Myoushu Fails Bigtime, Joint Patrols Won’t Work
Part 3 of a Series of 5: Escalation Suggested by Newsweek Report
Paradigm shift or paradigm shit?
They may not pick on our meager assets, but nothing stops the Chinese from challenging American, Japanese, Australian or any non-ASEAN aircraft and ships straying outside of our territorial sea, after all they have already converted certain features of both the Spratlys and the Paracels into artificial islands with intricate military facilities.
Besides, international law only allows innocent passage.
As we speak, three Philippine Navy ships sailed to Mindoro outside of our territorial sea for their second PH-US Military Cooperative Activity (MCA) last January 3 to meet US Navy destroyer USS Sterett (DDG- 104), the only American ship to arrive for photo and gunnery exercises which were shortened.
The plan was eventually cancelled for two reasons: first, the USS aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and its two other escort ships were a no-show, and second, a Chinese Jiang-class frigate 570 began shadowing the formation later reappearing backed-up by a Luoyang-class destroyer 174.
Obviously as early as its planning stage, the MCA showed that inter-operability between the two navies does not work. Besides, the American presence and behavior does not conform to the definition of innocent passage.
During its first MCA last November, China has already made its position regarding this issue. Reuters quoted the southern theatre command of the Chinese military as saying, “The Philippines enlisted forces out of the region to patrol … stirred up trouble and engaged in hype, undermining regional peace and stability.
“The Chinese military will maintain high vigilance, resolutely defend sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, and resolutely safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.”
Oxford Languages defines the adverb “resolutely” to mean in a manner that is admirably purposeful, determined, and unwavering. But in this year of the dragon, the Zodiac is even more graphic – Beware if you ever get on the bad side of the dragon, it will go for your jugular to let you know just how you’re ticking them off without batting an eyelash.
Don’t the western linear minds anticipate that joint patrol with foreign military assets is such a bad provocation it can court the creation of a Peoples Liberation Army Air (and Naval) Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the entire South China Sea when provoked further?
This would be tantamount to China reaffirming the area its internal waters or domestic from what is still generally regarded as international waters today, thereby reducing freedom of navigation to strictly innocent passage – a development that the United States and its allies will not wish to happen.
SECOND MCA
Zarzuela
There is, however, our penchant for vaudeville.
Even with the Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation as cover, the US Naval Institute’s “Project Myoushu’s” expensive top-dollar culminating event Christmas Convoy under its messaging umbrella What is Ours is Ours (“Atin Ito”), did not catch public support.
Actually, the project was truncated. Jorge de la Cruz captain of its flagship MV Felix Oca refused to sail farther because of an imminent Chinese blockade and the possibility of collision.
At 4:00 pm of its first sail date, a Chinese navy destroyer Changsha 173 was first spotted going as near as five nautical miles. Thirty minutes thereafter, Chinese Coast Guard 5305 went as near as 2.5 nautical miles encircling MV Oca at a speed of 21 knots, at one time even crossing the path of the convoy’s Philippine Coast Guard escort, BRP Melchora Aquino.
With MV Oca going at 10 to a maximum of 13 knots, Captain Dela Cruz made a judgment call to turn the ship around and head home, despite the PCG insisting that the convoy could still continue on advising “Stay on our portside.” The skipper refused saying he did not want to put the safety and lives of his passengers and crew in harm’s way.
In their self-imposed hype, the organizers who were mostly erstwhile homegrown communist sympathizers, were obviously un-informed that their “propaganda” activity was not covered under the principle of innocent passage qualifying for freedom of navigation.
However, they nevertheless run to the banks laughing and joyful for their Christmas loot at the expense of American taxpayers.
Poll confirms failure
Numbers even verified Myoushu’s toothlessness.
The Pulse Asia survey last September only registered 7% of Filipinos as seeing protection of sovereignty from foreign intervention, as its most urgent national concern, up but by only less than one percent from the previous quarter.
In sum, Stanford’s Gordian Knot Center, instead of untying “gordian knots”, created more entanglements and security problems than solutions.
The lone ranger strategems of its team leader Raymond Powell failed bigtime, mainly because the “tonto” he chose, PCG Commodore Jay Tarriela, has acted more in pursuit of a promotion by sucking up to higher-ups and aping talking points from the US Naval Institute, alienating unlike minds as “traitors” and paid parrots of pro-China narratives, dishing out of his own invalid and unschooled opinions about UNCLOS and the Arbitral award that have often been proven false by ordinary vloggers, worst – singing “alleluias” to the Americans while peddling the line of “protecting Philippine sovereignty”.
While still a commissioned officer of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), the joker has been disrobed of his appointment of deputy chief of Coast Guard Staff for Human Resource Management (CG-1) and designation as adviser to the Commandant on Maritime Security Affairs, and as PCG spokesperson on the West Philippine Sea.
It was only through the intercession of National Security Adviser Eduardo Año that Tarriela has been retained in the National Task Force for the West Philippine Seas, but was specifically instructed not to make public statements in behalf of PCG Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan without the latter’s advance knowledge and permission.
Now that his wings have been clipped and his contrived narratives have been unmasked as fiction, his effusions have been confined to his recluse – his notorious Twitter (X) Account making it most doubtful if Tarriela can come any close to achieving his overwhelming ambition to becoming PCG commandant.
Most in the coast guard are said to dislike him for putting our men and women in uniform in harm’s way in fishing for a false flag from the Chinese and for his misrepresentations and arrogance in his short-lived showman in mainstream media.
But now that he has allegedly made his treasure with Myoushu, licking his wounds, he is now singing a different tune. His coast guard peers told my sources, he intends to run for Congress in 2025 for Occidental Mindoro’s lone district, replacing his brother the incumbent.
THE TROUBLE LIES WITH THE PHILIPPINES
Search for options
According to Newsweek, the boldest among military and non-military options to U.S. policymakers included sending American troops to the Sierra Madre to back up their Philippine counterparts, or dispatching U.S. Navy escorts to aid the ally’s “defensive missions.” But the news magazine quickly rejoined both options could raise the risk of a clash between American and Chinese forces
Obviously, the United States is neither a coastal state nor a member of the UN Convention of the Law of the Seas.
Sending boots-on-the-ground to a place that is not covered by the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty as “metropolitan territory” can justify a preemptive strike by China. The same goes for naval escorts outside the Philippines’ 12 nautical miles of territorial seas.
Newsweek proceeded with other suggestions – Less risky alternatives included increasing military assistance and training to the Philippine Coast Guard, “expanding U.S. force posture in the region,” and working in concert with other aggrieved claimants in the South China Sea.
But this is already ongoing. Vice Adm. Andrew Tiongson, the commander of the U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area, said in September that the two countries enjoyed an “outstanding relationship.” In fact, deep penetration agents, ostensibly one military adviser, had already been inserted by the Central Intelligence Agency into the ranks of the PCG which has recently announced hiring another 4,000 in 2024.
On the diplomatic front, Newsweek said the U.S. Congress could consider the merits of ratifying the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS.
It erroneously added, however, that “the U.S. frequently appeals to an international tribunal’s legally binding ruling in 2016 that dismissed China’s claims in the Philippines’ EEZ. Ratifying UNCLOS, on which the tribunal’s decision was based, would strengthen Washington’s position on maritime law.”
This is a pie in the sky. The US will not allow itself to be limited in anyway by UNCLOS compulsory provisions. As a hegemon, it unilaterally sets its own “rules-based” order.
The Congressional Research Survey itself wallows in deep-state propaganda, and has, just like any lazy American academic, failed to do dispassionate but critical reading of UNCLOS and the 2016 Arbitral award. Besides, the American mindset has only brought its Philippine pawn from crisis to crisis to crisis.
Flabbergasted by the failure of his Project Myoushu, the overrated US Naval Institute operative Raymond Powell said “The Philippines and the US are going to have to start having some very direct conversations about what constitutes an ‘armed attack’ on a public vessel, and make sure they communicate clearly to Beijing how close China is coming to triggering far more serious consequences.”
Herman Tiu Laurel, president of the Asian Century Philippines Institute for Strategic Studies, however, made a sobering note: “”Any conversation about the South China Sea issues must be between China and the Philippines. The US is not part of UNCLOS and should have no role.
“USAF ex-Col. Raymond Powell’s ‘Myoushu Project’ and is ‘assertive transparency’ strategy has clearly hit a blank wall and, together with his Filipino operatives, are at a loss over the ‘next phase.’
“Independent Philippines and ASEAN do not welcome US interference and will resolve their minor differences through dialogue with China and each other towards ‘win-win” solutions.”
The signals are out as President Marcos himself has called for a paradigm shift on how his government ought to be handling the South China Sea tensions.
It seems that the US Naval Institute has already thrown Powell and his ill-fated Project Myoushu under the bus.
New names from the US military are appearing to once again set the Philippines up as guinea pig in a yet another experiment that the US Naval Institute or the US Air Force has concocted in advance.
But that is for the next part.
To be continued: US Prevailing Without Gunsmoke in the SCS?
Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan
is the anchor of Ang Maestro – the Unfinished Revolution at Radyo Pilipinas1, co-host of Opinyon Ngayon at Golden Nation Network Television, a political analyst, and author of books.
His third book, The Poverty of Power will soon be off-the-press. It is a historiography of controversial issues of spanning 36 years leading to the Demise of the Edsa Revolution and the Rise of the Philippine Phoenix. Paglinawan’s past best sellers have been 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. These important achievements earned for him to be named one of the 2021 international laureates for the Awards for the Promotion of Philippine-China Understanding. Ado, as he called for short, was a former press attaché and spokesman of the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC and the Philippines’ Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. Facebook
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