Exposing gray matter
Measures that the country has taken to respond to the West Philippine Sea threats are getting noticed to the point that they are now being used as a manual to counter gray zone tactics.
The so-called Assertive Transparency campaign is being hailed as having rewritten the counter-gray zone tactics.
Based on a study by current and former US Air Force officials, funded by the Albert del Rosario Institute for Strategic and International Studies, the Philippines’ policy has been strikingly successful in generating strong international support for its position.
The paper, however, warned it is going to need far more than admiration from partners and allies.
“It will need further commitments of both moral and material support before China is forced to take it seriously as a geopolitical and maritime power. Finally, it will need like-minded nations, transnational bodies, and non-governmental groups to learn the lessons it is teaching and develop their assertive transparency campaigns if the tide against gray zone aggression is to be conclusively turned,” it said.
“While the strategy’s impact has been impressive, Philippine leaders cannot assume that assertive transparency alone will produce sufficient deterrent value to win the West Philippine Sea contest against a ruthless and powerful adversary like Xi Jinping’s China,” according to the study.
It added that like any tactic, transparency is best employed as part of a more comprehensive national strategy.
Manila should build a realistic vision of how it wants the informational tool to work alongside its diplomatic, military, economic, and other elements of national power to help it achieve core strategic objectives.
Another crucial question is whether the Philippines’ early success in applying assertive transparency will inspire other countries to follow suit.
“China, according to the study, likely maintains the hope that the single, small, upstart country can eventually be brought to heel with some well-practiced combinations of veiled threats, economic retaliation, and elite capture techniques,” it said.
Beijing is accustomed to outlasting unruly and rebellious governments within its chosen sphere of influence.
That was the case “when the potentially devastating 2016 arbitration ruling was quickly asphyxiated by that summer’s dramatic political change in Manila.”
Other nations should be carefully studying the Philippine approach for adaptation and adoption into their counter-gray zone strategies.
“If it is applied more broadly and comprehensively, China and other malign actors will be faced with the reality that the gray zone battlefield has turned less favorable and that their prospect of exposure must change their risk-benefit calculation,” the report said.
It is that kind of broad-based adoption that has the potential to deter and defeat gray zone actors at scale.
The report indicated that assertive transparency may be replicable not only across national boundaries but also across gray zone domains.
It cited as an example the occasional practice of embarking videographers and journalists aboard surveillance flights into contested airspace.
“It is maturing and expanding to the point that perpetrators of dangerous aerial maneuvers must increasingly expect their antics to be shared and condemned internationally,” it pointed out.
Even this does not begin to touch on the number of different applications, however.
To comprehensively engage the world’s most sophisticated and committed gray zone actors, national governments and transnational organizations should adopt strategies to incorporate assertive transparency in non-military domains.
“These can include disparate areas such as illicit finance, counter-narcotics trafficking, economic coercion, environmental degradation, and illegal fishing,” it explained.
“It
will need further commitments of both moral and material support before China is forced to take it seriously as a geopolitical and maritime power.
“Manila should build a realistic vision of how it wants the informational tool to work alongside its diplomatic, military, economic, and other elements of national power to help it achieve core strategic objectives.
(To be continued)