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The Philippines’ Contested Shoal by Miguel Gomez
Most of our staff cannot recall when all the tit-for-tat spat started between China and the Philippines on the issue of the contested Second Thomas Shoal that all three countries claim as theirs – China, The Philippines and Vietnam. Some might refer to 1999 as the first instance of a disagreement between China and The Philippines, others might cite 2012. However, it may have been three or four years ago when the profile of this territorial dispute was elevated to the highest levels of alarm via Western and US news media headlines.
The United States and Chinese naval vessels started playing “traverse your path” waterways games, where vessels engaged in similar tactics to what the Russians jet fighters have been accused of doing in aerial intercepts – violate professional conduct and rules of engagement and act brashly towards the other power’s military assets in the form of non-definitive confrontations. Soon after, the United States scheduled multiple aircraft carrier visits to the Taiwan Straits in a show of force and organized multi-national maritime war games on China’s doorstep and in the South China Seas. Meanwhile the United States filed multiple complaints with the United Nations alleging China is overstepping its authority and exercising military domain claims outside its legal territorial waters.
The tit-for-tat friction eventually spilled over from USA and Taiwan against China into a China versus The Philippines contention over a small shoal where the Philippines has stranded the Sierra Madre, a rusted, dilapidated shipwreck and stationed a small platoon of their marines as a delimiter of their territory in the South China Seas – which China claims to be completely theirs. Over the years, the PRC had built a string of artificial islands to further forcefully delineate their claims over the South China Seas.
This week the Associated Press reported a vessels collision just like the one on October 22, 2023, American audiences were treated to headlines in which The Philippines and China once more played “chicken” with their coast guard vessels as Manila had sent a re-supply ship to their marines stationed on the Saint Thomas Shoal, something which they had been doing for years and which recently had become an excuse for China to express its displeasure with the United States by pinching, intercepting and/or bumping and humiliating America’s ally in the region. The Philippines does not have any naval assets that are worthy of mention to confront the fast-expanding and formidable China naval forces, complete with a small flotilla of civilian Chinese fishing boats that often intervene or act on behalf of the PRC in the Beijing-Manila showdowns.
In each instance this has happened, Washington and Beijing proceed to exchange insults, recall their ambassadors and engage in all kind of fruitless international circus shows that are presently so customary as to hardly provoke a yawn from world audiences.
Most recently Washington offered Manila a coast guard cruiser to help it in resupplying the shoal and re-affirmed its commitment to the Mutual Defense Treaty between the two allies. However, the lone coast guard vessel is sorely under-equipped and unable to fend for itself against the operating Chinese maritime forces. Also in 2023, the U.S. and the Philippines announced a historic pact that would open up several bases on the island archipelago nation to American forces for the first time in decades. Again, this only highlights the weakness of the Philippines and its dependence on the USA for surviving the new realities of the Far East and can play well into the hands of the PRC as well as factions in the Philippines that oppose American encroachment and harbor colonial resentment issues.
We question the motives behind such a slight to Manila, when the US Navy should have offered the Philippines three or four destroyers with complete munitions, two of which could be stationed on the shoal for the Philippines’ marines to use when they need to go to the mainland and resupply. The re-supply effort should not be a coast guard vessel that sails from the mainland to the shoal. The marines on the shoal should have two destroyers fully equipped by the United States stationed at Saint Thomas and used for regular re-supply missions against the Chinese naval forces harassing the Philippines naval toehold on the sandbar. In addition, there should be US military forces that regularly make a stop at the Thomas Shoal and refit the destroyers and train with the Philippines’ small platoon. This should put an end to the regular circus show between all three parties. Unless of course, Washington delights in the provocations from Beijing towards Manila and they await these opportunities to do more saber rattling to worldwide audiences.
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