Donald Trump strongly feels that U.S. security alliances in Europe no longer serve Washington’s long-term interest. In his view, the U.S. is being “ripped off” by wealthy countries that can afford to pay for their protection but choose to rely on the United States instead. He also says much the same thing about the U.S. military presence in Japan and South Korea.
Curiously, though, the Philippines is different. U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently visited Manila and reaffirmed Washigton’s “ironclad” commitment to protect the Southeast Asian country against “China’s aggression.”
Ray Powell, director of the Sealight initiative at Stanford University’s Gordian Knott Center for National Security Innovation and host of the “Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific Podcast,” joins Eric and CGSP Southeast Asia Editor Edwin Shri Bimo to discuss why the national security team in Washington remains appears to be more committed to the Philippines than other alliance partners.
Show Notes:
- Apple Podcasts: Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific? hosted by Ray Powell and Jim Caruso
- 60 Minutes: China rams Philippine ship while 60 Minutes on board; South China Sea tensions could draw U.S. in
- The Diplomat: What Southeast Asian Countries Can Learn from Vietnam’s History of Negotiating Territorial Disputes with China by Khang Vu
About Ray Powell:
Ray Powell is the Founder and Director of SeaLight, a maritime transparency initiative at the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University. His work focuses on increasing awareness of maritime security dynamics, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. He is also the co-host of the podcast “Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific?”, which explores key geopolitical issues affecting the region. Ray served 35 years in the U.S. Air Force, holding key diplomatic and operational roles worldwide. His assignments included posts in the Philippines, Japan, Germany, and Qatar and combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also served as the U.S. Air Attaché to Vietnam and the U.S. Defense Attaché to Australia, strengthening military-to-military relations and advancing U.S. strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific.
Transcript:
ERIC OLANDER: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China Global South podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander, and this week I’m joined by CGSP’s Southeast Asia editor, Edwin Shri Bimo. Good morning to you, Edwin.
EDWIN SHRI BIMO: How are you? Good morning. I’m good.
ERIC OLANDER: It’s great to have you on the show. Today we’re going to be talking about what’s going on in the South China Sea. Now, this is an issue that has fallen off a lot of people’s attention over the past several months because of all the drama that’s been happening with the tariffs with the United States and Donald Trump and all of that and everything that’s going on now between the U.S. and China. Meantime, there are a lot of events that have been happening in the past few weeks in the South China Sea between the Philippines and China, and that’s what we want to bring you up to date on today. So let me just give you a few kind of scene settings of what’s been happening over the past week or two just to kind of lay the groundwork for what we’re going to talk about today. We had another near collision last Sunday near the Scarborough Shoal between the China Coast Guard and the Philippines Coast Guard.
Let’s take a listen to how Philippines media covered the event.
SOUNDBITE: Another near collision between Philippine and Chinese ships in disputed waters. The Philippine Coast Guard said a Chinese Coast Guard vessel on Sunday engaged in reckless and dangerous maneuvers when it attempted a head-on collision with the PCG’s BRP Cabra near the Scarborough Shoal. The PCG adds it was only through the seamanship skills of the BRP Cabra’s crew that averted the two ships from colliding.
The PCG also says the presence of the BRP Cabra has effectively pushed the Chinese Coast Guard vessel further away and is now located approximately 92 to 96 nautical miles off the coast of Caponis Island. China is claiming the whole South China Sea, a claim that had been rejected by an international tribunal in 2016.
ERIC OLANDER: What’s interesting is that these types of collisions was something that was happening with a lot of frequency last year. And remember, we also saw a lot of the videos and, you know, live streams coming from these collisions. That was something the Philippines called the Transparency Initiative.
They’ve stopped doing that. So they don’t have as many influencers on board. They don’t have as many journalists on board.
So we’re not seeing these collisions or near collisions take place and kind of fill up social media. And that’s one of the reasons why you may not have heard about some of these things that are going on. What’s interesting, though, was a couple of days later.
So that was at Scarborough Shoal. Then a couple of days later on Wednesday of last week, the Chinese issued a statement that said that the China Coast Guard, and this is very interesting wording here, allowed and supervised a Philippine resupply mission on Wednesday to a warship illegally grounded at what they called Gennai Reef, and that’s the Second Thomas Shoal, in the South China Sea. Now, the reason why that wording is interesting is because this whole idea of them allowing and supervising implies, again, that they have the sovereignty.
The Philippine reading on this resupply of the BRP Sierra Madre, if that sounds familiar to you, that’s that old decrepit warship that’s kind of grounded on the Second Thomas Shoal, which serves as Manila’s territorial claim in that part of the South China Sea. And again, the Philippines have a totally different reading of this. But they did acknowledge, though, that the resupply mission went ahead last week.
So that was a positive thing because we did not see any confrontation. But then at the end of last week, the Chinese Ministry of Defense issued another statement critical of the United States. And this is, again, an ongoing theme of what the Chinese are doing.
And Senior Colonel Zhang Xiaogang, he’s a spokesman for the China’s Ministry of National Defense. And let me read you his statement here. He said, the U.S. is meddling in the South China Sea, undermining China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, and attempting to threaten and coerce China. This approach will simply not work. Here’s the interesting part. To the Philippine side, relying on foreign support to, quote, make waves at sea will backfire and being a pawn will only be used and discarded.
It’s interesting because one of the narrative points that the Chinese are now amplifying is this idea that the Philippines is simply going to be discarded as a partner of the United States. Picking up on some of the rhetoric that people have been talking about vis-a-vis the U.S. in Ukraine, for example, and Donald Trump’s questioning of alliances around the world. And so the Chinese are really trying to amplify this notion that the Philippines is going to be just like those others.
While this is all happening, and Edwin, I’m really excited to get your take on this, the Philippines is undergoing an arms buildup, the likes we have not seen, at least in my lifetime. $5.5 billion just approved to purchase U.S. F-16s. The Philippines also took delivery of two South Korean warships and 20 Australian advanced drones were donated to the Philippine Coast Guard.
And that’s going to help them improve their domain awareness capabilities, particularly in the South China Sea, using drones. So Edwin, this is a story you’ve been following quite closely, particularly on these arms deals. Tell us a little bit about what you’re seeing out here in the region.
EDWIN SHRI BIMO: Yeah. What we have, what we have previously, is that the Philippines have weaker equipment and hardware in military terms. But on the soldier’s side, on the men’s side, they are battle hardened, but they are weak in equipment and hardware.
So just recently we have news that they are buying, their request, quote unquote, got approved that they will purchase this F-16 Block 70 or 72. They are just receiving one Corvette of two and this drone, high capacity drone. What interesting is that all this equipment is a leap in terms of capability of the Philippine military.
And not just that, it’s not the fighter jet, the Corvette and the drones, it’s what they can do. It’s their equipment, it’s their capability. It’s way above the equipment that the Philippines has.
So I’m interested and I think it’s interesting to see how those equipment, when they arrive and when they are operational, changes the military calculation, changes the tactical and strategy calculation of the military situation in the South China Sea, especially in the Scarborough Shoal and the Second Thomas Shoal. And how would that be changing the whole situation, the whole tension there? It’s very interesting.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. Well, Edwin, you’ve asked precisely the right questions for our guest today, Ray Powell, who is the director of the Sea Light Initiative at Stanford University’s Gordina Knott Center for National Security Innovation. He is also co-host of the Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific podcast, an excellent podcast co-hosted with Jim Caruso.
And he’s joining us from Northern California this evening. Thank you so much for staying up late with us, Ray. Great to have you back on the program.
RAW POWELL: Great to be here, gentlemen. Thanks so much.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, Edwin raised the issue of all these military purchases that the Philippines are making. I went through some of the rundown of just the past few weeks. A lot of people are not paying attention to what’s going on in the South China Sea now because of all the bigger issues that are going on in the world today.
Let’s just start with your assessment as somebody who follows this very closely. And again, full disclaimer, it’s not a secret. You’re very critical of China’s position and much more sympathetic to the Philippines’ perspective on all of this.
But give us your take on what you’re seeing right now in the South China Sea in terms of the tensions between the Philippines and China.
RAY POWELL: Sure. When we saw maybe back last summer is when things really came to a head. And back then there were really two big issues that came up.
One, of course, was this issue over Second Thomas Shoal and that decrepit ship. And you saw in the summertime in June, there was that really dramatic showdown where you had Chinese Coast Guard out there with bladed weapons and ramming into Philippine boats. And there was a Philippine sailor who lost a thumb.
It was very dramatic. And it seems like that kind of forced both sides to take a very deep breath. And they came up with, as you noted, this very strange truce by which each one claims something completely different is happening.
So China claims, well, we’ve got everything we wanted. They only get to resupply when we say so. They have to give us advance notice.
The Philippines says, no, we’re not really doing any of that. We get to do what we need to do. And somehow being able to go forward with these two very different narratives seems to work for everybody.
And it seems like nobody wants to go back to where they were. So that seems to be at kind of a steady drumbeat. Every 45 days or so, there’s another resupply.
These two completely different messages come out and everybody kind of goes on. So that’s that. The other thing that was happening last summer was we had this very odd standoff at Sabina Shoal, where the Philippines went out and they took a, you know, one of their larger Coast Guard ships and dropped anchor and stayed there for about five months throughout the summer.
And there were a lot of dramatics around trying to get that resupplied. There was, in fact, a 60 Minutes crew from the United States that was on one of the ships that was rammed during an attempted resupply mission. And eventually the Philippines, you know, ship pulled anchor and left because, frankly, they were running out of supplies and it was just too hard to keep it resupplied.
And in that case, actually, the fact that the ship could float as opposed to the one at Second Thomas Shoal, which, of course, is too rusty to float, kind of worked in China’s favor because they could always say, look, you can always just leave. And eventually that’s what happened. So those two situations in the Spratly Islands have kind of settled down.
And now most of the action is up around, as you said, Scarborough Shoal, where you’ve had this close encounter with Chinese helicopter, where you’ve had this near ramming. All of these things have been happening as China has actually strengthened its position around the Shoal and is now trying to keep the Philippine ships a lot further out.
EDWIN SHRI BIMO: Yeah, that’s interesting. So they kind of have this understanding truce, but it’s still happening still in the Scarborough Shoal and in the Second Thomas Shoal. But here in this location, they’re still happening, although it’s on the Coast Guard level, but still the tension jitters.
RAY POWELL: Yeah. So the truce was localized to Second Thomas Shoal. So essentially what was going on at Second Thomas Shoal, where was this, you have this ship out there that cannot float.
Right. And there are Marines and sailors aboard the ship that have to eat. They have to get medicine.
They have to get water. They have to be rotated. All of these things have to happen every month or two.
And that was where all of the dramatics were happening. And, you know, last summer was essentially where during that very dramatic encounter, where they seem to mutually decide that maybe we shouldn’t invite sort of disaster every time the Philippines wants to do a resupply. So they came to this agreement, but that was simply for that one location, Second Thomas Shoal.
Scarborough Shoal, there is no such agreement.
ERIC OLANDER: I guess let’s just cut to the chase here and pick up back up where the Chinese Ministry of Defense statement was kind of talking about the Philippines being a pawn of the Americans. That’s not a new line. We’ve been hearing that for quite some time, but it takes on a different resonance now, given the kind of the perceptions of the United States here in Southeast Asia, in Vietnam, in Cambodia, they are literally facing existential threats to their economy because of these tariffs.
You know, I wrote earlier this week that this has traumatized the region. I mean, we’re looking at real economic, massive dislocation if these tariffs go through. And at the same time, there’s a lot of confusion after listening to Donald Trump talk about the European alliances.
There’s concern that the United States is going to bail on AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command. He has disparaged the relationship with South Korea and Japan in terms of those alliances, saying that the Americans are being exploited. It understandably raises a lot of concerns among Southeast Asians, particularly those in the Philippines, wondering will the United States back its security relationships with the Philippines that makes all of this possible?
Because without the United States behind the Philippines, the asymmetry in the military power between the Chinese and the Philippines is obvious to everybody. Give us your perspective on all of that, where the United States standing is in this part of the and whether or not the security alliance between the United States and Philippines still has the weight that it did in previous presidencies.
RAY POWELL: Yeah, Eric, you know, so one of the really remarkable things, and I agree, I mean, things are chaotic, right? And honestly, very few people in Washington, D.C. know what’s going on. In fact, there may be nobody who knows what’s going on except for Donald Trump.
And of course, that changes from day to day. So a lot of people are trying to sort of suss this out. Having said all of that, the Philippines, I think, does take some solace in the fact that it is actually being treated pretty special by the administration and has been sort of even under the Biden administration has got a lot of extra attention.
And I think that they can credit to a large degree the fact that they did and continue to some degree to have this transparency program because it has been so blatantly obvious the kind of pressure that they’ve been under. And so when Secretary Hegseth, as you mentioned, was recently in Manila, Manila has received assurances that not only is it going to get all of the aid that it was promised, there’s constantly new announcements that are being made, like the announcement around these F-16s, like the announcement that they would be deploying the Nemesis missile, which is an anti-ship missile, during some upcoming exercises.
So the relationship with the United States in the Philippines is actually moving kind of full steam ahead.
ERIC OLANDER: So if I could just stop you there, why do you think that is the case in terms of the US-Philippines relationship? And we never hear Donald Trump talking about how he’s being ripped off by the Philippines. They’re not paying their fair share.
We don’t hear any of that. And yet, he’s doing that with Japan. Even Taiwan, he does that with as well as Japan.
Why is Philippines special in this case?
RAY POWELL: Well, I think a couple of things. One, of course, is I think that Donald Trump’s impressions of Japan go back decades, right? I mean, he had problems with Japan in the 80s.
He was worried about them dumping cars into the United States. He has a perception that the United States is providing all of the security for Japan, which is a rich country, and Japan should be providing its own security or at least paying the United States for it, right? So he has a long-formed view of Japan.
Of course, that also has applied to South Korea, which he also associates as being a fairly wealthy country. I don’t think he looks at the Philippines through the same lens. Secondly, again, I think you really do have to continue to credit the Philippines Transparency Project because of the way that it’s brought its plight sort of front and center.
And people who watch television and see these images get the impression of this plucky little nation that’s standing up to the big China, right? And so, you know, that can’t help but make a difference in people’s impressions.
EDWIN SHRI BIMO: Those incidents escalate to really military ones, as in, although still skirmish, but one bullet shot at the other country’s military vessel means a declaration of war, as far as I understand. But would that escalate this tiny little country compared to China go that far in terms of their sovereignty in those shows that they claim?
RAY POWELL: Yeah, obviously that’s a concern, right? You have to be concerned. The reason that you are concerned is because there is a treaty alliance between the Philippines and a major nuclear power, and the antagonist is another major nuclear power, right?
So you have to be concerned about that. Having said that, I don’t think that China wants to go to war. I don’t think it wants to go to war anywhere, even Taiwan.
I think that China believes that it can get what it wants, short of armed conflict, and it looks at armed conflict as being something that it doesn’t really want to risk. So I think that China will do what it takes to deescalate carefully. Now, having said all that, it’s very interesting to watch China around these kinds of incidents.
China, if it does deescalate, will try to deescalate in a way that works out in its favor, right? And it tends to believe also that other countries want to deescalate even more than it does. And so it’s very, very good at sort of watching how the board is set, seeing if it can’t use its adversary’s desire for deescalation as its own advantage to reset the board in its favor.
But ultimately, President Marcos, when he was at Shangri-La last summer, said that the death of a Philippine sailor, he would consider that an act of war. And everybody paid attention to that, right? Because that was the first time something had been enunciated.
And I think that’s part of why the June incident in which the Philippine sailor lost a thumb got everybody’s attention.
ERIC OLANDER: But do you really think that the United States would go to war with China if Article 5 of the 1952 Security Treaty was activated by the Philippines? The politics in the United States now are so fractured and divided that war requires a national consensus. And I think it would be a hard sell to the American public to go to war with the world’s most powerful Navy over some rocks in the South China Sea for a cause that a lot of Americans may not fully understand.
And so I think that’s part of the Chinese confidence in pushing this, is that they don’t believe that the Americans would actually go to war for the Philippines. Taiwan, you can make an argument over silicon chips. Japan, Korea, you can also make a very compelling argument.
But the South China Sea, I think a lot of people, a lot of Americans and certainly the Chinese have their doubts that the United States would fulfill its security alliance by going to war. What do you think?
RAY POWELL: Well, this is, I mean, Eric, this is the eternal question, right? I mean, there’s good reason why it’s one that doesn’t get answered very often, if ever, right? So, you know, when has the United States in the post-World War II era ever had to sort of make that determination?
So, you know, it really is an important question. And in the end, it’s a political question, as you’ve implied. There’s no court that’s going to, you know, the Philippines can’t then go and take the United States to civil court and sue the United States for not honoring its treaty commitment.
Now, what is the cost to the United States if it is perceived to have failed to do that? Well, of course, every country on the planet that has a treaty alliance with the United States all of a sudden has to wonder, what is that piece of paper worth, right? So, it is a…
ERIC OLANDER: That’s what’s happened. That’s literally what’s happening right now, given the breakdown of the relationship with Europe.
RAY POWELL: Yeah. And, you know, the rhetoric, of course, has been extremely troublesome, right? And to some degree, there is a belief that, you know, that Donald Trump looks at himself as operating in year zero, that nothing that happened before really has a bearing on what he does because he didn’t decide to do it and other previous presidents don’t really matter.
So, yes, it is a key question. Now, the flip side is really ultimately deterrence depends on the adversary being convinced or at least have enough doubt in their minds that the United States is both willing and able to act on its treaty commitments. I still believe that Xi Jinping, you know, deep down would not want to try to test that proposition too far.
So, the things that I would watch for instead would be that he would try to continue to do things below that threshold, right, in the gray zone, as we call it, to see how far he can put you. Is the United States really going to do anything if I do this? What if I build a structure at Scarborough Shoal?
What if an encounter at sea ends up in the death of a Philippine sailor? Will the United States really go to war over the death of one sailor? Right now, we’ve been seeing these aerial encounters, which are probably some of the most dramatic.
If a Philippine aircraft goes down, I think that those things would be more likely to end or to result in a diplomatic crisis than a military conflict.
EDWIN SHRI BIMO: From Southeast Asia, looking out to the South China Sea dispute, we’re most looking at this bigger, muscular boy in dispute with smaller, weaker boy. And the neighbors are, you know, are going in the middle and stop. You still have your dispute, but don’t escalate it to a fist match because you’re going to lose your name, you’re going to lose the fight.
But now, the smaller guy gets much more sophisticated weapons, and they have the sovereignty to do that when they can because they are buying it. What makes the Southeast Asian looking out worries is that if that happens, if this, that’s my analogy, but now let’s go to China and Philippines. If the Philippines decides that, okay, this is too far, we are going to defend ourselves and use these weapons that we have to fight back.
We’re going to lose, but we at least fight back. I mean, that incident alone would, event alone, would tear down all the economic security situation in this whole South Asia to China, because millions of Southeast Asian are working in South Korea, Japan, even China. Would that be an event that we need to worry about?
The Philippines decide to use those weapons and escalate because sometimes war are started by accident or by incident that everybody can.
RAY POWELL: You know, I, so I think that the, the wars that start by accident are the exception, right? I think that for the most part war start because people want to go to war. And I am still under the strong impression that neither China nor the Philippines wants to go to war.
And I think in a fairly strong way, they don’t want this. So I am more sanguine about the possibility of war than I am the possibility of sort of quiet capitulation, right? That eventually, and I think that this is what China wants is they want, and they want this in Taiwan, they want this in other places.
They want somebody to come into power, somebody after Marcos, or if we’re in Taiwan after President Lai, who is more pliable and will, you know, they’ll say, look, you know, if you want to relieve the pressure, you can just make a deal on this and that and the other thing. And, you know, I think they actually thought that they had that, you know, they had that with President Duterte. I think they thought they had that with President Marcos and then President Marcos pulled a little bit of a surprise on them and didn’t go the way that they thought he would.
I also think it’s important to look at things from the Philippines perspective when you look out at the rest of ASEAN is the Philippines perceives that ASEAN has kind of abandoned it, right? That ASEAN looks at the Philippines and sees them under all of this pressure and they get support from the United States, they get support from Australia, they get support from the Europeans, they get support from Canada, they get support from Japan and ASEAN says nothing. And I think that there is, you know, just looking at it from their perspective, I think that that’s what they feel.
Look, you know, we are a member of ASEAN and we are clearly being bullied by this large power in our own exclusive economic zone and we’re getting no help from ASEAN. So, you know, while ASEAN looks at the Philippines and says, you know, why can’t you stop making trouble? The Philippines like we’re not making the trouble.
We’re trying to mind our own business. The trouble has come to us.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah, it’s interesting. We spoke with Kang Vu, who’s a Vietnamese political scientist at Boston College. And he wrote an interesting article in The Diplomat a few weeks ago contrasting how the Chinese are responding to Vietnam, who is actually engaging in territorial expansion in the South China Sea, and to the Philippines, who’s only trying to defend their existing boundaries.
And yet the reaction to the Philippines by the Chinese is orders of magnitude more intense than it is towards the Vietnamese. His theory is that because the United States is involved with the Philippines and the Vietnamese are going this alone and the Chinese are reacting to that. So, I just thought that was a really interesting kind of contrast.
RAY POWELL: I read that article. I thought it was interesting. You know, I spent three years in Vietnam there at the U.S. Embassy. And in fact, I was there during China’s island building campaign from 2013 to 2016. And I think the Vietnamese were looking at us Americans saying, hey, you’ve got a plan for this, right? And we really didn’t.
No, not so much. So I think it’s more complicated than that. I mean, I think that there is something to the, for example, the relationship between the Vietnamese Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Party.
I do think that the fact that the Philippines has a U.S. alliance does inform China’s view of the Philippines. And I think that Vietnam has taken advantage of the situation to a certain extent because China is preoccupied with the Philippines. They have not really been able to figure out how to sort of, or decided that it wanted to take a strong stance against Vietnam’s island expansions and island building.
So, I think it is interesting. The other thing I think to keep in mind is, to a large extent, geography played against the Philippines in that the Philippines, within its own exclusive economic zone, has this large number of reefs that, you know, whereas where we’re talking about Vietnam, we’re talking about reefs that are outside of exclusive economic zone. So, you know, all the way back 10 years ago, actually, if you go all the way back to the 90s, China lays claim to Mischief Reef, smack in the middle of the Philippine exclusive economic zone.
And that has sort of put the Philippines in this really tough situation. And then, of course, then in 2012, basically takes over a second feature in the Philippine exclusive economic zone in Scarborough Shoal. And this has really brought things home to the Philippines, I think in a way that’s more extreme than any other claimant, because everybody else is dealing with something out there, maybe within their claims, but not within their own EEZ.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. And just to be clear that the Chinese also did live fire exercises on their side of the border of the Gulf of Tonkin to express some displeasure with the Vietnamese. So, it’s not that the Vietnamese are getting a full pass as they are.
I’d like to get your take on a speech that’s by former Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo, that’s been making the rounds on social media. Now, this is about Taiwan. So, it’s not about the Philippines, but the principle here is very interesting.
And I’d like to put this into a Philippine context. And the essence of what he’s saying is that in 10 years from now, China is only going to get stronger. So, there’s an incentive to negotiate some type of resolution now, because it’ll only be harder in 10 years.
Let’s take a listen to what former Foreign Minister George Yeo said, and then Ray, I’d like to get your reaction in a Philippine context.
SOUNDBITE: If I were Taiwanese, think about this. In 10 years’ time, China will have almost a certain counter-strike capability against the US. So, at a conventional level, they may not prevail.
At the nuclear level, the risks are too high. At that point, the pressure on Taiwan, political, military, economic pressure, is bound to grow. So, therefore, the status quo is a ticking bomb.
To say, keep the status quo, is to say, let it tick. It will not take forever. In 10 years’ time, you’ll be ticking much faster.
Lee Kuan Yew had always taken the position that it is better for Taiwan to negotiate with the mainland earlier rather than later, because the longer you wait, the weaker your relative negotiating position. But of course, there are Taiwanese who believe that maybe if you wait long enough, something will happen to the mainland. Some big struggle in the Communist Party, a new civil war, and then a path for Taiwan to escape and become independent.
But you cannot base policy on such a possibility. It’s too dangerous. It may happen, but it’s not a high chance.
Policy cannot be based on that.
ERIC OLANDER: Ray, you’re a military man, 35 years in the US Air Force. You understand the politics of power. The Chinese are getting stronger.
As Edwin’s pointed out, the Philippines are buying weapons, but nowhere near the capacity of what the Chinese will have or have today. Do you see some parallels in what George Yeo is saying in terms of Taiwan to the Philippines?
RAY POWELL: — So, I’ve got a couple things to say about that. One is, it’s always easy to tell another country what they should do to negotiate away things that they have to a larger country, right? If somebody tried to tell Singapore in a similar circumstance, well, you should just make a good deal.
Just give away a little bit of your sovereignty, and things will work out. I guess the second thing is, what is the history of aggressive expansionist states being satisfied with just a little more, right? You can over-interpret, say, 1930s Nazi Germany or those kinds of things, or 1930s Imperial Japan, but you give them just a little bit, and that doesn’t seem to be enough, right?
So, the question is, if you negotiate something away, and you say, what do you get in return, right? Do you get a promise that will be nice to you later, right? What did that get Hong Kong?
Hong Kong was supposed to have 50 years of one country, two systems. In the end, when you wake up in five years, and all of a sudden, the country wants more, where does that push you, right? So, we had another Singaporean diplomat, or former diplomat, Vilahari Kauskan, who you probably heard from a few times.
He’s very well-known in the diplomatic community and think tanks. He had a different take. He couldn’t understand why Taiwan wasn’t taking its own defense more seriously, sort of aligning himself.
ERIC OLANDER: That’s been one of my questions too, actually.
RAY POWELL: And kind of aligning himself, if you will, with a recently confirmed Elbridge Colby, who is now the Undersecretary for Policy at the Pentagon, who said, why isn’t Taiwan spending 10% of their GDP on defense, if the threat is that serious? So, for the Philippines, I think that gets to be the problem, is that everything you give away, it does not satiate the appetite of the hungry shark, right? The hungry shark’s just going to be hungry again.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. Edwin, let me put that question to you. The Nantuna Islands, off the coast of Indonesia, are contested between Indonesia and the Philippines.
Do you think that Indonesia would negotiate a resolution to the point where they might have to sacrifice the Nantuna Islands, the way that Giorgio is suggesting that Taiwan should negotiate, and potentially the Philippines might also want to do something similar?
EDWIN SHRI BIMO: No, because as far as I know, Indonesia does not have any territorial dispute with China.
ERIC OLANDER: The Nantuna certainly does come up in this territorial dispute.
EDWIN SHRI BIMO: Yeah, as in the sovereignty area, the 12 miles and et cetera, Indonesia doesn’t have any of that problem. What Indonesia have problem is that the exclusive economic zone, it overlays with what China thinks. And on that basis, it’s not territorial as in sovereignty, but the issue is this area, Indonesia has the sovereign right to exploit for our benefit.
And if you claim, then we are at conflict, but not to the extent of territorial integrity. Maybe it’s similar or a conflict in the exclusive economic zones. So it will not escalate to a military standoff or coast guard standoff, but a game of cat and mouse perhaps.
And it’s very often a Chinese coast guard provoking or bullying Indonesian research professors.
RAY POWELL: If I could, let me suggest this. I was just in Kuala Lumpur a couple of months ago at a conference, and there was a Chinese diplomat who was having a question and answer. And I tried to ask him three times in a public setting, whether the five Spratly islands that are occupied by Malaysia are islands that China claims indisputable sovereignty over.
And three times he refused to answer the question. And the reason, of course, as we all know, is because of course they do. Right.
You know, we hear it all the time. And, you know, China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and quote, relevant waters, whatever that means. So the answer is, of course they do.
But they didn’t want to say it because they haven’t got there yet. And my point was, it will come for you. And I was talking to Malaysia, of course, it will come.
It’s not your turn. When is the last time China ever gave up on a claim? So it’s easy to sort of look at the Philippines and say, we know what you should do.
You know, you should just make a deal with China. You should just give away a little more of your sovereignty. Everything will be fine.
Eventually it’ll be Malaysia’s turn and they’ll have to make those decisions.
ERIC OLANDER: But isn’t that fitting for the time that we’re in right now, where we’re in a period of great power politics, where literally the United States is at least rhetorically shifting back into an imperialist mode, talking about acquisition of Canada and Greenland and deploying troops into Panama and revival of the Monroe Doctrine. You know, that rhetoric is not rhetoric we’ve heard. I’m 55 years old in my lifetime in any meaningful policy context.
But maybe we’re back in a period of where the big powers get to push around the smaller powers. So this indignation that you’re suggesting about the Chinese and Southeast Asian, the South China Sea, well, maybe that’s just the times we’re in today.
RAY POWELL: Well, so what you’re also referring to is kind of we’re at this inflection point where a new rising power is now challenging what has for a few decades now been the sole superpower and is no longer the sole superpower. And, you know, talk about the Thucydides trap and those kinds of things. But ultimately, you know, we are returning to a time of great power competition.
And as you recall from the Cold War or maybe from the Cold War history books, their countries made very difficult decisions. The time of the post-war, post-Cold War order is really kind of an historical anomaly, right? I mean, to have, first of all, a large superpower that basically stood astride the world like Colossus and at the same time made these really odd choices to essentially be a benign imperial power, right?
You know, I mean, you could you can argue that the United States made its mistakes and has fair share of sins and all the rest of those things. But for the most part, there was this Pax Americana. It was, generally speaking, a relatively peaceful time, to the extent to which the United States thought maybe we’d reached the end of history and we could just take our post, you know, our what we call our peace dividend, stand down our military and make a lot of money.
But unfortunately, the world failed to cooperate.
ERIC OLANDER: Iraq and Afghanistan kind of sucked a lot of that money away, that peace dividend. Well, I was I was in both places. Yeah.
Well, you know that. So, again, you know, the trillions of dollars that should have gone to American infrastructure investment in our own domestic economy ended up going into wars that didn’t really produce a whole lot, despite your best effort, you know, to that.
RAY POWELL: Although I will say, Afghanistan, we didn’t necessarily start.
ERIC OLANDER: No, fair enough. Edwin, we’re going to wrap up with you. Go ahead.
EDWIN SHRI BIMO: Yeah, this is personal. What I’m worried about, I think a lot of Southeast Asian worry about. We have this.
How do you call it? Cultural, cultural characteristic. And when you’re weaker and you get bullied, you you shut up.
And when they keep bullying you, you shut up. But when you come to the red line, you run amok. That’s where the term come from, amok.
Amok is that you just don’t care about anything else. You just fight back, although you know that you might lose. But that if that kind of thing happens at the grassroots level, it will change the whole calculation and the whole consideration of the situation in a neighborhood.
Taking that to a country level, we’re worried that of the Philippines getting bullied all these times come to a certain point that no more. We are going to run amok on you, although we know that we will lose in this battle, in this combat. And this is what we will fight back.
We will no longer take this bully. I mean, this is what me looking out that worry about. And if that happens, all the ceilings, all the workers, millions of them, all the trades will come to a halt.
That’s really worried me. So please help me assess that on on this geopolitical and military level.
RAY POWELL: Yeah. So I’m not sure if what I’m going to say is going to be that comforting. You know, I’ve been around for a little while.
I was in the military, as as Eric said, for three and a half decades. And do you know what? The next war never happens the way you think it’s going to.
Everybody will be staring at the thing that everybody thinks is going to be the next thing. And it’ll come completely out of left field. It’ll be something that nobody was looking at.
So the world is just an unpredictable place. And, you know, events have this way of befuddling us and taking us completely off stride. So there will be events over the next 12 months that nobody is looking for.
I mean, look at the look at the current thing that we’re all in over tariffs. Right. I mean, did anybody have, you know, this level of a tariff war on their bingo card?
125 percent tariffs on China or is it 150? I’ve lost track. What day of the week is it?
I don’t know. I mean, so, you know, events have a way of sort of taking us by surprise. So we tend to muddle through a lot of things and then get waylaid by the thing that nobody’s looking at.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. Well, let’s wrap up just looking forward a little bit. One of the things that we’ve noticed in terms of watching what Taiwan China is doing with Taiwan is the level of military engagement has just skyrocketed a lot.
And in part, some of the thinking goes is that China is making the calculation that if the Americans are not going to back Ukraine, as they’ve promised, even though they’ve spent billions already on Ukraine and even though there’s partnerships with the Europeans and listening to what Donald Trump has said about Taiwan and at the same time tariff Taiwan and has raised doubts as to whether or not he would protect Taiwan in the event of a conflict and his pursuit of a deal with China may be more important than anything else.
The Chinese feel they’ve got a lot more room to maneuver, not only in the Taiwan Strait, but possibly in the South China Sea. With that in mind, going forward and watching this divorce between China and the U.S. economically that appears to be happening right now, do you anticipate more military engagement in the South China Sea? And I call militaries the maritime militia, the Coast Guard and the PLA Navy all wrapped up into one.
Or do you think that the Chinese will maybe pull back a little bit because they know that the Americans are distracted and just kind of let this thing run? How do you look at the next 12 months?
RAY POWELL: I think that things are at kind of I think that things are kind of a sustainable static point at this point, even though there are, you know, incidents that make the news, they are not nearly as serious as the ones we saw last year. And I think that China is beginning to focus very much in on Taiwan. And but again, I’m not as obviously everybody should be concerned with an invasion.
But I still think the most likely thing that we would see around Taiwan is an escalation short of armed conflict. So, for example, what if we began to see as part of one of these military exercises, China decides to turn around a few LNG ships, liquid natural gas. Taiwan is is desperately dependent on imported liquid natural gas.
And that only gets in by ship. That’s the only way to get that stuff. And China says, look, I’m sorry, we’re in the middle of an exercise and now we’re going to be, you know, turning around your ship.
Or they say and during in the process, let’s say they, you know, they their Coast Guard boards, a couple ships say, hey, we’re just going to carry out a routine safety inspection for this ship going into Chinese Taipei, right, as they would call it. And we found out that you’re not really meeting standards. And so we’re going to have to look at more ships coming in.
And all of a sudden there is an escalation. Is the United States going to act because they’re turning around a few ships? Is anybody else going to act?
No, but that turns the screw a little tighter. There’s nothing that’s forcing China to invade right now. And there are so many other ways that I think they still think they can get what they want.
If, as long as they keep their time horizon a little further out.
ERIC OLANDER: And you see the Philippines is at this operating level that we’re seeing now, that’s probably going to continue for the foreseeable future.
RAY POWELL: Unless China sees some need to push the envelope, right? I don’t see that, that, that impulse coming from the Philippine side. I think the Philippines has kind of reached a point where they’re getting their supplies through to Second Thomas Shoal.
They’re sort of, if you will, the battle lines have hardened a little bit and everybody kind of hunkers down in the trenches. And again, there might be a few sexy pictures from time to time, but nothing that sort of rises to the level of pushing them closer to armed conflict.
ERIC OLANDER: Okay. Well, just before we go, I’d love for you just to give us a little bit of a plug and tell us about the podcast. Why should we care about the Indo-Pacific that you do with Jim?
Tell us kind of what, are you focusing mostly on the Philippines or is it the entire Indo-Pacific? Tell us a little bit about what you guys are doing there. So, because I know a lot of our listeners are always looking to find new podcasts to put into their playlists.
RAY POWELL: Yeah. You know, we’re having a lot of fun doing it. We do try to take in the entirety of the Indo-Pacific, but of course, as you know, that is a very, very large place and it’s hard to hit every place.
You know, we’ve done a couple of Indonesia episodes. We’ve done some, we’re going to be releasing a Vietnam one. We just did one on Japan that we released this week, but then we do topical ones as well.
We were, of course, trade is right at the top of the list right now, but we’ve done them on the South China Sea. We’ve done them on say, you know, naval buildups and those kinds of things. So, we try to cover both topics and countries and specific issues as they come up.
We started just over a year ago and we just released, we’re releasing right now our episode number 70. So, yeah, I mean, it’s been a lot of fun. We’ve got a lot of really interesting guests.
We’ve had one of our most interesting, we had the outgoing ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel. We had Commander of Pacific Air Forces, General Schneider. We’ve had former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull.
So, we get some pretty interesting guests, some of whom have got some very interesting and provocative opinions. And then at the end, we try to tell a story because both Jim and I spent a long time in the military and the foreign service respectively. And it’s amazing how many interesting, illuminating, and sometimes just funny stories come out of spending that much time in public service.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, we will put a link to the podcast in the show notes and we’ll also put a link to your Twitter handle and then what you’re doing over at Sea Light. Ray Powell is the director of the Sea Light Initiative at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation and also the host with Jim Caruso of the Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific podcast. Links for all of that will be in the show notes.
Ray, thank you so much for taking the time to join us and to stay up a little bit later to join us on this episode of the China Global South podcast. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Edwin.
It’s been a blast. We’ll be back again next week. So, for Edwin in Jakarta, I’m Eric Olander.
Thank you so much for listening.
