Amid the euphoria of end of the Cold War, Henry Kissinger presciently warned of the diplomatic and strategic challenge of incorporating non-European great powers such as China and India in the international order. “Never before”, he wrote in reference to the post Cold War, “has a new world order had to be assembled from so many different perceptions, or on so global a scale”. Developments in the second half of 2019 highlight this “doctrinal challenge” of fashioning workable conflict management arrangements despite competing security outlooks and different approaches to diplomacy.
“Independent Foreign Policy”
The Duterte administration has since 2016 fostered warm relations with China and Russia- a seeming departure from previous governments’ policy of taking our traditional place in the United States’ diplomatic orbit. There have also been intermittent calls to review or abrogate defense cooperation pacts with the US such as the Visiting Forces Agreement and the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty. However, despite political noise owing to the President’s own anti-American rhetoric, the administration effectively reinvigorated the concrete strategic value of its alliance with the U.S insofar as more specific defense commitments have been made.
On the part of the United States, aside from giving earlier assurances that the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty covers the South China Sea, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper conceded during his November 19 meeting with Philippine defense secretary Delfin Lorenzana that they are open to the latter’s call to review the pact. In the wake of the Gem-Ver incident last June where Filipino fishermen were left distressed at sea after allision with a Chinese boat, U.S. Ambassador Sung Kim also asserted that the Philippines’ Mutual Defense Treaty with the U.S. covers attack by “government-sanctioned militias”.
Meanwhile, the administration’s China policy remains its vulnerable flank. In the West Philippine Sea, the Philippine government inspired little confidence by taking actions that tended to blur the line between hedging and outright appeasement. Residual tensions remain over the F/B Gem-Ver incident. The government kept the incident low-profile and dismissed alternative actions proposed by critics. On September 30, a Filipino-manned commercial vessel defied Chinese patrols in the Scarborough shoal when warned by the Chinese: “Chinese warship, why should I alter my course… Is this Chinese territory?”. One could view this as a reckless provocation, but it pays to note that this is the first instance of Filipino civilians spontaneously standing up for their territorial claims. Rapprochement supported only by high officials and business interests is a policy that sits on a powder keg of nationalist backlash.
Second, a public spat ensued between Defense Secretary Lorenzana and Chinese Ambassador Zhao last August over the security risks of Chinese offshore gaming operators setting-up shop near military installations. The Armed Forces of the Philippines also disclosed that Chinese warships passed waters near Palawan and Tawi-Tawi without notification, over which the Department of Foreign Affairs reportedly filed diplomatic protests. President Duterte subsequently ordered foreign vessels to get clearance from Philippine authorities prior to passage, although as Chinese President Xi noted in their bilateral meeting late August, innocent passage in territorial waters requires no such thing under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas.
These developments highlight gaps in the management of maritime interactions (Gem-Ver incident), provisions of UNCLOS regarding innocent passage, and our lack of national strategy as regards risks from growing Chinese migration. During the 13th ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) last July, Lorenzana pushed for the adoption of ADMM Guidelines for Maritime Interaction. Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Locsin likewise stated that the Philippines is interested in the revision of UNCLOS, though revising it may open a Pandora’s box given China’s greater international power today and thus potential influence over such rewriting.
Bigger troubles lay ahead as these issues have implications on order-building principles as well as the mechanisms for conflict resolution- and these are not resolved by mere goodwill.
In Pursuit of Strategic Autonomy
Throughout the Asia Pacific region, countries refuse to align themselves with either China or the United States. President Duterte curtly rebuffed U.S. pronouncements that seek to deploy missiles in Asia to counter China, effectively ruling out Philippine hosting as an option. “If you want a fight, fight among yourselves. It’s geopolitics”, he said.
The European Union announced during the EU-ASEAN Post Ministerial Conference that it will “deploy military advisors in several… embassies across Asia”. Two days later, it signed a bilateral defense agreement with Vietnam- the first with a Southeast Asian country- in order to harmonize defense and intelligence policy. This was followed in November by their first security and defense consultations which focused on maritime domain awareness and cybersecurity. While such cooperation tends to only be symbolic, it raises issues of whether the EU is interested in engaging ASEAN as a group for future defense cooperation, and whether the EU sees it more beneficial to have bilateral defense engagements in the region, as opposed to slower inter-bloc agreements, although bilaterals may prove detrimental to ASEAN centrality.
Meanwhile, India’s commitment to non-alignment is being tested. China supported Pakistan’s condemnation of Prime Minister Modi’s suspension of the autonomy of the Kashmir region. This Chinese action is puzzling, not least because India has singularly been the dam that holds back the militarization of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between India, Japan, U.S., and Australia.
ASEAN, like India, has the opportunity to position itself as a broker between the U.S. and China. The ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific articulated a role for ASEAN in great power rivalry management, and yet platforms like the ADMM and ASEAN Regional Forum continue to produce outcome documents on low-hanging fruits like nontraditional security issues such as border management and fishing. Demonstrably, the draft China-ASEAN South China Sea Code of Conduct finished first reading in late July, though there is little optimism if its provisions will meaningfully alter the reality of Chinese predominance over the area.
ASEAN’s extended institutions remain as significant platforms for Sino-American dialogue. However, ASEAN still does not have a coherent strategic doctrine- seen on issues like the South China Sea. It will not get far unless it confronts what it wants and is prepared to expend resources for. The same is true for the East Asia Summit, ADMM Plus meeting, and Japan-China South Korea trilateral Summits that proceeded without hiccups last November, but also without much meaningful agreement.
The year-end release of Malaysian and Vietnamese defense white papers are also noteworthy since they signal their clear government positions amid geopolitical anxieties, but they too have been criticized for insufficiently addressing Chinese threats to regional balance of power.
New World (Dis)Order?
The United States’ network of alliances in Asia is also wandering adrift. Consistent with the shift toward “transactional” policies under Trump, tensions flared between Washington and Seoul after the former demanded a 500%. increase in payments for U.S. troop deployment. Japan-South Korea relations too have been rocky, after the Abe government slapped export controls of strategic goods used by South Korea in response to the ongoing war reparations issues for ‘comfort women’. South Korea responded by threatening to terminate a military information agreement. The US-ASEAN Summit in Thailand was also a flop after Trump avoided the annual meeting for a second year. Only the leaders of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam attended after the perceived diplomatic slight, but nevertheless the foreign ministers of the seven other ASEAN states participated in the event.
During his tour of Southeast Asian countries this quarter, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo remarked that “our (US) interests”, alluding to freedom of navigation and balancing against China, “naturally converge with yours to our mutual benefit”. This may not seem grounded, since Southeast Asian reluctance to bandwagon with the US is not because of lack of recognition of the dangers of Chinese hegemony, but of disagreement with its over-confrontational methods, such as unilateral trade wars. Second, increasingly transactional policies also diminish U.S. credibility as a security provider.
On the other hand, China proceeds full steam ahead in improving its international stature. On July 15, China launched the first China-Africa Peace and Security Forum which gathered over 50 African countries to discuss security cooperation. Furthermore, the global chessboard remains unaltered: China maintains control over some occupied strategic locations in the South China Sea- a fact that is both a manifestation of strength and a flashpoint for conflict down the line. However, China’s extension beyond the “near abroad” runs the risk of overreach, which repeats mistakes similar to US global entanglements.
The Limits of Duterte’s Independent Foreign Policy
Amid all the developments underscored above, the Philippines can be credited for faithfully pursuing its conception of an independent foreign policy. The administration has consistently downplayed hot-button maritime issues with China. Cooperation with the U.S. remains robust. The Mutual Defense Board and Security Engagement Board that convened in early September at Camp Aguinaldo listed 300 planned security cooperation activities for 2020, compared to 281 in 2019. Furthermore, we have tapped nontraditional partners like Russia, Turkey, Israel, South Korea, and France for various security engagements and arms acquisition.
In October, President Duterte delivered a landmark speech during his second visit to Russia, titled “World Order seen from the East”. He asserted two principal strategic challenges. First, “exceptionalism and double standards”- hinting at US unilateral military adventurism and aversion to international treaties. Second is the geopolitical shift and the need to engage nontraditional partners like Russia in order to avoid taking sides in future conflicts.
However, there is also danger in the administration’s line of valuing diversification for its own sake, often without honest reckoning of the costs of these new linkages. Purchases of Russian arms will be tested and limited by U.S. sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. Moreover, enmeshment with Russia and China contradicts the goal of national autonomy, since these two are direct participants in great power contests.
Diversifying partners may also make the Philippines a less attractive security partner to Australia, Japan, or the European Union when potential donors know too well that their aid will not be used to balance China.Over-dependence on the U.S. security network is ill-advised, but weaning away from it is also not without challenges.
Another glaring issue is how the administration applies its patience. News came out last September that the administration issued a ban on loans and grants from countries that backed the U.N. probe into the country’s drug war. This affected France, from whom we recently purchased maritime assets through a government loan, and Australia, whose government we are courting to finance 6 offshore patrol vehicles. This even prompted Secretary Lorenzana to seek exemption for Australia. In the same vein that the administration has productively agreed to not hinge our foreign relations with China on the territorial dispute, so too must Malacanang exercise prudence with Europe and Australia in relation to human rights concerns.
Conclusion
First, a fine-tuning of Duterte’s foreign policy may be necessary. The current “independent foreign policy” includes diversification of defense partners, non-alignment, and China rapprochement. On diversification, it may be better to engage uncontroversial third parties like India, Turkey, and European states instead of actively courting great powers like China or Russia, who themselves are directly involved in ongoing geopolitical competition with the U.S. Another is that rhetoric must be consistent; the President’s vocal anti-American and pro-China positions undermine the credibility of non-alignment. Furthermore, a “peace-at-all-costs” outlook regarding China has to be replaced with policy that clearly identifies non-negotiables, such as demilitarization of the South China Sea.
Second, great power competition itself is driving the regional security architecture toward flexible issue-based partnerships (e.g. on arms procurement, materiel transfers, etc.) instead of alliance systems. As China and the U.S. scramble for spheres of influence, middle and smaller powers are interested in a third option: where China is productively engaged but militarily counterbalanced and where U.S. confrontational postures are avoided.
Finally, countries today face not only a challenge of defense capacity-building but also of doctrine-formulation. On one level, countries like the Philippines that distance themselves from Sino-American conflict must actively transform platforms for U.S.-China dialogue (such as ASEAN) into mechanisms for preventive diplomacy and conflict management. Mere non-alignment will have to give way to proactive brokerage. At another level is a need for rules-of-the-game between the US-China, similar to “détente” during the Cold War when the U.S.S.R and the U.S. entered into agreements like the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the Helsinki Accords. In both cases, the challenge is doctrine-formulation regarding a new regional security architecture.