Since both our country and Japan are treaty allies of the United States, a “security triad” should come naturally.
One senator has raised the possibility of expanding the triad to a “quad” with Australia. Or how about a quad with another US treaty ally, South Korea? Filipinos, notably Fidel Ramos, fought alongside South Koreans during their civil war with the North.
Apart from shared alliances with Washington, all these countries have another common bond: democracy. Shared values and way of life make for the strongest alliances.
Dysfunctional as democracy may be in our country, those values, deeply ingrained in Philippine society, surely played a role in Filipinos’ rejection of Rodrigo Duterte’s open embrace of strongmen Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia.
The security triad, if created, will inevitably be seen as a foil against the expansionist activities of China within our region. But so what if it is? Would doing nothing be a better option?
Some quarters say Beijing can deem it as a provocative act. But China’s expansionist activities are real and must be addressed.
When Philippine ties with the US plummeted to below-zero temperatures after we kicked out American forces from their bases here, we turned to our closest neighbors for support in our maritime dispute with China. But the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is not a security alliance, and its members act largely based on each one’s self-interest. Most ASEAN members have a history of strongman rule, and the region is known for its policy of non-interference in each other’s affairs (although this has been broken a few times in the case of Myanmar).
Beijing has effectively played on these ASEAN characteristics to prevent the bloc from taking a common stand on disputes in the South China Sea, nearly all of which China is claiming as its own.
Using its enormous economic and financial clout, China has succeeded in its divide-and-influence if not divide-and-rule policy in dealing with ASEAN.
By the time ASEAN gets around to agreeing with China on a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, the code could simply uphold the status quo and effectively legitimize Chinese construction and occupation of artificial islands all over the Spratlys. Even then, we can bet that several ASEAN members will maintain their stand that the maritime dispute in the SCS is not their fight.
Those of us whose sovereign waters are being claimed by China, and whose fishermen are at the mercy of the Chinese coast guard, must turn to others for help.
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Some say that by strengthening our security alliance with the US, we are putting ourselves at risk of getting caught in the crossfire, that we could get trampled when the elephants fight.
But the alliance has never been formally broken, and the Mutual Defense Treaty has remained intact, despite the shutdown of the largest American bases outside their country.
As the name shows, the defense treaty is “mutual” – we have to come to each other’s defense in case of external armed attack. If we can’t honor our own commitments, we should not enter into international treaties.
The feared scenario is that we could get dragged into armed conflict in case China invades Taiwan and the US comes to the defense of the island-republic, as Washington has repeatedly vowed it would do. Two of the additional new sites for expanded US military access in our country will reportedly be in Cagayan.
But can we avoid getting dragged into such a conflict in an area located so close to our country? In Batanes, you get a clearer signal from Radio Taiwan than those from neighboring Philippine provinces.
We lack credible capability to even patrol our maritime exclusive economic zone and sovereign territory. China deploys its coast guard – part of its military – to escort its massive swarms of fishing boats that freely operate in the West Philippine Sea, way beyond its 200-mile EEZ as defined under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
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Today the geopolitical rivalry is moving into aerospace. Last Saturday a US military fighter jet shot down an unidentified cylindrical object that was first spotted on Friday flying over a remote northern coast of Alaska. The object was shot down over Canada, ostensibly because it posed a threat to civilian flights.
This came on the heels of the downing on Feb. 4 of what the US has described as a spy balloon that hovered near a military base in Montana housing intercontinental ballistic missiles.
It’s still unclear if the object shot down over Canada belongs to the Chinese. But last Thursday, the US said the Chinese military has deployed a global surveillance fleet of high-altitude balloons or HABs.
On Friday, the US blacklisted six Chinese companies involved in China’s aerospace program, in retaliation for the incursion of the “bad balloon” in Montana.
The US Bureau of Industry and Security said the six were blacklisted for “their support to China’s military modernization efforts, specifically the People’s Liberation Army’s aerospace programs including airships and balloons.”
For those wondering if the six entities might also be operating in the Philippines, where debris from Chinese rockets have fallen into the sea, these are the six: Beijing Nanjiang Aerospace Technology Co., China Electronics Technology Group Corp. 48th Research Institute, Dongguan Lingkong Remote Sensing Technology Co., Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group Co., Guangzhou Tian-Hai-Xiang Aviation Technology Co. and Shanxi Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group Co.
We can’t adequately patrol our maritime area, and even less our airspace. Until we develop this capability, we will need to rely on friends. The US and Japan are among the world leaders in this area.
The alliances are already in place. All that is needed is further strengthening.