Mixed U.S. Messaging on the ‘Brazen’ Chinese Assault against the Philippines

Posted to the conservative National Review (Jun 20, 2024): Mixed U.S. Messaging on the ‘Brazen’ Chinese Assault against the Philippines (By JIMMY QUINN)

Philippine Coast Guard personnel prepare rubber fenders after Chinese Coast Guard vessels blocked their way to a resupply mission at the Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, March 5, 2024. (Adrian Portugal/Reuters)

The contradictions of President Biden’s posture toward China were on display this week as a U.S. official found time to continue climate-diplomacy efforts with China while Beijing sent axe-wielding “coast guard” personnel in an attempt to wrest control of the Second Thomas Shoal from the Philippines.

The Chinese coast guard has escalated that campaign at the BRP Sierra Madre, a decrepit former U.S. vessel that the Philippines government put on the shoal to maintain its claim in the contested Spratly Islands. Beijing has harassed every resupply mission headed there for years. The latest efforts involve axe- and knife-wielding members of the Chinese coast guard, and other typical tactics, including the use of water cannons.

During the recent skirmish, on June 17, a member of the Philippines military lost a finger. The country’s military called it “a brazen act of aggression” and an “act of piracy,” as the coast guard stole supplies from a Filipino armed-forces vessel. Aggression is exactly what this was. It’s reckless. The Chinese coast guard doesn’t have much of a margin of error and could possibly start a shooting war.

On paper, the U.S. response has been strong. The State Department condemned “the escalatory and irresponsible” Chinese actions — and reaffirmed Article IV of the U.S. mutual-defense treaty with the Philippines, which covers armed attacks against the country. Secretary of State Antony Blinken conveyed the same about America’s “ironclad” commitment under the treaty during a call with Enrique Manalo, his counterpart in Manila.

So why was U.S. ambassador to China Nicholas Burns chumming it up with China’s climate envoy this week?

On June 19, Burns posted a picture with Liu Zhenmin, China’s point man on the so-called climate cooperation efforts that have proceeded during the Biden administration. In a previous role, as China’s vice minister of foreign affairs, Liu trashed a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration siding with Manila’s claims as “just a piece of paper.”

Burns wrote that he discussed “the need for progress on climate change” and that they hope to “address deforestation and accelerate the pace of the U.S.-China sub-working groups on the green energy transition & methane and non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.”

That working group is part of the zombie U.S.–China climate initiative that former envoy John Kerry kicked off in 2021, pointedly disregarding Beijing’s crimes against humanity, and then handed to John Podesta this year. (It’s not even clear that Podesta should be allowed to step into the role, as the administration has placed Podesta at the White House, skirting the legally mandated Senate confirmation process for State Department envoys, while he still presumably draws on Foggy Bottom’s work.)

More to the point, a U.S. ally has characterized an ongoing assault against its forces as aggression, and Washington has not allowed that to get in the way of its climate diplomacy with the aggressor.

The Biden administration has worked assiduously to build out a latticework of overlapping diplomatic arrangements in the Indo-Pacific. Expanding on Trump-era diplomacy that revived the Quadrilateral arrangement with Japan, India, and Australia, Team Biden brokered additional agreements. Among them: a rapprochement between Japan and South Korea and joint trilateral cooperation between Japan and the Philippines. Amid this effort, the Pentagon secured new basing access in the Philippines, which could be critical if China moves on Taiwan.

That matters more than one meeting about climate, and the full extent of covert U.S.–Philippines coordination to counter the Chinese coast guard could be comprehensive.

But the climate talks are, at best, a total waste of time, and, worse, a signal to Beijing that the U.S. doesn’t take its alliances seriously enough to keep its priorities in order.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mixed-u-s-messaging-on-the-brazen-chinese-assault-against-the-philippines/