AS OF THE writing of this article, news of the Chinese Coast Guard vessels’ attack on the Filipino supply ships is still fresh news. Emotions are still high and a lot of people are demanding retaliation or at least, more forceful tactics in the future. After all, the Indians, Vietnamese and Indonesians fought back with the Chinese, and their willingness to fight back did not lead to war.
The problem is that we don’t know the calculations driving Malacañang right now. Fighting back may sound easy to some people, but if it’s not part of the overall strategy then it’s irrelevant, despite its cathartic value for the masses.
From where I’m sitting, I think our leaders are fighting a media war, positioning the Philippines as the bullied underdog to China’s bully, and everyone supposedly loves an underdog.
My take on this is that this is only a viable strategy if it will allow us to secure more allies, allies who would be willing to put their ships alongside ours. If not, all our optics wins will be worthless, and it’s important to point out that no one, not least of which the United States, wants a war with China
The optimum result for the Philippines is to force the Chinese into the negotiation table.
We can’t get to that situation, though, by doing the same thing over and over again, and hoping that we can shame the People’s Republic of China to doing what we want them to do.
What the Chinese are doing may be bad for their international image, but I don’t think they care about that any more.
Make no mistake. China wants the area. They need it, not out of resources, but out of security needs. If the West Philippine Sea is blockaded, they’re economy will be badly hurt. So they will continue to do this until the Philippines falters first. Therefore, our strategy of being the lawful underdog will not work, and will likely just lead to further frustration.
Filipinos want a win, but it’s also true that we don’t want to escalate. Some have argued for non-lethal weapons, others for helicopter resupply. It doesn’t matter which we should use as long as we try something new because the media/diplomatic/moralizing strategy is just not working./PN
