Posted on 05/24/2016 5:12:55 AM PDT by Kaslin
If China begins to reclaim and militarize Scarborough Shoal, says Philippines President Benigno S. Aquino III, America must fight.
Should we back down, says Aquino, the United States will lose "its moral ascendancy, and also the confidence of one of its allies."
And what is Scarborough Shoal?
A cluster of rocks and reefs, 123 miles west of Subic Bay, that sits astride the passageway out of the South China Sea into the Pacific, and is well within Manila's 200-mile exclusive economic zone.
Beijing and Manila both claim Scarborough Shoal. But, in June 2013, Chinese ships swarmed and chased off a fleet of Filipino fishing boats and naval vessels. The Filipinos never came back.
And now that China has converted Fiery Cross Reef and Mischief Reef into artificial islands with docks and air bases, Beijing seems about to do the same with Scarborough Shoal.
"Scarborough is a red line," says Gregory Poling of the Center for Strategic and International studies. To allow China to occupy and militarize the reef "would clearly change the balance of power."
Really? But before concluding that we must fight to keep China from turning Scarborough Shoal into an island base, there are other considerations.
High among them is that the incoming president of the Philippines, starting June 30, is Rodrigo Duterte, no admirer of America, and a populist authoritarian thug who, as Mayor of Davao, presided over the extrajudicial killing of some 1,000 criminals during the 1990s.
Duterte, who has charged Aquino with treason for abandoning Scarborough Shoal, once offered to set aside his country's claim in exchange for a Chinese-built railroad, then said he might take a jet ski to the reef to assert Manila's rights, plant a flag and let himself be executed to become a national hero.
In a clash with China, this character would be our ally.
Indeed, the rise of Duterte is yet another argument that, when Manila booted us out of Subic Bay at the Cold War's end, we should have dissolved our mutual security pact.
This June, an international arbitration tribunal in The Hague will rule on Manila's claims and China's transgressions on reefs that may not belong to her. Beijing has indicated she will not accept any such decision.
So, the fat is in the fire. And as the Chinese are adamant about their claims to the Spratly and Paracel Islands and virtually all the atolls, rocks and reefs in the South China Sea, and are reinforcing their claims by creating artificial islands and bases, the U.S. and China are headed for a collision.
U.S. warships and reconnaissance planes passing near these islets have been repeatedly harassed by Chinese warplanes.
Vietnam, too, has a quarrel with China over the Paracels, which is why President Obama is being feted in Hanoi and why he lifted the ban on arms sales. There is now talk of the Navy's return to Cam Ranh Bay.
But before we agree to support the claims of Manila and Hanoi against China's claims, and agree to use U.S. air and naval power if needed, we need to ask some hard questions.
What vital interest of ours is imperiled by who owns, or occupies, or militarizes Scarborough Shoal? If U.S. rights of passage in the South China Sea are not impeded by Chinese planes or ships, why make Hanoi's quarrels and Manila's quarrels with China our quarrels?
Vietnam and the Philippines are inviting us back to our old Cold War bases for a simple reason. If the Chinese use force to back up their claims, Hanoi and Manila want us to fight China for them.
But, other than a major war, what would be in it for us?
And if, after such a war, we have driven the Chinese off these islets and destroyed those bases, how long would we be required to defend them for Hanoi and Manila?
Have we not enough war guarantees outstanding?
We are moving NATO and U.S. troops into Eastern Europe and anti-missile missiles into Poland and Romania, antagonizing Russia. We are fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and, if the neocons get their way, we will soon be confronting Iran again.
Meanwhile, North Korea is testing nuclear warheads for long-range missiles that can reach the American homeland.
And no vital U.S. interest of ours is imperiled in the South China Sea.
Should Beijing insanely decide to disrupt commercial traffic in that sea, the response is not to send a U.S. carrier strike group to blast their artificial islands off the map.
Better that we impose a 10 percent tariff on Chinese-made goods, and threaten an embargo of all Chinese goods if they do not stand down. And call on our "allies" to join us in sanctions against China, rather than sit and hold our coat while we fight their wars.
This economic action would send China's economy into a tailspin, and the cost to Americans would not be reckoned in the lives of our best and bravest.
>>Ya Pat....nothing is worth fighting for.
Are you saying that everything is worth fighting for? Do you have other posts on FR that say that major economic sanctions against China will cripple the US economy? There are some here who will say in one post that tariffs are bad and then in another post will proclaim the virtues of the “Short, but victorious, war”.
I used to wonder what would happen if Arayet would blow? We watched the sugar cane being set on fire on Arayat, always in a circle and found out later the PC and P Army were burning Communists the caught WAAAAY up there.
I enlisted during Nam, so don’t give me that all or nothing crap.
Tariffs and sanctions are not synonyms.
We need to fix our over-regulated and over-taxed policies here before talking tariffs.
>>I enlisted during Nam, so don’t give me that all or nothing crap.
I didn’t enlist for Nam, so I’m not willing to spill American blood over Filipino rocks.
>>Tariffs and sanctions are not synonyms.
Not synonyms,but they are tools in the same toolbox.
>>We need to fix our over-regulated and over-taxed policies here before talking tariffs.
Sometimes, you have to take care of more than one problem at a time. In this case, fixing one at a time is just going to counter-productive.
Are the Philippines worth a war? How about Japan?
To characterize this as “over Filipino rocks” displays amazing ignorance.
As does not know which tools to use for the job.
No, “one at a time” is NOT “counter-productive”.
You display military resolve to minimize the potential for war.
Weakness encourages bullying.
Should we back down, says Aquino, the United States will lose “its moral ascendancy, and also the confidence of one of its allies.”
Didn’t they basically kick our military out of the Philippines?
Actually, Mount Pinatubo erupted and destroyed Clark Air Base and severely damaged our base at Subic Bay. That damage had a lot to do with the leaving.
With out doubt, there were many there that wanted us gone though
So we don’t owe them a damn thing.
——So we don’t owe them a damn thing.-—
Well perhaps. The Philippines was a US territory. They lost many while being our ally during WW II. The US Navy was a prime source of Philippine jobs for many many years. They are still our ally.
There is more to life and national interest than $$$
For instance, this week, maybe yesterday, we entered an agreement with Vietnam that will allow us to have our Navy at I think Cam Ranh Bay. With the reestablishment at Subic and Cubi Point we have another base of operations.
With these two strong points, we can reassert the freedom of the South China Sea trade lanes. We have effectively flanked Chinese expansion.
Now back to the Philippines. We have several FReepers that actually live there. I have worked with many Philippine engineers and never heard a bad word about America. Supporting a friend is never a bad idea
Isolationists are a bane of conservatism
Same could be said about Cuba. Things change.
>>Weakness encourages bullying.
Perhaps Obama will give you the world war you want so desperately before he leaves office. I’m sure that someone will profit off it at the expense of everyone else in the world and profits are all that matter, right?
“They lost many well-being are our ally”
well it’s true they lost many and it’s also true they were our allies but I will caution a historical note:
The Philippines was invaded and completely taken over by Japan in World War II and a lot of them got their heads cut off.
in short the Filipino people had an extremely strong interest in expelling the Japanese, America be damned.
I like the Phillipines but i will state again we don’t owe the Filipinos anything for them having fought against an Invader to their own country:
If Russia invaded California and Californians fought them, Poland would owe California nothing.
Guy who works in Hi-Tech here.
If you try to fight a short but vicious war against China...you will lose.
China has and is making a concerted effort to take over US high tech hardware production. It is winning. Right now a lot of IC fabs are located overseas and almost all of the IC packaging houses are. We literally do not have the production capacity to produce a lot of the semi-conductors, magnetics, capacitors, display elements, etc. that are needed for a war. Most of the production house are located in Asia. China is in a position to halt the export of all of those items.
In rare earth metals, China has 94% plus of the worlds production locked up, because of cost. Yes there are significant deposits of the 17 rare earth metals in the west, but the last foundry to process them in the US was closed in the early 2000’s. Without those material you cannot make a whole host of high tech items.
Bismarck had another great quote “The issues of this age will not be settled in the fashionable salons of Europe but with iron and blood.”
Today that should be silicon, iron and blood.
We now lack the silicon side. Yes we have lots of high tech software types, but in the making side of things we are declining at a very fast rate. I have been in the business for 30 years (first design accepted into a product in 1986)and I am by no means the old man in my field, a situation I find shocking. When I started in the 1980s there were lots of young engineers and many production houses in the are I live in, most are now gone shoved overseas. In my company, which is one of the major players in high tech communications, the age of the hard ware engineers range from 43 to 65. No young guys, engineering is being shifted over to Asia because the cost advantage.
We need trump, we need a 6trade ware if necessary or we are going to be Brazil in about 10 years.
Having just retired from 45 years in “Hi-tech”, let me add some perspective.
The foundry issue you describe is a function of the regulation and taxation issues I previously addressed. I tried forcing this issue with regard to ASICs and FPGAs a dozen years ago.
Its also a policy and priority issue, as is the consequence of any engagement with China.
The notion that any encounter with China automatically escalates to WWIII, as others pretend, is nonsense.
This administration cares little about National Defense, so preparedness and capacity has not only been neglected, but undermined.
The experienced engineers and managers who would train the young engineers are being pushed out, both to contain cost and further Obama’s goal of a weaker America.
Trump needs:
John Bolton
Mike Flynn
Newt Gingrich
Rudy Giuliani
Art Laffer
Tom Cotton
a solid working relationship w Paul Ryan
Charles Payne
Ha! so we are more or less in agreement.
Except......
No one can predict how a conflict will escalate...no one.
In the civil war they thought it would be over very quickly, 3 months max.
In WWI, there was a serious argument made that Europe was so closely economically intertwined the various powers could not fight a long war...but they did.
It is quite possible we try a show of force with China or the other way around and it escalates beyond the point where either side can back down. it is a matter of face. Chinese honor is bound up with Face, perhaps less than the Japanese but not all that much less.
Were such a situation to come to pass, we are in no way prepared to fight such a war, as you seem to be aware.
So, wadda ya think about my proposed supporting cast?
But we DO have the ability to take their manufacturing OUT!
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