Brawner grossly ignorant of how we lost Panatag in 2012
First of two parts
ARMED Forces of the Philippines chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. is either grossly ignorant — or lied — when he claimed the other day that there was an agreement on June 12, 2012, during the 10-week Scarborough Shoal (Panatag to us) standoff for the “Philippine Navy and the Chinese Navy” to simultaneously leave the area, which he claimed we complied with but which the Chinese didn’t.
It is solely Brawner, who is regurgitating this false claim now, which had been the lie that the late Foreign Affairs secretary Albert del Rosario had been making, but had abandoned in 2021, after his claim was debunked by Chinese and indirectly by the US officials.
If Brawner can provide proof that he is right, and I am wrong, I will immediately stop writing as a columnist in this paper. I hope he can similarly put his money where his mouth is. As I will explain on Wednesday, the canard that China grabbed Panatag in violation of international law underlies this administration’s hostile and counterproductive stance against the superpower.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei, in his regular press briefing way back on June 18, 2012, denied that China made any agreement, taunting del Rosario to reveal who told him that there was one: “We wonder where the so-called China’s commitment of ‘withdrawing ships comes from.’” No Philippine official in the past 13 years has replied to him.
It is now an incontrovertible fact that there was no such agreement as Brawner claims. Even the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) — set up by a US think tank as a propaganda vehicle on the South China Sea disputes — in order to maintain some semblance of credibility — had to conclude that the Chinese foreign affairs vice minister Fu Ying, who allegedly agreed to the withdrawal, “only committed to relaying the ‘suggestion’ to her superiors. To some of those present, it was not obvious whether the two sides reached a deal, nor what its terms were. Communication errors multiplied because Manila was told that Beijing had conclusively agreed,” the AMTI concluded.
It was then-US deputy state secretary Kurt Campbell, the architect of the Obama administration’s controversial “Pivot to Asia” policy, who fooled the Benigno Aquino III government that he and the Chinese foreign affairs vice minister Fu had agreed on a simultaneous withdrawal of Chinese and Philippine vessels from the shoal.
Del Rosario and Aquino gullibly believed Campbell. That US official, however, was in actuality implementing the Obama-Clinton decision to end the standoff at the expense of the Philippines losing Panatag. US President Barack Obama — especially since he was running for reelection that year — didn’t want his administration embroiled in a conflict with China, which could even get out of control. Obama was worried that after denying outrightly Aquino’s plea for US intervention, Aquino would order his Navy to provoke China to force such a US move.
Campbell
Campbell had not denied that Fu’s statement made in a Financial Times article: “I do not know what agreement you are talking about. The Chinese vessels did not leave the area because they feared the Philippines might double-cross them.”
Campbell in his 2016 book, “The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia,” was silent on whether or not there was an agreement, reducing his explanation of the historic loss of Panatag Shoal to one sentence: “The Philippines’ 10-week standoff with China ultimately resulted in its loss of the Scarborough Shoal, which is claimed by both countries.”
Chinese official Fu explained that she and Campell merely had an hour’s talk about such a proposal in a Viriginia hotel in early June 2012 and that she had not even relayed it to her superiors in Beijing who had the sole authority to decide on such a major move.
Then-senator Antonio Trillanes IV, whom Aquino had appointed as back-channel envoy to the Chinese officials to resolve the crisis, also denied that there was such an agreement, and that he, in fact, was still in the midst of talks with high-ranking Chinese officials to work out how such an agreement could be implemented.
In his aide-memoire on the Scarborough crisis, a copy of which he gave me, Trillanes narrated: “PNoy (Aquino III) directed me to work on the sequential withdrawal of government ships inside the shoal.”
“However, on the morning of June 4, PNoy called me to inform me that our BFAR vessels have already left the shoal but China reneged on the agreement of simultaneous withdrawal of their ships, so two of them [were] still inside the shoal.”
“I asked him who agreed with what, since I was just hammering out the details of the sequential withdrawal because the mouth of the shoal was too narrow for a simultaneous withdrawal. The President told me that Secretary [Albert] del Rosario told him about the agreement reached in Washington.”
PNoy
“This time I asked PNoy: ‘If the agreement was simultaneous withdrawal, why did we leave first?’ PNoy responded: “Kaya nga sinabihan ko si Albert kung bakit niya pinalabas yung BFAR* (vessels) na hindi ko nalalaman (That’s why I asked Albert why he ordered the BFAR vessels to leave without my permission).” (BFAR: Agriculture department’s Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources).
In 2021, I interviewed the commandant of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) at that time, Vice Adm. Edmund Tan, on the events that transpired. He said that Aquino had ordered him to direct the two remaining Philippines Coast Guard (PCG) vessels at Scarborough Shoal to take shelter in Subic Bay “from an impending typhoon which was forecast to hit the area directly.”
“Unfortunately, when we were about to go back to Panatag Shoal after the typhoon, president Aquino directed us to stand by and hold our going back there,” Tan disclosed. He said Aquino’s order was given to him directly by him through both text messages and a cell phone call. Aquino never ordered the PCG vessels nor the Navy back to the shoal. Were the PCG vessels ever back to Scarborough during Aquino’s term? Tan replied: “No more such orders from the president.”
Since then, Chinese vessels, including those from its coast guard and navy, have occupied the shoal and patrolled its territorial sea, and has driven off — by water cannons and maneuvering of their ships — these ships attempting to approach the shoal that it claims it is the Philippines’ sovereign right to do so.
Why does the PCG and Navy still continue to undertake such risky, obviously futile attempts?
EEZ
One reason, PCG spokesman Jay Tarriela keeps saying like a robot, is to assert our sovereign rights since the shoal is within the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The Chinese, of course with their bigger vessels, have easily blocked the Philippine vessels, claiming that an EEZ — which is a maritime claim — cannot be superior to its sovereignty over the shoal.
What the coast guard and navy are doing is from the playbook of communist activists in their demonstrations: Provoke police violence to portray the state as a violent instrument of the ruling class. In the Scarborough case, it is to portray to the world that China is a “bully,” with its huge ships water cannoning and maneuvering our smaller “poor” vessels away from the shoal.
This administration, however, has a more sinister, shameful intention. It is to provoke a more violent Chinese response that would result in the loss of Filipino lives in order to draw in the US to fight the Chinese, hoping that with its superior force, the Americans will eject the Chinese from the shoal.
This is insane: The 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty clearly will not apply in cases of Philippine conflict in an area that is disputed. More importantly, the treaty was entered into in 1951 when the US was the undisputed hegemon. China was the still an underdeveloped country which would have been nuked to the stone age in case of a war with the US. It exploded its first nuclear bomb only in 1964, and since then has built up its nuclear-weapons capability to engage the US in a nuclear war. This administration is mad if it thinks that Trump will risk a nuclear war with China for the sake of this small country.
To be continued on Aug. 20, 2025
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Brawner grossly ignorant of how we lost Panatag in 2012
Source: Breaking News PH
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