Revising the MDT

Except for some certifiably keen defense policy wonks, many didn’t catch the strategic drift of the United States declaring last week it “will do what is necessary” to insure the resupply missions to the beleaguered BRP Sierra Madre go on.

Significantly, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s saying that the US has made it clear to China that its mutual defense treaty with the Philippines applies to the Sierra Madre is a breakthrough of sorts.

Here, the immediate impact is that it’s the first time the US is suggesting that Chinese harassment and attacks on civilian ships regularly supplying the Marine contingent on the Sierra Madre now counts as an “armed attack.”

Sullivan’s remarks are a dramatic reversal from the deliberate amorphous American statements about the types of Chinese gray zone actions that might trigger US military intervention.

Before Sullivan’s remarks, the Biden administration, though it had consistently insisted that intervention triggers included an “armed attack” on Philippine military or coast guard vessels, had not said anything specific about what constituted an “armed attack.”

Yet, Sullivan’s remarks now even suggest the possible involvement of the US coast guard or Navy as escorts of Ayungin Shoal resupply missions.

If such a revised US posture undoubtedly sends a strong message to China to think twice before further escalating tensions in the WPS, other important strategic prospects are involved.

One broad strategic point in Sullivan’s remarks is that he is signaling US openness to the strategic option that revising the Cold War-era Philippines-US Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) is a crucial and effective response to China’s escalated gray zone provocations.

Such US openness should now directly prod our political leadership to seriously pursue bilateral negotiations in what one defense analyst called “the floating activation” of the MDT, so that some key treaty provisions like its Article III are clarified.

The MDT’s Article III states “the parties…will consult together from time to time regarding the implementation of this Treaty and whenever in the opinion of either of them the territorial integrity, political independence or security of either Parties is threatened by external armed attack in the Pacific.”

Revisions to the MDT are urgent in spite of the fact that the country’s security alliance with the US has so far generally deterred China from more serious attacks on the Philippine military or other government assets.

In fact, revising the MDT raises the enticing prospect we can now prod the US to clarify its stand on the country’s assertion of its sovereign rights in its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

But the more urgent concern is that the MDT hasn’t deterred China from escalating its coercive gray zone tactics.

In essence, the 1951 MDT’s main shortcoming is that it did not foresee the kinds of gray zone tactics in China’s hybrid warfare strategy, which has been China’s modus operandi in recent years.

Additionally, a revision will help forge new Filipino strategies and tactics to counter China’s carefully scripted brinkmanship designed “to impress and influence others through fear of the consequences if China escalates to using violence,” which has since allowed China to gradually accumulate successes in the WPS while avoiding military escalation.

In fact, China has been arguably successful with its salami-slicing tactics that, according to the US think-tank Rand Corporation, the country has been blocked from accessing 30 percent of its EEZ.

As it is, while the country’s strategy of “assertive transparency” — of publicly exposing China Coast Guard abuses — effectively earned international attention and support, the same strategy is in danger of running its course.Should the country’s “assertive transparency” strategy be rendered ineffective by China’s foreseeable relentless ratcheting up of tensions and our defense officials failing to forge another viable strategy, grave danger lies ahead.

Not least of those dangers is the risk the country will become less attentive to and less fearful of China’s abuses, resulting in the normalizing of China’s abuses that will tragically end with the Philippines losing everything.