US military should play no part in Duterte’s bloody ‘reckoning’ with China
Doug Bandow says if the Philippines president insists on armed conflict over Scarborough Shoal at some point, he cannot expect the US to do the fighting
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is threatening a “reckoning” with China over the disputed Scarborough Shoal. Military misadventure by Manila could drag the US and its other allies into a catastrophic conflict over Filipino interests of minimal importance to America.
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China is at odds with many of its neighbours over control of islands and waters throughout East Asia. Among the bitterest spats is that with Manila over Scarborough Shoal. In July, an international tribunal ruled for the Philippines. However, China refused to participate in the case and has shown no inclination to retreat.
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Duterte is open to talks, but only based on “that arbitral judgment”. He seemed ready for conflict, announcing, “there will come a time that we will have to do some reckoning about this”.
“I guarantee to them, if you are the ones who enter here, it will be bloody and we will not give it to them easily. It will be the bones of our soldiers and even my own.”
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In Duterte’s imagined reckoning, he almost certainly does not expect most of the blood to come from Filipinos. That’s where Americans are supposed to come in. After all, Manila doesn’t have much of a military. The Philippines spends less than one per cent of GDP on defence. That is why it wants to borrow the US military in any conflict. The two nations purport to be allies under the Mutual Defence Treaty of 1951. Alas, the pact is “mutual” in name only. The Philippines’ only job is to let America defend it.