Secretary of State Antony Blinken is pledging U.S. protection for the Philippines after an aggressive move from China that Manila deems “a verbal threat of war,” wasting little time in sending a warning to a top adversary early in the Biden administration.
America’s new top diplomat closed ranks with the Philippines’s foreign secretary, Teodoro Locsin Jr., on the day that his Philippine counterpart accused Beijing of threatening a shooting conflict with the island nation. Locsin issued that condemnation in a protest of the communist regime’s thinly veiled threat that the Chinese Coast Guard’s heavily armed fleet could use lethal force against neighbors in territorial disputes — raising the likelihood of a major clash between Beijing and a U.S. ally.
“Secretary Blinken stressed the importance of the Mutual Defense Treaty for the security of both nations, and its clear application to armed attacks against the Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft in the Pacific, which includes the South China Sea,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said late Wednesday.
Though President Biden campaigned on nixing many of former President Donald Trump’s domestic and foreign policies, he is following the 45th commander in chief’s lead on taking a tougher stance against Beijing.
“It’s an extremely important relationship,” a former national security official who worked in the Trump administration said. “It’s a pretty sensitive time right now, and this was prioritized in transition meetings.”
That message amplifies a warning delivered by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who clarified in 2019 that the United States would treat a Chinese attack on Philippine assets in the South China Sea as a “trigger” for American military intervention. In Blinken’s case, the timing of the statement is as important as the pledge itself.
“The fact that it only took them seven days is a very good sign,” Center for Strategic and International Studies analyst Gregory Poling said, referring to standing up to Chinese leaders.
It was a doubly significant occasion Wednesday, as Philippine officials braced to confront Beijing’s latest move to intimidate U.S. allies in the region. Last week, Chinese Communist officials authorized the Chinese Coast Guard to use “weapons when national sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction are being illegally infringed upon.”
This policy would be a standard operating procedure for most coast guards, but China’s neighbors view it with alarm due to an intense dispute over the boundaries of Chinese territorial rights. Beijing has claimed vast swaths of the South China Sea, one of the most important waterways in the world, in defiance of an international tribunal that confirmed China, having “no legal basis” for these claims, is infringing on the Philippines’s rights under international law.
“While enacting law is a sovereign prerogative, this one — given the area involved or for that matter the open South China Sea — is a verbal threat of war to any country that defies the law; which, if unchallenged, is submission to it,” Locsin wrote on Twitter.
After reflection I fired a diplomatic protest. While enacting law is a sovereign prerogative, this one—given the area involved or for that matter the open South China Sea—is a verbal threat of war to any country that defies the law; which, if unchallenged, is submission to it. https://t.co/h2wHNPPH8n
— Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) January 27, 2021
That’s not a scenario that American economists or military strategists in either political party can tolerate easily.
“The big concern is that through the militarization of the South China Sea … [freedom of] navigation is at risk through the South China Sea,” the former Trump administration official said. “Half to two-thirds of seaborne oil transport in the world goes through the South China Sea, and a bunch of non-energy-related waterway.”
China’s Coast Guard already has a reputation for using violence to enforce Beijing’s policy claims. In August, for instance, one of the white-hulled vessels — some of which are larger even than U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers, despite their putative law enforcement purpose — collided with and sank a Vietnamese fishing ship.
“They are being understandably alarmist because they have good reason for alarm,” Poling, the CSIS analyst, said of the Philippine foreign secretary’s assessment. “If the Chinese Coast Guard is now authorized to use lethal force … and they consider waters 50 miles from the coast of the Philippines to be Chinese waters, well, now you’ve got a big problem.”
With that in mind, the Chinese Coast Guard’s new authorities signal that Beijing’s willingness to risk bloodshed in the South China Sea is on the rise. Yet, while a clash between China and the Philippines would call for U.S. intervention, the Pentagon’s ability to prepare for such a fight has been undermined by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s unvarnished dislike and distrust for the U.S.
Duterte moved last year to terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement, a key pact underpinning U.S. military access to the Philippine archipelago, only to offer short-term extensions of the deal that he seems to regard as leverage in human rights disputes with Washington. Those controversies have to be managed effectively if U.S. officials are to thwart China’s plan to dominate the region.
“What Blinken did was take the first necessary step toward saving [the] Visiting Forces Agreement,” Poling said. “It’s not going to solve anything overnight, but it had to be done, and the fact that he did it in the first seven days shows that the administration gets it — or, at least, that Blinken gets it. They understand that they don’t have time to play around.”
