Another expansion of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement must be comprehensively reviewed as it would constitute a point of no return with the country having to bear the consequences of an escalation of the friction in the West Philippine Sea.
China's latest aggressive actions directed at the Philippines started after the number of military bases covered by EDCA was increased to nine from four — which led the Chinese to believe it is being ringed in preparation for a conflict over Taiwan.
US Admiral John Aquilino, commander of the US Indo-Pacific fleet, and Lt. General Romeo Brawner, Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff, discussed the further expansion of the EDCA bases to increase US military capabilities for "humanitarian responses."
China, however, would not buy the excuse but increased the pressure using its gray zone tactics of confrontation which are just below the threshold of an armed conflict.
Felix K. Chang, a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Foreign Policy Research Institute, said increasing US access to Philippine military bases cuts both ways.
"Shorter distances offer American forces the ability to return to action faster and remain on station longer but they also make the bases vulnerable to attack," he said.
Before reaching a tipping point, it "would be wise for Manila and Washington to think about how to protect them (bases) from ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, strike aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles."
"Dispersed fuel and munitions storage, hardened shelters, and repair kits for airfields and other infrastructure would be a start," Chang said.
"Missile defenses would help even more. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the United States conducted a live-fire demonstration of its MIM-104 Patriot air defense system in the Philippines for the first time during the 2023 Balikatan exercise," he added.
Increased joint patrols, which is a euphemism for an American naval presence in the disputed seas, will be the next excuse for Beijing to ramp up its presence.
Aquilino said the "Philippines and the United States have been operating together for decades, so under the title of joint patrols, just recently on the 4th of September, we executed the first one that was aligned, designed, and built by the Armed Forces of the Philippines with approval from our leaders."
He added: "And we'll continue to do that for the long term, ultimately to ensure that we can maintain the freedom of the seas, freedom of the airspace so that all the nations in the region can enjoy peace and prosperity."
The statements of the US brass immediately drew a response from China through a hardline mouthpiece that said in an editorial that "the US believes that by containing China, it will gain an advantage. However, whatever damage they're doing to China, it also backfires on the US and even the world."
It attributed the increased presence of US forces in the region to its maintaining its hegemonic ambitions.
"Today, the US is embroiled in simultaneous confrontations with China and Russia. The US needs to think carefully, as it will be more difficult to engage in a 'new cold war' compared to the previous one," it added.
It accused the US of attempting "to stifle (China's) development by imposing unlimited technological restrictions, but it is unable to completely decouple from China economically."
China's concern was triggered by the recent "bilateral sail" of the US and the Philippines in waters off the western part of Palawan province, a great deal of which is part of the West Philippine Sea that China claims as its historic territory.
Increasing the pressure on China gives it the excuse to likewise put the heat on the Philippines.
The Philippines will always be geographically at a disadvantage if both countries scale up their conflict, considering that China is a neighbor while its ally, the US, is halfway around the world.
