Emergent Strategies and Tactics in the Asia-Pacific
By Col Dencio S Acop (Ret), PhD | Date 04-15-2024
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS — As global security developments unfold, it has become increasingly clear in no uncertain terms that the world is now divided between the reigning liberal order led by the United States and a revisionist authoritarian order led by China and Russia.
The implications are wide and profound. First, each order is the complete opposite of the other. Second, the nature of each order is dictating the strategies and tactics adopted by proponents. And third, each side thinks it can win. A pawn in the Big Powers chess game?
Some say the Philippines may become a pawn in the dangerous chess game between the United States and China.
This could be the perfect narrative from some people supporting the Chinese propaganda, particularly former president Rodrigo Duterte and his followers.
When he was in power from 2016 to 2022, Duterte tried hard to appease China, saying he would not go to war because the Philippines would surely lose.
He may be right. China has the largest navy and air force in the world, possesses an arsenal of nuclear weapons, and its ground forces dwarf the Philippines’ less than 100,000 army.
However, conventional wisdom suggests China will not go to war with the puny Philippines, which has only two guided-missile frigates and four operating light fighters.
The Philippines will not last 15 minutes in case an armed conflict erupts.
What would prevent a conflict is the “ironclad” support given by the United States, the country’s former colonial masters, under the 1952 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), which obliges Washington to defend Manila in case of an armed attack on its public vessels, aircraft, and personnel anywhere in the Indo-Pacific region.
Other like-minded countries are expected to help, such as Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and European powers like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
The coalition of democratic states is enough deterrence.
Besides, the international law and the rules-based order are squarely on the Philippines’ side.
The 2016 arbitral ruling repudiated China’s nine or ten-dash-line claim on the South China Sea, denying China its legal basis to excessively claim areas outside its exclusive economic zone and far beyond its borders.
Admiral John Aquilino, the commander-in-chief of the US Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, has described China’s actions in the disputed waters as “illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing.”
China’s gray zone tactics have been testing the limits of the United States’ patience as it intensifies coercive actions in the disputed waters.
In its latest incursion into the Philippines’ sovereign waters, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel intercepted a Philippine survey vessel and a Philippine Coast Guard ship just 35 nautical miles off the Pangasinan coastline, a blatant violation of the country’s exclusive economic zone.
What was China trying to prove? Was it a solid reaction to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s meeting with US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the United States?
After the trilateral summit in Washington, the Philippines won strong support from the United States and Japan, promising to help modernize the country’s antiquated and obsolete military capabilities.
The Philippines operates a fleet of World War II-vintage vessels and Vietnam War-era aircraft. It has started to acquire short and medium-range missiles, upgrade its air defense radars, and fly unmanned surveillance drones.
There is no comparison between Ukraine and the Philippines.
Russia was building a buffer zone against the US and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies when it invaded Ukraine two years ago.
China has already created a buffer zone by building several man-made islands in the Spratly Islands and has been intruding into the sovereign waters of Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
China is more determined to reunify with Taiwan, with force if necessary, because it considers the self-rule island as its renegade province.
Taiwan is the missing piece in its ambitions to retake all Chinese territory after annexing Tibet and getting back Macau and Hong Kong from European powers.
It has grand ambitions to supplant the United States not only as the world’s biggest economy but also as the global mightiest military power by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party takeover of China.
By ruling the world, China avenged its 19th-century humiliation when the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and even Portugal cut up China’s coastal territories.
The only similarity between the Philippines and Ukraine is the amount of attention the world has given Manila in the face of Beijing’s bullying.
Japan, the Philippines, and the United States held their first-ever trilateral ministerial meeting of foreign affairs, defense, and national security establishments.
The meeting came as the three nation’s leaders held their inaugural trilateral summit.
In Washington, Japan and the United States promised to help the Philippines strengthen its defenses to protect its sovereign interests.
Although the announcement was short on specifics, the United States and Japan knew what the Philippines badly needed: coastal defenses, long-range fires, integrated missile defense, maritime surveillance, and armed drones.
Two US lawmakers quickly responded, filing a measure to provide $500 million a year in military aid from 2025 to 2029 to build a minimum credible defense capability.
The $2.5 billion funding for equipment transfers under the Foreign Military Financing in the proposed Philippine Enhanced Resilience Act of 2024 (PERA) is a mini-Ukraine assistance.
That is the only reference to the Ukraine invasion.
A war with China is remote, but a Ukraine-like military aid is possible.
In chess, the pawn could be promoted to a stronger piece, a queen, to win a game.
The first implication from the evolving global security scenario that must be understood is that the authoritarian world order is vastly different from the liberal order the world has known since World War II.
The Cold War showed the world the wide gap between the two orders. For a time, the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the economic revival of China, with the help of the United States, were thought to work towards world peace and not against it.
Realizing that authoritarian states cannot be made democratic is more accurate than ever. Along with its grim addendum: If democratic states do not go to war, the opposite must be true. What are the wide and profound differences between the two orders? One, country decisions are not made by the peoples of undemocratic nations but by their dictatorial leaders.
The predominant goal of party or individual dictatorships is to remain in power. The issue with this characteristic is that the interests of those in power take precedence over those of the governed populations. And the problem with this arrangement is that this domestic policy eventually becomes the foreign policy. The ways and means by which the local leadership treats its own people extend to how the national leadership deals with other states with competing interests.
Second, authoritarian leadership is exclusive more than inclusive. Again, this worldview extends to both domestic and foreign policies.
Third, while the liberal order respects the moral code, the authoritarian order does not. It is the liberal order that has sustained world peace through mutual dialogue championed by the United Nations since World War II. Authoritarian states believe more in ‘might is right’ dealings with other states.
The critical difference is that while mutual negotiations allow for a win-win resolution of disputes, coercion by the strong inflicted on the weak results only in a win-lose scenario.
The probability of an escalation toward conflict is almost an assured outcome of strong-arm conflict resolution.
The second implication of the evolving global security scenario is that the nature of each order is dictating the strategies and tactics adopted by proponents. The liberal order has truth-based strategies and tactics.
The other does not, merely relying upon its own version of what constitutes the ‘truth.’
In his public appearances, US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral John Aquilino identifies China, Russia, and North Korea as threats to the reigning world peace. In non-equivocal terms, the US military leader said that China has been unilaterally imposing its illegal Ten-Dash Line in the South China Sea, impeding freedom of navigation and violating the international rule of law.
To follow through with its unilateral claim, China has been using its coast guard, building artificial structures, and chasing away Filipinos from their own exclusive economic zone to showcase that it ‘owns’ the South China Sea. It has also done provocative acts with other states in similar situations like Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan. While China is a signatory to the UNCLOS, it does not abide by it nor the 2016 arbitral ruling invalidating its now Ten-Dash Line historical claim. Its narratives regarding offensive actions against Filipino soldiers resupplying a Philippine defense outpost at the Ayungin Shoal in the West Philippine Sea have been utterly misleading and often untrue.
Russia, for its part, illegally invaded Ukraine, and the two are still locked in a war to this day.
It has defended its invasion using baseless accusations. Still, it is common knowledge that Russia did so to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, safeguard its border, and retaliate against Ukraine’s increased levy of Russian oil and natural gas running through its pipelines. Another aggressor, North Korea, continues to fire ballistic missiles into the Japan Straits in a show of strength against its long-time adversary South Korea but also provoking neighboring country Japan. It says the volleys are tests, but it has long used these acts to assert itself apart and away from the ambit of the liberal order.
The actions of Russia over Ukraine have served to encourage China in its aggressive acts in and around the South China Sea.
As enunciated by Admiral Aquilino in his interview at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, China, and Russia are now in an ‘unlimited partnership’ whose alliance extends to North Korea.
If the number of alliances and countries of like values is to be a gauge of what constitutes witnesses to the truth, these current numbers must be telling. The alliances of the liberal order led by the United States are: the North Atlantic Treaty (29 countries), the Agreement Between the US and Australia and New Zealand, the Philippine Treaty, the Southeast Asia Treaty (7 countries), the Japanese Treaty, the Republic of Korea Treaty, and Rio Treaty (22 countries).
On the other hand, China’s and Russia’s alliances are mostly bilateral with those of other authoritarian states.
China resurrected the once-moribund Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, straddling border countries across Europe and Asia. China and Russia have a much smaller number of countries supporting them following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s territory-grabbing in the South China Sea. The civilian and military leaders of the US, Russia, and China all articulate the actions of their forces as primarily aimed at preserving world peace. But primed to take action and win if all efforts to preserve peace fall short. The latter part is probably truer, as it is becoming more evident, as days go by, to see how profoundly dissimilar each defended world order is to the other.
Finally, the third implication of the evolving world security comes down to a fight. Conventionally, decisive victory on the battlefield can be a possibility. But not in the nuclear sense. No one wins in a nuclear war. Everyone eventually loses in a nuclear holocaust whose level of destruction is vastly disproportionate to the problem it tries to resolve.
The conventional order of battle, however complex, can still be predictable. First, superior intelligence in its accuracy, timeliness, and reliability is key as this knowledge of the threat is based on the operational elements of battle that will be arrayed to defeat it.
Then, offensive action will come from the least distance and travel time to take out key strategic enemy targets: communications centers (to isolate), command centers (political, strategic, operational, tactical – to behead), firepower centers (to eliminate immediate threats), logistical centers and lines of communications (to disrupt combat support and combat service support), population centers (to demoralize), and send in boots on the ground via sea and air invasion (to conquer and mop-up).
Generals and admirals will array their forces long before the invasion or counter-invasion. The location, placement, and disposition of these forces will depend upon the evolving geo-political scenarios and possibilities, including weather forecasts, intelligence and counterintelligence forecasts including deceptions, and anticipation of allied supports. The intensity and length of anticipated battles will forecast the quantity and quality of needed logistics down the road. Sources of needed resources must be mapped beforehand and, their supply chains must be protected.
The cause for which each side will be fighting for provides a substantive psychological edge, allowing both combatants and non-combatants to power through no matter the costs ahead.
In World War II, the Allies believed they fought a just war against the immoral forces of fascism, imperialism, and totalitarianism. The evolving global security scenario today does not seem too dissimilar from that world scenario of 79 years ago. Imperialistic aims encouraged Russia and China to act the way they did. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and invaded Ukraine in 2022. China built a large artificial island and other structures ‘over coral reefs and islets inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea’.
The UNCLOS already established the EEZs in 1982, ten years before China came up with its own law claiming the entire South China Sea. Moreover, China lost its claim in a 2016 arbitral ruling in favor of the Philippines. Thus, moral and legal ascendancy lies with the Philippines and all adherents to the rule of international law in the South China Sea territorial disputes.