Mary Kay Carlson is The Cartoon
Part One: Americans Prospecting GenSan as EDCA Site
In a flash, May Kay Carlson proved she is part of the problem President Bongbong Marcos Jr. has created with China rather than any solution.
The ambassador of the United States was invited to keynote the 33rd Mindanao Business Conference (Minbizcon), with around 700 delegates from various business chambers in the island to chart its sustainable development. General Santos City is perhaps the only part of the Philippines where the ascendancy of the United States can still be asserted.
Her frivolous foray to geopolitics depicting China’s claims in the South China Sea as a cartoon, was therefore utterly uncalled for and sorely opportunistic.
She showed her preference to serve as megaphone of the US “rules-based order”, rather than act as a professional diplomat dispensing the use of force or underhanded means and employing statecraft for the peaceful adjustment of differences between states.
Yes, it can be said Gensan is a won territory for the Americans.
For instance, despite its present complicated multi-national corporate structure, it was Dole Food Company of Irish-American origins that enabled Dole Philippines Inc. to establish its plantation in Polomolok, South Cotabato, Mindanao, Philippines in 1963.
This is the largest pineapple plantation of Dole Asia Holding in Asia, operating in around 16,000 hectares in South Central Mindanao and neighboring provinces.
According to their website, Dolefil Polomolok produces more than 30 million cases of processed pineapples, and more than 16 million boxes of fresh pineapples shipped annually, 95% of which is exported to America, Europe, and Asia.
Carlson was credible when she said they are working with the Mindanao Development Authority and other partners to help improve intermodal logistics, which are key to boosting trade and investment in Mindanao, including the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
American posturing in BARMM is common knowledge since her predecessor Kristie Kenny’s dalliance with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front Murad Ibrahim, Purported secret US Embassy files released by the whistle-blowing WikiLeaks, showed that Washington had a direct hand in the ill-fated deal to create a Bangsamoro Juridical Entity in 2008 that critics warned could lead to a dismemberment of the Philippines.
Flagship projects
But best of all, the United States seeded the Multilateral Aid Initiative (MAI) that began in 1989 to raise $14 billion in a “mini-marshall plan” to reignite the Philippine economy after its collapse in the final years of the presidency of the Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
Most of the American contribution of $800 million to the MAI went to the development of General Santos City as a model self-sustaining economic hub for the region of South Cotabato, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudrat, Sarangani (Region 13 Soccsksargen).
This went to the construction of a modern airport, the largest in the Mindanao, completed in 1996, having two runaways with a grade that is capable of landing two C-5 Galaxies at the same time. GES is now the second busiest destination in the entire island.
A modern seaport was also built complete with facilities for blast freezing and cold storage, processing, canning and warehousing, an integrated strategy first in the country. It now competes with Navotas in mega Manila in terms of fish catch and is where our largest tuna and sardine exports emanate. Today, the Sarangani Bay brand of milkfish and sea bass reaches markets all over the world.
For easy access to the air and seaport, roads and bridges were constructed circumferencing the Sarangani Bay, and with four lanes each way in major portions.
I did not get this info by surfing. I was part of the team of Ambassadors Emmanuel Pelaez of the Philippines and Elliot Richardson of the United States who worked for the Multilateral Aid Initiative (Philippine Assistance Program)_
But after crowdfunding among US allies in Europe and the Middle East from 1986 to 1993, the US had become relatively shy in subsequent development appropriations, as they had to leave their military bases in 1992 after the Philippine Senate refused to extend the Military Bases Agreement (MBA) a year before.
So, the discreet plan of the United States to make Gensan a military base in Mindanao under the MBA could not materialize.
Carlson’s visit, however, has augured a new vigor on the part of the Americans to pursue Gen San as another location, after four new sites were added on April, 2023 to the Enhance Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).
But other than $100 million a year in military assistance for the next five years, we will have to see what better the United States can offer in humiliating contrast to the $23 billion in economic assistance Xi Jinping promised the Philippines in January 2023 to the Marcos administration.
In terms of economics, we will have to see something more than what the US Embassy gave its audience at General Santos City – words.
Dash-line on the map
This makes the US ambassador’s frivolity in characterizing China’s dash-line as cartoon – unschooled, irresponsible and dangerous.
Let’s have fact-check.
Kishore Mahbubani, former president of the United Nations Security Council, narrates that Professor Wang Gungwu, an Australian historian and writer specializing in the history of China and Southeast Asia discovered that it was the Japanese that drew the dash-line on the map of the South China Seas when they were still based in Formosa (Taiwan) for the administration of the South China Sea.
It is definitely not a funny cartoon, but an illustration reflecting China’s territories in the SCS that Japan began occupying from the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War and throughout World War II.
It was not after the surrender of Japan, that the liberating forces of the Republic of China internally circulated an atlas in 1947, which included a drawing of the eleven-dash line to illustrate the geographical scope of its regained authority over South China Sea.
Two dashes were subsequently removed from the eleven-dash line in 1953, when the Peoples Republic of China transferred the territorial title for the Bach Long Vi island (Gulf of Tonkin) from China to Vietnam.
Law-based claim
China’s reacquisition of the group of islands after World War II and both its Declaration of the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the Territorial Sea of 1958, and the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone of 1992 predates the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.
Those laws expressly provides that the territory of the People’s Republic of China includes, among others, the Dongsha Islands (Pratas Group), Xisha Islands (Paracels Group) and the Nansha Islands (Spratly Group) are archipelagos (outlining the nine-dash line) affirming China’s territorial sovereignty and the relevant maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea.
Admittedly, the legal nature and meaning of the nine-dash line have become controversial with the effectivity of UNCLOS two years after in 1994, altering the definition of archipelagic baselines from its traditional concept.
Archipelagic debate
Records of the three Law of the Sea Conferences (LOSC) show that it is to the credit of the Philippines, Indonesia and Fiji that the Archipelagic Principle was incorporated in the final form of the Convention. In Article 46 to wit:
“Article 46 Use of terms
For the purposes of this Convention:
(a) ‘archipelagic State’ means a State constituted wholly by one or more archipelagos and may include other islands;
(b) ‘archipelago’ means a group of islands, including parts of islands, interconnecting waters and other natural features which are so closely interrelated that such islands, waters and other natural features form an intrinsic geographical, economic and political entity, or which historically have been regarded as such.
Unfortunately, in the following articles, the qualification of an “archipelago” has become complicated – (47) baselines (48) measurement of the breadth of the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf from the baselines (49) legal status of archipelagic waters (50) delimitation of internal waters within an archipelago.
Because of this, Philippine claims to the Kalayaan Island Group (70,000 square kilometers of sovereignty) as per its 1978 Presidential Decree 1596 and its historic title and historic waters (830,000 square kilometers of sovereignty) within the treaty limits established by the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the 1900 Treaty of Washington and the 1930 Convention Treaty between the United States and Great Britain, have been without closure.
OMG, if we allow a unique application of UNCLOS to the aforementioned, the Philippines stands to lose a total of 900,000 square kilometers of sovereignty over these erstwhile territorial seas.
Similarly-situated is China’s nine-dash-line!
If ever Carlson’s statement adds a new layer to the ongoing debate over the South China Seas, it is does not help enlighten the issues. On the contrary, her cartoonish assertion exacerbates the confusion.
Worse, she is politicizing the predicament to the obvious benefit not of China or the Philippines, but the United States.
Claims based on historic rights
It must be reiterated at this point that China does not base its claims in the SCS on the nine-dash line. The country is more than 3,000 years old and it understands maps do not constitute titles in international law.
On the other hand, UNCLOS is just one treaty and cannot be construed to serve as the totality of international law, that is the sum total of more than 250,000 written treaties and customary traditions between and among nations.
As a career diplomat Carlson ought to know this but she has chosen instead to slogan for US hegemony in the planet – she has chosen intellectual dishonesty instead of diplomatic statecraft.
US-phantom support
The American ambassador even lied about continuing to support the Philippines.
The nine US-Enhance Defense Cooperation Agreement bases were initially “sold” to the Filipinos as preparations for human assistance and disaster response. How many super typhoons have passed, recently Carina and Enteng, did we see any white or black gringos assisting?
If we did not revive the Chinese protocol to resupply our Marines stationed at BRP Sierra Madre at Ayungin Shoal, they would have been dead by now due to starvation.
We lost Scarborough in 2012 when we unconditionally withdrew BRP Gregorio del Pilar from the shoal off Zambales; last month we lost Escoda Shoal.
After nearly five months of attempting to establish another forward operating base there, we withdrew the BRP Teresa Magbanua with the embarrassing reason “that the ship was compelled to return to port due to unfavorable weather conditions, depleted supplies of daily necessities, and the need to evacuate personnel requiring medical care.”
Four of the crew, who got sick, disembarked from the ship on stretchers. The crew had to rely on rainwater for nearly a month, as they lacked replacement filters to convert seawater into drinking water. When rain was scarce, they resorted to using water produced from the ship’s air conditioning units for drinking and cooking.
They ran out of food and water two days before their return, eating only porridge for three weeks. Some of them became dehydrated after contracting gastroenteritis.
In a translated statement, the China Coast Guard said that the Magbanua “has been illegally stranded” at Escoda Shoal, which Beijing calls Xianbin Reef, since April and had violated China’s sovereignty and has “[undermined] regional peace and stability.” In short, we were trespassing?
Ms. Carlson, in Gensan you echoed Philippine propaganda shooing the Chinese coast guard to remove themselves from Escoda Shoal, where was your much-ballyhooed G.I. support in BRP Teresa Magbanua’s great hour of need?
With all due respects Madam, this makes you the cartoon personified.
To be continued. Next – Debunking Carlson’s rules-based mindset.
Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan
is former diplomat who served as press attaché and spokesman of the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC and the Philippines’ Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York from April 1986 to 1993. Presently, he is vice-president for international affairs of the Asian Century Philippines Institute, a geopolitical analyst, author of books, columnist, a print and broadcast journalist, and a hobby-organic-farmer.
His best sellers, A Problem for Every Solution (2015), a characterization of factors affecting Philippine-China relations, and No Vaccine for a Virus called Racism (2020) a survey of international news attempting to tracing its origins, earned for him an international laureate in the Awards for the Promotion of Philippine-China Understanding in 2021. His third book, The Poverty of Power is now available – a historiography of controversial issues of spanning 36 years leading to the Demise of the Edsa Revolution and the Forthcoming Rise of a Philippine Phoenix.
Today he is anchor for many YouTube Channels, namely Ang Maestro Lectures @Katipunan Channel (Saturdays), Unfinished Revolution (Sundays) and Opinyon Online (Wednesdays) with Ka Mentong Laurel, and Ipa-Rush Kay Paras with former Secretary Jacinto Paras (Tuesdays and Thursdays). His personal vlog is @AdoPaglinawan.
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