THE VISIT made by United States Vice President Kamala Harris highlights an abrupt turnaround in the Philippines’ approach to foreign presence in the West Philippine Sea.
For five years President Rodrigo Duterte had been loud in announcing the Philippines’ untethering from Washington. He was never shy about his preference for things Chinese and Russian.
However, late into his administration Duterte had yet to see the fruits of his canoodling with China. The “build, build, build” infrastructure program was to have been buoyed up by Chinese investments but never truly took off.
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On the other hand, there was no discernible deceleration in China’s incursions within the Philippine exclusive economic zone and beyond.
To its credit, the Philippine Coast Guard has been religiously documenting the superpower’s “cabbage strategy,” so called because it has been described as a “tactic to overwhelm and seize control of an island by surrounding and wrapping the island in successive layers of Chinese naval ships, Coast Guard ships and fishing boats and cut-off the island from outside support.”
In March last year around two hundred fishing boats appeared and surrounded Julian Felipe reef for several weeks, leading former defense secretary Delfin Loranzana to complain that the continued presence of Chinese maritime militias in the area reveals their intent to further occupy features in the West Philippine Sea.
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Duterte flirted with disaster by terminating the US-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement in early 2020. The move was peculiar because it was in reaction to the denial of a US visa to Sen. Bato dela Rosa – his favorite police chief.
After much hedging Duterte relented initially by postponing the effectivity of the termination three times and thereafter withdrawing his objections. The VFA has been reinstated.
The stage had thus been set for a renewal of Philippine ties with the US.
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And so it is that President Bongbong Marcos has sashayed quite confidently into his role as Head of State and Commander-in-Chief and will hopefully put meat into his words while faced with our neighbor’s cabbage strategy.
In September he said that “the position that the Philippines takes is that we have no territorial conflict with China. What we have is China claiming territory that belongs to the Philippines.” He added that “with our American partners, we have promoted that position.”
This clear position is now being validated by Vice President Harris’ support of the arbitral award that rejected China’s nine-dash-line over the West Philippine Sea.
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In her speech before the Philippine Coast Guard, Harris said that “as an ally, the United States stands with the Philippines in the face of coercion and intimidation in the South China Sea.”
She also announced additional US support for the coast guard that will include funding to upgrade the equipment of maritime law enforcement agencies.
What stands out in Harris’ speech is her concern for livelihoods that are put at risk when “foreign vessels enter Philippine waters and illegally deplete the fishing stock, when they harass and intimidate local fishers, when they pollute the ocean, and destroy the marine ecosystem.”
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The United States has committed $7.5 million in additional funding for our local maritime law enforcement forces. We hope this is not wasted but is used wisely against illegal fishing./PN
