My Take | Dangerous game with huge stakes being played out over tiny shoals
In maritime disputes, the Spratlys and Paracels are a military buffer for China, and the Philippines is becoming a proxy for the United States
Beijing and Manila have been embroiled in multiple maritime clashes in recent months over the BRP Sierra Madre, a manned and rusting Philippine naval vessel that ran aground on the Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands, the Nansha Islands in Chinese.
On Monday, coastguard vessels from the two countries collided at the nearby Sabina Shoal.
This immediately led to an offer by the US Indo-Pacific Command to escort the Philippine Navy in resupply missions, thus potentially bringing the world’s two superpowers into a regional conflict, if not worse. The US proposal has been floated before, but now it’s openly on the table.
The ball is now in Manila’s court – to decide whether to escalate and risk being crushed between two superpowers, or resort to a more peaceful status quo ante.
Does any of this make sense? No, at least not for the reasons given by the three countries, nor from most news reports about the two sides trading barbs.
To try to make some sense of what, in the worst scenario, could spell the end of you and me, it may be worth your while to study a map of the South China Sea and locate new US or joint US-Philippine military bases that have been set up or are being upgraded since Ferdinand Marcos Jnr came to power in June 2022.