Lack of resolve invites abuse

There is an ongoing debate on how the Philippines should react in the increasingly aggressive and combative reaction to the Philippines’ insistence on asserting its ownership over the Philippine Sea. China started by using its Coast Guard ships to block Filipino fishermen and the resupply ship. Now it has moved on to the next stage of using water cannon, most recently against the BRP Teresa Magbanua.

The main issue is to what extent the Philippines will defend its territorial sovereignty. Under the Duterte regime, the Philippine response was to totally submit to Chinese aggression. There are two things that the Philippines needs to take into account in determining how to respond to these challenges to its territorial sovereign rights.

The first is that the Philippines must ultimately depend on the American commitment to help defend the Philippines. The second is to analyze and understand the consequences of not challenging Chinese incursions in Philippine territory.

The task of analyzing potential American response in the conflict in the South China Sea must take into account that this must be analyzed from the perspective of the global conflict between the Russia-China alliance versus the democracies of the world.

Historically, a reputation for weakness has invited aggression from opposing forces. For example, it is believed that Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine in 2022 after believing that the United States and Western Europe lacked the resolve to confront any invasion by the Kremlin.

It is believed that Putin arrived at this conclusion because the West did not respond to the Russian annexation of Crimea, which was at that time part of the Ukrainian nation. Then in 2021 came the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was a demonstration of Washington’s lack of commitment even to its closest allies.

Even on the day Russia invaded Crimea, US President Biden declared that Putin launched his attack to “test the resolve of the West.” Now, the United States and Western Europe are incurring significant costs sending billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine in order to prove to Putin that it is resolute and committed to its allies.

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