A US-based think tank is urging the United States government to avoid a frontal military role in countering China’s actions in the South China Sea (SCS) but to instead enable the Philippines to take the lead.

A suggestion made by US Indo-Pacific Command chief, Admiral Samuel J. Paparo, in August 2024 to provide armed escorts to the Philippines’ resupply missions to Ayungin Shoal ups the ante on a feature of less than vital interest to the US, and risks a direct US-China naval clash that can easily spiral out of control, warns a report titled “Defending Without Provoking: The United States and the Philippines in the South China Sea.”

Written by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s Global South Programme director, Sarang Shidore, the report notes that Washington does not hold all the cards when it comes to China’s volatile and coercive behavior against the Philippines.

Thus, he’s asking the US to initiate de-escalatory steps to reduce the risks to American, Philippine, and other lives, even as he urges Washington to stop pulling in the US’s extra-regional allies militarily into the Sino-Filipino dispute in the SCS to prevent heightening the Chinese perception of bloc-formation and armed encirclement.

It should be noted that the US, of late, has not only intensified military support but has also organized and encouraged the entry of its allies in the region and beyond to build deeper military ties with the Philippines.

The Philippines too has continued annual combined military exercises with the US. This year sees 3,000 Philippine Army soldiers and 2,000 of their counterparts from the US Army Pacific (USARPAC) kicking off the so-called SABAK exercises a few days before US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is scheduled to visit Manila on 28 March.

While not making a direct reference to China or any other external adversary, Col. Aidan Shattock, deputy commander for interoperability of the US Army’s 25th Infantry Division, said the SABAK drills will focus on defending the Philippines and its territories.

“As we go through these battle plans, it’s important to understand that we are looking at adversaries, so how we operate, whatever adversary is out there, it’s important that we are able to work together to defend the Philippines,” he said.

Featured this year is the US Typhon mid-range missile system which presence in the country has raised Beijing’s hackles. The system, with Typhon launchers firing multi-purpose missiles thousands of kilometers and striking air or sea targets over 165 miles away, was used then left in the country at the end of last year’s joint military drills.

In his report, Shidore notes that US backing has made the Philippines bolder in asserting itself in the SCS, engaging in joint patrols and training exercises such as the ongoing SABAK exercises and deploying vessels to areas within its exclusive economic zone where China has maintained a heavy coast guard presence

Philippine and Chinese vessels have clashed, and heated diplomatic rows have happened with growing frequency, raising concerns that an incident could escalate and spark intense conflict in the SCS, an important trade route.

For Shidore, US support for the Philippines in its tussle with the Chinese in the SCS may be worthwhile but not essential to US interests. To his mind, Washington’s responses in support of its ally are “disproportionate and escalatory.”

He cites an “unspoken assumption” in Washington that Beijing would only make concessions under duress, and that “escalating to de-escalate” is the only viable strategy in addressing this issue.

The report calls for a different approach in defusing tensions between the Philippines and China in the SCS, that is, by implementing measures focused on deterrence.

Shidore underscores that there must be a clarification of what the US’s vital interests are, as differentiated from non-vital ones. This is urgently needed if Washington wants to employ an appropriate and proportionate response to the Sino-Fil dispute because, as he puts it, “While we may be on the threshold of a military crisis, we are not in one yet,” and a crisis of that sort is the last thing that anyone would want to see erupting in the SCS.