By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Part 3: An old order gives way to a new one, reshaping global geopolitics

Diplomacy with China will not work with the security cluster of the Marcos government going south while the economic sector attempts to go north.

The president must take firm hold of the country’s foreign policy. and crack the whip. Otherwise, our situation will retrogress to worse than where it was before Iran restricted the Strait of Hormuz.

Another circus?

While the Philippines stands at the crossroad of a crucial decision, Asian Century Vice President for External Affairs Anna Malindog Uy calls attention to a recent statement by Philippine Navy Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad that “China is not a reliable partner.“

Uy says “Let’s get this straight. On one hand, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is loudly warning that “China is not a reliable partner. On the other hand, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) is talking about “forthcoming” joint oil and gas exploration.”

Meanwhile, the Chinese Embassy in Manila is saying cooperation is open—if Manila is “sincere.” Moving forward, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. himself floats the idea of revisiting talks on potential joint oil and gas exploration in the disputed South China Sea (SCS) amid the global energy crunch.

So, is the Philippines negotiating? Posturing? Or just… talking to itself?

Her analysis follows – the only consistent thing it has thus far in its entire existence since 2022, is its policy dissonance.

This is not just “different perspectives.” This is strategic incoherence at the highest level of government.

• The military signals distrust and deterrence

• Diplomats signal engagement and negotiation

• The President signals conditional recalibration

• Meanwhile, external actors (China) are left reading mixed signals

This is policy fragmentation and inconsistency as far as the Marcos Jr. administration is concerned.

In international relations, especially in high-stakes issues like South China Sea energy exploration, coherence is not optional—it is currency! And right now, the Philippines is sending mixed signals like loose change.

What signal does the AFP send to Beijing?

To Beijing, it looks like:

• A government unsure of its own direction

• A leadership unable (or unwilling) to align its institutions

• A negotiating partner that cannot guarantee policy continuity

In diplomacy, credibility is power!

And credibility requires one thing: consistency!

If Manila speaks in multiple voices, Beijing will simply:

• Wait it out

• It might opt for patience

• Or worse—dismiss negotiations altogether

Why This Matters

Energy security is not a game: Let’s not forget the stakes.

The Philippines is facing:

• Rising fuel costs

• External supply shocks (Middle East War and Tensions)

• Structural energy vulnerability

Joint exploration—whether people like it or not—is no longer just geopolitics. It is survival!

And yet, instead of a clear national position, we get:

• press briefings that contradict each other
• agencies freelancing in foreign policy
• and signals that cancel each other out

So, the question becomes – Is this:

• A deliberate “good cop–bad cop” strategy?

• Or simply a lack of control at the top (Marcos Jr.)?

Because if this is a strategy, it’s poorly executed.

And if it’s not, then it’s worse.

Foreign policy is not a group chat where everyone gets to chime in. It is a discipline of clarity, hierarchy, and message control.

If Ferdinand Marcos Jr. cannot align his own government on something as critical as energy security and China policy, then the real issue is not China’s reliability, as AFP is trying to imply.

The real issue is the Philippines’ reliability as a negotiating partner.

If one has observed, Beijing has been consistent, since the time of President Duterte, it is open to oil and gas exploration in the SCS, and there was even an MOU (Memorandum of Mutual Understanding) in this regard, acknowledged by Chinese President Xi Jinping and former President Rodrigo Duterte.

Tarriela card

As if Roy Vincent Trinidad were not yet ridiculous, his megaphone double Philippine Coast Guard Commodore Jay Trystan Tarriela, who definitely is not an expert in international law, attacks Marcos warming up to China by peddling an obscure map.

The PCG and the Chinese Embassy in Manila exchanged arguments over the relevance of an 1875 Spanish-era map to Manila’s claims in the South China Sea (SCS).

“Disregarding treaties and international law, misinterpreting maps, and denying historical facts will not help manage differences through dialogue,” Chinese embassy spokesperson Guo Wei said on Thursday.

The following report by GMA news is proof positive of these allegations.

On March 29, West  Philippine Sea spokesman Jay Tarriela cited the 1875 Carta General del Archipiélago Filipino as a key document supporting the Philippines’ position over disputed features.

The 1875 Carta General del Archipiélago Filipino is a historical map of the Philippine archipelago originally prepared during the Spanish colonial period. It was later republished by the United States for administrative and military use.

According to Tarriela, the map is among the “most detailed” official Spanish charts of the Philippine archipelago.

This depicts features such as “Los Bajos de Paragua,” associated with the Spratly Islands, and “Panacot,” also known as Bajo de Masinloc or Scarborough Shoal.

“This map strengthens the historical basis for the Philippines’ position over these features, as it was later adopted and reissued by the United States War Department after the Spanish-American War,” Tarriela earlier said.

However, Wei disputed these assertions and called Tarriela’s claims “wrong.”

Guo argued that the 1875 map was “merely a geographical map” with no indication of sovereignty or political boundaries.

The embassy also cited the 1928 Island of Palmas arbitration, pointing out that the Spanish era map had been rejected due to the absence of boundary markings.

Guo further challenged the identification of “Panacot” with Bajo de Masinloc, claiming other historical maps that show both as separate locations.

On March 30, Tarriela pushed back against the embassy’s claims.

He said the map helped inform the Treaty of Paris and the Treaty of Washington, which transferred the Philippines from Spain to the United States.

Tarriela also rejected China’s interpretation of the Island of Palmas case, saying it was being “misused and was unrelated to the disputed features in the West  Philippine Sea.”

He maintained that historical maps and records consistently place Panacot at the location of Bajo de Masinloc.

For Tarriela, 2016 South China Sea Arbitration had already invalidated China’s sweeping “historic rights” claims beyond its lawful maritime zones.

“The 2016 Arbitral Award under UNCLOS already settled the legal status: China’s “historic rights” claims beyond its lawful maritime zones have no legal basis. The Philippines is not “distorting history” — we are defending it with treaties, official maps, and international law,” Tarriela said.

“We remain committed to dialogue and diplomacy based on UNCLOS and the 2016 Award. But diplomacy requires acknowledging facts, not rewriting them to justify continued harassment of our fishermen and Coast Guard in our own exclusive economic zone,” he added.

End of news story.

My apologies for belaboring this matter. It is however important that we pinpoint how Tarriela play mumbo-jumbo with impertinent details hoping to appear scholarly about his approaches.

The marionettes on top of him are also equally mindless but malicious – they keep opening points-of-view but disappear when the course of the debate exposes them either as wrong or twisted.

First. maps cannot stand alone in international law. Their probity relies on a convention or a written treaty that they depict in illustration form. Carl Thayer, an Australian international law expert says maps are only pieces of information.

Second, predating Tarriela’s 1875 map, a 1778 map indubitably proves that Scarborough is different from Panacot.

The map was drawn by British captain Robert Carr and was published in London for navigational use in Southeast Asia. The map clearly shows that “Cabezas dos Negros or Scarborough” shoal is different from “Panacot or Marsingola Bank.

(https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/94350/a-chart-of-the-china-sea-and-philippine-islands-with-the-a-laurie-whittle).

Third, Tarriela does not accept  jurisprudence involving Las Palmas because he argues that Spain ceded Las Palmas to the US in an 1898 sale in the Treaty of Paris.

In basic logic, that’s cherry-picking because in a subsequent 1928 arbitration, the US lost Las Palmas to Netherlands debunking Spain’s argument of discovery by “terra nullius”.

Filipino international law scholar Melissa Loja says former associate justice Antonio Carpio is at it again, pointing to the expired magistrate’s as the genesis of this new disinformation.

She said “the 1875 Montero map was trashed by Judge Max Huber in the Island of Palmas case. If (Carpio and Tarriela) think we can use it as evidence in a territorial arbitration, (they) will be in for an embarrassment.”

Loja wonders when will they start reading rather than blabbing?

Fourth, the 1898 Treaty of Paris is irrelevant here because Bajo de Masinloc or Scarborough Shoal is outside its western treaty limits of 118 degrees east longitude.

Fifth, this was further aggravated in 2009 when Antonio Carpio’s ponencia of the Supreme Court decision GR 187167 ruled that the coordinates Philippine archipelagic baselines were delimited by Republic Act 9522 as close as possible to our coastlines and internal waters, effectively superseding the Treaty of Paris limits effectively losing 830,000 square kilometers of what was erstwhile territorial sea by historic rights to the treaty.   In conformity to UNCLOS, our territorial sea now has been reduced to 12 nautical miles off our baselines and internal waters.

Sixth, after the Scarborough standoff of 2012, we lost the feature which fell under the effective control of China. This is vouched by Tarriela himself in a recorded video.

Finally, Tarriela’s assertion that the 2016 South China Sea Arbitration had already invalidated China’s “sweeping claims” for “historic rights” is a half-truth, thus an outright lie.

The coast guard officer oversimplifies his argument based on Paragraph 278 of the Arbitral Award, that says “…the maritime areas of the South China Sea encompassed by the relevant part of the ‘nine-dash line’ are contrary to the Convention and without lawful effect to the extent that they exceed the geographic and substantive limits of China’s maritime entitlements under the Convention.”

But Tarriela conveniently dropped the prefatory and qualifying Paragraph 272 of the Arbitral Award:

“Finally, because the Tribunal considers the question of historic rights with respect to maritime areas to be entirely distinct from that of historic rights to land, the Tribunal considers it opportune to note that certain claims remain unaffected by this decision.

“In particular, the Tribunal emphasises that nothing in this Award should be understood to comment in any way on China’s historic claim to the islands of the South China Sea.

“Nor does the Tribunal’s decision that a claim of historic rights to living and non‑living resources is not compatible with the Convention limit China’s ability to claim maritime zones in accordance with the Convention, on the basis of such islands.

In sum, Paragraph 272 of the 2016 South China Sea Arbitration ruling clarifies that the tribunal’s rejection of historic rights does not prevent China from claiming maritime zones, such as territorial seas, based on land features that qualify as islands under UNCLOS. While invalidating “nine-dash line” claims, the decision noted that China can still assert maritime entitlements based on islands in accordance with international law.

It is Tarriela who rewrites and distorts international law, which is easy to read and simple to understand as we have illustrated above.

That is, if one has no self-serving agenda.

With his term thinning out, Marcos has yet no legacy.

But a God-sent choice appears– another Good Friday optics or an Easter Resurrection!

(Co-authored with Anna Malindog-Uy)

   

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