South China Sea : How the Philippines Win in the South China Sea?

South China Sea : How the Philippines Win in the South China Sea?

The Philippine Islands has a problem. It has international law on its side in its quarrel with China over maritime territory, but no policeman walking his beat to enforce the law. That means that, despite an international court’s findings, the dispute over rocks and islands off Philippine shores is far from over. On August 2, China’s defense minister, Chang Wanquan, even said China must prepare for a “people’s war” at sea. That leaves strategy as Manila’s lone recourse; yet China overshadows the Philippines in every imaginable metric of national power.

Anti-China protestors, in front of the Chinese Consulate in Makati, Philippines, on July 12, 2016

But as I wrote in 2012, when South China Sea tensions were heating up, while the Philippines has “no chance of winning in combat” with China, “it may win a peacetime confrontation.” The hope for Philippine leaders, then as now, was to conjure the career of Fabius Maximus, the Roman dictator nicknamed “Cunctator,” or “the Delayer.” Fabius advised confounding antagonists through inventive strategy and tactics, constructing alliances to augment strength, and remaining united and resolute at home.

The Delayer spoke from experience. Greek historian Plutarch relates how Fabius envisioned combating Hannibal, who “burst into Italy” across the Alps in 218 B.C. and went on a rampage. Romans, accordingly, granted Fabius emergency powers to repel the threat. Fabius appeared unperturbed despite the menace in Italy’s midst. He reasoned that given time, Rome could amass power sufficient to vanquish the invaders. So he abjured efforts to crush the Carthaginians in an afternoon and postponed a battlefield decision.

The International Tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration came out with a ruling later that day on the dispute between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea.

The Fabian playbook is essentially this: 1. Exercise self-discipline, subduing your passion for quick victory. Refuse to fight a stronger foe on its own terms. 2. Keep your alliances robust, supplementing your strength. 3. Tend to the home front, sustaining political unity for a prolonged struggle while husbanding the sinews of national power. And 4. be patient. Let the foe exhaust its fervor over time, yielding an acceptable peace.

It’s likely Fabius would have smiled at Manila’s courtroom triumph. It’s precisely the sort of stratagem he would have deployed when confronting a power mismatch. Unable to dissuade a muscle-bound China through diplomatic persuasion or overpower it through economic or military might, Philippine officials took their case to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which last month struck down Beijing’s claim to de facto ownership of most of the South China Sea—including much of the Philippine “exclusive economic zone” (EEZ), the offshore belt of sea where coastal states enjoy exclusive rights to harvest natural resources from the water and seafloor. Most strikingly, the jurists pronounced Beijing’s map of Southeast Asia, which bears a “nine-dash line” enclosing most of the South China Sea and delineating waters where China claims “indisputable sovereignty,” as bunk.

Under the doctrine of indisputable sovereignty, China would make the rules governing seaborne endeavors in the South China Sea. The logic behind China’s stance was simple: the warrior who does battle on unfamiliar ground fights at a marked disadvantage relative to the warrior fighting on home ground. China wants to keep prospective foes like the U.S. Navy from knowing the theater’s physical terrain and underwater geography, and to keep them from working with Southeast Asian allies before the outbreak of war. If successful, it can cripple its rivals operationally.

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