(NEW YORK) MintPress — Twenty years after the Philippines voted to close the Clark Air Base and the Subic Bay Naval Base, America’s largest overseas military installations at the time, Manila is cozying up to Washington, launching two weeks of joint war games on and around the island of Palawan in the South China Sea.
The exercises, with the code name of Balikatan, Filipino for shoulder-to-shoulder, symbolize the close historic ties between the two countries. On a practical level, with more than 6,000 troops conducting mock beach invasions and live-fire practices, they allow relatively inexperienced Philippine troops to learn from American expertise and afford the U.S. a chance to bolster its relationship with one of its staunchest allies in Asia.
“Given the international situation we are in, I say that this exercise, in coordination with all those we had in the past, is timely and mutually beneficial,” said the Philippines’ Armed Forces chief Jessie Delosa.
“The conduct of this annual event reflects the aspirations to further relations with our strategic ally, a commitment that has to be nurtured, especially in the context of the evolving challenges in the region.”
Noticeably absent from his remarks: The word China.
Territorial dispute
The joint maneuvers come amid a standoff between Manila and Beijing over the long-disputed Scarborough Shoal, a string of rock outcroppings near Luzon Island, which the Philippines claims is part of its exclusive economic zone and China maintains was mapped as its territory as far back as the 13th century.
The latest tensions began on April 8, when Philippine surveillance aircraft spotted Chinese fishing boats near the shoal. The Philippine Navy sent its largest warship to search them, but two Chinese ships blocked them. The Philippines eventually let the fishermen leave and replaced the warship with a smaller boat. Beijing also pulled out one of its ships, but Manila later accused it of sending another boat to the area.
On Monday, a Philippine Coast Guard official said the situation was “stable.” “We have two missions,” asserted President Benino Aquino III. “One, not to escalate the situation and, two, to protect our sovereignty.”
Vested interests
Beijing in fact claims nearly all of the South China Sea, part of the Pacific Ocean, which stretches some 1,300,000 square miles from Singapore to the Taiwan Strait, but five other countries, especially the Philippines and Vietnam, claim parts of it too.
The dispute, one of the most heated in Asia, is not about who actually owns the various islands strewn around the area but who has the right to tap what are believed to be vast oil and gas deposits under the seabed. For the United States and other countries, the issue is making sure the waters, which carry about half the world’s trade, are free for shipping.
While diplomatic efforts have kept the conflict in check in recent decades, the Philippines and Vietnam said last year that China was becoming increasingly aggressive in staking its claim to the sea.
Although Aquino said that Balikatan had nothing to do with the Scarborough Shoal dispute, the Philippine military confirmed that some of the drills will be held in waters facing the South China Sea.
U.S. military shift
The war games also come as President Barack Obama embarks on a new defense strategy. In January, he announced a shift in policy driven by three realities: the winding down of a decade of war in the Middle East, a fiscal crisis requiring that hundreds of billions of dollars be cut from the Pentagon budget and a rising threat from China and potentially North Korea.
As a result, said Obama, the military will steadily shrink the Army and Marines and reduce troops in Europe, rely more heavily on Special Operations forces and coalitions with allies, and shift its focus to Asia.
Indeed, the head of the American forces taking part in Balikatan, Brigadier General Frederick Padilla, said the war games were part of Obama’s military plan for the region.
Beijing reaction
That plan has not gone over well in China. Especially in view of the latest U.S.-Philippine maneuvers. On Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin criticized the exercises, saying “The major trend of the time in this region and peace and development. Military exercise does not represent the major call of the times.”
And an article in the People’s Daily online, a website run by the official newspaper of China’s Communist Party, highlighted domestic resistance in the Philippines to Balikatan. “As in the past years, the exercise has also reignited anti-American rhetoric,” it said.
Leftist groups, who also opposed the invasion of Iraq, burned an American flag at the U.S. Embassy in Manila on Monday, asserting that the Philippine government was demonizing China to justify giving Washington a bigger military presence in the country.
But it’s not clear whether Beijing for its part intends to address its own combative position in the South China Sea. According to Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, China advisor for the International Crisis Group, “China’s maritime policy circles use the term ‘Nine dragons stirring up the sea’ to describe the lack of coordination among the various government agencies.”
It looks like there could be rough waters ahead.