manila, philippines
Among America’s Asian allies in the Indo-Pacific, the Philippines is in a unique category. Besides being the oldest defense treaty ally of the United States, the Philippines was also America’s main colonial experiment, which created deep political, economic and cultural ties. Despite this, America is now betraying the nation by its inaction in the Philippines’ battle against China.

In recent months, China has been antagonizing the Philippines and testing the limits of the U.S.-Philippine alliance.

• Last month, it prevented the Philippines from resupplying its military base at Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands.
• On June 20, a group of Chinese maritime militiamen rammed and boarded a patroling Philippine Coast Guard ship with axes and sticks. This confrontation caused one of the Filipino servicemen to lose a finger.
• On July 1, in a show of force, China sent the world’s largest coast guard vessel into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and ordered its only fully operational aircraft carrier to sail just outside the zone.

These provocative and unlawful moves by China have gone unchallenged, and they are exposing a deadly weakness in the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty (mdt). “The failure of the mdt to deter [these aggressive moves] shows the vagueness in the conveyed commitments of the two parties,” said Chester Cabalza, president and founder of Philippine think tank International Development and Security Cooperation.

The U.S. has stated that an “armed attack” on any Philippine troops, warships or aircraft in the South China Sea will trigger the mdt’s defense commitments. But China’s recent actions in the vital waterway are circumventing the operational definition of an “armed attack” by using gray-zone tactics that fall short of what officially qualifies as an armed attack. This is meant to test whether U.S. rhetoric about protecting the Philippines will hold true.

America has become an unreliable ally, and Manila is aware of that. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is reluctant to invoke U.S. defense commitments to the Philippines under the mdt. After Chinese maritime forces prevented Filipino servicemen from resupplying their base at Second Thomas Shoal, Marcos’s own executive secretary was quick to downplay the incident, saying it was likely a “misunderstanding or an accident. We’re not yet ready to classify this as an armed attack. I think this is a matter that can easily be resolved by us, and if China wants to work with us, we can work with China.”

Even President Marcos Jr.’s statements have displayed a hesitation to invoke the mdt despite increasing pressure from academia and his own government. “We are not in the business of instigating wars,” he told troops at a military base in Palawan. “We refuse to play by the rules that force us to choose sides in a great-power competition.”

What might be the reason for Marcos Jr.’s increasing unwillingness to rely on the U.S.?

Fickle Military Support

Since the mdt was signed and ratified, the U.S. has done virtually nothing to stand up for the Philippines’ claims in the South China Sea. In fact, U.S. defense officials and diplomats have often used the “strategic ambiguity” element of the mdt to avoid defense responsibilities to the Philippines.

In the early 1970s, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a champion of “strategic ambiguity” himself, said that “there are substantial doubts that [a Philippine] military contingent on islands in the Spratly group would come within protection” of the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty. Kissinger told his diplomats to give Manila only “helpful political actions” instead of direct military assistance in the event of a conflict between South China Sea claimant states.

Succeeding administrations after President Richard Nixon have echoed the same sentiment, intentionally referring to the waters surrounding the Philippines as the “Pacific” instead of the more appropriate term “South China Sea” or the “West Philippine Sea,” the specific area where greater and active U.S. presence is direly needed for the security of the Philippines. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration refused to take action when China took control of Mischief Reef.

This trend was further exacerbated during Barack Obama’s time in the White House. He repeatedly ignored questions about whether the South China Sea was part of the U.S.’s defense commitment to the Philippines. Also worth remembering is Obama’s dithering over the Scarborough Shoal incident in 2012, when China forcibly seized and militarized the island in defiance of the America-led rules-based international order.

Both the Philippines and the U.S. have sought diplomatic solutions with China over various incidents in the South China Sea, despite China’s failure to compromise in its massive territorial claims. China is able to do whatever it wants in the South China Sea because America is skirting its defense commitments as it did under Nixon, Clinton, Obama and the Biden administration. As a result, President Marcos Jr. is hesitant to invoke the mdt and is dealing with Chinese aggression largely alone.

America’s message to the Philippines is clear: You must fend for yourself. This message will soon reach other U.S. allies around the world. America’s limp-wristed response will further erode its reputation as a security guarantor and will embolden adversarial nations to push harder against the global order.

Steering Toward War

In “China Is Steering the World Toward War,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote:

The Spratly Islands are claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. China is ignoring these nations’ territorial claims. China is being aggressive and provocative. … China is intimidating the nations of Southeast Asia into submission to its will. It is forcing these countries to do what it wants. Everything is headed in the direction of war!

Mr. Flurry has repeatedly emphasized over the years that China will gain control of the South China Sea as U.S. influence in the region deteriorates. His insights on the South China Sea situation are based on Bible prophecy. Deuteronomy 27:1 and 28:52 record God issuing a sobering warning to “Israel,” referring mainly to modern America and Britain: If the people fail to turn to Him, He will give the “gates” they once possessed over to their enemies.

“Gate” in this context means oceanic choke points and key shipping lanes of strategic importance. Having control over many such locations was a major factor in the economic success of America and Britain, and it was indispensable to Allied success during World War ii. America and Britain have lost control over many of these vital sea gates in recent decades. And it is now losing access to the crucial South China Sea, including Philippine ports, to China. In the end, China will use its control of global sea gates to besiege America.

To understand more about why America is abandoning the Philippines in the South China Sea and how this will accelerate China’s rise, read “China Is Steering the World Toward War.”