As China unveiled its huge defense spending for this year, jitters reverberated across Southeast Asia that the massive budget may be used to reinforce its long-standing claim over the Spratly Islands that are also being claimed by the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
But how far can Beijing really go just to enforce its so-called sovereign rights? Will it go into war just to occupy the oil and mineral resources-rich islands on the South China Sea?
It will not, said Maj. Gen. Francisco Cruz, Armed Forces deputy chief of staff for intelligence (J-2), who came out with a paper on how the government can contain the so-called China threat and resolve the ownership dispute through pressure and peaceful dialogues.
In his paper, “Strategy of Indirect Pressure: A National Security Strategy on the West Philippine Sea [Spratlys],” the military’s top intelligence officer said the Chinese cannot risk losing their economic and political clout in using actual force just to enforce its claim.
“Economically, its [China] growing exports to Southeast Asia would suffer. Politically, China would face a concerted Asean which could otherwise serve as its partner in resistance to the human-rights pressure by the West.”
“Worse still, a possible containment against China might come into being,” Cruz said, citing also the analysis of other political and military scholars in the region.
In fact, the containment is already working with Asean members pushing for regional talks in resolving the dispute, which is against China’s position of directly talking to the individual claimants, and with the US building its greater presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
Cruz is one of the military’s brightest minds. As a colonel, he came out with an analysis on how the military can defeat the New People’s Army by incorporating civil-military operations in its campaign and where he also coined the term CNN (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front), which more than seven years later, was used by the Armed Forces.
Last year he conceptualized the first meeting of the Asean Military Intelligence Exchange whose inaugural gathering was held in the country, and became the blueprint for such meeting that will be held annually.
While emphasizing that his paper was not the government’s official policy on the South China Sea, Cruz said China’s going into war against its claimant neighbors would damage the environment that it has developed or is still developing for its full economic takeoff.
He said militarily, China will not achieve anything from an armed confrontation because it would have to deal with two fronts—across the Taiwan Strait and across the South China Sea.
As such, China is using the “gunboat diplomacy,” as evidenced by its occupation of the Mischief Reef in 1995, which is well within the Philippine’s exclusive economic zone, and last year’s incident at the Reed Bank near Palawan, as its strategy in pursuing its stake in the Spratlys.
Indirect pressure
Cruz said the country can counter China’s aggressive acts, enforce its claim and push for the resolution of the ownership dispute through the use of indirect pressure, which negates the use of military force, but employs psychological pressure, mainly through information and diplomatic maneuvers that are backed by intelligence support.
“The strategy will persuade, not to coerce; internationalize the dispute; leverage alliances; create a domestic and world opinion favorable to Philippine position; inform the world that the Philippines has the superior claim and pressure China and other claimants to accept a settlement,” he said.
The strategy should also co-opt China and the other claimants into working with the country.
As part of the strategy, Cruz said there must also be an inter-agency cooperation, and as such, a National Maritime Enforcement Agency must be put up.
“The Philippines, a coastal, maritime nation, is one of the few countries without an inter-agency maritime enforcement organization. Agencies tasked for maritime law enforcement and protection of exclusive economic zone [EEZ] work independently of each other, thus are less effective,” he said.
The maritime agency should integrate all efforts of agencies involved in the enforcement of maritime laws and in safeguarding the country’s EEZ. It should be headed by a senior officer from the Navy which has the preponderance of assets.
“The West Philippine Sea conflict is a legal, political dispute that needs a lot of calculations and out-of-the box solutions,” Cruz said, adding, “weakness in the military does not necessarily mean weakness in strategy.”
PHL interest over the Spratlys
Other than asserting its rights and sovereignty over its claimed islands in the South China Sea, Cruz said oil is a major lure for the country in maintaining its presence in the disputed territory.
He said the Philippines has the fifth lowest gross domestic product per capita in Southeast Asia and had been 97.5-percent dependent on imported oil.
Oil, which is necessary for the future welfare of the Chinese, is also the same reason that attracts China into the Spratlys.
“It will provide an economic lebensraum for millions of Chinese citizens,” he said, noting that from 667.1 million in 1960, China’s population has grown to more than double, or 1.341 billion, in 2010.
“China has 19.43 percent of the world’s total population, which means that one person in every five people in the world is a resident of China,” Cruz said.
Aside from oil, the Spratlys straddles a major shipping route.
“Much of the Philippine trade with the region is shipped through these waters. Safety of shipping, not only from natural hazards but from piracy and illegal seizures, is thus of great importance to the Philippines.
“Effective control over the Spratlys will enable a country to exert political influence on others using the sea lanes in the South China Sea as commercial routes,” Cruz said.
Dipetik dari - BusinessMirror
Resources fuel tensions in South China Sea
By MICHAEL RICHARDSON
SINGAPORE — For much of 2010 and 2011, tensions over conflicting claims to disputed islands, maritime territory and energy resources rippled through the South China Sea, embroiling several Southeast Asian states and China in disputes that also involved the interests of outside powers, including Japan and the United States.
Both allies see the semi-enclosed sea in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia as a key strategic arena, one that provides a critical trade and energy supply lifeline to Japan. After a short period of relative calm, the long-simmering struggle for control of one of the world's most important arteries for commercial and military shipping may be about to boil up again.
The current dispute is between the Philippines, and China. It focuses on the issue of which country has the authority to let local and foreign companies develop valuable offshore oil and natural gas reserves in a contested zone of the South China Sea.
In the background is the U.S., which has a long-standing mutual defense treaty with the Philippines. Are we about to see a proxy conflict between China and the U.S., the two top Asia-Pacific economies and military forces? Such a power struggle could destabilise the region and undermine its growth prospects.
The dispute between the Philippines and China surfaced again last week when Manila announced it was preparing to issue exploration licenses for 15 petroleum blocks, three of them in the South China Sea. Philippine officials said that they hoped contracts would be awarded to bidders within the next few months.
The foreign ministry in Beijing immediately protested. It said that at least two of the South China Sea blocks being auctioned by Manila were under its jurisdiction. Each of the blocks covers at least 6,000 square km. Beijing asserts that they are part of the disputed Spratly Islands, even though they are less than 150 km from Palawan Island in the southwest of the Philippine archipelago, and some 1,065 km from Hainan Island, the nearest uncontested Chinese territory.
The Philippines insists that the two blocks are not part of the Spratlys. It says that the United Nations law of the sea treaty gives it the right to control seabed energy and mineral resources, as well as fisheries, in an Exclusive Economic Zone stretching 370 km from its shores. Both Manila and Beijing have ratified the treaty.
China has long maintained a sweeping but vaguely defined claim to about 80 percent of the 3.5 million square km South China Sea. If enforced or acknowledged, the claim would make China an immediate neighbor of the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. China would also become a very close neighbor of Singapore.
The core of China's giant U-shaped claim stretching deep into Southeast Asia's maritime heart to a point just north of Indonesia's Natuna Islands is its assertion of sovereignty over three island groups, the Pratas, occupied by Taiwan, the Paracels, occupied by China but claimed by Vietnam, and the Spratlys, the main islands of which are garrisoned by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan.
China, Taiwan and Vietnam each claim the whole of the Spratlys, which spread over 729,000 square km of the southeastern zone of the South China Sea. The Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei claim parts of the Spratlys closest to their territory. But only China consistently contests the Philippine claims to energy rights in the area.
The largest single feature of the Spratlys is a 100 km-wide submerged mountain top, known as Reed Bank, in the northeast of the group. It is prime petroleum territory, coveted by both the Philippines and China.
Before the recent exploration licensing round, Manila had issued only one previous block in waters also claimed by China. This was in the Reed Bank, where a British-based firm, Forum Energy Plc, which is 64 percent owned by Philex Mining Corp. of the Philippines, has done extensive seismic surveys to determine the size of a big gas find there.
Forum told shareholders earlier this year that the block could contain 40 trillion cubic feet of gas, a bigger reserve than the nearby Malampaya gas field operated by the Shell group. It fuels half the power needs of Luzon, the main island of the Philippines.
Philex said it would comply with a work program agreed with the Philippine government, including drilling two wells by June 2013. A year ago, a survey ship hired by Forum reported that two Chinese vessels in the Reed Bank area had threatened to ram it, disrupting the seismic work. This was followed by a series of incidents, with the Philippines reporting as many as a dozen cases of Chinese vessels, some of them warships, intruding into what Manila claims are Philippine waters.
How will China react this time? Will it use its vessels to disrupt survey work, as it did against both the Philippines and Vietnam last year?
The official China Daily last week accused the Philippines of breaching the ASEAN-China voluntary code of conduct in the South China Sea and choosing "once again to be a troublemaker." China's Global Times said that it was "probably time for China to take some substantial moves, such as economic sanctions, to counter aggression from the Philippines since protests and condemnation (by Beijing) have not worked."
Meanwhile, Manila is seeking increased U.S. aid for its weak defense forces and preparing to give Washington more access to its ports and airfields to re-fuel and service U.S. warships and planes. The U.S. and the Philippines will conduct joint military training off Palawan Island late this month, focusing on how to deal with a takeover of an oil rig in the South China Sea.
The Philippines' ASEAN partners and Japan will be watching with concern to see whether a strengthened U.S.- Philippine alliance deters or provokes China.
Dipetik dari - The Japan Times Online
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