Filipinos Doubt US Reliability As Marcos Deescalates

Leading Philippine experts have argued that China's latest action could have been a basis for invocation of the MDT. Surveys have found that up to 93 percent of Filipinos want their government to protect Philippine-claimed territories and wrest back control of those occupied by China.

Many in the Philippines began to doubt the determination of the Marcos administration to stand up to China, as well as to question America's reliability as an ally.

In a speech before Philippine military personnel at the southwestern province of Palawan, which lies near the disputed Spratly islands, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr sought to strike a balance by emphasizing that the Philippines has an uncompromising position as well as a commitment to diplomacy.

“We are not in the business to instigate wars - our great ambition is to provide a peaceful and prosperous life for every Filipino. This is the drum beat, this is the principle that we live by and that we march by,” said Marcos during his speech at the“Talk to the Troops.”

“We refuse to play by the rules that force us to choose sides in a great power competition. No government that truly exists in the service of the people will invite danger or harm to lives and livelihood,” he added, underscoring preference for a non-aligned and independent foreign policy. Nevertheless, the Filipino president emphasized that his government will“stand firm” in protecting the country's sovereign rights in the South China Sea.

The exact circumstances of the latest incident remain shrouded in mystery. From the standpoint of China, aggressive intervention was a legitimate response to the Philippines' violation of a supposed prior agreement over the Second Thomas Shoal. Since the late-1990s, Manila has exercised de facto control over the disputed feature by stationing troops over a grounded warship, BRP Sierra Madre. But given the extremely poor conditions in the de facto Philippine base, China has hoped over the past decade to peacefully eject its rival from the area.

In 2013 People's Liberation Army General Zhang Zhaozhong argued ,“Without the supply for one or two weeks, the [Filipino] troopers stationed there will leave the islands on their own. Once they have left, they will never be able to come back.”

Over the succeeding years, China not only expanded its reclamation activities in the disputed areas, birthing a whole host of massive artificial islands and military facilities, but it also began to tighten the noose around Philippine-occupied land features such as the Second Thomas Shoal.

Accordingly, China rapidly expanded the number of vessels, both warships and civilian, dispatched to the area in order to cut off Philippine resupply lines near the shoal. The Asian superpower upped the ante when it began suspecting that the Philippines had been transporting construction materials to fortify its de facto base in spite of an alleged“secret agreement” with former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to maintain the status quo.

Latest reports suggest that the Philippines has already fortified the dilapidated
BRP Sierra Madre, thus provoking outrage and aggressive countermeasures by China.
Increasingly dangerous clashes between the Philippines and China, however, have raised concerns over America's role.

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Both the Trump and Biden administration have made it clear that MDT would apply only if there were an armed attack on Filipino troops and public vessels. But China's deft reliance on“gray zone” tactics has undercut the utility of the Philippine-US alliance dramatically. Strategic planners in the Pentagon have clearly recognized this gap, which has been thoroughly exploited by China.

Last year, the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) released an unclassified report in which its legal experts argued that the MDT should also apply to “illegal use of force [which] is not limited by law to a kinetic armed attack (e.g. the use of munitions), but could also include non-kinetic attacks that result in death, injury, damage, or destruction of persons or objects.”

So far, however, the Biden administration has demurred from expanding the parameters of the MDT and, instead, insisted on a more general rhetoric of“ironclad commitment” that clearly doesn't cover gray zone assaults on Philippine troops. As a result, critics are beginning to question the wisdom of the Marcos administration's decision to expand military cooperation with Western allies without securing clear-cut commitments on the festering South China Sea disputes.

So far, both the Marcos administration and the US have pressed for a diplomatic approach, despite the fact China has shown little appetite for compromise on its expansive claims across the disputed waters. Under growing domestic pressure, Manila likely will push for revision of the guidelines governing its mutual defense obligations with America.

But with the superpower facing competing priorities across the world, and the US presidential elections just over the horizon, it remains to be seen if Washington is willing to expand military commitment to its besieged Southeast Asian ally.

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