NEGOTIATING FROM A POSITION OF STRENGTH IN THE WEST PHILIPPINE SEA

IT doesn't take a genius to figure this out. China is not in the mood to negotiate with us if it perceives us as weak. All it must do is to impose its brute force. What will force it into the negotiating table is when we offer it the chance that it becomes more costly for it to continue its bullying tactics on us.

Anyone with common sense would know that negotiations begin not with one side acquiescing or capitulating to the other, but when the weaker would offer the stronger the possibility of suffering more if it continues to impose its will. For six years under the Duterte administration, the Philippines capitulated to China's demands. It began when the former president diminished our hard-earned victory at the Permanent Court of Administration at The Hague. The capitulation was framed as in the best interest of the country and was projected as the only way for us to avoid war with China. President Rodrigo Duterte waged a brutal war against drugs and rebels internally while he played the war card against our interest in the West Philippine Sea.

The acquiescence was framed in the context of Chinese carrots that were imagined as having been given to us to finance the ambitious infrastructure projects that the Duterte administration promised. While the building projects indeed produced great strides, most of them were sourced from other bilateral and multilateral assistance and only a few from China. And energized by what it perceived to be an acquiescence by the Philippine government, China became even bolder in its activities in the West Philippine Sea, which included harassing Filipino fishers and denying them their livelihoods and continuing with their island-building projects that destroyed our coral reefs.

Duterte's pivot toward China was deodorized as an expression of an independent foreign policy, even if the very nature of the pivot did not increase the leverage of our country in relation to China's competing territorial claims. Meanwhile, organized criminal elements from China flooded our country through pseudo-tourism channels and, more severely, through the legitimization of the Philippine offshore gaming operators.

To put it bluntly, the Duterte government did not gain enough leverage to negotiate with China as an independent equal.

China, and the pro-China sections of Philippine society, which counted much of its support from the diehard Duterte supporters (DDS), expected that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. would become a mere extension of Duterte's brand of governance. As it turned out, Marcos surprised not only the political opposition but even the DDS when he charted a different path not only in relation to the problem of drugs and the leftist insurgency but also in relation to our foreign policy, including our stance toward China and the United States.

Marcos' strategy was simple. He strengthened our leverage to negotiate with China by relying on the objective reality where we have an existing defense treaty with the United States and by going beyond it and striking defense alliances with countries like Japan, Australia and the European Union, among many others. Marcos understood diplomacy more intuitively where, in order to deter China's aggressive moves, we have to rely on deterrence based on securing stronger alliances with countries beyond the US and the seemingly inadequate Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

This strategy neutralized the argument of pro-China apologists that Marcos would only be playing into America's designs. However, it is also foolish not to count on US support, considering that we have an existing defense agreement with it, and it alone could become the single effective deterrent to China's aggression.

Faced with this, pro-China apologists are now busy maligning the US and its commitment, casting doubt as to whether it can run to the Philippines' defense in the event of an attack. The US has intervened in many countries where its interests are at stake, and it is plain naivete to assume that it will sit idly by and watch the Philippines, with its strategic location and proximity to US territory, fall into China's hands. Even without a defense treaty, the US will intervene. This is the reality of global politics and brinkmanship. And the best the Philippines should do is not to cut its nose off to spite its face by playing neutral in a conflict that will certainly affect us whether we like it or not. The pro-China DDS cannot play the US as a worse card when it is ready to embrace China's interests in the region.

At present, the Philippines has already been effective in unmasking China's lies in the eyes of the world. With embedded journalists, images of China's brutal attacks and illegal maneuvers in the West Philippine Sea on areas within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone have already cost China much political capital. The relative restraint shown by our Philippine Navy personnel in the most recent attacks by the China Coast Guard in the Ayungin Shoal, which pro-China trolls vilified and derided, further painted China's image in a bad light as the aggressor and as a violator of international law. One could even label it as a form of nonviolent resistance.

It is this dual move under the Marcos administration of expanding our alliances as our strategy of deterrence and the ensuing war of optics that we wage that renders our position much stronger now compared to what it was during the six years under Duterte. Marcos has been successful in forging an alliance that extends beyond our Mutual Defense Treaty with the US and now involves more countries, even as we are able to build a global constituency of sympathy that rides on the power of the immediate, real-time and free flow of images of China's illegal acts enabled by the power of modern information and communication technology.

And now, China cannot afford to continue its one-sided aggressive moves against fishers eking out a livelihood and against humanitarian resupply missions in territories over which the Philippines has sovereign rights without losing face in the entire world. Its position has been severely weakened.

2024-06-28T16:27:26Z dg43tfdfdgfd