Tribunal overwhelmingly rejects Beijing's South China Sea claims
An arbitration court ruled on Tuesday that China has no historic title over the waters of the South China Sea and has breached the Philippines' sovereign rights with its actions, infuriating Beijing which dismissed the case as a farce.
A defiant China, which boycotted the hearings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, vowed again to ignore the ruling and said its armed forces would defend its sovereignty and maritime interests.
China's state-run Xinhua news agency said shortly before the ruling was announced that a Chinese civilian aircraft had successfully tested two new airports in the disputed Spratly Islands.
And China's Defence Ministry said a new guided missile destroyer was formally commissioned at a naval base on the southern island province of Hainan, which has responsibility for the South China Sea.
"This award represents a devastating legal blow to China's jurisdictional claims in the South China Sea," Ian Storey, of Singapore's ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, told Reuters.
"China will respond with fury, certainly in terms of rhetoric and possibly through more aggressive actions at sea."
The United States, which China has accused of fuelling tensions and militarizing the region with patrols and exercises, said the ruling should be treated as final and binding.
"We certainly would urge all parties not to use this as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative action," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in a briefing.
U.S. officials have previously said they feared China may respond to the ruling by declaring an air defense identification zone in the South China Sea, as it did in the East China Sea in 2013, or by stepping up its building and fortification of artificial islands.
China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.
Finding for the Philippines on a number of issues, the panel said there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within its so-called nine-dash line, which covers almost 90 percent of the South China Sea.
It said China had interfered with traditional Philippine fishing rights at Scarborough Shoal and had breached the Philippines' sovereign rights by exploring for oil and gas near the Reed Bank.
None of China's reefs and holdings in the Spratly Islands entitled it to a 200-mile exclusive economic zone, it added.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on all parties to resolve the disputes in a "peaceful and amicable manner through dialogue and in conformity with international law."
"2,000 YEARS OF HISTORY"
China's Foreign Ministry rejected the ruling, saying its people had more than 2,000 years of history in the South China Sea, that its islands did have exclusive economic zones and that it had announced to the world its "dotted line" map in 1948.
"China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards," it said.
However, the ministry also repeated that China respected and upheld the freedom of navigation and overflight and that China was ready to keep resolving the disputes peacefully through talks with states directly concerned.
Julia Guifang Xue, a professor of international law at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that given Beijing's sensitivity about sovereignty and security "we won't be surprised to see some kind of renewed effort by China to consolidate its claim in the area."
In a statement shortly before the ruling, China's Defence Ministry said its armed forces would "firmly safeguard national sovereignty, security and maritime interests and rights, firmly uphold regional peace and stability, and deal with all kinds of threats and challenges"
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The judges acknowledged China's refusal to participate, but said they sought to take account of China's position from its statements and diplomatic correspondence.
"The award is a complete and total victory for the Philippines ... a victory for international law and international relations," said Paul Reichler, lead lawyer for the Philippines.
Vietnam said it welcomed the ruling.
Taiwan, which maintains that the island it occupies, Itu Aba, is legally the only island among hundreds of reefs, shoals and atolls scattered across the seas, said it did not accept the ruling, which seriously impaired Taiwan's territorial rights.
"This is the worst scenario," Taiwan Foreign Minister David Tawei Lee told reporters, promising unspecified "action" from Taipei.
GROUND-BREAKING RULING
The ruling is significant as it is the first time that a legal challenge has been brought in the dispute, which covers some of the world's most promising oil and gas fields and vital fishing grounds. [bit.ly/29AlvXc]
It reflects the shifting balance of power in the 3.5 million sq km sea, where China has been expanding its presence by building artificial islands and dispatching patrol boats that keep Philippine fishing vessels away.
Andrew Mertha, a China specialist at Cornell University in the United States, said the ruling further isolated China internationally.
"Domestically, Beijing has painted itself into a corner and may find itself compelled to act in a potentially reckless fashion, if only to demonstrate to its domestic audience that it is not ... an 'empty cannon' in the eyes of its own citizens."
The Philippines said it was studying the ruling.
"We call on all those concerned to exercise restraint and sobriety," Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay told a news conference. "The Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision as an important contribution to the ongoing efforts in addressing disputes in the South China Sea."
Japan said the ruling was legally binding and final.
The court has no power of enforcement, but a victory for the Philippines could spur Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei to file similar cases.
Ahead of the ruling, around 100 members of a Philippine nationalist group demonstrated outside the Chinese consulate in Manila, calling on Beijing to accept the decision and leave the Scarborough Shoal, a popular fishing zone off limits to Filipinos since 2012.
In China, social media users reacted with outrage at the ruling.
"It was ours in the past, is now and will remain so in the future," wrote one user on microblogging site Weibo. "Those who encroach on our China's territory will die no matter how far away they are."
Spreading fast on social media in the Philippines was the use of the term "Chexit" - the public's desire for Chinese vessels to leave the waters.
(Additional reporting by Thomas Escritt in Amsterdam, Enrico Dela Cruz and Martin Petty in Manila, Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing, Tim Kelly in Tokyo, John Walcott, David Brunnstrom and Jeff Mason in Washington, JR Wu in Taipei and Greg Torode in Hong Kong; Writing by Lincoln Feast and Nick Macfie; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Grant McCool)
These are the bases the U.S. will use near the South China Sea. China isn’t impressed.
End of Aircraft Carriers Era?
…from SouthFront
The flagships of the American Navy are ready to disappear from the oceans. This is the the perspective drawn for these monsters of the American Navy by senior analyst Ben Ho Wan Beng of the prestigious School of International Affairs in Singapore. His report was published by the American naval academy.
Firstly, this is due to a rather small range of the naval aviation aircraft. Most of the F-18 aircraft cannot be more that 500 nautical miles off the mothership. And even if the ship is at that distance away from the shoreline, there is no chance the Hornets will get into the enemy territory – no more fuel. If their objective is to attack a country which is not a small one, or an island nation, but a country with a deep “strategic depth” these aircraft are useless. The F-35 that is meant to replace it will not solve anything, because its combat radius is only 50 nautical miles greater.
Secondly, two of the likeliest USA’s military opponents – Russia and China are creating new generation of long range missiles that could be “moved” deep into the continent – the analyst thinks, that they could be moved up to 800 miles inland and still be highly effective against naval targets. The missile defense lines are virtually invincible for the American aircraft carriers.
So, the defending side has no need to attack the aircraft carrier with dozens of their own naval aviation aircraft – a Chinese DF-21 missile, just one, would be sufficient to sink a ship together with the 6000 men on board. It is difficult to say where up to 84 aircraft would land after that.
The new series – Gerald Ford class carriers. The first one was launched in 2013. By 2019 it is planned to build a second one. Their characteristics are vastly different, however, considering the existing conditions, these ships are made redundant by Russian and Chinese defenses.
The aircraft carriers that are capable by their mere presence near a country’s shores strike fear in the hearts of a small country’s government are turning into a gargantuan sitting duck for Russian hunter-killer submarines, Kirov-class cruisers and countless long-range missile systems. They are probably going to be about as useful as a movie prop in the next few decades. In the worst-case scenario – they would be scrapped.
The massive program to build these monsters nowadays exists more to beat the cash out of American taxpayers in favour of the American military industries. The main American suspected opponentы – Russia and China – aren’t scared of the fleet of naval airfields, but these ships are still capable of earning big money for the people who own the industries that build them.
The disputed South China Sea will soon see increased U.S. military activity from five Philippine bases, following the signing of a deal between Manila and Washington that will allow the Pentagon to deploy conventional forces to the Philippines for the first time in decades.
The deal — called an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement — was reached Friday between State Department officials and the government of the Philippines, and will allow the Pentagon to use parts of five military installations: Antonio Bautista Air Base, Basa Air Base, Fort Magsaysay, Lumbia Air Base, and Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base. It comes at a time when the United States and its allies in the region have expressed concern about China increasingly deploying military assets to man-made islands in the South China Sea.
China has laid claim to a number of islands in the South China Sea, building airbases on tiny spits of land while installing powerful radar and missile launchers. Here's why. (Jason Aldag, Julie Vitkovskaya/The Washington Post / Satellite photos courtesy of CSIS)
State Department spokesman John Kirby, a retired two-star Navy admiral, saidthat the United States has “made absolutely no bones about the fact that we take the rebalance to the Asia Pacific region very seriously.” But he added that there is “nothing offensive or provocative” about any of the Pentagon’s deployment of troops to the region.
“It’s not about selling it to the Chinese or to anybody,” Kirby said, under questioning during a media briefing. “It’s about meeting our security commitments in a serious alliance with the Philippines. That’s what this is about.”
The map above shows where the bases are. Antonio Bautista Air Base, on the island of Palawan, is a few dozen miles east of the disputed Spratly Islands, where China’s military buildup is underway. Basa Air Base is also near the South China Sea, and is in a rural area outside Manila. Bautista Air Base is the closest installation the Philippines has to the Spratlys, according to Philippine air force. Other bases were considered, according to Philippine media reports, but ultimately not included in the agreement.
China raised questions about the plan Monday, saying that cooperation between the United States and the Philippines should not harm the sovereignty or security interests of any other country.
“The U.S. has talked about militarization in the South China Sea. But can it explain whether its own increased military deployment in the region is equivalent to militarization?” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a media briefing, according to Xinhua, a state-run news agency.
The United States had a conventional military presence in the Philippines for nearly a century until 1991, when the country ordered the U.S. military to leave its naval base in Subic Bay after the countries could not reach an agreement on the extension of a lease. A U.S. Special Operations task force was based in the Philippines for 13 years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but was phased out last year in favor of keeping a small amount of U.S. troops nearby to assist Philippine forces in their fight against Islamist militants.
A new agreement between the United States and the Philippines clears the way for a new permanent American military presence across five bases that will support rotational deployments near the contested South China Sea.
The bases include:
Antonio Bautista Air Base. Located near the capital of the island province of Palawan, which is strategically located near the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
Basa Air Base. Located about 40 miles northwest of the Philippines' capital, Manila, the air base was originally constructed by the U.S. Army Air Corps before the Second World War.
Fort Magsaysay. Located on the northern Island of Luzon, Fort Magsaysay is the largest military installation in the Philippines, and is one of the primary training areas of the Philippine Army.
Lumbia Air Base. Located on the southern island of Mindanao, the air base is connected to a civilian airport. Local media reports say construction of a new U.S. facility will begin soon.
Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base. Located on Mactan Island of the coast of Cebu in the central Philippines. It was originally built by the U.S. Air Force before the American pullout in the early 1990s.
The U.S. will be setting up “permanent logistics facilities to support rotational deployments,” said one defense official familiar with the agreement. The Pentagon is likely to invest heavily on construction projects to enhance capacity at those five bases.
The agreement was finalized Friday.
The rotational presence could, in effect, leave U.S. military assets and personnel on the ground in the Philippines for long periods if the missions are approved by the government in Manila.
The U.S. military presence in the Philippines, a former American colony, was once fiercely opposed by many Filipinos, partly because of notorious rowdy behavior and misconduct that was common among troops during the Vietnam era when the Philippines offered war fighters a respite from the combat zone. That led to the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces in the early 1990s.
But the Filipino government has recently sought new support from the United States as China has grown more aggressive in asserting territorial claims and conducting military-style operations near Filipino shores.
The list of bases surprised many analysts who expected it to include some of the former U.S. military outposts such as Naval Station Subic Bay and Naval Air Station Cubi Point, both strategically located on the northwest coast, or Clark Air Base near Manila. Those facilities were a backbone of logistics support during the Vietnam War.
China has stepped up its military activity in the region by claiming small uninhabited islands and even building new ones in the South China Sea off the western shores of the Philippines.
It's likely that the American presence there will grow slowly because China's activities have threatened the stability of the region, which includes vital trade routes for global economy.
"I suspect that it will ramp up slowly," said Jan van Tol, a retired U.S. Navy captain and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. "A suddenly much larger U.S. presence, even if just a rotational presence, that can be seen, certainty in Beijing, that this is a ratcheting up of a U.S.-Chinese competition in the South China Sea."
Van Tol noted the Antonio Bautista Air Base on Palawan is very close to the Spratly Islands where China has made its controversial territorial claims. "That puts them much closer to the scene where the Chinese are using what we consider to be illegitimate activities," he said.
The announcement of the five bases comes almost two years after President Obama visited the Philippines in 2014 and signed a new 10-year agreement with the former U.S colony. The future U.S. activity in the Philippines may include Marine Corps units rotating through the country like the ongoing mission in Darwin, Australia.
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