The Asian Pivot - TTG

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced his "separation" from the United States on Thursday, declaring he had realigned with China as the two agreed to resolve their South China Sea dispute through talks. Duterte made his comments in Beijing, where he is visiting with at least 200 business people to pave the way for what he calls a new commercial alliance as relations with longtime ally Washington deteriorate. "In this venue, your honors, in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States," Duterte told Chinese and Philippine business people, to applause, at a forum in the Great Hall of the People attended by Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli. "Both in military, not maybe social, but economics also. America has lost."

Duterte's efforts to engage China, months after a tribunal in the Hague ruled that Beijing did not have historic rights to the South China Sea in a case brought by the previous administration in Manila, marks a reversal in foreign policy since the 71-year-old former mayor took office on June 30. His trade secretary, Ramon Lopez, said $13.5 billion in deals would be signed during the China trip. "I've realigned myself in your ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to (President Vladimir) Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world - China, Philippines and Russia. It's the only way," Duterte told his Beijing audience. (Reuters)

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I think it’s safe to say that we have been out-pivoted in the South China Sea. Yes, we are left luffing in the breeze as Xi and Duterte sail to the East on a broad reach. We can kiss off Subic Bay for good this time. I wonder how the business community of Olangapo will adjust to the inevitable future presence of the PRC Navy?

Duterte said he will stop joint military exercises with the US. He also opposes joint patrols of the South China Sea with the US. US officials insist the current treaty alliance, dating back to the Mutual Defense Treaty of 1951, remains in effect. Will the Filipino government go along with their President? How far will our government go to keep the treaty alliance and our hold on the Philippines alive?

I spent a couple of weeks in the Philippines back in 1978 during the first "Tempo Caper" joint exercise. We were based on the USS Cleveland in Subic Bay. I enjoyed it immensely, although I could have done without being knocked out of my hammock by a roaming carabao one stormy night. A year later I met my Filipino Army counterpart at my RECONDO school back in Hawaii. He greeted me like a long lost brother. I'm sure there are a lot of this kind of personal "mil to mil"relationships today. What will become of them?  

TTG 

Comments

[Pundita]

TTG, I can't find your comment to the effect that you found the discussion among various commenters on this thread interesting. But to reply to a comment that seems to have vanished -- well, you started the ball rolling, which is why I thanked you earlier. My brain has appreciated a break from chewing over country situations in the Middle East.

I hope the following excerpts from a news report today will interest you and others who've been reading this Asia Pivot thread. My comments follow the excerpts.

"Protocol on drugs with China a big boost in Philippines war on illicit substance
Gulf News
October 26, 2016

http://gulfnews.com/news/asia/philippines/protocol-on-drugs-with-china-a-big-boost-in-philippines-war-on-illicit-substance-1.1917228

Manila: The Philippines top anti-drugs executive said President Rodrigo Duterte’s recent agreement with China on curbing illicit substances will go a long way in boosting the government’s drive against the menace.

According to Director General Isidro Lapena of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), the Protocol on Cooperation on Drugs, which he signed recently with Hu Minglang, Director General of China’s Narcotics Control Bureau, will greatly enhance the government’s bilateral capability to go after drug suspects.

The protocol was signed last October 20, 2016, during President Duterte’s visit to Beijing.

“Under the protocol, which will be effective for five years, the two countries agreed to establish and maintain cooperation on sharing information on drug crimes. Such information includes an updated list and complete profile of drug suspects and status of arrested drug personalities who are citizens of each country,” Lapena said.

[...]

Both countries likewise agreed to set up mechanisms against movement of illicit drugs across their respective borders and establish a mechanism for joint investigation on special cases.

[...]

Last July, several days after his inauguration as the new Philippine President, Duterte accused China of contributing to the country’s problem on illegal drugs.

He said that his basis for making this statement is that a considerable number of the unclaimed fatalities in the government’s drive against drugs are Chinese.

“Most of the people that they send [into] the Philippines do drugs. And these include those who are already in prison,” Duterte said.

[...] "

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Bingo. Yet I doubt the Filipino military got their first indication that way; this on the supposition the U.S. would have shared intelligence with them on Chinese drug gang activities in the Philippines, which has been known to the US since at least as early as 2012.

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/41837/chinese-syndicates-behind-drug-trade-in-philippines-says-us

However, a large number of druggies and penny-ante drug dealers dumped on a country certainly suggests that drug-dealing networks are deliberately being created in the country.

In any case I hope the U.S. military has been exerting itself since Duterte's volte face to learn just how many other countries might display the same pattern of, uh, Druggie Dumping as is evident in the Philippines.

This, on the somewhat uncertain premise that the military doesn't already know. If they already know and are studiously looking the other way, or using drug dealers to provide them with intel on terrorist activity -- I'd say that's being too clever by half, if Beijing has been using drug networks to destabilize American friendlies. Of course the information in the Gulf News report isn't hard evidence that this is what Beijing has been doing, but I find it suggestive evidence.

It's just occurred to me that this Druggie Dumping is reminiscent of a DDoS attack on a computer network or website. So if the PLA is indeed using Druggie Dumping to destabilize a country, they're operating on the same principle as a DDoS. I'll be darned.

[Pundita]

Oops. Well I just found your comment. [chuckling]

[Pundita]

US wants to continue campaign against militants in Philippines
By Raul Dancel - Philippines Correspondent In Manila
Octobere 26, 2016
AFP via Straits Times

http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/us-wants-to-continue-campaign-against-militants-in-philippines

MANILA • The United States wants to remain involved in the campaign to quell militancy in the southern Philippines, its envoy to Manila said after President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to kick out US forces.

US Ambassador Philip Goldberg said yesterday that the security threat in the conflict-plagued region is "very serious", warning that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is among a number of foreign militant organisations trying to increase its involvement there.

"We've helped the Philippines as it has reduced the threat over time," he told ABS-CBN television.

"But we are concerned obviously about any new intrusion of ISIS or any other group that wants to take advantage of open space in the south of the Philippines. So we want to continue doing that."

The US deployed a rotating force of about 600 troops to Mindanao from 2002 to 2014. The presence was scaled down after the US deemed the militants had "largely devolved into disorganised groups resorting to criminal undertakings", according to a US statement in 2014.

Militant attacks spiked after that, most notably with the home-grown Abu Sayyaf group abducting foreigners and locals to extort ransoms.

Mr Goldberg warned that foreign militant groups such as Jemaah Islamiah are in Mindanao. "We are not just dealing with Abu Sayyaf but groups from the region like Jemaah Islamiah," he said. "We see increasing efforts from ISIS to become involved."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

[END REPORT]

[Pundita]

Tidewater, Thanks returned for following the discussion and contributing to it. Regarding your question, it doesn't really apply to my points because I've been thinking in purely military terms about the China-Philippines situation.

I had proposed that as part of its response to the American "Asia Pivot" China has been using drug gangs to destabilize the Philippines, and specifically because of the country's relationship with America. This way of looking at the situation moots your concern about whether the CCP can control drug gangs. The party wouldn't be directly controlling the drugs or any of the gangs, China's military would. In short, I was thinking in terms of a weaker state using asymmetrical warfare against a more powerful one.

However, since this morning, when I read an AFP report I quoted in an earlier comment, I now think my idea was too fancy. From the report, China's government seems to have simply 'dumped' thousands of their country's drug addicts and drug dealers into the Philippines -- and probably as part of Xi Jinping's famous anti-corruption drive.

http://gulfnews.com/news/asia/philippines/protocol-on-drugs-with-china-a-big-boost-in-philippines-war-on-illicit-substance-1.1917228

But whether it was a Druggie Dump or, as I'd originally envisioned, a covert military operation with PLA officers posing as drug dealers, it would work out to the same difference: the Philippines would be destabilized. This would throw a monkey wrench into Obama's perceived attempt to play Lord Nelson in the South and East China seas.

If the White House would say that wasn't what they intended to convey -- for decades China's leaders watched the U.S.-led NATO coalition expand right up to Russia's European border, and all the while telling Moscow they wouldn't do that.

Then Americans announced an Asia Pivot. This sounded to China's generals like Washington was trying to gin up a Southeast/South Asian version of NATO, to expand right up to China's shores.