The challenge to Vice President Binay

question: how would VP Binay the South China Sea?

me, less a Philippine concern than American.

These are the givens on the issue. In a report delivered in January this Fleet intelligence chief, Capt. James reefs and islets China had already occupied, enumerating developments made thereon, as follows:

*Mabini Reef (also known as Johnson South Reef) - a three-storey concrete building ringed with gun emplacements and a helipad; feared capable of being converted into a military base.

*Mischief Reef - a three-storey octagonal concrete structures. It has search lights and radar.

*Cuarteron Reef – a permanent reef fortress, supply platforms, and naval and anti-aircraft guns. An airstrip is reportedly being planned.

*Fiery Cross Reef – A marine observation station designated in 2011 as “main command headquarters” equipped with surface and air search radars and armed with at least four high-powered naval guns.

*Gaven Reef – a permanent reef fortress, supply platforms an harbor for navy patrol boats.

*Subi Reef – a permanent reef fortress and supply platforms that can house troops, has a helipad and is armed with four twin-barrel 37mm naval guns. Also houses a Doppler weather radar.

Fannel urged US decision makers to face the problem squarely.

“China’s rise, if left unchecked or undeterred, will necessarily disrupt the peace and stability of our friends, partners, and allies,” he stressed.

That Monday, while we delighted at the usual entertainment characteristic of the advent of the election season, we hardly noticed a horrible news: US to deploy warships close to the Chinese-occupied territories in the Spratlys.

Times of trouble, indeed. But times calling for utmost circumspection.

We must understand that the crisis in South China Sea is a result of an adventure intrinsically American. former US State Secretary and now presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton - ticle she published in the magazine Foreign Policy in November 2011.

In the article, Clinton made known US strategy in the Asia Pacific region for the next one hundred years. Acknowledging the rising threat to American power in the region from rapidly developing to China, she wrote: “One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment—diplomatic, economic, strategic, and oth

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama already set to motion the machinery for pushing the strategy. That same month he toured various countries strengthening security alliances and working out the formation of a new trade block called excluded China. That exclusion found added impact in Obama’s declaration at the subsequent East Asia Summit of a not-too-subtle challenge to China right in the face of Chinese Premiere Wen Jiabao: “…while we are not a claimant in the South China Sea dispute, and while we do not take sides, we have a powerful stake in maritime security in general, and in the resolution of - as a maritime nation, as a trading nation and as a guarantor of security

Less than a year later, the Chinese seized Scarborough Shoal and held on to it since then.

The Philippines avoided physical confrontation by withdrawing the lone navy ship that had been deployed to respond to the crisis. It brought the matter to the United Nations for arbitration. In response, China went on frenzied reclamation on occupied reefs and islets.

Now, with US warships about to be deployed to the Spratlys, what is the Philippines to do?

Against this question, here is a piece of advice which appeared in the English-language state-owned China Daily: “No matter how willing we are to discuss the issue, the current Philippine leadership is intent on pressing us into a corner where there is no other left but the use of arms… Manila is living in a fantasy world if it mistakes our forbearance for timidity. This is a dangerous delusion. We have never been a trigger-happy nation. But when necessary… the Philippines should stop being a troublemaker and drop its ridiculous claim. Otherwise they will learn to their cost how serious we are about our land and sea.”

According to Philippine security expert Rafael Alunan, a former cabinet member in the Cory Aquino and Ramos administrations, China’s ultimate goal is to deny the United States unrestricted passage in the South China Sea. And that’s not attacking the Philippines.

to Vice President Jejomar C. Binay as he enters the threshold of the Philippine presidency. The country is increasingly being inclined to a war that is somebody else’s making, therefore a war that it does not want, but a war in which it has been inextricably enmeshed. Will the imminent Binay administration be just one more bead in the country’s rosary of US puppet long last to the long history of that puppetry and proclaim, “The Philippines is not at war with China. The US is.” But in that event, won’t the Philippines be just watching with arms akimbo while China appears to be annexing it, albeit in slices. Are we to take China’s

How as President will VP Binay statecraft of having to walk the exquisitely thin line between political pragmatism and national surrender.