Teodoro shows gross ignorance of Mischief Reef issue

DEFENSE Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. is so grossly misinformed on our disputes with China over the conflicting claims in the South China Sea, which explains his — and the Marcos 2nd regime’s — belligerent stance against the superpower.

At a session of the so-called Shangri-La Dialogue on global security issues in Singapore on June 3, he displayed his ignorance on the issue of Mischief Reef, which was occupied by China in 1994.

Teodoro evaded answering questions from several Chinese military men regarding the US use of proxies in Asia — an obvious reference to the Philippines — to maintain its hegemony in the region, just as it is doing in Eastern Europe, with Ukraine as its proxy.

Calling them “propaganda spiels disguised as questions,” Teodoro then blasted the Chinese military men, claiming they have no right to ask such questions as China has a “trust deficit” in the South China Sea.

Teodoro pointed as an example that China can’t be trusted with its building of structures on Mischief Reef in 1994 (discovered by the Philippines only in February the next year). Teodoro said the Chinese claimed at that time the structures were “temporary havens for fisher folk.” “But now you have an artificial military island, heavily militarized,” unconcerned that his “now” is 34 years when the reef was occupied by China.

Teodoro is so grossly misinformed on what happened at Mischief Reef: His narrative is based on US-manufactured media accounts and not on a comprehensive study of the issue that his Defense department should have done over an issue he considers as the Philippines biggest threat, “Chinese aggression.” This is to be expected; most of his undersecretaries are retired military men in the departure lounge of their careers. There isn’t a single official there who is an expert on China.

While there are several studies on what happened on Mischief Reef, I will base my claim of Teodoro’s ignorance not on any Chinese nor international study, but rather on a masteral thesis submitted in 1998 at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. The thesis’ title itself reveals that it is certainly not a naïve, pro-China study: “Dragon in the Shadows: Calculating China’s Advances in the South China.” The author was then-Navy Lt. Michael Willilam Studeman, who would go up the ranks to become rear admiral, and his last post before he retired in July 2023 was as director of the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Provoked

Studeman narrates that it was the Ramos government which provoked the Chinese to occupy and build structures at Mischief Reef, that rather than China, it was the Philippines which first had, to use Teodoro’s term, a “trust deficit.”

Studeman wrote: “China’s occupation of Mischief Reef was not a bolt from the blue. It was preceded by a logical chain of events beginning with a fallout with the Philippines over exploration in the northeast region of the Spratlys.

“After joint development talks between China and the Philippines over gas-rich Reed Bank broke down in early 1994, Manila decided in May to grant a six-month oil exploration permit to an American oil company. The Philippines was interested in collecting additional seismic data on the seabed southwest of Reed Bank. Manila hoped the contract would remain a secret, but news of the collaboration soon leaked.* Beijing swiftly issued a statement reaffirming China’s sovereignty over the area covered by the license, and ignored Manila’s belated invitation to become a partner in the project. Manila back-pedaled on the diplomatic front for weeks, but the damage had been done. By secretly licensing a solo exploration effort without consulting the Chinese, the Philippines had appeared to be engaging in unilateral efforts to exploit the natural resources of the Spratlys.

“Manila’s untrustworthiness proved, China decided to advance eastward to a perch [Mischief Reef] that allowed China better surveillance coverage of possible Philippine-sponsored oil exploration activity. China was forced to show it was not sleeping on its rights**. “Occupying Mischief Reef also strengthened China’s hand were petroleum ever to be discovered in the area. Though the Chinese posts on Mischief Reef were not discovered until February 1995, the advanced stage of the buildings indicated construction had begun in the fall of 1994, just a few months after Manila’s faux pas. China quietly advanced eastward because it believed it was acting in defense of urgent economic and territorial imperatives, and it was anxious to stop the plundering along its periphery.”

Strategically

US navy man Studeman had an explanatory note: “Mischief Reef is strategically positioned in the lower middle section of the Alcorn concession, enhancing the PLA’s (People’s Liberation Army) claim to potential finds in that area. Mischief is also well-placed to perform surveillance of any future oil exploration missions sponsored by rival governments.”

History repeated itself in a way when the Aquino III regime in 2011 undertook a combative stance against China, which was actuated by the same issue behind the Mischief Reef incident years ago: China’s and the Philippines’ conflicting claims over Reed Bank in the South China Sea beneath which vast deposits of oil and gas were thought to exist and could be extracted on a commercial scale.

In this case, what triggered the tension between the two countries was China’s driving away from the Reed Bank on March 2, 2011, the oil exploration vessel MV Veritas Voyager, owned by Indonesian tycoon Anthoni Salim (through Philex and his executive Manuel V. Pangilinan), Marcos’ former technocrat Roberto Ongpin and ports magnate Enrique Razon. The vessel’s mission was to confirm the existence of commercially viable oil and gas reservoirs. Among other consequences, that would have pushed up Philex’s share prices to astronomical levels that would enable its main owner, the Salim Group, to recover much of the P25 billion it had spent to gain control of the firm.

Aquino was inexplicably livid over the incident, probably as he had assured the three tycoons he would make sure China doesn’t stop the Veritas Voyager. In his State of the Nation Address on July 25, 2011, he announced his next move to prevent the Chinese from stopping Philex’s exploration in the Reed Bank. He said he was studying “to bring the case to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.”

That plan came to pass. With the assistance of the US State Department, that “case” evolved to be the Philippines’ arbitration suit against China under provisions of the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea filed in January 2013 that was heard and decided by a five-man panel of arbitrators.

Debacle

That suit turned out to be catastrophic, a debacle*** not just for the Philippines but for other claimants, mainly Vietnam.

The suit, among others, claimed that the seven features, including Mischief Reef, that the Chinese controlled since 1988 and 1994 in the Spratlys were merely reefs, which are not entitled to an exclusive economic zone nor even to a territorial sea. The Chinese retaliated: “Whatever you call these, whatever the panel decides, we’ll turn these into islands.”

The Chinese didn’t just sit on their asses condemning the arbitration. They “established the facts on the ground,” as has been practiced often in territorial disputes: i.e., a claimant strengthens its claims by strengthening its hold, its facilities on the disputed area.

Right after the arbitration was filed, the Chinese went on a massive reclamation work to transform each of these seven reefs into huge artificial islands with ports, military accommodations and airstrips long enough for military transport planes to land.

The suit did not just give the Chinese body politic the excuse to spend huge resources — $100 billion by one estimate. It revealed that the US was powerless to stop the Chinese project, since after all they claimed they had all the right to do whatever they wanted in their territory.

Teodoro at the Singapore conference, of course, demonstrated total ignorance of the events that transpired in the 18 years after China first built havens for fishermen in Mischief Reef and its building of an artificial island on the reef — provoked by Aquino III’s arbitration suit, which the US designed to demonize China as not complying with international law.

* The permit was actually given to the local firm Alcorn Petroleum, which had partnered with the US oil exploration for Vaalco Energy. The “leak” was actually the Alcorn chairman’s announcement of the Ramos permit made at a stockholders’ meeting in order to boost its share prices — not an uncommon practice among listed oil exploration firms in Manila at that time.

** This was especially so as China in 1992 passed its Law on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, the first time in the modern era that the Spratly Islands (referred to as the Nansha Islands in Chinese), along with other island groups such as the Paracels (Xisha Islands), were categorically declared as part of China’s sovereign territory. Before this law was passed, its sovereignty over these groups were only implicit in that these were included in China’s official maps.

*** For details and sources, read the 2021 book “Debacle: The Aquino regime’s Scarborough fiasco and the South China Sea arbitration deception,” available at www.rigobertotiglao.com/shop, Fully Booked, and amazon.com.

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Teodoro shows gross ignorance of Mischief Reef issue
Source: Breaking News PH