Philippines Establishment Ready to Go to War Over Scarborough Shoal--With Rodrigo Duterte

I have a piece up exclusively at Asia Times, Meiring, Murder, Subversion, and Treason: Duterte’s Beef with US.  Go read it!

It unpacks the story of Duterte’s coolness to the United States dating back to the Michael Meiring incident in 2002.  Duterte’s spokesman recently cited the Meiring case in explaining his attitude toward the U.S., leading to a New York Times ‘splainer that I characterize as a feeble effort to handwave aside a pretty major problem and sideline an extremely awkward, pivot-unfriendly narrative of ongoing US shenanigans in the Philippines.  Read my piece and you’ll see why.

In my Asia Times piece I go with the conservative and better-documented allegations, which are pretty damning.  Basically, Meiring looks like a CIA op tasked with a bombing campaign in Davao City to advance US objectives and just one piece of ongoing US interference in Mindanao that sticks in Duterte’s craw.

That’s bad enough, but it’s only a small fraction of the eyepopping rumors that circulate about Meiring.  I’ll address those in a separate post.

Here I’ll stick with Duterte.  

For the reasons described in my Asia Times article and below, Duterte is not an enthusiast for U.S. military operations inside the Philippines.

Duterte opposed the Balikatan exercises, at least as far as Mindanao is concerned, objected to the use of an airport in Davao City as a U.S. drone base, and he’s unlikely to be an enthusiastic helpmate for the pivot.  Duterte wants to have bilateral exchanges with the PRC on the issue of Scarborough Shoal and undersea resource development.  

In the course of President Obama's congratulatory phone call, Duterte stated he would try a multilateral approach to PRC but "if there’s no wind to move the sail, I might opt to go bilateral."

Duterte's qualms about the U.S. military relationship and openness to dealing with the PRC have occasioned disquiet in Manila's pro-US government departments, and provoked systemic pushback.

The blizzard of exit statements given by the outgoing Aquino administration look a lot like a rewrite of recent history meant to focus and define the Philippine-US narrative exclusively in the context of a burgeoning struggle with the PRC in the SCS, and relegate to insignificance the rather checkered history of US-Philippine military and security cooperation.


And they look like part of a sustained, long planned effort to box in Duterte, limit his options, and pre-empt possible moves by him away from the current US-Philippine strategy for gaming the SCS issues.  

The Manila establishment, in other words, looks ready to go to war over the Scarborough Shoal--with President Rodrigo Duterte. 

Given the friendly relationship between the anti-Duterte Manila establishment, the US government, and the Western press--and Duterte's apparent disinterest in playing the foreign media game--expect the pro-pivot SCS narrative to get "overweighted" in the international media and diplomatic discourse and contribute as needed to getting Duterte and his populist/insufficiently pro-US agenda chewed up  perhaps a la Rousseff, Kirchner, and Maduro in the Philippines' no-holds-barred political arena.

Clearly, all is not lost for the United States, given the strong U.S. relationship with the Philippine military and civilian elite—backed up by Philip Goldberg, U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines, ex Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research and one of those imperial bladerunners who finds their way in and out of hotspots around the world (Note: As of May 20, Goldberg is slated to be replaced by Song Kim, apparently because of personal animosity with Duterte)-- and the fact that Duterte’s opponents are entrenched in key central government institutions in Manila.

For some time, the Manila establishment has been systematically planting its flags and deploying its forces to defend the current China policy--founded on participation in the U.S. rebalance and keystoned by confronting the PRC through the UNCLOS arbitration process--in anticipation of an adverse outcome in the presidential election.

Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, the legal maestro of the Philippines’ UNCLOS arbitration case, declared at a recent forum that a favorable Hague ruling will leave only 1551 square kilometers of the “South China Sea” in dispute i.e. victory is within reach & it would be foolish/criminal to fritter away Philippines’ rock-solid claims in order to make nice with the PRC.  

Carpio made this case at a forum “held in Camp Aguinaldo and was attended by military personnel, representatives from embassies and the Department of Foreign Affairs.”  Presumably, everybody in the civil & military establishment is expected to sing from the same hymnal on the importance of sticking with the arbitration route.

Just in case Duterte tries to duke it out with the uniforms in the Department of National Defense and the suits at the Department of Foreign Affairs, he can also worry about the Senate.  I’m guessing opposition in the Senate will insist that any deal Duterte works out with the PRC must involve an explicit PRC acknowledgment of Philippine sovereignty over Scarborough Shoal and acceptance of the Philippines EEZ.

And beyond that, there’s also Carpio’s shop, the Supreme Court.  Carpio stated last year that impeachment is the proper remedy for any president that violates Philippine sovereignty by dealing improperly with the PRC on EEZ matters, for instance by offering a deal on delineation of the EEZ that accepts anything less than 200 nm for the Philippines.

And in any case, if the arbitration case goes the Philippines’ way, I don’t see any difficulty for the Department of National Defense to start EEZ-assertion patrols with fishing fleets without too much deference to any objections from Duterte, messing it up with PRC vessels, and eventually invoking the aid of the US.  This is something I think the US Navy lusts for and a new Hillary Clinton administration may not be unwilling to provide; consider the FONOPs farce simply a way of keeping the SCS pot boiling until the arbitration ruling comes down, Obama’s on the golf course, and Clinton is president.

On top of that, the New York Times report of its exit interview with Aquino led with:

President Benigno S. Aquino III said Thursday that the United States would be obligated to take military action in the South China Sea if China moved to reclaim a hotly contested reef directly off the Philippine shore.

...
But he suggested that there would be a harsh response if China decided to [reclaim Scarborough Shoal], saying that in his view the United States would be forced to defend the Philippines or risk losing its credibility in the region.“It has to maintain its ascendancy, moral ascendancy, and also the confidence of one of its allies.”

An interesting statement on several levels, not the least of which is the president of the Philippines apparently drawing a red line for the president of the United States.

Beyond that, nothing says "militarization" like "threatening military action if somebody reclaims an island" and I imagine the other ASEAN countries viewed with interest but not too much enthusiasm Aquino's effort to provide a justification for U.S. military action in the South China Sea.

More significantly, perhaps, Aquino seemed to be trying to do the expected incoming Clinton administration a solid by helping extract the SCS from the confines of the "international law" box where Obama has tucked it to the dismay of China hawks (in which the U.S. has no position on Scarborough sovereignty and can do little if anything to block reclamation legally), and let it roam the wide open "U.S. national security/credibility" spaces where "anything goes" to protect vital American interests.

Also, as a domestic matter, Aquino is trying to take the ball out of Duterte's hands by declaring that U.S. strategic interests on Scarborough Shoal can and should legitimately trump whatever deal he thinks of working out with the PRC.

Thanks, Noynoy!

And if Duterte goes too far in his bilateral dealings with the PRC, the Philippine media has already test-driven the strategy to paint him as an ignoramus, a stooge, and/or in thrall to Chinese gold.

Bottom line: the US will not surrender its strategic opportunities in the Philippines and South China Sea dispute lightly, and I expect its allies in the Philippine establishment to do their best to deter and obstruct Duterte as needed from taking Philippine PRC policy down an undesirable path toward appeasement. 

Duterte’s election, in other words, gives the PRC another potential lever to work in the dispute, but not a decisive one, especially if the China hawks have anything to do with it.  Which they will.  In my opinion.  

So Duterte might decide to let the SCS process grind on and expend his political capital on domestic issues like corruption, public order, and the challenge to national unity posed by his home island of Mindanao--issues in which the US has played a brutal role over a century and shaped Duterte's perceptions of the US relationship.

It can also be said the US built its modern military toolkit by porting best practices of the genocide against Native Americans in the US homeland to the brutal counterinsurgency against the Moro on Mindanao after the Spanish-American War.

Mindanao is the place where Jack Pershing served.  Donald Trump has erroneously tagged Pershing with the brainwave of putting pig’s blood on bullets to freak out the Moro.  Actually, it was a junior officer who suggested the idea, which Pershing rejected.  What an officer (not Pershing) did try was burying a dead assailant in a pig’s carcass, which didn’t have the desired demoralizing effect.  See Robert Fulton’s Moroland 1899-1906: America’s First Attempt to Transform an Islamic Society pp. 176-77 for the story.

One innovation of the Philippine War that did stick was waterboarding.  Here’s the cover of Life Magazine in 1902 with the picture. 

Judging by the caption, this was a punishment for stone-throwing.

Despite the current obsession with the South China Sea, territorial, colonial, and imperial issues have always been a big, if unwelcome, part of the U.S. equation for the Philippines.

Indeed, "terrorists on Mindanao" was seen as the key way to get the US military nose back into the Philippine tent after eviction from Subic and Clark in 1992; and there's sometimes a whiff that the U.S. and its friends in the Department of National Defense might have been ready to step up and stir the pot if there wasn't enough action down there.

Not just Michael Meiring.

The US military, via a JSOC command, was engaged for the last decade or so with the notorious Abu Sayyaf militant group we now hear so much about.

Abu Sayyaf was actually a collection of the usual suspects i.e. Muslims who fought the Soviets under the U.S. aegis in Afghanistan and returned home to do mischief.  Apparently Abu Sayyaf was enabled by high-level protectors in the Philippine military, who saw them as a potentially useful asset against the Moro independence movement on Mindanao and providing useful pretexts for the extension of central government control over the island via martial law.

I haven’t seen anybody else write about it, but it looks to me like Abu Sayyaf lost its covert government sponsorship in 2003, when the main Moro insurrectionary outfit, the MILF, wrote a letter to George W. Bush that opened a negotiated track.  I suspect this initiative was midwived by Muammar Gaddafi, who was a big supporter of the MILF; in 2003 Gaddafi had started his rapprochement discussions with the U.S. and I think the Moro got the message to make nice with the States.

Abu Sayyaf has degenerated into a kidnap/ransom enterprise whose main utility appears to be to provide a pretext for the US to do security operations on Mindanao while elements in the military apparently still provide it with protection.  Duterte let it be known his first act as president will be to declare war on Abu Sayyaf in its final stronghold, and corrupt Philippine officers who didn’t resign before he took office would find themselves on the front lines: “And if you are taken hostage there, say your ‘Our Fathers’ because I will never, never pay anything to retrieve you.”

And the U.S. government has tagged rich rewards on fugitive terrorists to orchestrate security operations on Mindanao and the surrounding islands with its preferred central government forces, sometimes with disastrous results.

The U.S.-advised fiasco at Mamasapano resulted in the death of  44 members of the Philippine Special Action Force a year ago, in January 2015, as I described in my piece, Mamasapano: the Philippines' Benghazi.

President Aquino's dubious role in the operation exposes him to a lifetime of legal jeopardy, jeopardy that probably becomes more imminent if Duterte successfully reorients the Philippines' PRC diplomacy and prompts a national rethink of the costs, benefits, and myriad skeletons in the closet of the US-Philippine relationship.

Duterte’s election is a reminder that there's more to the United States in the Philippines than white sailor suits, grey ships, and heroic confrontations with the PLA Navy.

As I conclude in my Asia Times piece:

The Meiring case is simply an inflection point in a multi-decade and ongoing US program of misjudgment, misbehavior, and mayhem in Mindananao that continues to the present day.

Unfortunately for the United States, that campaign has gone on for fourteen years right under the disgusted nose of the man who is now poised to become president of the Philippines.

Scarborough Shoal Shadows the Pivot

[For the convenience of casual readers that can only handle so much of Scarborough Shoal at a single sitting, I also posted this piece in two separate helpings:  The Price of the Pivot: Scarborough Shoal and The Ultimate Pivot Pricetag:  A Luxury Resort on Scarborough Shoal. FYI CH]

The PRC is in a pretty solid position, legality-wise in occupying Scarborough Shoal.  

And that means it’s pretty much free to build on it.  Even island-build it.

The United States and the Philippines know that.  

Losing Scarborough Shoal was the price of the pivot.

It’s just hard to admit it.

Back in May 2012, a little-known figure in the US government, one Hillary Clinton, declared that the United States took no position on the sovereignty of the Scarborough Shoal.

[Clinton] voiced concern about Scarborough Shoal, repeating that Washington does not take sides on competing sovereignty claims there but has a national interest in maintaining freedom of navigation as well as peace and stability.

Unsurprisingly, the fact that Hillary Clinton affirmed US neutrality on the issue of Scarborough Shoal sovereignty is not on the lips of every China pundit handwringing over current PRC banditry in the South China Sea and searching for pretexts to block PRC island-building on the Shoal.

Perhaps China hawks find Clinton’s statement something of an embarrassment, especially since it undercuts the policy/legal justification for some of the more extravagant plans for frustrating the PRC’s purported Scarborough schemes—like the brilliant idea of sending SEALS to covertly sabotage PRC dredgers.  Or the even more brilliant idea of sending 4 A-10 Warthogs (air to surface combat) and 2 HH-60G Pave Hawks helicopters (insertion and extraction of special ops personnel)  to put some credibility behind the threat.  Which we already did.

If the PRC can island-build Scarborough Shoal unchecked, it would represent an embarrassing piece of blowback for the pivot, and a pivot-sapping political incubus for pro-US political and military figures in the Philippines.  

The best lawfare gambit available is to declare that dredging the shoal would violate environmental protection standards in UNCLOS; however, the idea that PRC could be targeted by a R2P2 (Responsibility to Protect Polyps) military operation has, for some reason, not acquired its sea legs, perhaps because the idea that the US would engage in an act of war to enforce environmental norms in a treaty it has not even ratified has not quite caught on.

The Scarborough Shoal dilemma is well understood in Manila.

As the crisis evolved in 2012, the Philippines had expressed hopes for a US statement that the Mutual Defense Treaty covered Scarborough Shoal, something along the lines of the US declaration that the Senkakus fell under the US-Japan security treaty.

Remember, pivoteers, that the US returned the Senkakus to Japanese administration in 1979 but has pointedly never acknowledged Japanese sovereignty over them even as the Obama administration affirmed they were covered by the security treaty as “territory administered by Japan”.  The sovereignty issue was supposed to be worked out in negotiations involving China and Japan but the Japanese nationalized several of the islands instead in 2014, a big middle finger to the United States as well as the PRC.  

So, in theory, the Philippines might hope that Scarborough Shoal could merit similar consideration from the United States, as a disputed sovereignty territory that the US has decided, nevertheless, to include under its defense umbrella. 

Problem is, as Hofstra’s Julian Ku points out, the MDT affirms that the obligation of the United States to come to the aid of Philippine armed forces when they are under armed attack in areas under their jurisdiction.  Since Scarborough Shoal is not under Philippine jurisdiction, and there are no Philippine armed forces there to suffer attack, that dog didn’t hunt, at least in 2012.

In May 2012, Hillary Clinton’s refusal to put Scarborough Shoal on the US-Philippine agenda was seen as a humiliation for the Philippines, a sign that the Philippines was a second-tier ally compared to Japan.

In retrospect we might say that yes, it was an affirmation that by virtue of the Philippines’ eviction of US military forces in 1992, it only rated second-tier ally treatment compared to Japan… and it was time for the pro-US element in the Philippines pick up its game.

China hawks in the Philippines (and, I suspect in the United States) did not want to see a positive or dignified future for an essentially non-aligned Philippines mired in protracted and inconclusive bilateral negotiations with the PRC over Scarborough Shoal, fishing rights, hydrocarbon plays and whatnot, perhaps generously larded with the corruption allegedly associated with the PRC-friendly posture of the previous Arroyo government, while at the same time free-riding off the Mutual Defense Treaty. 

Instead, leadership in the Foreign Affairs and Defense ministries pushed for overtly siding with the United States and upgrading the relationship to a more robust level (culminating in the de facto return this year of the US military to Philippine bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement or EDCA), thereby promising the overmatched and underequipped Philippine military and security forces more lethal if not necessarily more effective support from the US against internal as well as external threats.

From that perspective, the Scarborough dispute--a sovereignty beef which could not bring US military power to bear on the Philippines' behalf but virtually dictated bilateral engagement with China--was a dead end.

As I’ve written here, a flock of China hawks sabotaged the mid-year 2012 bilateral negotiations conducted by President Aquino through his envoy, Antonio Trillanes, for both sides to withdraw from the shoal.

As the bilateral crashed and burned, the Philippine government abandoned the bilateral track and turned toward internationalization of the Philippines dispute via UNCLOS…full pivot membership...and an emerging maritime focus that gave the US Navy a potential role in the disputes...

…while leaving the PRC in occupation of Scarborough Shoal.

The pivot had a cost, in other words, and that cost was Scarborough Shoal.

And UNCLOS isn't going to help.

The Shoal is above water at high as well as low tide, so it falls outside of the purview of UNCLOS—and the Philippines’ UNCLOS arbitration. 

 

If the Scarborough Shoal was under water some or all of the time, UNCLOS would rule and the arbitration commission could assign it to the Philippines as part of its EEZ endowment—but it ain’t.

And the Philippines has acknowledged that.

Best UNCLOS can do is either declare that the Shoal is capable of sustaining a human population and economic life, meriting a 200 nautical mile EEZ, unlikely well impossible in its current configuration, or only a 12-mile territorial sea.

As to whose territorial sea it is—and to whom Scarborough Shoal belongs—well, UNCLOS got nuttin’.

To be harsh, the awkward fact is that the Philippines did not “lose” Scarborough Shoal; it threw it away.

I imagine awareness of this politically toxic sacrifice underlies the ostentatious US breast-beating over Chinese plans for Scarborough Shoal, dictates useless Warthog flybys, and contributes to Ash Carter’s determination to up the US-Philippine military game and demonstrate heightened American commitment to the alliance.  

It might even explain the cancellation of Carter’s China trip in favor of a swing through India, Malaysia, and the Balikatan joint exercises in the Philippines.

There's a Philippine presidential election coming up, after all.

In sum, there is no need for the PRC to island-build the shoal to shield it from US-backed sovereignty challenges or UNCLOS-related embarrassment.

So I’ve been a somewhat skeptical concerning Western handwringing about perceived PRC intentions to islandbuild Scarborough Shoal, seeing them as perhaps pivot-promoting alarmism.

But, as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is a cigar and sometimes a threat to build the shoal is…a threat to build the shoal.

My rethink was prompted by the appearance on a Chinese military enthusiasts’ forum of this plan to convert Scarborough Shoal into a world class tourist destination…

…and, more importantly, a piece by Minnie Chan in the South China Morning Post on April 25, reporting that according to “a source close to the PLA Navy”:

China will start reclamation at the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea later this year and may add an airstrip to extend its air force’s reach over the contested waters…

SCMP, in Hong Kong, is now owned by Alibaba’s Jack Ma and is not the usual outlet for regional pivot-building scaremongering.  And Minnie Chan has been in the China defense-reporting game for a good while, and her sources are PRC and mainland-related, not so much Pentagon or Filipino.  So if she’s reporting this, good chance it’s getting floated by the PRC side.

And, if references to Scarborough Shoal island building are turning up in the public sphere, rest assured the PRC had already signaled this gambit to the US government privately.  I don’t believe President Obama has to read the South China Morning Post, peruse Bill Gertz, or refresh his Super Camp Military Forum browser tab (the extremely obscure source for the notorious Scarborough reclamation plan image) to find out what deviltry the PRC is promising in the South China Sea.

So the China hawk uproar over Scarborough Shoal island building over the last month has, I suspect, a basis in representations of the PRC government to the US.

 As I wrote in Asia Times, floating a Scarborough island-building scheme might seem to be an own-goal by the Chinese, reinforcing the theme of the PRC as an irresponsible, aggressive revisionist power at the same time the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs is rather cannily and cleverly cobbling together a narrative that disputes between China and its neighbors are best handled bilaterally.

However, my thesis is that the PRC is concerned that the United States will look for some way to side overtly with the Philippines to enforce its UNCLOS-defined rights after the judgment goes against China, is prepping an escalation pathway to match any US moves, and is carefully signaling what the path might be and where it might end.  

I await the judgment of legal scholars, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a) EEZs are under the Philippines’ “jurisdiction” for the purposes of the MDA and therefore b) if Philippine naval/air assets experience interference by China in those EEZs c) even if the encounters are with PRC "white hulls" i.e. maritime patrol vessels (I recall seeing rumblings from the USNWC that the converted frigates in the PRC coast guard should be considered “weaponized” because of the fact of their bulk and, in any case, the frigates still retain a couple sets of anti-aircraft guns) and not the PLAN d) the US can invoke the MDT to intervene to protect Philippine military forces against attack.

Which means that the PRC has to be prepared to escalate its game and plan for the contingency that it will come into direct confrontation with US Navy vessels if it tries to mess with the Philippines.  

That doesn’t necessarily mean armed confrontation.  Probably more a careful, steplike exercise in “hassling” by the PRC.

Moves up the escalation stepladder could involve close approaching, impeding, and then jostling US Navy ships FONOPing alone or participating in  Philippine military escorts of fishing and oil exploration vessels seeking to exploit the EEZ claims validated by UNCLOS.  

There is an existing playbook for this sort of harassment.  Interested readers and fans of 1990s arena rock are welcome to view this video showing a Soviet naval vessel bumping a US Navy vessel during a FONOP in the Black Sea.  If all goes according to plan, the foreign boat approaches with its crew on deck wearing life jackets, the officers gather at a suitable vantage point to stare meaningfully at their opposite numbers on the US ship, the helm is given a healthy jerk, the fender-bender is applied, and the caravan moves on.

And if these moves prove ineffective, indeed are welcomed by the US hawks as a welcome escalation in tensions that build the case for the pivot, the PRC tit-for-tat could culminate in…

…the appearance of a luxury resort on Scarborough Shoal!

In other words:

Okinotoroshima-zation!

Which is, in my opinion, what the apparent PRC threats of island building at Scarborough Shoal are all about.

For those of you who don’t obsessively follow and memorize China Matters, Okinotorishima is the secret shame of UNCLOS and the Achilles’ heel of US pivot policy.  I guess that’s why you don’t hear too much about it in the western press.

A full airing here, but Okinotoroshima was a Japanese stunt that took two rocks—an even smaller above surface holding than Scarborough Shoal—poured in more than half a billion dollars to cofferdam and reinforce them…

…and claimed a 200 nautical mile EEZ around them.

As far as I can tell, the reason Japan was able to declare a 200 mile EEZ around this island-building excrescence is because it’s out in the middle of the ocean and there were no surrounding countries that could claim injury.  Although the PRC and South Korea both voiced objections to UNCLOS, they apparently went nowhere.

The idea that the PRC would island-build Scarborough Shoal in order to extend a military threat to Luzon is, to my mind, idiotic.  

In my opinion, the only reason this argument is advanced is to raise a “Red Dragon Loose in SCS” military threat ruckus to obscure the unpleasant fact that there is no effective way to challenge PRC sovereignty claims or legal way to prevent it from building whatever it wants on Scarborough Shoal. 

Imputing a threat to US forces in the Philippines from the PRC on Scarborough Shoal, on the other hand, allows these pesky diplomatic/legal inconveniences to be swept aside by executive order on grounds of national security.

The superior PRC dodge would be to build an ostensibly civilian outpost at Scarborough per the leaked plan ("Hotel", "Tropical Travel & Holiday Area", maybe a casino to really cheese off the Philippines),i.e.  non-military along the lines of Okinotorishima (which has a helicopter pad but is plausibly 100% civilian).

PRC news reports also added an extra wrinkle with reports of plans for floating nuclear power stations in the SCS and also Bohai Bay.

To my mind, this prospect is appalling enough that the pivot into the South China Sea should be jettisoned immediately for negotiations to keep nukes out of the SCS, but that’s just me.

In the context of the US-PRC competition in the SCS, unfortunately, a floating nuclear station next to Scarborough Shoal makes a lot of sense.  It would provide desalinization and power generation capabilities that affirm the habitability of the island (supporting claims for 200 nautical mile EEZ), would help the island withstand a US-led blockade, and by its presence would make the US think twice about firing a few dozen HIMARS missiles at the island to flatten it.

Plunking an Okinotoroshima clone in the South China Sea, nuclear or not, would confound pivot planners with the dilemma of either conceding the legitimacy of the faux-island and its EEZ claims (200 nautical miles would be a completely unviable option given the proximity of Scarborough to Luzon, but the island might very well rate a good deal more than the 12 nautical miles it’s currently expected to get) or suggesting that the Japanese ditch their $500 billion plus investment for the sake of consistency and pivot credibility…

…that’s the kind of price tag that might get the pivot’s attention...

...and perhaps rebuke the strategists who decided to sacrifice the shoal in a geopolitical gambit.

Everything You Think You Know about Scarborough Shoal is Wrong

In this post I’m developing at length several themes that I touched upon in my most recent article up exclusively at Asia Times on the current pivot hot button: South China Sea Dispute: Rewriting the History of Scarborough Shoal.

There is currently a great deal of handwringing as to whether the PRC will island-build the shoal as a pricetag retaliation if the Philippines if, as expected, it wins its arbitration case under UNCLOS.

If the PRC proceeds, it would be a pretty big deal, especially since the PRC never had anything on the atoll previously and would be sticking a finger in the eye of ASEAN and the Declaration of Conduct standstill agreement.  But never say never.  And don’t be surprised if the PRC is doing some back-channeling to the Philippines at the same time to offer some carrots with its sticks, like the suggestion recently floated for non-exclusive traditional fishing rights inside EEZs.  

In my opinion, gaming the 2012 “crisis” at the Scarborough Shoal was a key gambit in the rollout of the pivot.  As I write at Asia Times:

Holy writ for pivoteers is that the PRC seized Scarborough Shoal in 2012, proving both its duplicity and the futility of bilateral engagement, so the Philippines had no choice but to internationalize the dispute by taking its South China Sea issues to binding arbitration under UNCLOS, and the US had no choice but to insert itself into the South China Sea between an aggressor state and its helpless victims.

The reality is that the PRC and the Philippines were successfully negotiating their differences bilaterally, so successfully in fact that the Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Alberto Del Rosario had to step up to sabotage the talks.  

In fact, PRC permanent occupation of the shoal was a consequence, not a cause, of Philippine internationalization of the dispute.

Today, a growing fear is for China hawks in Washington and various Asian capitals is that their Scarborough chickens are now, four years after the fact, in danger of coming home to roost.

If the only concrete outcome of the decision to adopt a strategy of open confrontation under internationalization is the permanent alienation to the PRC of the fishing grounds at Scarborough Shoal the whole UNCLOS process was supposedly designed to secure, people in the Philippines and, for that matter, governments around the South China Sea are going to ask, what exactly did this brilliant strategy accomplish?

Alberto Del Rosario’s role as hatchet-man for the pivot has become extremely difficult to dispute as more facts about the events of 2012 emerge in the Philippines.  The only murky part—the degree of conspiratorial canoodling between Del Rosario and pivot pappy Kurt Campbell, at that time Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs—awaits unraveling by the dogged foreign policy journalists of the American press.

I have, over the last couple years, expended a certain amount of righteous spittle to debunk the story floated by the United States in 2014—that the PRC had reneged on a deal negotiated in a Virginia motel room between Kurt Campbell and PRC Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Fu Ying for a simultaneous withdrawal from Scarborough Shoal, thereby necessitating the Philippines’ internationalizing of the dispute, with US moral and military support becoming more and more overt until today we have the US conducting joint military exercises with the Philippines on the periphery of the South China Sea to deter further PRC adventurism.

As the Financial Times reported the official version in 2014:

With typhoon season fast approaching, the US tried to broker a resolution. By the end of the meeting between Kurt Campbell, then the top US diplomat for Asia, and Fu Ying, China’s vice foreign minister for Asia, the US side believed they had an agreement for both sides to withdraw. The following week, the Philippines ships left the Scarborough Shoal and returned home. The Chinese, however, stayed in the area.

The Scarborough Shoal case played a big role in another part of the new approach by the US and its allies: the appeal to the courts. Albert del Rosario told the FT that it was the “catalyst” for Manila’s decision to bring China to an international court over its expansive claims in the South China Sea. 

Actually, Kurt Campbell’s one-off in Virginia collided with an intensive series of 16 negotiations by a Philippine senator, Antonio Trillanes IV, conducted at the behest of President Aquino and deliberately bypassing the pro-US China hawk Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Alberto Del Rosario.

Part of the messy deal had come out in September 2012 during a contentious encounter in the Philippine Senate designed to discredit and embarrass Trillanes.  I covered that in my current AT piece and in my 2014 Debunking America’s Scarborough Shoal Dolchstoss Meme.

In my Asia Times piece, I also build on my 2014 story to incorporate some reporting by Rigoberto Tiglao, a Philippine journalist who had obtained a copy of a four-page Aide Memoire prepared by Trillanes to further explain his side of the story.  It persuasively describes a concerted effort by Del Rosario to sabotage Trillanes’ negotiations and force the Scarborough process away from a bilaterally-negotiated resolution of a fisheries dispute to an interminable festering regional crisis and potential flashpoint for a US-PRC war.

Persuasive enough for Tiglao—who does not present himself as much of a Trillanes fan—to conclude:

I believe him when he made one of his particular allegations: that Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario deliberately caused the aggravation of our territorial disputes with China in 2012. 

As described in a series of columns by Tiglao, the Aide Memoire paints a pretty clear picture of Del Rosario screwing up Trillanes’ Scarborough Shoal deal-- for a sequential withdrawal, not a simultaneous withdrawal, of Philippine and PRC vessels--with the help of a phone call from the US.  I have bolded some prime bits for emphasis.

“PNoy [President Aquino] directed me to work on the sequential withdrawal of government ships inside the shoal. However, on the morning of June 4, PNoy called me to inform me that our BFAR [Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources] vessel has already left the shoal but China reneged on the agreement of simultaneous withdrawal of their ships, so two of them [were] still inside the shoal.

“I asked him who agreed with what, since I was just hammering out the details of the sequential withdrawal because the mouth of the shoal was too narrow for a simultaneous withdrawal. The President told me that Sec. del Rosario told him about the agreement reached in Washington.

“This time I asked PNoy: ‘If the agreement was simultaneous withdrawal, why did we leave first?’ PNoy responded to this effect: “Kaya nga sinabihan ko si Albert kung bakit niya pinalabas yung BFAR na hindi ko nalalaman.” (“That’s why I asked Albert [del Rosario] why he ordered the BFAR vessels to leave without my permission.”)

“Around 10 June, PNoy informed me that the (remaining BFAR) vessel was ordered to proceed to Subic to undergo repairs and directed me to ask Beijing to reciprocate. On 15 June, PNoy informed me again that he has ordered the pullout of the 2 remaining PCG (Philippine Coast Guard) ships from the shoal, citing an incoming typhoon as the reason, and directed me to ask Beijing to reciprocate.

In other words: Trillanes is negotiating a sequential withdrawal on behalf of the president of the Philippines.  Del Rosario, who has been shut out of the negotiations, gets a message from the US (apparently a phone call in the middle of the night from US Ambassador to the Philippines Harry Thomas), orders a unilateral withdrawal from the shoal without telling his own president, and then accuses the PRC of violating an agreement for a simultaneous withdrawal.

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

Tiglao’s web page provides some further information on the Aide Memoire as excerpted below.  A few points worth noting:

Although Trillanes’ effort is described as a “backchannel”, Aquino’s cabinet knew about it.  During one phone call from Beijing, Aquino put Trillanes on speakerphone and Rosario was among the listeners.

Bringing Del Rosario up to speed on Trillanes’ efforts may not have been some of Aquino’s best work.  Del Rosario was bitterly opposed to the Trillanes channel:

During Trillanes’ stint as backchannel negotiator in 2012, there were persistent reports that del Rosario detested the senator’s role, and had even threatened to resign his post, as he wasn’t consulted on the matter.

And the feeling was mutual, especially after Del Rosario intensified his behind-the-scenes fiddling against Trillanes’ efforts:

It is in the course of his “back-channelling” mission that he concluded that del Rosario was provoking the Chinese, so much so that an angry Trillanes blurted out: “He should be shot by firing squad for what he did.”

It looks like Del Rosario leaned in early to sabotage the talks, even before he disrupted Trillanes’ sequential withdrawal in June.

Despite his knowledge that Aquino was making progress through Trillanes, Del Rosario also dispatched his own envoy, utility-and-everything tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan (known by his initials as “MVP”) to Beijing, perhaps in an attempt to undercut Trillanes’ role.  

MVP and Del Rosario are joined at the hip, both as business partners and allies in advancing the US-Philippine relationship.  Reportedly Del Rosario, now retired from the MFA, is slated to take on the leadership of a new foreign policy think tank generously funded by MVP.  It is rumored that MVP is a front man, albeit supremely capable, for the Salim family of Indonesia in order to disguise its control of various strategic Philippine industries that are supposed to be indigenously owned. Del Rosario himself is one of the richest people in the Philippines, perhaps richer than MVP, and it’s a question who’s dog is wagging whose tail.

In a further gotta-be-Asia complications, one of MVP’s companies owns the development rights to the undersea hydrocarbon play at Reed Bank.  Reed Bank has been on the agenda for joint Philippine-PRC development for a dog’s age, but will be a matter of (relatively) undisputed sole Philippine development rights if the UNCLOS arbitration goes Manila’s way.  In any case, the PRC’s interest in Reed Bank ensures MVP a high-level reception at least in the petroleum sector and he can leverage that to claim if not actually enjoy a privileged capacity as an interlocutor with the PRC on the Philippines.

I’m guessing MVP went to Beijing to tell whoever he met with that the Philippine Foreign Affairs and Defense ministries were dead set against Trillanes’ initiative, he was crazy bananas, and even if the bilateral blows up, no hard feelings, we can still work on Reed Bank together.  And his message back to Aquino, hey, we’re solid with the PRC on Reed Bank, they think Trillanes is crazy bananas, let Del Rosario handle Scarborough…

Anyway…

According to Trillanes’ inquiries, after doing his best to blow up the deal by disrupting the negotiations and then interfering with the early June withdrawal, Del Rosario apparently planted false news stories in the Philippine papers to paint a picture of the PRC humiliating the Philippines and turning potential appeasement over the Scarborough Shoal a matter of hot-button nationalism.

Trillanes, in his paper, pointed out that following Aquino’s orders, he had succeeded in his back-channel talks with Chinese officials, so that they ordered on June 10, 2012 the withdrawal from the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Bajo de Masinloc on our maps) of their Coastal Marine Surveillance (CMS) ships and 14 fishing boats. Our two Bureau of Fishing and Aquatic Resources vessels, as part of the agreement, also left the area.

Nine days later, though, Aquino called Trillanes to say that they were “betrayed by China.” Aquino referred him to the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s huge banner-photo which showed Chinese uniformed personnel holding a Chinese flag on the shoal, with the headline in huge fonts screaming: “China ships stay on shoal.”

Trillanes in his report wrote that his Beijing negotiators denied the news story, and pointed out that the photo was an old one from the 1980s. The senator himself had suspected so, as the photo had clear blue skies and calm waters as background, when in fact a typhoon was passing through the area at the time the photo was published.

Trillanes claimed that his contacts in the newspaper told him that the story and photo came from del Rosario.

According to subsequent reports, the Chinese ships, both their CMS vessels and the fishing boats, indeed, had left the shoal, although as Trillanes said in his report, the Chinese would not announce that this was due to negotiations with the Philippine government. The official explanation of the foreign ministry was that the ships escorted the fishing boats to the Chinese mainland to escape an impending typhoon that would pass over the shoal.

There was a second instance in which del Rosario planted, Trillanes alleged, a false news story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer that roused Philippine ire against China:

“On 24 June, the Philippine Daily Inquirer published a story about a Chinese vessel ramming a Filipino fishing boat. Again, P-Noy called me and he was furious about this incident. I told him that I would ask Beijing about it. When I confronted the negotiators, they told me that their ships [were] in place and that the incident happened in an area that was at least 150 nautical miles away.

“So I investigated further by sending somebody to talk to one of the survivors who was then confined in Ilocos Sur. The survivor said that they were already sinking while tied to a fish marker and that they were not rammed at all. I then asked around again in the Inquirer as to who fed the story. My sources then revealed that the story came from Sec. del Rosario.”

According to Trillanes’ Aide Memoire, the sequential withdrawal he had negotiated with the PRC was still proceeding in early July, despite Del Rosario’s multiple efforts to drive a stake in its heart.

The final confrontation came in a cabinet meeting in early July.  The point at issue: whether to “internationalize” the Scarborough crisis by raising it as a matter for a joint statement at the upcoming ASEAN Regional Forum, or not.  According to Trillanes, if the Philippines stuck to the bilateral process and didn’t make a fuss at ASEAN, the PRC would withdraw the last three ships it had in the shoal.

Per Tiglao’s account:

According to Trillanes, he recommended in an executive Cabinet meeting on July 5 that Aquino adopt a bilateral approach to resolving the territorial dispute with China, especially that over the Scarborough Shoal.

He explained that his bilateral talks with Chinese representatives had resulted in the drastic reduction of Chinese vessels from almost a hundred to only three.

Trillanes told Aquino that the Chinese made the commitment to pull out the remaining three CMS vessels if the Philippines does not internationalize it by raising the issue to the Asean Regional Forum scheduled for July 12. The Chinese, he said, also assured him that they would not put up any structure around the shoal.

Del Rosario, however, pushed for internationalizing the dispute. Trilllanes narrated:


“I clearly remember USec. Henry Bensurto with a PowerPoint presentation telling everybody in the meeting that the annexation of Scarborough Shoal by China would be used as a springboard to claim Western Luzon. Sec. del Rosario proceeded to present that China had almost 100 vessels in and around the shoal; that they placed a rope at the entrance of the shoal and the Chinese were duplicitous.”

(“USec Henry Bensurto” was not an undersecretary but a foreign affairs department assistant secretary heading its West Philippine Sea Center, and the Secretary-General of the Commission on Maritime and Ocean Affairs Secretariat.)

“The rope at the entrance of the shoal” del Rosario alleged is sheer nonsense, a source familiar with Scarborough shoal explained. The “rope” seen by Coast Guard personnel was a remnant of anchor ropes floating near the entrance of the shoal.

Trillanes report continued:

“It was at this point that Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile… raised the ante and proposed on the table that we study the option of completely cutting ties with China. Sec. del Rosario and Sec. Almendras followed suit and the discussion went on with NEDA detailing how many percentage points would be shaved off the GDP; DTI, explaining that the electronics exports sectors would be gravely affected; and DOLE, saying how many OFWs would be repatriated, etc.”

It would be interesting to find out why the cabinet thought the threat of a PRC invasion of western Luzon was real enough to risk entering an economic and diplomatic deep freeze with the PRC. In any case, at this point Trillanes’ name was definitely mud through some combination of his own mis-steps, machinations of his enemies and, I’m guessing, Aquino’s anxiety to avoid getting painted into the “unpatriotic China appeaser” corner the China hawks in the media and inside his administration had prepared for him.  Del Rosario carried the day:

 “In the end, when the vote came in, it was lopsided in favor of Sec. del Rosario’s option…” (to internationalize it).

Del Rosario took the issue to ASEAN in coordination with Vietnam and tried to insert an explicit reference to the Scarborough Shoal/SCS EEZ issues into the final communique.  Cambodia resisted, at the PRC’s behest, and as a result of the deadlock no joint communique was issued for the first time in the 47 years of ASEAN’s history.

The leaked notes of the ASEAN deliberations found their way to Carleton Thayer, who prepared a lengthy analysis for Japan Focus that placed the onus on the PRC and Cambodia. 

However, given what we know now of the Philippine cabinet’s decision to internationalize the dispute, however, it appears more likely that Del Rosario came to the ASEAN meeting knowing he wouldn’t compromise and it was just a matter of managing the endgame and the resultant fallout.

At the end of the meeting, Del Rosario engaged in a bridge-burning twofer, equating the PRC to Nazi Germany and uncooperative ASEAN nations to spineless Nazi appeasers.

Del Rosario argued that China’s actions challenged ASEAN centrality, leadership and solidarity. The Philippines, as the aggrieved party and one of the founding members of ASEAN, failed to understand the lack of concern by some other members and their “seeming silence” on their commitment to the principles of the DOC, he concluded. Del Rosario then asked rhetorically, "what would be the real value of the COC if we could not uphold the DOC; in Scarborough Shoal the DOC is violated?” He stated that it was “important that ASEAN [make a] collective commitment to uphold the DOC [and this] be reflected in the joint communiqué of the AMM.”

Finally, Del Rosario concluded his remarks by quoting from the German anti-Nazi theologian, Martin Neimöller:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

You see where we’re headed here, thanks to Del Rosario’s determined efforts.

Bilateral with China blown up.  Check.  

ASEAN smeared and sidelined as a hopelessly divided, China-corrupted institution. Check.

Nowhere to go but international arbitration.  Check.

Mission accomplished!

The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs applied an additional eggbeater to troubled waters with this post-ASEAN statement:

“On the reference to ‘duplicity and intimidation,’ the Philippines forged an agreement with a neighboring country for the simultaneous pullout of all vessels inside the shoal, which we undertook in good hfaith on June 4. Furthermore, the neighboring country agreed to remove its barrier at the entrance of the shoal.

“Yet to this day, the neighboring country has not fulfilled its obligations under the agreement and has maintained its ships inside and outside the shoal, as well as its barrier, in its aim to establish effective control and jurisdiction in the shoal and surrounding waters.”

In parsing the DFA statement, recall that 1) the PRC had agreed to a sequential, not simultaneous pullout and 2) according to Trillanes the “barrier” was a bogus reference to a piece of rope seen floating in the water at the mouth of the shoal.  In other words, just another of many layer of public relations BS applied (and I suspect, still applied) to the Scarborough/SCS issues by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

It’s very hard to argue against the conclusion that Del Rosario wanted to take the case to international arbitration and foreclose the options of a Philippine-PRC bilateral or ASEAN-focused conciliation.  Even if it involved a considerable amount of dirty work.

The only hanging question, in my opinion, is how much and how early the US pitched in on the dirty work.

When Enrile read the notes of Sonja Brady, the Philippine ambassador, concerning her recollection of her discussions with Trillanes in Beijing, it included this account of Trillanes’ observations:

When [Trillanes] got involved it was in the height of the problem; he had to find out what was happening so he tried to see whether this was a move of the Americans.  He was suspecting the Americans as involved in the conflict…We are internationalizing the issue because of Secretary Del Rosario.  This is his move…There was never any negotiations between the Chinese and the Americans, just a meeting with Kurt Campbell.

Trillanes seems to have regarded the internationalization gambit as the work of his arch-nemesis, Alberto Del Rosario. He also accused Del Rosario of treason, not because Del Rosario was working for the United States, but because Del Rosario had been abandoned by the United States and was recklessly playing a lone hand in favor of internationalization.

Maybe Trillanes believed this, or maybe he wanted to tout the superior legitimacy of his channel, informal but endorsed by the president of the Philippines, over that of the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. 

Given the fortuitously misleading phone call from the US Embassy in June 2012, and the 2014 revelation of the purported motel breakthrough negotiated by Kurt Campbell with Mdme. Fu Ying, Del Rosario’s undermining of the Trillanes negotiation through multiple activities over a period of months…perhaps more was involved than the unassisted initiative of a decisive, turf-protecting pro-US millionaire at the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs ready to defy his president in executing a personal China policy.

As I wrote at AT:

It is, of course, possible that Kurt Campbell innocently engaged in some great power diplomacy ignorant of the Trillanes channel and Del Rosario’s machinations, and the whole thing backfired, so sorry…but even so the US inadvertently harvested the benefits of the polarization of relations between the PRC and the Philippines when proponents of the US alliance were able to push through the “Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement” that signaled the de facto return of US military forces to Philippine bases 25 years after they were kicked out.

On the other hand, Del Rosario was an aggressive advocate for the American relationship, the key phone call that let him torpedo Trillanes’ sequential withdrawal arrangement came from the US ambassador, and I find it difficult to believe that the Philippine cabinet would agree to internationalize the dispute and provoke the PRC without pretty strong confidence that the USA had its back.  

It would make sense for Del Rosario and the United States to downplay the US role in 2012 in order to strengthen Del Rosario’s hand as a principled, independent player at ASEAN, and then float the motel room tale in 2014 to paint the PRC’s actions on Scarborough Shoal as a breach of trust with the United States, now prepared to escalate its South China Sea game, as well as the Philippines.

And in 2016 high profile indignation is the order of the day, now that it may be necessary to finesse the blowback if Del Rosario’s pro-US initiative ends up with the PRC island building and permanently alienating the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines.

I, for one, can visualize an episode of near-panic in the US State Department in 2012 when Del Rosario warns them that a bilateral agreement between the Philippines and the PRC—one that would undercut the entire US pivot narrative that only an internationalized US-led united front can bring security and stability to the SCS and East Asia—is looming.  Time for bold, determined action, perhaps, like helping Del Rosario sabotage the sequential withdrawal by providing him a pretext to order the Philippines ships out of the shoal and then accuse the PRC of reneging on a vague deal purportedly negotiated in a motel in Virginia.

This tangled history might also explain why the Obama administration has been loath, at least until now, to make a huge deal out of Scarborough Shoal despite the vociferous complaints of the China hawks.

The question is what did Kurt Campbell know and when did he know it.  I’m guessing: quite a bit and pretty early on.