This was the fifth time in a month that China had confronted Philippine law enforcement agencies within the country’s own EEZ, as China goes all out to push the Philippines away from this shoal and others. The presence of two naval tugboats suggested China might even have been contemplating towing the Philippine vessel away after immobilising it.
China says its actions are “‘professional, restrained and appropriate”, whereas the majority recognise them as unprofessional, dangerous and inappropriate. For example, the New Zealand Embassy in Manila stated, “This latest incident, with a CCG vessel ramming a Philippine vessel, is profoundly troubling and fits a recent pattern of dangerous and destabilising actions in the region. New Zealand calls for de-escalation and compliance with international law, in particular UNCLOS.”
The USA vocalized its condemnation too. Rear Admiral Andrew M. Sugimoto, Deputy Commander, US Coast Guard (USCG) Pacific Area, said:
“We unequivocally condemn the ramming of vessels. The whole point of rules on the water is so that we don’t run into each other, and so this is a clear act of bullying by one individual that wants to exert its influences over another nation with complete disregard for the rules and the international law that exists.”
RADM Sugimoto, who was promoted to his post in July, asked which international rules condoned ramming as a measure for upholding international law, especially when collision regulations are designed to prevent vessels from hitting each other. “So it’s a little astounding to say that I’m going to break the law in order to uphold the law. It just doesn’t make sense, and I think most nations out there see that as unsafe and unprofessional conduct, which only highlights and further emphasises the bullying that is going on, right?”
The USCG rear admiral continued, “…We stand together with the Philippines and we condemn the actions of aggressive individuals that do such things as ram or try to prevent humanitarian supplies from reaching individuals resupplying their fellow citizens…” He pointed out that using water cannons to flood or sink vessels is “not what we call safe and professional operations”.
Responding to a Naval News question about the best way to counter China’s mounting aggression, RADM Sugimoto replied: “One is to demonstrate what those international rules-based orders are that are so important for us to follow, and for us to lead by example, along with our partners. It’s to point out those transgressions that occur from nations that are counter to those things, and help them understand how the rest of the world wants to operate. We can afford training in terms of legal capacity or maritime domain awareness, or even conduct joint exercises at sea so that they can see that we’re united in our will to uphold that rules-based order that’s so important.”
The USCG representative noted that global consensus does matter, and that if the world continues to condemn China’s actions, then “perhaps they’ll change the way they do business”. He elaborated: “China wants to be seen as a member of the world that has a set of rules and enforces it, but whenever they do things like ramming or water cannoning unarmed vessels, it does not appear to be so. When they uphold the rules themselves and they stand and lead by example, that’s when the rest of the world will notice that they are in fact world leaders and not bullies.”
However, this appears a forlorn hope. The CCG, along with the China Maritime Militia and People’s Liberation Army, has been exhibiting increasing aggression against the Philippines. In order to illegally grab maritime territory, Beijing is willing to pay a reputational price as the number of dangerous incidents by Chinese ships and aircraft has surged in the past 18 months or so.
At what stage could the Philippines and USA invoke their Mutual Defense Treaty in the face of such provocations? RADM Sugimoto, speaking to media by telephonic conference from the Philippines, could not answer that question, but he did say, “We stand with the Philippines and we’ll continue to work with them and, if Article IV is invoked, we’ll stand with the Philippine Coast Guard and everybody else that is a part of – that we have a mutual defence treaty with … It’s not something that I personally can specifically drive towards, but that’s the reason that we want to continue to work together – so that interoperability, our ability to have effective communications, to be able to have effective maritime domain awareness of what’s going on out there – all of those things are so that we can be as effective as possible and continue to push back against those nations that want to exert their influences solely for their purposes at the expense of other law-abiding nations.”
RADM Sugimoto, who is based in Alameda, California, said he is “grateful for the professional and truly safe way in which the Philippines has responded back to this, because it really demonstrates that this nation, the Philippines, do stand for the conduct that we all recognize is what we want in this world, and not that of the other individual that keeps bullying smaller nations.”
He said the PCG is family to the USCG. “We’re working with the Philippine Coast Guard in a number of different ways through training, through helping them with the organisation and buildout of the Philippine Coast Guard. We’ve transferred vessels to the Philippine Coast Guard, helped them with the operations, maintenance of those particular vessels. We’re looking for whatever the Philippine Coast Guard wants us to help them with. That’s what we’re here for in training, capacity building, legal structures, building out the laws necessary to support them, maritime domain awareness, any of those things.”
However, against such a backdrop, American support for treaty allies like the Philippines is under scrutiny. If China succeeds in evicting the Philippines from this shoal, or any other, the USA is in danger of losing legitimacy in the eyes of regional countries.
However, the USA insists it is providing all the assistance the Philippines wants, and that it is invested in supporting regional coast guards in capacity building and holding China to account.
The UCSG official commented on broader regional interaction: “There have been many nations that have reached out to the United States Coast Guard, and we look forward to working with each and every one of them. We’ve shifted some resources to the Pacific specifically in order to be able to meet those commitments. We’re deploying a ship called our Indo-Pacific support cutter, which is out there going around the Pacific Island nations providing training and assistance. We do patrols in the Western Pacific. We’ve had two ships this past year that have been out there conducting exercises with all of our partners – Korea, Japan the Philippines – and just recently the coast guard cutter Waesche came back from a very successful patrol in the Western Pacific.”
RADM Sugimoto said the USCG is helping in real-world operations. One example was assisting the PCG to remove fuel from the tanker Terra Nova after it sank during a typhoon in Manila Bay on 25 July. The USCG has also helped conduct search-and-rescue operations in the Pacific, offering technical advice with things such as drift patterns.
Furthermore, “…There’s this growing interest to want to work together to continue to uphold those very precious rules that we all depend on in order to be able to coexist safely and peacefully on the planet together. And there are a growing number of individuals that want to talk to us about it.”
Trilateral coast guard cooperation between Japan, the Philippines and USA will increase, RADM Sugimoto explained. “It really isn’t about one nation trying to push its points, but it’s an example of us all coming together wanting to uphold the rules-based order that we find so important in our ability to conduct commerce, to feed our citizens, to safely protect them on the waters, to protect the environment – all of those things.”
The cutter Waesche recently hosted observers from the PCG, Japan Coast Guard and Vietnamese Coast Guard for 13 days, and “we were able to highlight how we do operations, show how we want to reinforce rules-based order out there, safely conduct certain operations, help and show them what and how we do maintenance on our ships”. He said future ship-rider events are on the cards too.
RADM Sugimoto said he was looking forward to the time where we’ll “increase the number of nations that are coming together, and not just trilateral but quadrilateral or any number of others – the ASEAN nations, around the globe – in supporting these efforts as we move out.”
He reminded his audience, “There’s a lot going on in this world, and I think it’s just very important that we continue to highlight the importance of rules-based and lawful operations on the ocean, as the ocean interconnects all of us and allows us to have economies that flourish and prosper…” Indeed, he pointed out that 90% of commerce flows through the oceans.
He said the USA upholds such standards it is promulgating.
“We conduct freedom of navigation exercises or transits throughout the world. We’re a firm believer in reinforcing the right of every nation to be able to transit freely, as long as they do so in accordance with customary law and international law. It’s an important part of upholding rules-based order. Similarly…we do not aggressively harass Chinese vessels or other vessels in the world when they come north into the Arctic off of Alaska or in other places. We respect their right to transit when they want to go through the Aleutian Islands, and so we expect the same ability to do so wherever we are in international waters to be able to freely and safely navigate according to those rules that are out there.”
