Philippines Vs Taiwan... Troubled Waters

Jeff Head

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
RollingWave said:
This isn't looking too good.

Politically speaking, the Ma government has basically no room to back down here, few sane people would believe Ma is in any way / shape / form a warmonger, and if anything he's mostly being accused of being the opposite. But he's getting pushed dangerously close to that now.

The PRC would do well to not try to complicate this situation, because we could end up with some nasty situation if say.. the Philippines decide to officially apologize to Beijing instead. and it's actually a game they might play.

It would be pretty interesting though if the last straw on the camel i this region happened between one of the most passive player in the region and one of the weakest.
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No...it is not looking good. But Taiwan is exerting stronger pressure becaue the Filipino government is trying to test their limits.

Otherwise, I see no up-side for the Philippines at all.

They have a far, far weaker military in every way.

The evidence is piling up against them on the incident itself. In fact, their story never held water in any case.

Thye US has interests in both sides and will not take sides at all.

China will remain uninvolved and would certainly not exasperate the issue when they are already on the winning side.

No...I hope, pray, and expect that with Taiwan calling the Filipino cards that the Filipinos will take a few more days to "investigate," then come out and apologize to Taiwan and pay reparations to the family. As I said, I hope and pray that is the case.

If not, the ROC should take the types of measures I talked about before.

They have given a clear ultimatum. If the Filipinos will not adequately compensate the family for their wrongful killing of the man, then Taiwan simply must make good on its promise to freeze Filipino immigration and work permits, and to take the case to international court. Then continue to ratchet up the economic pressure.

IMHO, they should also maintain a permanent naval patrol there in those waters to protect their people...and keep the Filipino coast guard out...until this is adequately settled. Taiwan has more than enough naval and air strength to do this...and should.
 
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solarz

solarz

Brigadier
RollingWave said:
Well no, the ROC navy and Coastguards generally show the up most restraint in using force, the ROC is trying to play as much by the rules as they can here, since let's face it, even when they do, the international community is usually rigged against them, imagine if the roles were reversed here, we'd be North Korea at sea.
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Eh? Since when?

The news isn't getting better, the ROC have just announced that they are declaring the Philippines a red travelling zone, aka do not go for whatever reason, all tours are canceled with full refund immediately. this is almost always only reserved for war zones.

I think the key issue here is that the Philippines have been avoiding to talk on a government to government basis here, playing the 1 China card to their advantage (or so they think.) but this is probably only adding oil to the fire to be honest and it is very unlikely that Beijing will help them out here.

As it is now, tomorrow we'll probably be firing rounds dangerously close to the Philippine islands.

I'm not kidding when I'm saying that we're on a trajectory towards war, I'm hoping that the Philippine government isn't as deluded as some of their online poster here. its getting late early for them. as early investigation on our side sees evidence mostly in agreement with the Fisherman's side of the story, as in... no signs of ramming, clearly being hit by heavy machine gun, guy shot while inside the deck, GPS seems to show they're not even really in the disputed water when most of the shooting occured (aka they might actually be only in our EEZ, that would REALLY be asking for war. if it turns out that they're firing at our ships in OUR EEZ, not even crossed once.)
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A war between TW and PH simply isn't possible. The disparity between the militaries are far too great. If any shooting starts, it will just be ROCN sinking a few PCG ships and PH suing for peace within 72 hours.

Of course, it won't come to that, as TW itself has stated that use of force is not an option.

I agree with your previous post that neither the PH government nor its people are taking this as seriously as they should.
 
solarz

solarz

Brigadier
Some details on what happened Tuesday night:

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article said:
“At one time [Tuesday] we thought the Philippine government was ready to resolve the issue as the ministry received an informal response by fax and e-mail from Manila before Basilio’s departure [from the Philippines]. This is the first version,” Jiang said.
However, during his meeting with Lin, Basilio presented a second version, which showed that the Philippine government “was not sincere in apologizing” to Taiwan and “had tried to shirk its responsibility” over the incident, Jiang said.
In the second version, Basilio made no mention of “the Philippine government,” did not address any concrete judicial measures needed to ascertain what happened during the incident and bring those responsible to justice, and did not express the Philippine government’s willingness to compensate the victim’s family.
After Lin said that the second version was unacceptable, Basilio drafted a third version that was similar to the first version. However, the third version was rejected by the Philippine government after Basilio talked with the relevant agencies in Manila, Jiang said.
After consultations with the Philippine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Philippine Department of Justice and legal advisers of the Aquino administration, Manila proposed a fourth version, which “was not much different from the second version,” Jiang said.
During the negotiations, the Philippines tried to trivialize Taiwan’s demands and responded in a flippant and most unequivocal manner, Jiang said.
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I think PH is about to get a harsh dose of reality.
 
P

PanAsian

Major
I don't think anyone wants war over this incident but it seems like everyone wants face and no one is getting enough of it.

I do think the Philippines missed a golden opportunity to play the whole thing down to their advantage. Given their coast guard shot and killed an unarmed civilian there is no way they can come away from this on top. They should have paid up on humanitarian grounds and cut their losses combined with an apology, again on humanitarian grounds, and an investigation treating this as an isolated incident.

Now that the Philippines have been recalcitrant about compensation they have forced Taiwan to escalate. And Taiwan now gets to use this also as an opportunity to advance their maritime territorial claims by having enforcement patrols in the area.

I honestly think this is simple incompetence on the part of those involved on the Philippino side, from the initial shooting all the way to the negotiations. This surely reminds me of the Philippino authorities' mishandling of the 2010 hostage crisis.
 
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solarz

solarz

Brigadier
PanAsian said:
I honestly think this is simple incompetence on the part of those involved on the Philippino side, from the initial shooting all the way to the negotiations. This surely reminds me of the Philippino authorities mishanding of the 2010 hostage crisis.
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Given the
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, I certainly won't dispute your assessment!
 
AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
Reading Filipino reaction on the internet, they're basically not even mentioning the death of the fisherman or this incident. They're trying to distract it into larger issues, namely China, and accusing everyone else of something against them. If they didn't want all this heat, they simply shouldn't have fired upon a defenseless party. All they do is open up to having the other side fire upon them because they already set the bar low on justifying this murder.
 
solarz

solarz

Brigadier
AssassinsMace said:
Reading Filipino reaction on the internet, they're basically not even mentioning the death of the fisherman or this incident. They're trying to distract it into larger issues, namely China, and accusing everyone else of something against them. If they didn't want all this heat, they simply shouldn't have fired upon a defenseless party. All they do is open up to having the other side fire upon them because they already set the bar low on justifying this murder.
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Their big mistake is to treat this incident the same way as they treated similar incidents with the PRC: i.e. try to BS and play for sympathy.

Unfortunately, they forgot that USA doesn't have their back this time.
 
plawolf

plawolf

Lieutenant General
Well I honestly cannot believe how short sighted, stupid and downright petty the Philippines government is being with this whole mess.

Their coast guard shot up an unarmed foreign boat in disputed waters (if not in someone else's EEZ) and killed a foreign national for no good reason and then fled the scene like pirates and either omitted to report it or lied to their superiors about it. That is simply unacceptable and indefensible behaviour no matter how you look at it. Man up, apologies and pay the family and try the stupid captain to set an example so the Philippines government is not put in a similarly embarrassing position again. Offering a generous compensation package for the family is the first thing, and least any decent government would have done.

If I was in charge in Taiwan, I would have a court in Taiwan award the fisherman's family whatever compensation they see fit, and fine the Philippines government another billion dollars on top of that as punitive damages unless they publicly apologise and pay the family what the court ordered.

I would make a statement that so long as the Philippines government does not publicly apologies and pay, I will maintain a permanent naval presence in all disputed waters with the Philippines and seize any and all Philippines government ships in those disputed waters, which will be auctioned off and the money raised put towards the compensation and punitive damages, and I will keep doing that until the debt of the Philippines government has been paid off in full, plus interest for however long it takes to pay off the fines.

So, the Philippines can hide in port and effectively relinquish all claims to the disputed waters, or they can pay up and apologise.
 
siegecrossbow

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
plawolf said:
If I was in charge in Taiwan, I would have a court in Taiwan award the fisherman's family whatever compensation they see fit, and fine the Philippines government another billion dollars on top of that as punitive damages unless they publicly apologise and pay the family what the court ordered.
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That is asking too much of Ma, the Great Compromiser of the 21st century.
 
MwRYum

MwRYum

Major
plawolf said:
Well I honestly cannot believe how short sighted, stupid and downright petty the Philippines government is being with this whole mess.

Their coast guard shot up an unarmed foreign boat in disputed waters (if not in someone else's EEZ) and killed a foreign national for no good reason and then fled the scene like pirates and either omitted to report it or lied to their superiors about it. That is simply unacceptable and indefensible behaviour no matter how you look at it. Man up, apologies and pay the family and try the stupid captain to set an example so the Philippines government is not put in a similarly embarrassing position again. Offering a generous compensation package for the family is the first thing, and least any decent government would have done.

If I was in charge in Taiwan, I would have a court in Taiwan award the fisherman's family whatever compensation they see fit, and fine the Philippines government another billion dollars on top of that as punitive damages unless they publicly apologise and pay the family what the court ordered.

I would make a statement that so long as the Philippines government does not publicly apologies and pay, I will maintain a permanent naval presence in all disputed waters with the Philippines and seize any and all Philippines government ships in those disputed waters, which will be auctioned off and the money raised put towards the compensation and punitive damages, and I will keep doing that until the debt of the Philippines government has been paid off in full, plus interest for however long it takes to pay off the fines.

So, the Philippines can hide in port and effectively relinquish all claims to the disputed waters, or they can pay up and apologise.
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Well, at least Hong Kong people have learned a government can be that incompetent, yet democratically elected again and again...but of course if Philippine government is competent in the first place, it won't be a Third World state that it is now.

The common opinion, at least in the Chinese speaking world, is that the Philippine government must've thought they can play the infighting situations both within Taiwan and China-Taiwan to their advantage, but they've forgotten yet again how much rage a smiling government spokesperson can generate...guys, have you ever seen the States Department spokesperson put up such a grin during press meetings, especially when the subject in question is such grim matter?

Now that grin have generate so much rage that President Ma, aka "Mr. Teflon", have to go tough or it's gonna be his head on the plate next.

China would do well by not doing anything more than they already doing, only step up the plate when Taipei clearly failed.
 
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