Maritime sovereignty compromised due to gov't neglect - military paper

From the Philippine Star posted to the ABS-CBN Website (Jun 14): Maritime sovereignty compromised due to gov't neglect - military paper

The country’s maritime sovereignty and security have been compromised many times over due to decades of neglect and indifference by past political leadership, according to a military paper.

A 40-page military study, a copy of which was obtained by The STAR, noted that because of this neglect, the country’s external and territorial security have been in a woeful and pathetic state, especially in terms of maritime capability.

“There are now multitude of issues and challenges facing this archipelagic country. These include high rates of human trafficking, weapons smuggling, Chinese assertiveness in the West Philippine Sea (WPS), to name a few,” the paper said.

It stressed that the Philippines is a coastal or archipelagic nation and the world’s second largest archipelago, next only to Indonesia. It has the fifth longest coastline totaling 36,289 kilometers.

On top of this, the country is strategically positioned in East Asia where the world’s most important navigational sea lanes crisscross one another.

The nation also sits astride major shipping routes between the Americas and Southern China and Southeast Asia, as well as between northern Australia and the Lombok Straits and Northeast Asia.

Unfortunately, the country lacks maritime security and infrastructure and has failed to check and secure around 70,000 international vessels traversing year-round the Luzon Straits and Malacca Straits and the waterways in the Sulu Sea, the paper said.

Aside from the 55 percent of Indian trade to East Asia, 95 percent of Japanese oil requirements form the Middle East and 90 percent of the world’s trade (by volume) pass the country’s waters every year.

“Against this backdrop, it is surprising that the Philippines has the most inward-looking and myopic outlook in the region in relation to its maritime environment.

“Internally and externally, the nation is fraught with serious maritime issues but government priorities are clearly misplaced,” the paper said.

In spite of its enormous natural wealth, there exists a misunderstood “culture of poverty.”

This lamentable situation of Philippine maritime security can easily be traced to the attitude of its past leaders and policy-makers in their understanding and appreciation of geography.

“The leaders are focused on their respective areas, which means that although they may embark on improving their respective ports, hardly any would think of the inter-connectivity of their areas, much less think of the entire nation in a maritime context,” the paper said.

“This attitude keeps legislators entrusted with the ‘power of the purse’ from looking at the national perspective and coming to grips with the reality,” it said.

The military study also noted that the development of maritime capability stagnated because of the security umbrella that the United States provided to the country through the years, the land-based campaign against the insurgents and budgetary constraints, the paper added.

“For this reason, the need to set the power of the Philippine Navy and the Air Force against the size of their commitments was gravely overlooked. The development of their capabilities was to come only in the mid-1990s after the pull-out of US bases and the assertiveness of China in the contested West Philippine Sea,” the study said.

The paper also warned while the war of today has been deregulated by international law, the prospect of states going to war for various interests, including sovereignty and national self-defense, is ever present.
 

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/06/14/15/maritime-sovereignty-compromised-due-govt-neglect-military-paper