Tuesday, May 2, 2017

China And The U.S. Are Fighting For Influence Over The Philippines

From Forbes (May 2): China And The U.S. Are Fighting For Influence Over The Philippines

Eight months ago Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte called his former American counterpart Barack Obama a son of a whore. Throughout much of last year, after his June 30 inauguration, the notoriously outspoken Duterte told the United States in just slightly less coarse language to quit helping his Southeast Asian country with military aid. He resented Washington, a former colonizer of the Philippines, for criticizing his deadly anti-drug campaign.

Now look who current U.S. President Donald Trump just invited to the White House.

Duterte hasn’t accepted the invitation and has hinted at taking a pass. He's busily making friends with China, Washington’s chief political and military rival in Asia. China pledged $24 billion in aid to the largely impoverished Philippines in October. Washington never offered such a wide-reaching package, some Filipinos argued then. Beijing and Manila still dispute tracts of the South China Sea, a reason Duterte's predecessors preferred the United States. Boats from both Asian countries intensively fish the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea. The two governments hope to strike oil or gas under the seabed.

Duterte likes China so much he may have let Chinese vessels explore off the Philippine archipelago’s Pacific Ocean continental shelf last year. Only Manila claims sovereignty to that tract. Following a few flaps over maritime sovereignty in March and April, China on Monday docked three warships on a goodwill visit to Duterte’s hometown Davao. The president suggested the two countries might jointly patrol the Sulu Sea where the Philippines is trying to squelch the Abu Sayyaf terrorist-slash-Muslim-rebel group.

The U.S. president who just passed his 100th day in office hasn’t come out with a solid policy on the South China Sea, analysts in Asia say. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hinted in January at an eventually stiff anti-China stance, but Trump is trying to work with China now on containing the North Korea threat. Beijing claims about 95% of the resource-rich sea, covering parts of exclusive economic zones normally controlled by Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam as well as the Philippines. China has the region’s strongest military, which it’s prepped to deploy on some of the sea’s islets that it has landfilled over the past half-decade, a Washington-based think tank says.



In defending the invitation to Duterte against critics of his anti-drug campaign, the White House said Sunday it hoped to solidify an Asian alliance against North Korea. Washington may ultimately try sustain a military protectorate relationship in effect with Manila since colonization ended in 1946. Duterte scaled that back last year by canceling joint South China Sea patrols that irritated Beijing. The arrangement gives Washington a Southeast Asian base to monitor and resist China’s expansion.



Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (C, wearing cap) disembarks after visiting the guided missile frigate Changchun berthed at the Davao international port on May 1, 2017. (MANMAN DEJETO/AFP/Getty Images)

China’s growing influence in the Philippines – something that Duterte’s predecessors strongly resisted – makes it hard if not impossible for a U.S. president to stick the archipelago in its back pocket again. “I would not anticipate that Duterte will seek assistance from the United States going forward,” says Carl Baker, director of programs at the think tank Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu. That’s even after Duterte said last month he would improve structures on nine Spratly Island features his country controls but that China claims. “I think he is pretty confident that China is not going to protest too strongly to the efforts being undertaken to make the existing features more habitable.”

The two superpowers may end up living with each other’s bids to influence Manila. Southeast Asian neighbors Indonesia and Vietnam already play both sides with little incident. You never know when you might need one more than the other.

“I think for both sides, China and the U.S., as long as the Philippines is not a source of challenges for either of them, they will be fine,” says Jay Batongbacal, director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea at the University of the Philippines. Tolerance would break down, he says, only “if the Philippines is seen as causing trouble. The way China views, it’s the Philippines that causes trouble in the South China Sea. From the American perspective, it’s more of the Philippines trying to draw it into the South China Sea against China.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2017/05/02/china-and-the-u-s-are-fighting-for-influence-over-the-philippines/#16861de04c48

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