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.

Debunking America's Scarborough Shoal Dolchstoss Meme

... or “Goodbye Honest Broker” 

Whoever is rolling out the new US maritime strategy for East Asia apparently regards the Financial Times as his or her chosen instrument.  The FT, for its part, appears to believe that it completes its journalistic mission by reporting the US position, and sees no need to examine the US claims in detail, a shortcoming I intend to remedy in this piece.

In recent days two backgrounded FT articles have expressed US frustration with Chinese salami-slicing and cabbage wrapping in the South China Sea.  From the first piece, Pentagon plans new tactics to deter China in South China Sea:

In recent months, the US has come to two broad conclusions about its approach to the South China Sea. The first is that its efforts at deterrence are having only limited impact. Despite considerable US attention and rhetoric since 2010, China has slowly continued to shift the status quo in ways that are rattling both many of its neighbours and the US.

The second is that US military strategy in the region has to some extent been asking the wrong question. For several years, some of the Pentagon’s best minds have been focused on how the US would win a protracted war with China and have come up with a new concept – known as AirSea Battle – to ensure continued access of US aircraft and ships to contested areas during a conflict.

However, the reality is that Washington is facing a very different military challenge, a creeping assertion of control by the Chinese that often involves civilian rather than naval vessels – the sort of grey area that would not normally warrant any response from the US.

The solution doesn’t appear particularly impressive on the surface: basically naming and shaming through increased and closer US surveillance.  

More important, perhaps, is the thrust of the second article: an effort to paint the PRC as the guys who cheated at the game, rather than outplayed the United States.  That is important because the United States has taken another step in shedding its threadbare “honest broker” costume, and is adopting a more overtly confrontational posture in backing the PRC’s overmatched local adversaries and imposing the US strategic and tactical agenda on the region.

And that, it appears, requires getting rewrite on the phone for some creative history.

The event in question is the scuffle over the Scarborough Shoal in 2012.  In an attempt to assert Philippine sovereignty, Manila apprehended some Chinese fishermen poaching protected shellfish in the shoal and made a point of broadcasting pictures of them with their ill-gotten conch.  Two Chinese maritime patrol vessels appeared, and the Philippines withdrew without detaining the fisherman.

The Chinese ships stuck around and were joined by fishing vessels.

Now, according to second the FT backgrounder, US strategists face dilemma over Beijing claim in South China Sea:

In June 2012, senior US and Chinese officials met in a hotel in southern Virginia to discuss a dangerous two-month stand-off taking place in the South China Sea.

At the time, dozens of government vessels and fishing ships from China and the Philippines were massed in the lagoon of Scarborough Shoal, a reef 120 nautical miles from the Philippines’ coast claimed by both countries. A naval conflict seemed a real possibility.

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. 

Even though there is still considerable resentment over the way events in Scarborough Shoal unfolded, the Obama administration has shown no willingness to reopen the issue and push for a Chinese withdrawal. 

Speaking last month at a conference in Singapore, Ms Fu denied there had been any deal between her and US diplomats in 2012. “I do not know what agreement you are referring to,” she said. The Chinese vessels did not leave the area because they feared the Philippines might double-cross them. 

“All China is doing is to keep an eye on the island for fear that the Philippines would do it again,” said Ms Fu.

US officials tell a different story, insisting there was a clear understanding at the 2012 meeting that the Chinese would take the idea of a mutual withdrawal from Scarborough Shoal back to senior leaders in Beijing. 

They say it is unclear whether Ms Fu really tried to sell the agreement in Beijing or whether the foreign ministry was overruled by more hawkish elements in the Chinese system, including the military.

This is pretty weak beer.  

And I will add my considered opinion that any scenario based on the PRC agreeing to US mediation in its dealings with the Philippines is, for lack of a nicer word, horsepucky.

The PRC’s detestation of internationalization of its one-sided scrum with the Philippines is a byword in Chinese diplomacy.  Maybe as a courtesy, Mdme. Fu agreed to transmit the U.S. proposal back to Beijing; most likely, the leadership’s decision would have been to reject any U.S. involvement in the matter.  Indeed, as shown below, the record in the Philippine media supports this interpretation.

What was really going on in June 2012 seems not to have been the rape of Kurt Campbell’s injured innocence by the dastardly Chinese; more likely it was a carnival of collusion, incompetence, and bad faith, with Philippine Foreign Minister Alberto Del Rosario at its center.

Negotiations with the Chinese were not in the hands of Campbell or, for that matter, Del Rosario.

President Aquino had despaired of achieving diplomatic engagement with the PRC over the Scarborough Shoal issue through Del Rosario—a China-bashing fire eater—and had instead opened a back channel to the PRC through a senator, Antonio Trillanes IV.  (Del Rosario apparently retaliated by dispatching an ex-business associate of his to Beijing to represent himself as Del Rosario’s own informal envoy and further muddy the waters.)

Trillanes was not just engaged in occasional chit-chat.  He apparently was the recognized conduit for behind the scenes engagement between the Philippines and the PRC, claiming to have met with the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs sixteen times concerning the Scarborough matter between May and July 2012.  Presumably, he met more than once with Fu Ying who, in addition to acting as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for Asia, had previously served as ambassador to the Philippines and was entrusted with presenting the smiling PRC face to the Phillipines.

Trillanes clearly detests Rosario—he characterized Del Rosario as a “traitor”--and Del Rosario certainly returned the favor.

In an attempt to discredit Trillanes and his channel, the Speaker of the Philippine Senate, Juan Ponce Enrile flayed Trillanes’ efforts when they came to light in September 2012.

Excercising the government’s prerogative of leaking classified information when political necessity demands, Enrile introduced some confidential notes from the Philippine ambassador to the PRC, whom Trillanes briefed on his talks, and added his own vituperative remarks in order to provide the most unfavorable gloss on Trillanes’ actions.  

The notes are not particularly damning to Trillanes, and they do characterize the nature of Campbell's contacts with Fu rather persuasively:

“There was never any negotiation between the Chinese and the Americans, just a meeting with Kurt Campbell. Mr Campbell was not a negotiator. Besides, Secretary del Rosario was not there.”

Rather unambiguously albeit awkwardly, President Aquino credited Trillanes with negotiating the mutual climbdown…and in September 2012, far from repudiating Trillanes, confirmed that the senator was still his informal envoy.

Aquino was asked about the Palace statement that Trillanes achieved “minor successes” in his role as backdoor negotiator.

The President said Trillanes’ work helped reduce the number of Chinese vessels in Scarborough Shoal, deescalating the tension. Aquino was however unsure about the exact number.

“’Yon naman siguro pwede nating i-credit doon sa efforts rin at efforts ni Senator Trillanes at iba pang efforts ano.” (This we can credit to the efforts of Senator Trillanes and other efforts.)

Aquino admitted that he felt uneasy discussing Trillanes’ work in detail because the talks were informal in nature.

“’Pag informal nito, hindi pwedeng sabihin publicly sa China. Meron silang considerations sa pag-a-address nung kanilang constituencies. So hindi ko pwedeng ibigay sa inyo lahat ng detalye pero mukhang napakaliwanag na humupa naman nang maski papaano ‘yung tension diyan at nakatulong si Senator Trillanes.” (When it’s informal, it means we can’t discuss it publicly with China. They have considerations in addressing their constituencies. So we can’t give you all the details but it looks like it’s very clear that the tension was reduced and Senator Trillanes helped.)

As to how the withdrawal actually played out, Philippine journalist Ellen Tordesillas provided this timeline in 2012:

Days before President Aquino left for London and the United States, Fu Ying was in Washington D.C and met with Kurt Campbell, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

DFA and Chinese sources said Campbell suggested a simultaneous withdrawal of vessels from Panatag Shoal to de-escalate the tension.

A DFA official said United States Ambassador to Manila Harry Thomas relayed to Del Rosario that Beijing has agreed to a simultaneous withdrawal.

This is the “agreement” Del Rosario said Beijing reneged on. He referred to this agreement in several statements.

…
Chinese sources said what happened in Washington was that Fu Ying told Campbell she would relay the suggestion to Beijing.

Bejing said they would “gradually pull out” of the disputed shoal. “There was never a commitment for a total pullout,” a Chinese source said, explaining that “they have a domestic audience to consider.”

China has always been against the intervention of the U.S. in conflict in Asia and sources said the Chinese officials did not appreciate it that the Americans were negotiating for the Philippines.


Based on Thomas’ confirmation, Del Rosario ordered the pullout of Philippine vessels in the middle of the night. By morning, the President was displeased that Del Rosario had made that order. So he called Trillanes to ask the Chinese why their ships remained in the area when the Philippines had already pulled out.

Trillanes was unaware of such an agreement coursed through the U.S. Following the President’s orders, he called his counterpart in China to follow the Philippine move, since both countries had already agreed on a “simultaneous pullout.”

The Chinese sent word to Aquino, through Trillanes, that they would issue a statement to explain the back-to-port order of their ships, and asked that they be given 48 hours to relay the orders to appropriate agencies in Beijing.

Aquino departed for London and the U.S., relieved that the tension had de-escalated.

The Philippines said it pulled out its ships to safety because of the bad weather in Scarborough Shoal. China for its part said they will go back to port to re-supply.

But before China could complete the pullout, the DFA issued a statement accusing China of reneging on an agreement. This angered China, which insisted there was no such agreement.

It seems quite likely that this account, and not the FT’s, hews closer to the facts.  For reasons of practicality (Fu was already in negotiations with Aquino’s designated envoy, Trillanes) and principal (US involvement in bilateral PRC-Philippine disputes were to be discouraged), it seems unlikely that Fu was luring Kurt down the garden path.  

Neither, for that matter, is it particularly credible that Campbell would believe America’s blinding “honest broker” charisma would persuade a vice foreign minister to sign off on a fundamental change in the PRC strategy of bilateral dispute resolution, and settle a Philippine issue without the Philippine foreign minister even in the room.

Tit-for-tat, as opposed to simultaneous, withdrawal was being discussed between Trillanes and the PRC, per the Philippine ambassador’s notes:

“The arrangement being looked at by the senator, meaning Senator Trillanes, was one side would leave first then the other side then the next, etc. They were talking about the manner of evacuating the Scarborough. He then received a call from PNoy [Philippine President Benigno Aquino III], saying why are the Chinese still there when there was an agreement for simultaneous withdrawal. He thought to himself, ‘This is not the arrangement.’ He was protecting the Chinese.” [I’ll go out on a short limb & infer that the ambassador meant Trillanes was “defending” not “protecting” the Chinese--PL.]

The confusion created by Del Rosario’s assertion that the PRC had committed to a simultaneous withdrawal, and his denunciations of the Chinese for reneging, are palpable.  

At the time, the PRC made the point that it felt Del Rosario, in denouncing the PRC for its failure to withdraw its ships simultaneously, was talking through his hat, both through official and unofficial channels.  

As in an official statement from the China.gov web portal:

Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario said Friday that Manila is waiting for Beijing to meet its commitment to remove its vessels that remain in the lagoon of Huangyan Island after the only Philippine ship there left this week.

In response to Del Rosario's remarks, Hong questioned where and when the Philippine side received such a commitment from China.

He urged the Philippines to constrain its words and deeds and do more things that are conducive to the development of bilateral ties.

And via Global Times:

Zhuang Guotu, director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University, told the Global Times, a tabloid of the Communist Party-owned People's Daily that "China has never made commitments that it would pull out from the waters around the island. The Philippine side is saying this to get out of an awkward situation."

Nevertheless, the PRC did take action in support of the de-escalation process.

On June 18, the PRC announced it would be removing the 20 fishing vessels inside the lagoon:

"Due to the inclement weather and strong tide in the Huangyan Island (Panatag Shoal) waters, in order to help Chinese fishermen and fishing boats pull out safely for shelter, Nanhaijiu-115 vessel has set out to the area to provide necessary assistance," the Embassy said in a statement posted on its website on Sunday.

…

In fact, according to Del Rosario himself, on June 25 the shoal was completely clear of all ships, Chinese and Philippino, an awkward state of affairs that the FT account of Chinese duplicity fails to address.  

Two days later, however, the PRC ships were back.  Supposedly, the PRC took umbrage at President Aquino’s statement that the Philippines would fly surveillance aircraft over the shoal (and, I would expect, also took exception to statements by the Philippine defense ministry that it was imperative that Philippines take control of the shoal to pre-empt any Chinese return).  

Perhaps the underlying reason was that the PRC realized that the Trillanes channel had completely imploded, the initiative lay with Del Rosario, and there best option was to return to the status quo ante (after symbolically vacating the shoal for a couple days to indicate it could and would honor the undertakings it made through Trillanes).

The PRC re-established its presence at the shoal, which it maintains to this day.  Currently PRC vessels control entrance to the shoal via a cable strung across the mouth, and occasionally even accommodate the entry of some Philippine fishing vessels.

As to the second order consequences, observers are welcome to speculate that Foreign Minister Rosario was either a clueless ass who abruptly ordered the Philippine vessels to vacate the shoal on the unilateral say-so of the US ambassador despite the PRC’s long-standing insistence on bilateral negotiations (which indeed were ongoing), without any confirmation from the main Beijing negotiating channel, and without informing his president…

…or he presumed upon whatever statement the US ambassador passed to him to assert the existence of a fictitious agreement for simultaneous evacuation in order a precipitous unilateral evacuation so he could accuse the Chinese of bad faith, torpedo the deal, and foreclose a bilateral PRC-Philippine process that kept Del Rosario (and the US) on the outside looking in.

President Aquino provided Del Rosario with considerably less than full-throated backup over the fiasco:

Malacañang is leaving it up to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to answer China’s claim that it never committed to pull out its vessels from the disputed Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal.

“First off, the commitment has always been to deescalate tensions; to always be sensitive about what is being said. Second, we will defer to the DFA to respond to that particular issue,” deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said.

Given this context, it is not surprising that Del Rosario felt compelled to offer his resignation to Aquino over the Scarborough brouhaha, which Aquino declined.  A sense of discomfort within the Philippine establishment concerning Del Rosario’s confrontational agenda can be seen in the publication of a heated defense of his incendiary anti-Chinese diplomacy at ASEAN in July 2012.

Del Rosario further muddied the waters in September 2012 by claiming rather unconvincingly he had negotiated the fatal deal with the PRC’s ambassador to the Philippines, Ma Keqing, which needless to say conflicts with both the Trillanes and the Campbell versions, both of which are predicated on the premise that Del Rosario was not effective as an interlocutor with the Chinese.

As to the declaration that the United States and Philippines were pushed beyond their endurance by PRC perfidy and finally decided more in sorrow than in anger to pursue the Philippine case through a lawsuit before the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, it appears that the US had already hung its hat on shifting the Scarborough dispute to an international forum before the simultaneous vs. alternating evacuation unpleasantness played out.

While the negotiations were still bubbling along on June 21 (the deal fell apart on June 26, when the PRC reoccupied the shoal):

A US official on Thursday said Washington supports the Philippine initiative to resolve the dispute between Manila and Beijing over Panatag Shoal through legal means…

Joy Yamamoto, political section counselor and acting deputy chief of mission of the US embassy in Manila, echoed [Ambassador] Thomas’ statement.

“We have been very consistent throughout this dispute in supporting international law in settlement of dispute, so we continue to support China and the Philippines to settle the issue through international means,” said Yamamoto.

With this context, my personal construction would be that the tenor of Kurt Campbell’s representations to Mdme. Fu Ying in Virginia in early June might have been along the lines of: “Withdraw from the shoal.  Otherwise the US will encourage a Philippine legal challenge to the 9-dash line.”

With the eager assistance of Del Rosario, failure was pretty much pre-ordained and the Philippines took their case to arbitration.

Now the question is begged as to why, two years after the fact--and despite a public record that calls its version of events into serious question--the United States deems it necessary to publicly promote a Scarborough Dolchstoss (“stabbed in the back” for you non-German speakers) meme at this particular time.

First of all, US South China Sea policy needs a reboot.  To quote the FT:  “Our efforts to deter China [in the South China Sea] have clearly not worked,” said a senior US official.

In 2010, the US justified its attention to the remote reaches of the SCS on the grounds of “a national interest in freedom of navigation”.

The substantive US interest in freedom of navigation—the freedom of US military vessels to conduct surveillance within the PRC EEZ—was de facto conceded by the PRC pretty promptly.  On the other hand, since the PRC was relies on freedom of navigation for commercial traffic to an existential degree (most of the traffic through the SCS is, after all, going to and from Chinese ports), there was an embarrassing dearth of Chinese offenses against freedom of navigation that compelled US action.

While sedulously protecting freedom of navigation (and studiously declining to take positions on sovereignty issues), the United States had no direct riposte to the most conspicuous PRC exercise of outrance in the South China Sea: the dispatch of the HYSY 981 drilling rig into disputed waters off the Paracel Islands.

In simpler times, the US might have been willing to concede that the PRC had the stronger case than Vietnam thanks to its conspicuously exercised sovereignty over the Paracels, and Vietnam’s Vietnam was only muddying the waters by deploying the politics of outrage to sustain its claim.  

But these are complicated times, and the United States, Philippines, and Japan have clubbed together to ensure that Vietnam is spared the embarrassment of acknowledging PRC sovereignty over the Paracels, divvying up the overlapping EEZs accordingly, and, perhaps, putting one festering South China Sea problem in the rear view mirror.

Failure to deter the HYSY 981 exploit would seem to require that the definition of the US national interest in the South China Sea be redefined to enable more effective pushback, preferably pushback that carries the threat of the PRC’s least-desired outcome: confrontation with US military forces, a threat justified by the US assertion that, as demonstrated by the Scarborough Shoal affair, the PRC is a dangerously duplicitous adversary.

The Financial Times makes an interesting elision by stating “The Obama administration declared South China Sea a US “national interest” in 2010,” leaving out the rather important qualifier “in freedom of navigation”.  Connoisseurs of irony are welcome to wonder if the next step will be for the US to declare this remote basin of rocks, reefs, and shoals 10,000 miles from the homeland a “core interest”, a formulation for which it excoriated the PRC when it tried to apply that formulation to its near beyond in 2010.

Today, if the US is simply declaring a national interest “in the South China Sea” full stop, that would imply, well pretty much whatever the US wants it to imply.  In practical terms, this means that the United States will have the luxury of acting unilaterally in its self-defined national interest, unconstrained by rigid considerations of international law (which the PRC, for the most part, carefully attempts to parse and the United States, by its failure to ratify the Law of the Sea convention, is on the back foot) or the position of ASEAN (which the PRC has, for the most part, been successful in splitting).

The US recently took another bite out of the SCS apple by calling for a construction ban in the South China Sea (the PRC has been dredging, expanding, and improving some of its island holdings in order to strengthen its sovereignty claims):

Speaking at a Washington think tank, senior State Department official Michael Fuchs voiced great concern over the "increasingly tenuous situation" as an assertive China and five of its smaller neighbors vie for control of tiny islands and reefs in waters with plentiful fisheries and potential hydrocarbon reserves.

Fuchs said no claimant was solely responsible for the tensions, but criticized a pattern of "provocative" behavior by China.

He detailed a proposal for a voluntary freeze on activities which escalate tensions, to flesh out a 2002 declaration by China and the Southeast Asian bloc that calls for self-restraint in the South China Sea. The U.S. is expected to push the proposal at a gathering of Asian foreign ministers in Myanmar next month.

Fuchs said the claimants themselves would need to agree on the terms, but suggested stopping establishment of new outposts and any construction and land reclamation that would fundamentally change existing outposts. He also proposed that one claimant should not stop another from continuing long-standing economic activities in disputed areas.

Apparently the United States has decided that ASEAN needs an extra push to come up with the proper anti-PRC policies and, even though the US is not a member of ASEAN, it will be more pro-active in trying to shape its policies and counter the PRC’s attempts to divide and influence the forum.

Actually the new US posture—call it Requiem for the “Honest Broker” or We’re Taking Sides: Got A Problem With that? was already rolled out for the occasion of the resupply of the Philippine Marines aboard the hulk of the Sierra Madre on the Thomas Second Shoal in April 2014.  

Billed at the time as “plucky Philippine craft evades hulking PRC maritime patrol vessel”, as I noted in a piece for Asia Times Online, it was actually a choreographed exercise in alliance anti-PRC pushback, featuring ship loaded to gunwales with Western journos, US surveillance aircraft overhead, and a suspiciously fortuitous port call by two Japanese destroyers.

Now, the FT article indeed explicitly characterizes the Sierra Madre resupply as a piece of US pushback, while failing to note it was something of a Rubicon: de facto support of the Philippines against the PRC i.e. taking sides in a territorial dispute, something that it would be difficult to justify in even in terms of enforcing the ASEAN standstill agreement (since the US is not a party to ASEAN, nor has ASEAN asked the US to enforce the voluntary agreement on its behalf).

I expect there will be more Rubicons in the South China Seas’ future.

Perhaps we are now approaching a situation in which the United States explicitly declares that it will act in the South China Seas on behalf of the Philippines or Vietnam against the PRC for the sake of a unilaterally defined US interest.

The need to justify a pretty significant shift to unilateralism in the US doctrine for the South China Sea is, perhaps, behind the decision to repackage the US/Del Rosario Scarborough gambit as a Chinese outrage.  That way the US move can be presented as retaliatory to PRC misbehavior, not as an escalation provoked by PRC success in gaming the current SCS order.

A further whiff of this possibility was offered by Carl Thayer:

University of New South Wales in Australia Professor Carlyle A. Thayer suggested that Vietnam submit a proposal to the UN Security Council seeking for a debate on China’s illegal oil rig placement in the South China Sea and its impact on regional security.  Thayer, who is a Southeast Asia regional specialist with special expertise on Vietnam, said that China, as a world power, may use its veto power to reject any UNSC resolution. However, at least the international community will better understand Vietnam’s goodwill and China’s actions, asking China to withdraw its platform from Vietnam’s waters.

Bear in mind that the United States usually feels compelled to check off the “tried the UNSC; unreasonably blocked by PRC and/or Russian veto” box before embarking on some unilateral security adventure.

As to where this all goes, I envisage a specific scenario.  It relates to SC-72, a hydrocarbon exploration block off the coast of the Philippine island of Palawan in a region called Reed or Recto Bank, in a zone that the Philippines claims lies within its 200-nautical mile EEZ, but the PRC also claims.

Amid the resource-related bonanza bullshit that underlies SCS rhetoric, SC-72 might be the real thing, a significant oil and gas find that will provide a major economic boost to the Philippine economy and the government’s bottom line.  Greed and anxiety concerning SC-72 have been the consistent, unifying thread of Philippine-PRC maritime disputes including the Scarborough Shoal circus.

The Philippine government designated a Philippine controlled company, Forum Energy, owned by Philippine’s leading rich guy Manuel V. Pangilinan (and very close friend of Del Rosario; indeed, Pangilinan was the informal envoy Del Rosario sent to the PRC when his formal diplomacy hit a wall and Aquino turned to Trillanes) to  “help assert the Southeast Asian country's sovereign rights over parts of the South China Sea, claimed by the Philippines as the West Philippine Sea.” 

SC-72 was originally a centerpiece of prospective PRC-Phillipine cooperation and co-development.  The main point of contention was Phillipine insistence that the PRC acknowledge SC-72 as lying within the Phillipine EEZ, something that beyond bragging rights would give the Philippine government 100% share of the royalties.  In an interesting parallel to the PRC/Vietnam/Paracels situation, Pangilinan declared ”his only condition… was for CNOOC to respect the Philippines' rights over Recto Bank.

When the Philippine concession-holder sent a survey ship into SC-72 in 2011, a PRC vessel played chicken-of-the-sea and nearly rammed it.  Nevertheless, the Philippine side has consistently presented SC-72 as a venue for cooperation with the PRC.

I wonder if this is about to change.

Specifically, I can imagine a scenario in which the Philippines wins its arbitration suit invalidating the 9-dash line; the Philippines, emboldened by its victory, US support, and the blandishments of Japan (which is in the process of reinterpreting its constitution to permit assistance to vital, friendly nations under the banner of "collective self defense") decides to develop SC-72 without the PRC; the US military closely surveils PRC vessels attempting to disrupt unilateral Philippine exploration and production efforts…

…and, if necessary, US military vessels interpose themselves to protect Philippine ships.

Indeed, the Philippine government recently renewed the concession of Philex Energy to August 2016, which would give time for the lengthy Arbitral Tribunal process to play out and allow Philippine ships to sail into Recto Bank waters that are, at least with a minimal level of ambiguity, Philippine and not Chinese.

Engineering the PRC’s exclusion from SC-72 might be seen as fitting revenge for Beijing’s presumption in sending HYSY 981 to drill off the Paracels.

Whether or not the United States goes beyond Scarborough and Recto and establishes itself as the all-purpose defender of the UNCLOS rights or claims of the PRC’s neighbors in a brave new world in which the nine-dash-line has been refuted would presumably depend upon whether the US can bring itself to ratify UNCLOS itself—a long-standing goal of the US military and diplomatic establishment, but opposed by US conservatives as a piece of sovereignty-surrendering trickery.

But in the South China Sea, it looks like anything is possible.