via Rappler.com
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines will send coast guard ships to Panatag Shoal (Scarborough), located off the coast of Zambales province, if China "persists" in harassing local fishermen in the area, according to Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin.I hope the Philippine Government knows what its doing.
"In case CCG (Chinese Coast Guard) Vessel will still persist [in using] water cannon [against our fishermen], response should be calibrated. We will have the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) so as to maintain white to white response and not to heighten the tension," Gazmin told government station PTV-4 on Thursday, February 27.
White to white means coast guard to coast guard operations as opposed to gray to gray meaning navy to navy. The PCG, a civilian unit, is under the Department of Transportation and Communications.
Sending navy ships to disputed waters could provoke China.
This is the lesson of the 2012 months-long standoff between Manila and Beijing in Panatag. The Philippines was said to have committed a mistake when it sent a warship – then the newly acquired BRP Gregorio Del Pilar – to deal with Chinese fishing boats. (READ: PH's 1st mistake in Scarborough).
Panatag, which is within the country's 200 nautical miles exclusive economic zone, is now practically occupied by the Chinese Coast Guard.
The Chinese Coast Guard isn't the same as everyone else's....its a pure military organization that is designed to harass, interdict and incite violence on the high seas.
The Chinese want war and will use any excuse to push territorial claims.
The Ferengi among the American people that only see trade, the amount of money the Chinese lend and nothing else should have a care.
The Chinese are playing for blood. They don't give a rats ass about our values and consider us decadent, obscene and beneath contempt. Whether we like it or not the second cold war has begun.
You have to exert your sovereignty, or you lose it. China is just a big fat bully.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the Philippines is that their 40+ yr old doctrine and they don't know how to exert over their sovereignty
ReplyDeleteThe real issue is China will see how far it can push. It shows their boldness that they are pushing hard at two US treaty partners, knowing that could easily lead to a shooting war that would bring the USA into the war.
ReplyDeleteIf you go by 200nm EEZ then the Senkakus/Daiyous belong to China. And like the Senkakus China has historical claims to Scarborough Shoal.
ReplyDeleteif you go by the 200nm EEZ then you have overlapping claims throughout the region. additionally these "historical" claims tend to ignore the passage of history in which territory changes hands either legally or through warfare.
Deleteif you're talking historical claims then Mexico could go to war to get back California and Texas...the French and Spanish can play lawyer over Texas, Louisiana and Florida....
in other words we can play the Asia game of historical claims but the reality is that its BULLSHIT and we all know it.
History lesson time. The concept of sovereignty in the Chinese/non-Western sense used to be about people. I.E manpower. If you are sovereign over people, you get tax dollars, you get workers, you get conscripts for your armies. It is only recently in historical terms and after we (as in the world) started industrializing that the focus became "resources" and "territory", hence the sudden grab of all the unpopulated odds and sods islands all over the place. Before the resource war, these islands were, in the eyes of the powers then, useless. Now, they suddenly became valuable hence everyone is grabbing them in a modern day gold rush. This is also why there is often a lack of documentation to the claims. No one bothered for "useless" pieces of rock in the past. Hence the current mess.
DeleteAnd China is worrying. They're proud, they're arrogant and they believe in manifest destiny and are not afraid to throw their weight around. It might be best for them to suffer a major military defeat soon to curtail that mindset. Ironically, it reminds me of the US in the very early 1900s before Vietnam, but worst. The US is fairly insular, even now, while the Chinese are very global in outlook, which means that they will engage with the surrounding countries more often.
I'm not really sure using the US and the UN to wack them would help though. To the Chinese, it would be a case of "US jealousy" and "US aggression". A dribbling purely by Philippines or Japanese forces would help a lot more in slapping them out of the "manifest destiny" mindset if even a small country gave them a body check.
you nailed it.
Deletebut to be honest i think there are only two countries in the region that actually scare China...outside of the US, the Chinese (I believe) fear the Japanese and the Vietnamese.
they're the only two countries that ever really bloodied and roughed them up. the asian mind has a long memory and the drubbing from the Japanese in WW2 and the humiliation that the Vietnamese gave them still aches to this day.
still. i'm looking for a minor naval mistake to erupt into a full scale naval engagement with a few small combatants sank before the dogs are called off....but even that might be wishful thinking.
can you imagine the trouble if the CHinese Coast Guard decides to fire house a Japanese fishing crew...the Japanese Coast Guard responds and damages the Chinese ship....the Chinese escalate and sink the Japanese boat......
racial pride alone will force the Japanese to escalate to keep from losing face. the same applies to the Chinese.
by the time the US, Russia, the EU and the UN step in we might have several small ships on the bottom and air arms rushing to launch points.
Don't think they fear the Japanese so much as utterly hate them. Nanking and WWII was not a showcase for Japanese diplomacy unless it is the negative kind, and the Sino-Vietnam one I'll call it more of a draw with a slight Chinese strategic victory, they demonstrated that they could drive all the way to Hanoi and the Vietnamese couldn't do a damn thing. It was more of an insult than a real war, the Chinese came, slapped the Vietnamese across the face and left. The Vietnamese called it a victory because the Chinese left, but the reality is that China never intended to stay anyway and the Vietnamese needed to keep morale up, so in reality, none of these are really a Chinese Communist loss, especially the WWII part when the current Communist Party was not even in power yet. So, no, the impression is that China has not really lost a modern war yet and this fuels their aggressiveness. Even Korea was a close run thing when they kicked the US back from the Korean Northern border to the current DMZ. Their leadership knew they were overstretched, the common man doesn't.
DeleteAnd I think Russia and the EU will sit most of any Pacific War out. Nothing in it for them there really and the local populations there are more than enough for any manpower needs, they just lack heavy equipment. Armies may sound scary with million man numbers, but the reality is that if everyone in a country picked up a gun, their numbers will dwarf any army. Defender advantage.
Manifest destiny and fear don't go together, it's something like religious extremism and "historical destiny". They know they are going to win, so how does fear come into play? They need to be shown that they may not win before they can fear.
I did some backchecking and it seems that China does have a historical case for the islands, as painful as admitting it may sound. They were collecting tribute from the people there since the imperial times and they have a consistent record of claims up to 1914, while the Philippines one is very recent, only in the 1950s. If it went to a court, I have to say most likely China will win.
Bad taste in mouth, but even a thug has rights and the right to own property. Just wish it was someone less dislikable.