber is of appeasement. Such disarray, says retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, begets an "erratic, self-destructive" defense and foreign strategy.

Carpio knows whereof he speaks. When Beijing declared a nine-dashed sea boundary he researched ancient Chinese maps and accounts. All those, along with old European, Japanese and Philippine charts and records, debunked Beijing's claims.

Carpio helped craft Manila's victorious arbitration against China's reef occupation and destruction. Although Beijing ignores the verdict, it is now part of world jurisprudence and history. China only isolates itself in bullying the Philippines, like in ramming a Filipino wooden fishing boat with a steel-hulled Chinese maritime militia vessel.

Excerpted here are Carpio's remarks on the first anniversary last Tuesday, June 9, of that injustice at sea:

"Fora like this (Stratbase-ADR Institute) remind us that we must continue to defend our sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea. Otherwise, our fishing boats will not only be rammed like F/B GemVer-1 a year ago, but all our fishing boats, even our Navy and Coast Guard ships, will be barred from crossing China’s nine-dashed line.

"China wants to make the nine-dashed line its national boundary in the WPS. China wants to seize 80 percent of our exclusive economic zone and 100 percent of our extended continental shelf. We will lose a maritime area larger than our land area. We will lose all the fish, oil, gas, and mineral resources in this huge maritime area. We want to defend and preserve our EEZ and ECS.

"China is bullying the Philippines into accepting its nine-dashed line. By building huge air and naval bases in the Spratlys, by patrolling our EEZ with missile-armed frigates and destroyers, by swarming with maritime militia vessels our territorial seas in the Spratlys, by locking our smaller warships to the radar fire control system of their larger, better armed warships, and by ramming our fishing vessels in our own EEZ, China hopes to intimidate the Philippines.

"The Philippine strategy under the Duterte administration is: never offend, always appease China.

"The administration set aside the arbitral ruling in expectation of receiving loans and investments from China. But the expected amount of loans and investments have not materialized.

"Still we refuse to conduct joint patrols with Vietnam or Malaysia in each other’s EEZ because we do not want to offend China. We do not welcome freedom of navigation operations of the US and other naval powers in the WPS because we do not want to offend China, even if these FONOPS are the most robust enforcement of the arbitral ruling.

"We declined Vietnam's invitation to delineate our overlapping ECS in the Spratlys because we do not want to offend China, even if such delineation reinforces the arbitral ruling by state practice.

"We refuse to file our ECS claim off the coast of Luzon facing the South China Sea because we do not want to offend China, even as Malaysia and Vietnam have filed their own ECS claims in the SCS.

"We are shy in using our own arbitral victory to protest China’s creeping encroachment of our EEZ, even as Indonesia uses the ruling in its diplomatic protest against China’s encroachment of Indonesian EEZ.

"The Philippines even announced on February 11, 2020 the termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement in six month’s time as if we do not need any military ally in defending our territory and maritime zones from encroachment by a nuclear-armed China.

"All this is music to China’s ears.

"Has Philippine strategy countered China’s strategy? Obviously not. Events show our strategy to defend the WPS is in total disarray.

"China recently abundantly hinted it would soon declare an Air Defense Identification Zone over the SCS. The Philippine response was to suspend the six-month period to terminate the VFA.

"When China hinted it will establish an ADIZ over the SCS, it only meant one thing. China will very soon put up an air and naval base on Scarborough Shoal, without which an ADIZ over the SCS cannot be enforced because of a hole in China’s radar, missile and jet fighter coverage in the northeast section of the SCS in the vicinity of

Scarborough.

"In early 2016 China sent dredgers steaming from the coast of Guangdong to Scarborough. US satellites monitored the dredgers. President Obama called President Xi Jinping that the US would take serious measures if the dredgers proceeded to reclaim Scarborough. The Chinese dredgers turned back.

"Will the six-month or even one-year suspension of the VFA termination stop China from reclaiming Scarborough? Will the US exert all efforts to stop the reclamation of Scarborough knowing that the VFA will in any event be terminated after six months or one year?

"A strong, effective alliance cannot be made to depend on a treaty, as the VFA is a treaty, that is terminated on whim, then suddenly suspended from termination for six months to one year, with a threat to finally terminate it thereafter. That is not how the territorial integrity and maritime zones of a state are defended. That is compelling proof of a foreign and defense policy in total disarray.

"We are just lucky that China’s nine-dashed line is so outrageous, so ridiculous, so fake and so destabilizing that despite our erratic and self-destructive policies, our ASEAN neighbors and world naval powers will never accept China’s claim to ownership of the SCS. Even small coastal states outside our region oppose China’s claim for fear that bigger neighbors might emulate China and seize their EEZs. This fortuitous situation allows the Philippines to muddle through even with a defense and foreign policy on the WPS that mainly appeases the very state that intends to seize Philippine territory and maritime zones."

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