By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Part 28: Where the Philippines seek War, China seeks Diplomacy

In a post on social media platform X, U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines MaryKay Carlson who always confuses international law from US rule-based international order, condemned what she described as China’s “dangerous ramming” of a Filipino vessel, calling the incident “aggressive actions” in the South China Sea.

This was echoed by a certain newbie in the US State Department, Tommy Pigott acting as the principal deputy spokesperson (whatever principal deputy means) who joined the Trump-Vance administration in January 2025, after working as strategic communications director at the Republican National Committee with only almost a decade of communications experience:

“The United States condemns China’s October 12 ramming and water cannoning of a Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources vessel close to Thitu Island in the South China Sea. We stand with our Philippine allies as they confront China’s dangerous actions which undermine regional stability.”

I never heard Pigott say anything when a Chinese destroyer collided with a Chinese Coast Guard ship while shielding a Philippine Coast Guard vessel that engaged in a maneuver-kill after trespassing the Scarborough Shoal area last August.. It was never confirmed that two Chinese mariners may have lost their lives but 25 Filipino crewmen certainly came home safe and sound that day.

Why do I say that Pigott is a newbie?

The Georgetown University graduate betrayed his ignorance of the US foreign policy and its imprints in his country’s history, when he said: “The United States reaffirms Article IV of the 1951 United States-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty extends to armed attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft – including those of its Coast Guard – anywhere in the South China Sea.”

For the continuing education of Ms. Carlson and Mr. Pigott, this is also what the Biden administration termed as an “iron-clad commitment”, the very same shibboleth Henry Kissinger debunked in his June 9, 1975 memorandum to US Ambassador to the Philippines William Sullivan:

First, Kissinger wrote, “Spratly Islands all fall out- side Philippine territory as ceded to us by 1898 treaty with Spain. (US government) maps accompanying presentation of (the Mutual Defense Treaty) also exclude Spratlys from territories covered by MDT.”

Second, Article IV that Pigott is brandishing says verbatim: “Each Party recognizes that an armed attack in the Pacific area on either of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common dangers in accordance with its constitutional processes.”

Constitutional processes mean an act of the US Congress.

There you go, far from “iron-clad” there is nothing automatic or carte blanche about the US braggadocio. In fact, Kissinger views it with realpolitik –“As a practical matter, we see precious little chance Congress or the American people would support US intervention in Spratly dispute.”

What he saw could even be the reverse, which means disavowal: “If the [Philippine] garrisons ever were attacked, it seems to me less harmful politically to deny our obligations on legal grounds, than to leave unfulfilled an acknowledged commitment.”

Kissinger is never sporadic, never tentative As early as January 31, 1974, with 17 of his senior staff in a policy meeting he presided about applications of the PH-US Mutual Defense Treaty in the South China Seas, he asked Arthur Hummel who was deputy assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific Affairs:

“Did we volunteer it or did (the Filipinos) first ask us? — because this, I think, would make a psychological difference. That, to me, is the only interesting question. I agree with the fact that we should not invoke the Mutual Security Treaty. I wonder whether it’s in our interest to show excessive eagerness in volunteering reluctance to take on the Chinese when we haven’t been asked — whether that might not actually trigger things, the way things leak out there.

“I do not think that we should have indicated that we would defend (the Philippines) The question is whether we should have left some ambiguity in (their) minds, not in ours.”

In the same memo to Bill Sullivan seventeen months after, Kissinger consistently emphasized: “we view (the) purpose of [Philippine] garrison (such as Pagasa) as establishing and enforcing a claim to sovereignty over openly disputed territory. MDT does not obligate us to support this type of deployment in event of armed attack (as) we have also not recognized [Philippine] sovereignty over (those) islands.”  

Hillary Clinton repeated this under President Barack Obama: “we don’t, as the United States, take a position on competing sovereignty claims over land features. I’m not going to discuss hypothetical events.”

So, I would say to Carlson and Pigott – tame your rhetoric because you are starting to look like warmongering idiots trying to hoodwink the Filipino people. If you cannot approximate Kissinger’s double-speak then at least try Mrs. Clinton’s prudence.

Missing the median doctrine

It seems there is no stopping, however, to Philippine adventurism and recklessness when it comes to the South China Seas.

Philippine maritime authorities, this time the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, has again lost their compass and forayed outside of the territorial sea of Thitu (Pagasa), a feature that has been classified as a “rock” or a high-tide elevation (HTE)by the 2016 Arbitral Award.

Before Commodore Jay Tarriela, the pinocchio of the Philippine Coast Guard, however, takes us again for a ride to tralaland, let us do some fact checking.

The same award clarified that that rocks or high-tide elevations (HTEs) are like islands that generate a 12nm territorial sea (UNCLOS Article 2) but unlike islands do not generate an entitlement to a 200-nautical mile (NM) exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. (Article 121).

Various international news agencies have located the position where Chinese Coast Guards water-cannoned the BFAR ships about 1.8 nautical miles from Pagasa. One of the ships, BRP Datu Pagbuaya was slightly rammed and damaged, but there were no injuries were reported.

But what significant detail journalists sorely missed is that the neighboring feature, Sandy Cay, which is northwest of Pagasa, is also a rock and an HTE, and entitled to its own territorial sea.

In which case, UNCLOS’ superseding principle is taken from its Article 15 that says where the coasts of two states are opposite or adjacent, the boundary of their territorial seas is the median line unless they agree otherwise. A median line is a line where every point is equidistant from the nearest points on the baselines of each state’s territorial sea.

If the distance between Pagasa and Sandy Cay, is approximately 1.5 nautical miles, under the media principle, Pagasa can only claim 0.75 nm territorial sea where is opposite Sandy Cay, not 12 nautical miles.

Fact #1 – If Philippine ships were therefore 1.8 nautical miles from Pagasa, they have already exceeded the median and were actually trespassing 1.05 nm inside the bounds of Sandy Cay as they were engaged in activities that do not qualify as “innocent passage” under Article 19 of UNCLOS.

Fact #2 – This said, the Philippine claim over Pagasa is not carved in stone as it also claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan. The Philippines grabbed Thitu Island from Taiwan in 1971 when the Taiwanese forces left the garrison it had occupied since Japan surrendered it to China in 1946, due to a typhoon. The Philippines exercises de facto sovereignty over Pagasa only by virtue of the 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DOC) between China and ASEAN.

Fact#3 – If the DOC is the only foothold of the Philippines in reference to Pagasa, it cannot project to any more claims for other features without violating its Section 5: “The Parties undertake to exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability including, among others, refraining from action of inhabiting on the presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features and to handle their differences in a constructive manner.”

Fact #4 – The Philippine cannot invoke its mythical creation of a “West Philippine Sea” as far as Pagasa is concerned, which is already 270 nautical miles or 70 nm outside of our 200 nm EEZ claim west from our Palawan coastlines, that is disputed by China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei west of the Philippines.

Fact #5 – In attempting to inhabit or acquire Sandy Cay and its own territorial sea , the Philippines cannot invoke the “Kalayaan Island Group”, a polygon created by Presidential Decree 1596 because it has already been abandoned as an archipelago by Philippine legislation (Republic Act 9522) in 2009 serving as  our new baselines law, and rejected by the Arbitral Award in its Paragraph 574 in 2016.

China both has right and might

According to the Associated Press, the Chinese Coast Guard accused the Philippine vessels of illegally entering Chinese waters near a cluster of sandbars known as Sandy Cay. This area is controlled and monitored by China strictly because it leads to one of its military forward-operating base, located 9.3 nautical miles northeast at Subi Reef.

Lin Jian, deputy director of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, said the Philippines has recently taken organized and orchestrated moves to send a large number of ships to make provocations and create trouble in relevant waters of Zhongye Dao (Thitu), Tiexian Jiao (Sandy Cay) and Zhubi Jiao (Subi) that are part of Nansha Qundao (Spratlys) which are China’s territories. Philippine official vessels sailed dangerously more than once and some of them intruded into the waters off Zhubi Jiao, which led to the collision between the vessels of the two sides.

The Chinese ministry urged the Philippines to immediately stop its infringement, provocations and vilification, and refrain from challenging China’s firm resolve to safeguard our territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.

The Chinese Coast Guard has already released on-site video footage on the incident.

Lin said, “The facts speak for themselves and the merits are very clear, which brook no distortion.”

But American newbie Pigott rejoined, “China’s sweeping territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea and its increasingly coercive actions to advance them at the expense of its neighbors continue to undermine regional stability and fly in the face of its prior commitments to resolve disputes peacefully.”

Lin rebutted Pigott’s statement as “turning a blind eye to the facts, the U.S. vilified China over the legitimate and lawful measures it took to defend its sovereignty, and attempted to threaten China citing the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.

“Such moves once again exposed the U.S.’s ill intention of deliberately stoking confrontation and destabilizing the South China Sea, and serve as yet another evidence that the U.S. is the biggest source of risks undermining regional stability.”

My own take here is as usual, the United States is again feigning a high moral ground albeit awkwardly as the US is neither a coastal state, a claimant and nor a member of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.

China’s actions in the South China Seas are one of defense not offense, law enforcement not aggression. The use of water cannon, lasers and sonics are internationally-accepted non-lethal weapons (NLWs) even by the US Department of War.

A most appropriate quote from Henry Kissinger serves as a pertinent conclusion:

““It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” #

To be continued

   

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