Backing the 2016 UNCLOS award with a grand strategy

The People's Republic of China (PRC) considers the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea as its testing ground for its integrated maritime campaign.

China’s integrated maritime campaign seeks two objectives: a) de facto—or the imposition of a state of affairs based on raw hard power and use of force; b) de jure—earning the legal recognition of China’s sovereignty over the South China Sea through lawfare.

China’s long-term objective is to gain de facto recognition and legitimacy for its unilateral and expansive territorial claims over the South China Sea’s vast marine terrain, several surface and subsurface land features, and natural resources above and below the seabed. It deploys its three well-equipped, well-trained maritime services in its expansionist, coercive naval campaign against smaller littoral Southeast Asian states. 

The People’s Liberation Navy (PLAN), the Chinese Coast Guard (CCG), and maritime militias advance, consolidate, and enhance Chinese economic activities in the disputed waters. At the same time, they obstruct Southeast Asian littoral states from harnessing their natural resources in their EEZs in the South China Sea.

The PLAN and the CCG cooperate to normalize their joint naval patrols to maintain and assert China's rights and interests in the South China Sea. However, if challenged by littoral Southeast Asian states, China’s maritime services will decisively respond to crises involving these littoral states’ smaller, weaker navies and coast guards. 

Since 2011, amid China’s overwhelming naval prowess, the Philippines has challenged China's maritime expansion in the South China Sea. Lacking the necessary military capabilities, the Philippines filed a case in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in January 2013. This was aimed at depriving China of the prospect of achieving the second goal of its integrated maritime expansion—earning the legitimacy of its expansive claim in the South China Sea.

On July 12, 2016, the Arbitral Tribunal on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) determined that China’s basis for its expansive claim—the nine-dash line- is an entirely untenable claim because it has no basis in international law.

The tribunal reminded China that, since becoming a party to UNCLOS, it could not legally claim to exercise historic rights in areas beyond 12 nautical miles from its coast. The tribunal also explained that there was no historical evidence to back China’s landmark claim in the South China Sea. By declaring that China’s nine-dash line claim has no legal basis and, therefore, is groundless, the tribunal effectively deprived China of the opportunity to exercise de jure jurisdiction over the South China Sea.

The grand strategy  

Even before he assumed the presidency, Mr. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared that he would assert the Philippines’ territorial rights over the West Philippine Sea. He stated that he would consistently and firmly negotiate with China on the two countries’ territorial dispute. He also announced that he would leverage the July 2016 arbitral award against China’s expansive and sweeping claims in the South China Sea to assert the Philippines’ territorial rights. 

Based on his statements regarding the arbitral tribunal's ruling, President Marcos has pursued a vigorous balancing policy, grounded on the 2016 arbitral ruling, to challenge China’s maritime expansion in the South China Sea.

Specifically, this balancing policy entails building up the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ (AFP’s) territorial/external defense capabilities, enhancing its alliance with the U.S. by increasing American strategic presence in the Philippine territory, fostering security arrangements with other American allies like South Korea, Japan, and Australia, and, more recently, adopting the Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept (CADC). 

In January 2024, Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro announced the gist of CADC. CADC incorporates President Marcos’ view that China’s activities aimed to implement its 10-dash line claim in the South China Sea are not only a blatant disregard for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and for the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling.

As an archipelagic state, they constitute a serious strategic threat to Philippine national security. It directs the AFP to build and project its naval and aerial capabilities into Manila’s EEZ and to develop and expand the country’s strategic depth to enhance the defense of the Philippines’ archipelagic territory.

The CADC’s long-term goal is to ensure the unimpeded and peaceful exploration and exploitation of all natural resources within the country’s EEZ by Philippine nationals, corporations, and other entities authorized by the Philippine government. This implied a more comprehensive and defiant strategy against Chinese maritime expansion, grounded on the 2016 award in favor of the Philippines. 

CADC sees the need to foster the Philippines’ alliance and security partnerships with the U.S. and other American Indo-Pacific allies. For this reason, the Philippines engages in arms modernization and, more importantly, in alliance formation and coalition-building to constrain Chinese maritime expansion in the South China Sea and the waters of the first island chain.

CADC recognizes that the Philippines has a superpower ally and several security partners that can help balance China's preponderant military power, a task the AFP’s current modernization program cannot possibly counter. The AFP’s force modernization program would be linked to its alliance and security partnerships.

This requires the Philippine Navy (PN) and the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) to conduct continuous Multilateral Maritime Cooperative Activities (MMCA) with American, Japanese, and Australian naval forces. This is part of the Philippines’ ongoing shift in its defense posture to protect its maritime territories, particularly its EEZ, and in the process, implement the 2016 Arbitral Tribunal Ruling.

Clearly, by backing the July 12, 2016 with a grand strategy based on an archipelagic defense concept, the Marcos Administration is putting in practice E.H. Carr’s aphorism that “foreign policy never can or never should be divorced from strategy. The foreign policy of a country is limited not only by its aims, but also by its military strength, or more accurately, the ratio of its military strength to that of other countries.”