Aquino should’ve tried to broker

It is easy enough to see why Japan, the United States and South Korea have reacted with varying degrees of concern to China’s establishment of an “air-defense identification zone” in the East China Sea. The zone covers the disputed Senkaku/ Diaoyu islands, which have embroiled Tokyo and Beijing in a bitter conflict, as well as the waters off Jeju Island and part of South Korea’s own ADIZ. 

But I cannot for the life of me see why Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, who represents a country whose air space is not encroached upon and which has no military planes whose flights could be inhibited by Beijing, should try to speak so much louder than the US Secretary of State or the foreign minister of Japan, Korea (or even Taiwan) on this issue, which he obviously needs a little more time to fully understand. 

The reasons of the governments concerned are clear. Japan controls the Senkakus (Diaoyu to the Chinese), while the waters off Jeju Island and the existing ADIZ which China’s ADIZ overlaps are simply Korean. Japanese and Korean planes have always patrolled their own air space without having to clear with Beijing, just as the US has always patrolled the region as a faithful Pacific power. The Philippines on the other hand is simply a privileged ringside observer. 

The imbroglio arose after the Chinese defense ministry declared that foreign aircraft entering China’s ADIZ must report a flight plan, maintain two-way radio communications, and respond in a timely and accurate manner to all queries related to their identity and flight plan, or face “emergency defensive measures.” This obviously refers to military aircraft, since Beijing says normal flights by international carriers in the zone will not be affected in any manner.

Japan has protested Beijing’s action, saying it “escalates” the tension over the Senkakus, which ratcheted up after Tokyo bought three of the islands from their private Japanese owner last year. In an apparent effort to test Beijing, Japanese military and commercial aircraft (ANA and Japan Airlines) crossed the demarcated zone without notification. American and Korean military aircraft did the same thing. There was no reaction from Beijing. Chinese patrol jets scrambled to the zone one day later. 

Official statements from those directly affected have been measured until now. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan would pursue whatever action it deemed necessary “firmly but with calmness.” The Korean press came in strong, but Seoul’s official response was rather muted, like Taiwan’s. The strongest reaction came from US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel who viewed the ADIZ as “ a destabilizing attempt to alter the status quo in the region,” and as something that “increases the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculations.” But while saying it “will not in any way change how the United States conducts military operations in the region,” Washington has instructed American airlines ( United, American and Delta) to comply with Beijing’s restrictions. 

Still not even Hagel could say what Del Rosario alone has said-----that the ADIZ “transforms an entire air zone into China’s domestic air space” and is an “infringement that compromises the safety of civil aviation and the national security of affected states.” Experts have pointed out that the ADIZ is destabilizing only because it covers disputed maritime territory. Otherwise, in itself, an ADIZ is neither provocative nor negative: Japan, the US, Korea, Russia, Vietnam and Taiwan, among others, have their own ADIZs. 

According to the Chinese defense ministry, the ADIZ does not define territorial air space nor does it establish a “no-fly zone” where an aircraft that fails or refuses to identify itself could be shot down. It is simply meant to give the country delimiting the zone sufficient time to identify and ascertain the intentions and attributes of an incoming aircraft and make the appropriate response if there is any perceived threat. 

Does China worry perhaps that, like the US, it could become the victim of a 9/11-type of terrorist attack in the future? Beijing has not said so, but is that perhaps a consideration?

Experts suggest that the situation could have been avoided had there been some consultations with the affected parties prior to Beijing’s announcement. Some rules of engagement could have been agreed upon. But since that was not done, there could be room for an honest broker to get the parties to sit down even now---after the fact. And the Philippines could have aimed at performing this role. 

Despite its past acrimonious exchanges with Beijing on maritime territorial issues, and with Hong Kong on the 2010 Manila hostage-taking in which eight Hong Kong tourists were killed and for which Aquino refuses to apologize, the administration could have tried to initiate friendly conversations after Beijing sent its 14,000-ton hospital ship “Peace Ark” to participate in the international relief and rehabilitation work in the typhoon-devastated city of Tacloban, Leyte and the town of Guiuan, Eastern Samar. Aquino should have tried.

But instead of doing this, the foreign secretary decided to attack with an open mouth and tried to show the US, Japan and Korea that he could take on the Asian giant for all of them. Then Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and some congressmen tried to climb onto the same soapbox by issuing their own statements. To Beijing’s credit, it refused to pay much attention to the political noise coming from these typhoon victims.

It is an old colonial thing. Many of our officials never got rid of their old colonial mental frame. They still like to fight their battles for their old colonial masters. During the Cold War when it was almost obligatory to rail against Moscow, our chief delegate to the 902nd plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly blasted away at the Soviet Union for “swallowing up” the peoples of Eastern Europe and elsewhere. This prompted a livid Nikita Khruschev to bang his shoe on his desk, and call then-Senator Lorenzo Sumulong “a jerk, a stooge, a lackey, a toady of American imperialism.” One would have thought we had learned a little from that experience.

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