Will the U.S. defend the Philippines?

In our dispute with China, the U.S. has our back, said Daxim L. Lucas in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. China’s “assertive behavior” in our fishing waters in the West Philippine Sea—which China calls the South China Sea—has led to a two-month standoff there, as both sides dispatch more and bigger ships to a disputed shoal. After meeting with President Obama in Washington last week, President Benigno Aquino said Obama had assured him that the U.S. was “very, very serious” about the Mutual Defense Treaty between the two countries. True, Obama never gave an “explicit statement” that the U.S. would jump in on our side with its full military might if China attacked. But he did pledge to triple U.S. military sales to the Philippines.

Aquino accomplished nothing beyond proving that he is Obama’s stooge, said The Daily Tribune (Philippines) in an editorial. It wasn’t China that provoked the naval standoff, but us—and it looks suspiciously as if we did it at Obama’s bidding. This whole drama was manufactured to “give the U.S. an excuse to push its Asia-Pacific pivot.” It’s no coincidence that the fishing rights dispute began in April, right before the U.S. announced that it was overhauling its military deployment to station more than half of its naval forces in the Pacific. The Philippines have become a pawn in a dangerous game. “By acceding to be part of the American master plan in the region,” Aquino has put the Philippines “very much in the front line in the event of a confrontation between the U.S. and China.”

Look at a map: We’re already on the front line, said Roly E. Eclevia in The Manila Times. “We’re too weak economically and militarily to defend ourselves, and that’s an indisputable fact.” So anything we can do to cement our ties with the U.S. is in our interest. While it may be “politically incorrect” to admit it, the Philippines would be safest if we once again had permanent U.S. military bases. When the government discussed closer ties with the U.S. military earlier this year, such bases were explicitly ruled out; opponents said they would “be a magnet for attack from China.” It turns out the opposite is true, and China is now pushing us around. “It hasn’t attacked us yet, but it will-—knowing we are too weak to resist.”

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And it’s far from certain that the U.S. will go to war for us, said Boo Chanco in The Philippine Star. “As we position ourselves as America’s ever loyal squire, let us not have any illusions.” After a decade spent fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are sick of war. They are hardly likely to attack their biggest trading partner unless a vital U.S. interest is at stake—and Philippine fishing rights simply don’t rise to that level. We’ll have to come up with an alternative to “our knee-jerk response to run to America’s side and hide behind its 7th Fleet.”