Lost claim
There you have it, my brother Filipinos. In a one-on-one meeting between US President Barrack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington Friday, Xi told Obama to his face that China has the right to exercise its sovereignty over the whole of the South China Sea, including islets belonging to the Philippines that it has taken control of, because the entire area has been China's since ancient times.
The in-your-face assertion by Xi, and to which Obama had nothing as assertive to reply, effectively dooms any hope of the Philippines to recover all that China has already taken. The same fate is assured for all the other claimants in the area, including Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, even if, more than us, they are prepared to take the dispute to the next, and more dangerous, level.
The Philippines has anchored its fight for its islands in the South China Sea on only two things -- international arbitration and backing by the United States. The arbitration case the Philippines filed with the United Nations is due for resolution any time soon. Since China has refused to participate, the chance is big the decision will be in our favor. But all it will amount to is moral victory, unenforceable in light of China's stonewalling.
In the Xi-Obama meeting, the only concession the Chinese leader was willing to give was an assurance of freedom of navigation through the disputed area. That should be enough to placate the United States, which is really in it for its own interests, but does nothing for the claimants. In fact, the assurance of freedom of navigation is but a couched assertion of ownership -- okay, you can pass through my property as an act of neighborliness, but it is still my property.
The assurance of freedom of navigation is all that Obama really needs to hear directly from Xi. It provides tremendous relief to the American president to hear that he no longer has to use force to assert that freedom. Obama may not have realized it, by Xi was more than willing to give that assurance even if Obama did not ask for it.
Allowing freedom of navigation through the South China Sea does not impact on China's claim of ownership of the entire area. On the contrary, it effectively entrenches that claim. It is a mindset-building ploy of China and its very first enrollee is the United States. Freedom of navigation thus out of the way, China can now merrily proceed on its reclamation and building spree, leaving the rest with nothing better to do than watch and grow livid helplessly.
What the Philippines should do right now is to quickly fortify what small territory it still has under its control. China may try to curtail our activities in this regard but it will not push the envelope by actually using force to take what we already physically occupy. At this point, it is enough for China that its leader has put his American counterpart on the spot, right in front of the world's cameras.
Perhaps, Filipino leaders might start rearranging their thoughts toward more practical conclusions, such as the incipient fact that the age of America as global policeman has come to an end. In almost every front, America's traditional enemies are thumbing their noses at the United States, and largely because Obama has not been more assertive in projecting that role, busying himself instead with such non-pressing issues as same-sex marriage.
We must, of course, never give up on our claims in the South China Sea. But we should focus on protecting what we still have and resolve not to dwell on illusions that only distract us from the truth. Even our renaming a portion of the South China Sea as West Philippine Sea is frivolous, even childish. It does not prove anything and is not even recognized by anyone outside the Philippines. We should do what we can and set aside what we cannot.
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