Escalation

If anyone noticed, China’s president has not weighed in on the Scarborough Shoal issue. He has not uttered a word about it. It is not his job to do so.

Once the Chinese president opens his mouth on the matter, the issue is immediately escalated. It moves up the hierarchy of Beijing’s priorities, unjustly displacing many other important matters.

Not even China’s cabinet ministers talk about the matter  for basically the same reason the head of government keeps his silence. The matter of the shoal does not deserve getting royal treatment.

Most of the time, the Scarborough issue is addressed only by the foreign ministry spokesman, a most junior official. Once or twice, if I recall correctly, a deputy minister addressed the diplomatic spat. Otherwise, the matter is kept pretty low key from Beijing’s end.

That is the correct way to handle this problem. By keeping talk to a minimum, enough diplomatic space is kept open for maneuver either on the overt level or by the backdoor.

It is never correct for a head of government to engage other countries in petty quarrels. The role of the head of government is to embrace other leaders warmly during summit meetings, playing the soft side of diplomacy. The head of government must at all times be the good cop.

Through the length of this long and very public spat over the Scarborough Shoal, Beijing very wisely pushed the matter down the diplomatic ranks. Since China has recently organized the South China Sea islands it claims into a prefecture, expect that the matter will soon be relegated to a local government concern.

Our highest officials will soon find themselves addressing the city mayor, whoever he might be, charged with administrative supervision of the islands and shoals China claims to be hers. Whatever that city mayor says could be disowned by the provincial governor. Whatever the governor says could be reversed at the capital. That is how diplomatic space for maneuver is created.

By contrast, our handling of the Scarborough matter is to push it up the political ladder. That progressively leaves us with less diplomatic space to work with.

Even when we used inclement weather as an excuse to remove our ships from the shoal, the announcement was made by President Aquino no less. When the weather excuse began to appear too flimsy, the DFA stepped in to save presidential face by announcing an “agreement” with China for mutual withdrawal. That produced a fiasco when Beijing denied any such agreement. Chinese ships remained on the shoal.

During the rare times the DFA tries to keep quiet, mostly after committing blunders, President Aquino’s spokesmen could not resist stepping into the void.

Early this week, Secretary Ricky Carandang regaled us with talk of sending US spy planes to watch over the shoal. Everyone seemed so awed by Carandang’s spy plane story that no one asked the most relevant question: What do we need the spy planes for? To see what the Chinese crews were having for lunch?

Most of the time, Filipino and Chinese fishermen eyeball each other at the shoal. Before this became such a hyperventilated diplomatic issue, they actually shared their lunches. We do not need spy planes to estimate Chinese presence in the area. The Chinese ships are visible to the naked eye.

Did the US volunteer their planes? There is no indication of that  and Washington has been so kind as to spare us embarrassment by commenting on Carandang’s fascination with spy planes.

Unless Carandang was talking about spy planes flying high into the stratosphere with expensive communications gear, the usual air asset used for surveillance these days is an armed drone. Precisely because drones are armed, their entry into the theater of confrontation will constitute a serious escalation of US involvement in the Scarborough issue. I seriously doubt Washington is inclined to do that.

Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda could not resist usurping the DFA’s proper role. This week, too, Lacierda tried to indulge Beijing in a tit-for-tat by instructing the Chinese, in Mandarin at that, to think before they talk. What authority this man had to preempt our professional diplomatic establishment is not clear.

Lacierda’s attempt to join the dirty talking was met with stony silence from the Chinese side. The Chinese, it is apparent, are not about to dignify this Laurel-and-Hardy act of Palace amateurs attempting to commandeer the nation’s foreign policy.

The most serious escalation from our side is the Cabinet meeting held this week held solely to discuss the Scarborough matter.

Why a full (and rare in this administration) Cabinet meeting was needed to discuss the Scarborough situation is not clear either. What inputs might the Social Welfare Secretary or the commissar for poverty alleviation have to supplement the professional opinion of the DFA?

True enough, nothing much has been said to date about whatever brilliant new insight this week’s Cabinet meeting might have produced to enlighten our Scarborough Shoal policy. Instead, we had this funny scene after the Cabinet meeting with the President muttering something inconsequential about the South China Sea situation flanked by the Agriculture and Agrarian Reform secretaries.

The proper forum, of course, to discuss what was on the Cabinet agenda is the National Security Council. Convening this Council, however, requires inviting the three living former presidents to the meeting. This is clearly politically inconvenient.

Fidel Ramos has said a lot about the issue in his weekly opinion column. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo might, in the course of the meeting, simply pick up the phone and talk directly to the Chinese president as she did when she was president.