I just read an April 15 article titled “Defending Japan and the Philippines Is Not Entrapment” and written by Jeffrey Ordaniel at The National Interest on line magazine. He started with a statement that in August 2013, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel declared while in Manila that the US-Philippines alliance is “an anchor for peace and stability” in the region and that in October of the same year, US Secretary of State John Kerry also emphasized in Tokyo that the “US-Japan alliance is the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in Asia Pacific.”
What concerned Ordaniel was that according to him, notwithstanding the bold pronouncements from high-ranking US officials, some in America have expressed concerns over the possibility of entrapment in case the two US allies’ separate disputes with China turn and that others merely suggested that Washington’s long-standing policy of strategic ambiguity should be applied on the East and South China Seas in order to deter the Chinese from changing the relevant status quos, and the Japanese and the Filipinos from getting too emboldened.
The problem, according to Ordaniel, is that some people in the US are concerned that “Washington could get dragged into a war with China over tiny islands that the US has no national interest in.” To these, Ordaniel asked: First, will militarily defending Japan and the Philippines over their disputes with China really mean entrapment of the US? Second, will ambiguity in American security commitments to Tokyo and Manila result in an outcome in favor of peace and stability?
To answer the first question, Ordaniel dissected what the East and South China Sea disputes actually involve. On the East China Sea dispute, Ordaniel noted that it was only in 2008 when China started to send civilian law-enforcement vessels to the territorial waters of the islands in contention and that, in retrospect, this was the start of Beijing’s attempt to revise the status quo of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. The frequency of incursions increased dramatically over the years and recently, according to Ordaniel such attempts to alter the status quo was extended to the relevant airspace with China sending paramilitary aircraft and declaring an air-defense identification zone. Ordaniel also mentioned that in 2010, Beijing used economic coercion to prevent Tokyo from sentencing a Chinese fishing trawler captain who deliberately rammed his ship into Japanese Coast Guard vessels.
On China’s dispute with the Philippines, Ordaniel also noted that Beijing’s ambiguous “nine-dash line” claim effectively turns much of the South China Sea, including areas long considered part of the global commons, as China’s own territorial waters, adding that Beijing has been using coercion and intimidation to change the status quo of the islands and maritime domains in the South China Sea. Ordaniel mentioned, for example, that In 1995 Chinese forces occupied and built a garrison on the Mischief Reef, a submerged maritime feature located 129 nautical miles west of a major Philippine landmass and 599 nautical miles southeast of Hainan, the nearest Chinese landmass. According to Ordaniel, under customary international law and its codified version, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), submerged maritime features cannot be claimed by any state as a territory under its sovereignty. Hence, their control is dependent on whichever exclusive economic zone (EEZ) or continental shelf they are located.
In 2012, Ordaniel also said that China successfully changed the status quo of the Scarborough Shoal, another maritime feature within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone after a tense standoff which is now followed by China’s attempt to eject Manila’s military presence in the Second Thomas Shoal, another submerged maritime feature within the Philippines’ Unclos-mandated continental shelf. It was only last 2014 that, China, according to Ordaniel, twice implemented a blockade which tried to prevent the Philippine military from provisioning and rotating its troops in the shoal. Ordaniel added that months prior to those incidents, China had been sending naval frigates and civilian maritime law enforcement vessels to contested waters in an apparent attempt to intimidate the Philippine government.
What Ordaniel sees from all these are two issues. First, the disputes in the East and South China Seas involve a rising revisionist power trying to alter the status quo, not by the rule of law or peaceful, nonhostile means, but by intimidation and coercion. Second, the disputes involve not just the islands themselves, but maritime domains critical for the control of valuable trade routes and strategic commons.
What then do these two issues mean for the United States, Ordaniel asked? They mean, according to him, that militarily defending Japan and the Philippines is not simply giving a favor to longstanding allies; not an entrapment and that clearly committing to their defense means defending two important US national interests: 1) the rule of law, and 2) securing freedom of navigation and unimpeded lawful commerce in very strategic trade routes and critical choke points. To Ordaniel, these two alone are enough justifications for Washington to clearly stand by its two Pacific allies.
As to the second question, Ordaniel said that it is obvious that America’s “strategic ambiguity” has not been effective in preserving East Asian status quo, not a wise answer to China’s approach of “salami slicing” and “talk-and-take” policy in East Asian seas. He noted that China has shown that it is not interested in signing a binding code of conduct in the South China Sea nor in clarifying its claims to be in line with Unclos.
He also pointed out that while both Philippine president Benigno Aquino III and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have been repeatedly stressing the importance of upholding the rule of law, Beijing has been continually rejecting multilateral platforms and international arbitration for resolving disputes. Instead, recent incidents, according to Ordaniel, mainly indicate that China is becoming more inclined to use intimidation, coercion and even force against its neighbors to attain its objectives.
Before its too late, Ordaniel says that Washington should be very specific with its security commitments to both Tokyo and Manila, before it’s too late. As to Japan, he was concerned that if Japan doubts the security guarantee of its US alliance, the ramifications would be deleterious, which may also result in many other American allies also doubting the US. In a way, the US-Japan alliance is the ultimate measure of America’s rebalance to Asia. As to the Philippines, any doubts in the US-Philippines alliance, according to Ordaniel are more likely to embolden China to use force since, unlike Tokyo, Manila has a weak military and a significantly lower deterrent capability.
Jeffrey Ordaniel is a PhD Student at the School of Security and International Studies, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo. Thank you, sir, for the enlightenment.