'Win-win'

In my mind’s eye, I imagine a special room deep in the innards of the Forbidden City where top-level bureaucrats representing all possible policy areas orchestrate a comprehensive strategy to deal with the erratic and reckless utterances emanating from Manila on the South China Sea issues. It might be called a “crisis committee,” although Beijing will hesitate using the word “crisis” to describe this little ruffling initiated by a minor power.

They might prefer to describe this episode as something akin to a small child’s tantrum. It will be dealt with firmness without sacrificing ascendancy.

The last thing Beijing wants at this time is a military skirmish over a worthless shoal. That will cause China to lose the public relations war, vulnerable as that economic superpower is to caricature as a regional bully  despite the presence of the Philippine Navy in the contested area and the endless stream of jingoism coming out of Manila.

It is easy to anticipate that Beijing would rather deploy “soft” power, causing just enough pain to calm the hysteria. The experts in that little room, well studied in our vulnerabilities, probably decided to start with bananas and then follow through with a curtailment of tourist flow.

Beijing’s deployment of “soft” power appears to have achieved its desired effects. After weeks of saber-rattling, the last word on the Scarborough affair coming out of President Aquino’s mouth is that Manila is seeking a “win-win solution.”

The idea of a little room filled with experts orchestrating a comprehensive strategy, I now remember, draws from a room at Moscow’s Institute for Oriental Studies I visited many years ago, when the Soviet Union still existed.

I called on a section of the Institute that covered the Philippines. In that room were people who spoke in Tagalog, read everything coming from Manila, including komiks and magazines like Liwayway. The people in that room bantered in slightly stilted Tagalog  even if none of them had ever been to the Philippines. This was an almost surreal experience.

What that visit impressed on me was the extent to which all policy utterances by leaders of what was then the other superpower was always guided by deep familiarity with the subject country’s culture and discourse. I am sure Beijing has an equivalent pool of expertise influencing the shape of its policy actions on the Philippines.

How I wish our every foreign policy utterance is similarly disciplined by depth of expertise. The Scarborough Shoal episode demonstrates how sorely incompetent our handling of foreign policy is. We were fumbling from the start.

This episode begins with the involvement of a recently acquired Philippine Navy warship in an effort to arrest Chinese fishermen “poaching” in waters we claim. That inadvertently militarized the confrontation.

This was followed by loud pronouncements from our leaders that we are prepared to defend our territory. That was unnecessary bravado serving only to escalate tensions and foreclose dialogue.

Then there was this incredibly stupid statement made by the DFA and the Palace that we are prepared to unilaterally bring the case to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea. That is a stupid statement on three counts.

First, every freshman diplomat knows that international arbitration can proceed only if both sovereign parties agree to submit to the process and abide by its outcome. No nation can unilaterally go to arbitration.

Second, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) covers only maritime delineations. It does not cover territorial claims over land. There is a purpose to why Beijing prefers to call the shoal Huangyan Island: theirs is a claim over land. Also, both China and the Philippines explicitly excluded territorial disputes in their respective subscriptions to the UNCLOS.

Third, as every freshman law student knows, one goes to court only if one is sure of winning the case. We are not.

The stupidity of that announcement about going to arbitration is exceeded only by the stupidity of the Palace-orchestrated “people power” protests against several Chinese embassies. The worst way to handle a delicate diplomatic question is to submit it to a mob.

As the heat began to build up, Palace spokesmen announced that talks were underway between Beijing and Manila. There is no indication this is true. The normal diplomatic channels are frozen and only Track 2 (backdoor) diplomacy seems feasible at this time.

As we stumbled along, making every error in the diplomatic book, the last thing heard from our Foreign Secretary is a call for Filipinos to prepare to endure sacrifices as the standoff at Scarborough drags on. That signals to the other party that we are digging in and preparing for a war of attrition, thereby poisoning the climate for negotiation.

Just as quickly, the President turns around, this time talking about a “win-win” solution  even as he contradicts himself in the same speech by saying something useless about not being elected to office to cede Philippine territory.

There is no other conceivable “win-win” solution than returning the respective territorial claims to the backburner, keeping the door open to a joint-use, mutual-benefit formula. That, exactly, was the status quo ante before the President opened his confrontational mouth.

The previous administration was vilified for letting sleeping dogs lie on the South China Sea issues  but that is exactly the point we are returning to, going a full circle, after all the fracas and needless costs.

Continental Europeans often deride the British as a people who eventually do the right thing after trying everything else. The same applies to us.