Strategy

There is a whale of a difference between being eloquent and being verbose. The fine art of diplomacy requires eloquence and despises verbosity.

International wire reports have it this week’s ASEAN meeting turned tense and apprehensive after Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario spoke. Del Rosario accused China of “duplicity” and “intimidation” in the matter of contending national claims over the South China Sea islets.

That verbal broadside against China might have been a bit over the top. The ASEAN ministerial meeting was attempting to craft a code of conduct on the South China Sea territorial issues that might, hopefully, draw in China’s participation. The verbal attack by the Philippine side in a critical forum could produce a hardening of Beijing’s position.

Beijing has a long-standing policy of dealing with territorial issues on a strictly bilateral basis. Inviting Beijing to participate in a multilateral diplomatic framework such as the ASEAN is trying to construct is a tough task to begin with.

According to the diplomatic grapevine, there is no love lost between del Rosario and Beijing. The Chinese showed displeasure when our Foreign Secretary was considered for the post, seeing him as an American boy. The displeasure might have been too subtly expressed: the Palace missed the signals. Consequently, Beijing downgraded its ambassador to the country.

It did not help that we had no ambassador to Beijing for an unduly long time. President Aquino tried appointing a close family friend whose credentials the Commission on Appointments (CA) questioned. Eventually, the nomination was withdrawn and a professional diplomat was offered for the crucial posting. The CA confirmed the replacement faster than one could say “Amen.”

According to Boo Chanco’s column yesterday, our new ambassador to Beijing, called in from retirement, intimated that one of the difficulties she must deal with in her assignment is a view among her superiors that sees China as an enemy. That admission merely confirms the suspicion that, from Beijing’s point of view, del Rosario is the problem. His verbal tirades this week did not mitigate that.

If the diplomatic atmosphere is poisoned, it is because of reckless talk, principally from our side.

President Aquino no less astounded his interviewer when he began talking about deploying American spy planes over Scarborough Shoal: a functionally worthless but diplomatically destructive option. Beijing must have found the utterance so hilariously amateurish, she did not bother to comment. Washington, whose air assets were being committed by the leader of a foreign nation, did not comment either. Anything Washington says will simply add to Manila’s embarrassment.

After that blunder, the Palace issued a gag order on the issue. That was a wise move, although it did not appear to cover the Foreign Secretary’s remarks.

Our supposedly “secret” strategy on the Scarborough affair is fairly easy to divine. We have only one viable option: build an ASEAN united front to help leverage our fumbling diplomatic position.

To advance that strategy, we should begin by reassuring our ASEAN partners we will no longer act unilaterally while invoking the regional association. The ASEAN is a strictly consensual forum. We ruffled a lot of feathers in our partner capitals when we took a confrontational stance towards China while suggesting we had ASEAN support for what we do.

The fact is there are only two real frontline countries as far as the South China Sea issues are concerned: Vietnam and the Philippines. Hanoi never invoked the regional association when it undertook bold initiatives to assert her claims against China — including once sending in commandoes to assault Chinese garrisons in islands they claim. Manila, by contrast, seems to be invoking ASEAN’s name at every turn.

The South China issues are not high in the priorities of most ASEAN member countries. Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, Indonesia and Singapore will not be inclined to damage their relations with China to side with us. The dispute over islets and shoals are not security concerns for them.

Like the US, most member countries of the ASEAN are principally interested in arriving at an arrangement that ensures freedom of passage through the vital sea lanes crisscrossing the South China Sea. They are looking at the proposed code of conduct among claimant countries from exclusively that angle.

Manila should understand that there is really no interest in the ASEAN capitals — nor in Washington, Moscow or Canberra — to endorse Philippine territorial claims. Their principal interest is to prevent the present situation from getting out of hand, militarizing the confrontation and, thereby, threatening the vital international sea lanes.

The warnings against escalation of tensions and aggressive action emanating from ASEAN capitals as well as from Hillary Clinton is as much directed against Manila as it is against Beijing. Much of our local media, animated by jingoism, tends to interpret such statements as being exclusively against Beijing.

Given the realities, del Rosario’s choice of words during the ministerial meeting is clearly discordant. The verbal assault he unleashed impaired rather than improved chances for our strategy to work.

We must not labor under any illusion our ASEAN partners will line up behind us against Beijing. Diplomacy cannot advance on the basis of wishful thinking.

A multilateral framework for dealing with the South China Sea issues cannot be based on supporting one sovereignty claim over another. Such a framework can evolve only on the basis of denationalizing the issue, abetting acceptance on all sides of mutual use/mutual benefit formulas.

Jingoism will not open the door to a viable diplomatic strategy.