Philippine-China deal hits US strategy
FOR years, the US and its allies have struggled to contain China’s ambitions in the South China Sea, even as China steadily seeded the waters with artificial islands and military installations.
Now, by cutting its own deal with China, the Philippines has suddenly changed the calculus, persuading the Chinese to let its fishermen operate around a disputed shoal but setting a worrying precedent for the US and its hopes of using regional alliances to preserve its place as the dominant power in the Pacific.
What had been a fairly united front against China’s expanding maritime claims, stretching from Japan to Malaysia, now has a gap in the southeast corner where the Philippines lies, and could soon have another at the southwestern end, where Malaysia is making noises about shifting its alliances.
In both cases, resentment over what is seen as US interference in unrelated problems – a wave of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines and a huge financial scandal in Malaysia – may have contributed to the shift.
The Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, is angry with the United States over its criticism of his lethal anti-drug program, in which 2,000 people have been killed, mostly by the police.
In Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Benjamin L Cardin of Maryland, has vowed to block any sale of assault rifles to the Philippine police, Senate aides confirmed on Tuesday. While President Barack Obama has criticised extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, blocking weapons sales would be the first concrete US sanction, and would probably only drive the Philippines further from the United States.
Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, is angry over a money-laundering investigation into what the US Justice Department says is more than $1 billion looted from a Malaysian government fund by Najib’s relatives, friends and associates. Najib is in Beijing this week shopping for military hardware.
“Nobody wants the US to leave the region to China,” said Bilahari Kausikan, ambassador-atlarge for Singapore. “But China is using its economic leverage, its geographic position and its lack of interest in human rights to try and change the balance of influence in a region where the vagaries of American politics are now on stark display.”
The deal between China and the Philippines became apparent over the last week with reports that China had begun to allow Philippine fishermen to operate in contested waters in the South China Sea for the first time in four years, rewarding Duterte for his friendship with Beijing and his coolness toward the United States.
The deal is an informal one, and so far has not been committed to writing, but it seems to give both parties what they want while sidestepping the contentious issue of sovereignty over Scarborough Shoal, the contested fishing grounds claimed by both China and the Philippines.
China has not renounced its claim over the shoal, nor has the Philippines conceded China’s claim. But the Philippines’ main interest in the territory is fish, and it appears to have gotten that, a victory for Duterte and his popular defence of his country’s important fishing industry.
For China, the concession not only shifts an important US ally into its good graces but also brings it at least partly into compliance with a ruling by a tribunal in The Hague on the dispute.
The July ruling, which China rejects, denied Beijing’s claim over most of the South China Sea. China’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday that it remained opposed to the ruling and that the loosening of its four-year blockade of the shoal was a special “arrangement” for Duterte and “has nothing to do with the so-called award”.
“Beijing has played a clever diplomatic hand,” said Ashley Townshend, a research fellow at the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney in Australia. He added, “It’s secured a public relations win by lifting the blockade, without forgoing its sovereignty claims over the shoal or even removing its coast guard vessels.”
The United States, a bystander to the deal, gave it a kind of provisional approval.
Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, saying that he had only read reports, said it would be a “positive development” because it showed that China “is acting consistently with the arbitration ruling”.
Even if it portends a potential strategic loss, the agreement also helped reach a goal that the US has long sought: lowering ten- sions in an important area of the South China Sea.
For Duterte, the agreement caps a two-week period in which he has shown himself to be a “shrewd political animal”, as Kausikan, the Singaporean ambassador, put it.
In Beijing, Duterte signed $24 billion in infrastructure projects and loans. He left Tokyo last week with the promise of two new vessels for the poorly equipped Philippine coastguard and, according to Philippine news reports, $19 billion in investment and loan pledges.
He also won tacit support in both capitals for his campaign against drugs. Like the Chinese leadership, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan did not raise the issue of extrajudicial killings and human rights violations.
How long Duterte can ride out his good relations with China and keep up his threats against the US is an open question.
At a Cabinet meeting next week, Duterte will hear a report from the Philippine Defence Ministry on whether to continue to allow the US access to the military bases, including one at Palawan, close to Scarborough Shoal.
Duterte has threatened to cancel the 2014 accord that gives Americans access to the bases, a decision that Beijing would welcome. Termination of the agreement requires a one-year notice by the Philippine government to the US.