Hybrid warfare

As early as the 1750s, English cartographers had included Scarborough Shoal in their map of Philippine waters. The shoal was named after the British East India Company ship Scarborough, which struck the reef on Sept. 12, 1748, as Leon Gallery curator Lisa Guerrero Nakpil has written in The STAR.

There are other 18th century maps of the Philippines referring to the shoal as Panacot and Bajo de Masinloc.

It’s doubtful though that ancient maps, or that chat between President Marcos and President Xi Jinping in San Francisco will make China give up its greedy claim over nearly the entire South China Sea and the East Sea.

“Greed” is the accurate term. The sea is like a public street with dozens of houses on both sides, and there are rules governing private property delineations and common use areas. But it’s greed when a resident of one house is claiming ownership of nearly the entire street, based not on any commonly approved regulation, official document of ownership or ruling, but chiefly on the breadth of the resident’s imagination.

Among those embroiled in maritime disputes with China is Japan, which under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has reworked its national security strategy amid what Tokyo describes as the “serious challenges” to the international order.

Japan categorically identifies the sources of these challenges: Russia, North Korea and China. Tokyo says Chinese military and other activities “present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge in ensuring the peace and security of Japan and the peace and stability of the international community.”

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China, according to Japan, is intensifying efforts to unilaterally change the status quo in the waters around it, and is trying to challenge the international order. It is also taking advantage of other countries’ economic dependence on it, Japan points out.

A primer on the new Japanese strategy states: “Japan’s security environment is as severe and complex as it has ever been since the end of World War II.” That’s a dire description for the only country in the world to have suffered nuclear attacks on two of its cities.

With typical efficiency, Japan has identified the problem, laid out the policy for its response, prioritized strategic approaches and started their implementation.

Japan is harnessing its “comprehensive national power” for its responses – meaning diplomatic, defense, economic, technological and intelligence capabilities.

Among these approaches is the strategic use of official development assistance and other international cooperation frameworks. Japan is the biggest source of ODA for the Philippines, accounting for nearly three-fourths of the total. Now Japan will be capacitating its allies not just in terms of economic and social development aid but also in the area of security.

Tokyo has launched its first-ever “official security assistance” to deepen defense cooperation with like-minded countries and strengthen their defense and deterrence capabilities. And the first recipient of Japanese OSA is the Philippines. The aid program was rolled out during Kishida’s visit in Manila on Nov. 3-4.

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During the visit, I sat down with Japanese Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs Noriyuki Shikata for a chat about his country’s new national security strategy.

On the way to the meeting, I bumped into Transport Secretary Jaime Bautista, the Cabinet member in charge of overseeing Kishida’s visit. Sec Jimmy told me the Marcos administration would seek from Japan five 97-meter patrol vessels – the size of the biggest vessels in the Philippine Navy – for use by the Philippine Coast Guard in the West Philippine Sea.

The ships won’t be given away for free by Japan, Sec Jimmy stressed, but will be granted at concessional terms through Japanese ODA. I guess the procurement, which was approved during Kishida’s brief visit, will now fall under the OSA program, which includes Japan’s provision of a coastal surveillance radar system for the Philippine Navy.

Shikata told me that the other candidate countries for the OSA are Malaysia (which Kishida visited after the Philippines), Bangladesh and Fiji.

Provision of the OSA “will be conducive to our broader national security efforts,” Shikata told me.

Japan describes itself (correctly) “as one of the most mature and stable advanced democratic countries in the world.” It intends to “lead the international community by example… Japan will work to achieve a virtuous cycle of security and economic growth.”

A briefer that Shikata gave me on the new national security strategy declared: “Japan will maintain and protect universal values, such as freedom, democracy, respect for fundamental human rights and the rule of law, and international order based on international law. In particular, Japan will maintain and develop a free and open international order, especially in the Indo-Pacific region where Japan is situated.”

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There’s an ongoing discussion in the international community about the emergence of hybrid warfare, wherein the line between military and non-military aggression is blurred. This warfare is waged in cyber, maritime, space and electromagnetic arenas, and uses extensive disinformation prior to an armed attack.

The US and its allies have been raising the alarm about hybrid warfare, and crafting responses to state-sponsored cyber attacks that not only steal sensitive data but also disable or destroy critical infrastructure and even interfere in foreign elections.

Hybrid warfare threatens even the economic sector, through economic coercion and the provision of loans that eventually bury the recipient in a debt trap.

With nations that do not share universal values increasing their influence, Japan believes it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain and develop a free and open international order.

“The United Nations, which should embody the will of the international community at large, has experienced a round of confrontation and thus has not fully lived up to fulfilling its functions,” the briefer that Shikata gave me noted. “Strong leadership is being lost in the global governance structure at large.”

Japan is moving with urgency to confront hybrid warfare on multiple fronts. The Philippines has had a taste of this new type of warfare, in the form of economic pressure, cyber attacks on government sites, and aggression against our fishermen and coast guard operations. We should also be reworking our national security strategy.