We are not alone

This year’s Balikatan, the 39th version of the largest joint military exercise held annually between the Philippine Armed Forces and the US military, was kicked off last Monday by nearly 17,000 troops — 5,000 Filipinos, 100 Australian Defense Forces, 100 French sailors and the rest, Americans — with China, paranoid as ever, whining that the Philippines should be “sober enough to realize that attempts to bring in external forces to safeguard its so-called security will only lead to greater insecurity for itself.”

Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission (which oversees the Chinese armed forces,) speaking in a naval conference in Qingdao, Eastern China, sternly cautioned against using the sea as an arena where countries can flex their “gunboat muscles.”

Said Zhang, “Reality has shown that those who make deliberate provocations, stoke tensions or support one side against another for selfish gains will ultimately only hurt themselves.”

This, from a former top military officer of a superpower that claims, on the basis of some fantastic 10-dash line map created in 2023, most of the South China Sea, including shoals and islands claimed by other countries like the Philippines whose naval troops have been subjected to violent aggression by the Chinese in waters within the Philippines’ own exclusive economic zone.

Balikatan, the second biggest since the annual joint military exercise was launched in 1991, will be conducted for the first time beyond Philippine territorial waters, that is, 12 nautical miles offshore, in the open sea claimed by China.

Likewise a first, the Philippine Coast Guard will join Balikatan to provide perimeter security while the Philippine and US navies, along with Australians and the French, conduct drills. Other countries from Southeast Asia, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, South Korea, Germany, Japan, and New Zealand will act as observers monitoring the drills.

The four provinces hosting Balikatan are Batanes, which is close to Taiwan; Zambales and Palawan facing the West Philippine Sea and just some 100 nautical miles from features Ayungin Shoal and Bajo de Masinloc, respectively, where Philippine maritime forces have encountered Chinese aggression; and Ilocos Norte off which the Filipino and American forces will sink, as part of the drills, an “enemy” ship, the Chinese-built oil tanker MT Lake Caliraya which was once commissioned by the Philippine Navy.

The highlight of this year’s Balikatan could very well be the counter landing and ship-sinking exercise off the coast of Ilocos Norte, President Marcos Jr.’s home province, with the La Paz Sand Dunes in the provincial capital, Laoag, serving as the staging ground.

These drills, emphasize Philippine officials, are “not aimed at any particular country.”

Still, one thing that’s particularly agitating the Chinese about this year’s Balikatan is the maiden deployment by the US military of its ground-based mid-range capability missile launcher system which has a range that could reach China’s southern provinces.

Also known as the Typhoon system, this is the first-ever deployment of such a missile system to the Indo-Pacific theater, and its presence in the Balikatan exercises sends a clear signal to China that the US can very well use weaponry within striking distance of Chinese installations in the South China Sea, the southern Chinese mainland and along the Taiwan Strait.

The Typhoon system is capable of firing the Standard Missile 6, a ballistic missile defense munition that can also target ships at sea at a range of 370 kilometers. It can also fire the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, a manuevarable cruise missile with a range of 1,600 kilometers.

Balikatan officers explain that no missile would be fired and that the objective is to familiarize exercise participants with the high-tech weaponry in a Philippine setting.

And again, the reiteration that the joint drills are undertaken with no specific external aggressor in mind but to improve interoperability between military forces.

Balikatan exercise director, US Lt. Gen. William Jurney, has stressed that the “exercises operate based on international order and international law and well within Philippine sovereign rights and responsibilities. We are conducting exercises that are normal.”

Very apparently, to China which claims most of the South China Sea — a conduit for over $3 trillion worth of annual ship-borne commerce — and is blasting the Balikatan for causing tension and impeding regional stability, the joint military exercises ongoing until May 10 are anything but normal.

The Chinese can think what they want but where this year’s Balikatan exercise is concerned, what the Philippines wants to say, well said by Philippine Navy spokesman Commodore Roy Vincent Trinidad, is simply this: “We are not alone, and we are ready to defend our sovereign rights.”