Which now only goes to show that despite provocations and threats of overwhelming military firepower, we Filipinos essentially remain steadfast and will not accept China’s underhanded ploy to illegally occupy what is rightfully ours.
Often overlooked in discussions about the Marcos government’s plan to acquire the state-of-the-art Typhon missile system is the long-term strategic intent to restore the balance of power between the Philippines and China.
Yet, that strategic intent is what really riles the Asian behemoth as it potentially threatens China’s widely effective “gray zone” tactics and power projection in the region.
To begin understanding this strategic point, it is best to keep in mind that it was Beijing’s 1995 occupation of the now heavily fortified Panganiban Reef (Mischief Reef) that effectively altered the perceived balance of power between the Philippines and China.
China has since proceeded to either occupy or exercise de facto control over other features in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).
Responding to China’s hegemonic strategy and tension-fueling short-of-war tactics, the government has since referred to the 2016 arbitral award to prove our case, conducted frequent sea patrols, resorted to the novel “transparency initiative” to publicize Chinese abuses, and highlighted our defense treaty with the US and our burgeoning security alliances with other countries.
But China remained unfazed.
All that obviously changed, however, with the American deployment of a single Typhon missile battery in the Ilocos Region and the Philippine Army’s subsequent announcement it was buying the mid-range missile system.
And for obvious reasons. The Typhon missile system puts at risk targets on the southeastern island of mainland China, as well as on Hanan Island on the northern end of the South China Sea (SCS).
Several Chinese man-made outposts elsewhere in the SCS, as well as targets at sea in the surrounding areas, would also be within the Typhon’s range.
Realistically speaking, however, neither the American Typhon deployment nor the Army’s decision to buy it will dramatically alter the balance of power between China and us anytime soon.
It would take, for instance, at least two to three years for the Army to get its hands on the Typhon, from planning to taking delivery. In fact, it took five years before our military took delivery of the Indian-made BrahMos missiles.
But the fact remains that acquiring the mid-range missile system would rapidly advance — in a matter of years rather than decades — the country’s strategic intent to mount a credible defense against China or any other hostile power in the region.
In the shorter term too, the intention to buy the Typhon obviously comes in handy, gaining the country negotiating leverage in the event there are serious talks regarding China’s abusive “gray zone” tactics.
As such, the plans for procuring the Typhon unexpectedly resulted in hurting China’s long-term interests more than ours.
This is strikingly evident from the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s warning last week that “it will not sit on its hands when its security interests are in danger or under threat.”
China’s warnings and “saber-rattling,” of course, unduly alarmed not a few concerned Filipinos, provoking calls for serious debates about whether procuring the Typhon is indeed in our best interest or not.
Yet in those calls so far, no one has refuted Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro’s valid point that the Philippines “is a sovereign state, not any country’s doorstep.”
“Any deployment and procurement of assets related to the Philippines’ security and defense fall within its own sovereign prerogative and are not subject to any foreign veto,” Teodoro said.
At the same time too, those calls somehow exactly align with China’s confident expectations that she can easily predetermine our behavior towards her machinations, in part thanks largely to the unchecked activities of a Filipino pro-China lobby.
But the government surprisingly did something else in its continuing push-back against China, doing something altogether unexpected by announcing plans to buy the Typhon.
Which now only goes to show that despite provocations and threats of overwhelming military firepower, we Filipinos essentially remain steadfast and will not accept China’s underhanded ploy to illegally occupy what is rightfully ours.
China, in short, is largely failing in her efforts to rein us Filipinos in, to make us Filipinos subservient.
