Foreign Undersecretary Erlinda Basilio did well to explain “Why there’s
no Asean joint communiqué” that came out of last week’s big regional meeting at
Phnom Penh.
Until I read her essay yesterday,
all I had read about was China’s going to town with its “success” at the Asean,
portraying the Philippines as an isolated state pathetically abandoned by its
fellow Asean countries, all of them bowing before China’s might and meekly
going along with the regional bully.
Basilio explodes that myth in
categorical yet sober language (and even that level of restrained candor, I am
unused to getting from our diplomats). No, the Philippines wasn’t abandoned by
its Asean neighbors who, in fact, already supported an earlier statement
circulated by Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario on the standoff at
Scarborough Shoal. One foreign minister wrote the Asean chair on the “necessity
for Asean to issue a timely statement by the foreign ministers… as our common
effort to contribute to the maintenance of an environment conducive in the
region which is of interest [to] all of us.”
The Singaporean foreign minister,
K. Shanmugan, wondered aloud on his website how the Asean “was unable to deal
with something that is happening in [its] neighborhood and not say something
about it.” In other words, it was as if the Asean pretended there was no
elephant in the room. He added: “There’s no point in papering over it. There
was a consensus among the majority of countries. The role of the chair in the
context is to forge a complete consensus amongst all. But that did not happen.”
But therein lay the problem. The
chair happened to be occupied by Cambodia, obviously beholden to China, and it
was determined to exclude any mention of Scarborough altogether. Indeed, from
Basilio’s account, it was Cambodia which invoked the chair’s prerogative to
quash any reference to Scarborough in the communiqué, in effect, a de facto
veto on the majority’s support for the Philippine position.
Whatever happened to China’s
much-touted “peaceful rise”? Since when did it become vicious, and why? China’s
leaders devised the term “peaceful rise,” later on replaced by the less
suggestive “peaceful development,” to reassure its Asian neighbors and the
United States that its breakneck economic prosperity and corresponding military
modernization should pose no threat to them, and that it was after all in
China’s interest to have peace and stability. For a while, it led to the muting
of territorial feistiness over barren islands and rocks in the South China Sea.
Basilio also exposes the canard
that Secretary Del Rosario walked out of the meeting. Far from it. (In another
report, I read that it was Cambodia’s foreign minister who walked out after the
Philippines had already accepted a draft compromise.) Indeed, the scenario was
quite the opposite. Del Rosario stayed on to say his piece. His microphone went
dead, but he continued speaking to complete the Philippine statement.
Basilio diplomatically fudges
whether Cambodian microphones usually conk out when foreign ministers speak
but, since I am not a diplomat, I am completely free to speculate that
Secretary Del Rosario’s microphone being cut off was not innocent at all.
Finally, Basilio shows that the
disagreement at Phnom Penh was narrow and specific, but the consensus that the
Philippines won was actually broad and substantial. The disagreement—the one
that stalled and finally killed the
Asean’s joint communiqué—was on whether there will be an express
reference to Scarborough. The consensus—on which basis the Asean can move
forward despite the Cambodia-engineered debacle at Phnom Penh—is on the key
elements of a proposed Code of Conduct. I have read other reports saying that
consensus affirms international law as the framework for resolving the
territorial disputes. That in itself is a major step forward.
But the real triumph there is
that the Code of Conduct recognizes the multilateral nature of the South China
Sea problem. Again, given the game of shadows that is Asean diplomacy, it might
have otherwise been wiser to hush up on this triumph. When it comes to victory,
what’s important is to win it, not to revel in it. A little humility should be
good. But the situation is different now.
The first Asean declaration
calling for a code of conduct on the territorial disputes in the South China
Sea was adopted in 1992, and it took 10 years before that declaration was
joined by China in 2002. The 2002 declaration was a major step forward, and
must have coincided with the time when China indeed took its “peaceful rise” to
heart. Today, another 10 years have passed and obviously things have changed
for China.
China has portrayed the Asean’s
failure to adopt a joint statement at Phnom Penh as China’s triumph, but it
merely succeeded in portraying it as the Asean’s defeat. In other words, by
gloating about how it prevailed in Phnom Penh, this sordid episode should
remind other Asean countries why it is so important for them to band together
against their biggest, most powerful neighbor. Already, just days after Phnom
Penh, China has upped the ante and announced newer initiatives in islands
belonging to the Kalayaan Islands Group that are covered as part of Philippine
territory under our latest Baselines Law.
In other words, China is using
the Cambodian veto over the Asean joint communiqué to build momentum not just
over the five scattered rocks at Scarborough but over the Spratly islands
archipelago themselves. We should capitalize on China’s aggressive streak to
galvanize further international support for our position. Let the Phnom Penh
meeting be one step backward, and foster global outrage to push us two steps
forward.
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