MANILA, Philippines — Chinese coast guard troops attacked Philippine troops with axes and knives last month, ramming a vessel on a routine mission resupplying a Philippine base in disputed shallow waters of the South China Sea, severing one sailor’s thumb.
A week later, the Philippines was bracing for the United States, its longtime ally and defense partner, to withdraw from global affairs as Donald Trump rises to power ahead of the November presidential election.
U.S. President Joe Biden, 81, put in a faltering performance in the first debate of the season against President Trump, 78, and the right-wing populist’s sudden rise in the election betting markets has sent panicked Democrats searching for another candidate who can come out on top in the nomination race, while many international observers are bracing for the return of President Trump and his “America First” policies.
“If the US withdraws from East Asia, weaker countries in the region will have no choice but to accept China’s carrot-and-stick hegemony,” Philippine Congressman Mark Cojuangco told HuffPost. “We will lose our territorial integrity and the US’s ‘commitment’ will always be in doubt.”
Under Trump, the Philippines was ruled by then-President Rodrigo Duterte, a similarly brash populist who railed against Washington and sought closer ties with Beijing. But increasingly aggressive Chinese actions, including claims to uninhabited islands and fishing grounds in waters internationally recognized as part of the Philippines, are forcing current President Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr. to strengthen ties with the United States.
Marcos, 66, the former dictator’s son and namesake, saw China’s push for dominance in the busy waterway as a challenge to the “open, inclusive and rules-based international order” established after World War II and which aimed to “make the floor of the United Nations the final battlefield.”
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“We are determined that humanity will survive and never again be wiped out in a holocaust,” Marcos said in a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore in May.
“The Philippines has always been part of that history,” he said. “Amid the rubble of war, we were among the architects of a new peace.”
But he warned that Filipinos “are resolute in their efforts to protect our traditions, rights and dignity as a proud and free nation.”
Philippine and Chinese diplomats met in Manila on Tuesday in an effort to ease tensions, but at the same time the Philippines is openly courting U.S. battery investors to shore up the country as an alternative source of nickel as the U.S. seeks to roll back China’s dominance in the electric vehicle supply chain.
The South China Sea, which the Philippines calls the West Philippine Sea, is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, with 60 percent of all maritime trade passing through it. China drills for more than a third of its petroleum products and two-thirds of its natural gas off the coast of the region, which is bordered by Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines.
The United States began conducting maritime patrols in 2015 that it called “freedom of navigation” missions aimed at preventing Beijing from asserting full sovereignty over international waterways. When the Duterte administration accepted Chinese military aid in 2017, Trump “did nothing to change Duterte’s pro-China policies,” said Patricio Abinales, an expert on Philippine politics at the University of Hawaii.
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Marcos is set to resume ties with the United States after taking office in 2022 and last year announced four new U.S. military bases across Taiwan. The Biden administration is seeking to bolster the defense of Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that has not been ruled by Beijing since 1895.
U.S. military officials have repeatedly said over the past year that China will invade Taiwan within the next decade, especially since Taiwanese voters elected Lai Ching-te as president, a man seen as more pro-independence than his party predecessor. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has suggested he believes the United States is trying to goad the People’s Republic of China into a risky amphibious invasion, which Western experts told Business Insider last month is part of Beijing’s strategy to drive a rift between its allies in Washington and Brussels.
At a recent international conference on Asian security in Singapore, Chinese officials confronted President Marcos and accused the Philippines of endangering regional peace. But tensions reached new heights in mid-June when the Chinese coast guard attacked Filipino sailors on their way to reinforce a rusting World War II-era warship. The Philippine government had parked its ships on a disputed reef to prevent China from claiming the island and establishing its own base there.
“I think there’s going to be a war, really,” said Carlos, a taxi driver in Pasay, metropolitan Manila, who gave only his first name, unprompted after confirming that the reporter riding in his car was American later that afternoon. “Are you guys going to support us?”
The United States has had a NATO-like defense pact with the Philippines since 1951. The United States seized the Philippines as a colony along with Puerto Rico and Guam in 1898 but liberated it in 1946 after the end of World War II. Despite ups and downs in relations over the years, Biden has cemented closer ties with the Philippines by establishing new Marine Corps units in Honolulu and Okinawa, Japan, and by having U.S. forces conduct frequent joint military exercises with Philippine forces.
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“The Biden administration has done a lot to make up for the lackluster support the Trump administration gave to the Philippines,” Abinales said in an email. “Of course, the Philippine military and the Filipino people would like to see more than joint exercises (e.g., rescue of Philippine ships intercepted by the China Coast Guard), but we remain patient.”
But if Biden loses reelection, Chinese President Xi Jinping could “easily please Trump” and pressure the U.S. to withdraw support from the ally, Abinales said.
“Given President Trump’s lack of interest in what is happening outside the United States and the strong isolationist movement within the Republican Party, Filipinos are hopeful that cuts will be made,” he said.
President Marcos recently appeared to draw a red line when he said any deaths of Filipinos in the South China Sea disputes would be considered “very close to an act of war.”
Cojuangco said it was time for the United States to “act or stay silent.”
“We have been your allies since before World War II,” the Filipino lawmaker said. “It’s time for you to show your affection for us as allies and brothers.”
