Re: ASEAN military news
What I really don't get from the Philippine's stance is what's the obsession with not even engaging in bilateral talks? Wouldn't talks that don't result in something acceptable simply involve the Filipinos walking away from the talks?
When the Philippines insist on multilateral talks, the approach used so far isn't really multilateral. It's more of a "let's try to gang up on China" tactic. Because I haven't heard one peep from the Philippines about their grievances on territorial disputes with the other claimants. How does one realistically expect resolution of territorial disputes when nothing is heard about regarding the other claimants? The more media attacks the Philippines attempts, the more resistance it will generate. It only makes the average Chinese even less sympathetic to the Philippine's protest. This is in turn actually gives the Chinese gov't less room to bargain because they now can't be seen as being week. Ditto for the Philippine gov't if they keep up the media act because their populace will also expect no grounds being given up. One of the main attack strategy is to accuse China of not going to ITLOS, therefore China is not a law abiding country. Well guess what, it's been an interesting month as just recently, the US, SK, and Japan conducted joint exercises to show solidarity. We now have SK and Japan at each other's throats over Dokdo with Japan also demanding Dokdo be taken up in ITLOS and SK flat out rejecting.
You don't understand the Philippines' tactics because you are working under the mistaken assumption that the Philippines wants to resolve the dispute.
Just look at the timing and the circumstances surrounding the recent stand-off over Scarborough Shoal. The Philippines were having massively damaging internal political scandals. Then the Philippines air force detects some Chinese fishing boats near Scarborough Shoal, the Philippines dispatches not a coast guard patrol ship, but the flagship of their navy to arrest the fishermen. The PN flagship gets on scene, and even boards the Chinese fishing boats, yet somehow fails to make any arrests for over a day and just sits there waiting.
Only after the unarmed Chinese civilian monitoring ships arrive, does the PN make a token attempt to arrest the Chinese fishermen.
When you look at the bare facts as reported by the Philippines themselves (before they changed their story), it really boggles the mind how anyone can buy the preposterous Philippines official version of events and not see their actions for what it was - a casebook example of the fabled diversionary tactic that the western media accuse China of doing every time it doesn't roll over on any international dispute.
The insistence for multi-party talks and taking the case to the ITLOS are just more obvious ploys whereby the Philippines are making demands that they know full well China would never accept for precisely that reason - so that they can point the finger at China when they reject the Philippines' unrealistic conditions and try to make it look like China who is the one that does not want to settle the dispute.
When you consider the blatant bias and duplicity the west has shown in their reporting of the issue and even supporting the Philippines' frankly ridiculous claims (which basically boils down to, 'we quietly sent people to some islands in the late 90s [after oil and gas were discovered in the area] to remove/destroy Chinese territorial markers and place Philippines one on the islands in their place, and China didn't notice so those islands are ours now'), is it any wonder that China has no confidence that a western dominated body like ITLOS will deliver a remotely fair ruling if given the chance?
