Had it not been for the position of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. not to lose an inch of territory, the Philippines would have been mired in an inextricable occupation by a foreign neighbor.
The previous regime adopted an independent foreign policy which an analyst said dangerously made the country a willing victim of China’s “boiling the frog” strategy.
The phrase involves a biological experiment in which a frog is placed in cool water that is very slowly raised to a boil; it does not notice the temperature change and dies.
Such a strategy of slow expansion into the West Philippine Sea (WPS) has been employed for almost three decades, according to regional specialists of the Washington-based think tank United States Institute of Peace.
The truth behind that metaphor of Boiling the Frog holds the key to breaking the cycle of an expansionist trap, the report said.
The report indicated that the strategy was started in 1994 with the building of initial structures on stilts in the WPS despite protests from the Philippine government.
The structures were supposed to provide shelter for fishermen. Mere months later in 1995, a foreign flag was flying on a reef amid the presence of several armed ships, effectively evicting the Philippines from the area. While additional structures continued to be built in the intervening period, it was almost two decades later, in 2014, that land reclamation, the process of creating new land from the sea, started inside the rims of Mischief Reef.
The Philippines then filed a diplomatic protest with the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a leading international body for dispute resolution.
A July 2016 tribunal ruling favored the Philippines and nullified China’s nine-dash line claim.
The USIP experts said that by the time the international tribunal issued its ruling, Beijing had established presence, occupation and norm in the contested areas.
A day after the international tribunal’s ruling, the successful landing of a plane was announced at a newly built airport on Mischief Reef.
Later that year, photographs showed evidence of anti-aircraft weapons and missile defense system deployments. In 2021, new satellite imagery confirmed additional military installations.
The report indicated that plans to occupy and militarize islands in the WPS were flatly denied by China at precisely the time it was doing exactly that. Employment of the Boiling the Frog syndrome not only established new thresholds for what it could get away with but confirmed the efficacy of its playbook.
“This all but ensured the conduct of similar actions in the future,” the USIP assessed.
The slow boil is continuing as the report provided proof of a 2021 incident where over 200 Chinese fishing vessels moored at Whitsun Reef, amassing what resembled a maritime militia incursion within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
More recent are naval blockades that have consistently tried to stop Philippine resupply missions to its military personnel stationed at Ayungin Shoal since 2014, gradually escalating to the regular use of water cannons including an incident in a March 2024 face-off that came dangerously close to triggering the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.
While its coast guard water cannons fishermen, the foreign invader calls for “objective” and “calm” conduct and presents even more expansive and unlawful maritime maps to justify its actions.
Limits of the international rule of law in the WPS are tested despite the internationally accepted arbitral ruling favoring the Philippines.
Opportunities for mediation and international hesitation and weakness to advance its position are exploited.
The aggressor country while preaching pacificism, occupies and militarizes new positions as it reaches toward the boundaries of its nine (now 10)-dash line.
Expansionist territorial claims and gradual militarization affect Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan and other East and Southeast Asian countries at sea, just as they do India and other South and Central Asian countries on land, the report said.
Employed in all cases is a creeping domination which, nonetheless, achieves the same objectives as a Nazi blitzkrieg attack did in the past.