In the course of the night time, a CBS Information crew onboard the Cape Engaño woke to the sound of alarms. The Philippine sailors directed the media staff to placed on life jackets whereas the crew ready to defend themselves with golf equipment in opposition to a possible Chinese language boarding. About 60 nautical miles from the Philippine shoreline, this Philippine Coast Guard ship and a ship from the China Coast Guard collided close to the Sabina Shoal, a low-tide elevation characteristic properly inside the Philippines’ unique financial zone. The impression left a meter-long gap within the Philippine Coast Guard ship’s hull. By the point the Cape Engaño extricated itself from the encirclement of Chinese language ships, Beijing had already launched a press release blaming Manila for the incident. To contest the Chinese language narrative, the Philippines may depend on the impartial testimony of the CBS Information crew who have been on board the ship on the time of the collision. Additional, the Philippine Coast Guard launched footage of the harm to their ship’s hull, denouncing China’s actions as “illegal and aggressive.” This incident displays an instance of the Philippines’ “transparency technique” at work.
Manila is implementing a deterrence posture that imposes reputational prices to China for its use of “gray-zone techniques” within the South China Sea. We use the time period gray-zone techniques to outline “a strategic method that operates between typical warfare and peacetime competitors.” The Philippines’ “below-the-threshold” method to deterrence makes use of non-military means to impose prices, limiting the chance of escalation whereas establishing credible threats. Reportedly, Manila has built-in transparency initiatives as a part of its January 2024 Complete Archipelagic Protection Idea.
Manila’s transparency technique disseminates uncooked footage and promotes impartial reporting to reveal harmful China Coast Guard and maritime militia actions at sea. This method goals to garner home and worldwide help for the Philippines’ stance in opposition to China within the South China Sea, as Manila goals to guard its sovereign rights beneath the U.N. Conference on the Legal guidelines of the Sea. The Philippines is just not the primary authorities to combine journalists onboard its vessels to doc the unprofessional and harmful behaviors of the Individuals’s Liberation Military, China Coast Guard, and China’s maritime militia. Nevertheless, the Philippines’ systematic use of media reporting as a clearly outlined and persistently applied technique is novel.
Manila’s Transparency Technique
The official positions of the Philippines on South China Sea points achieve credibility when coupled with the photographic and video proof made extensively out there. These positions additionally achieve credibility by way of the legitimacy of impartial journalism. The Philippines’ technique discredits the Chinese language Ministry of International Affairs’ narratives about occasions and proves the culpability of China in South China Sea confrontations, thereby imposing prices to Beijing’s worldwide fame. Though China persistently denies duty for what its personal actions have brought about, its denials are more and more untenable within the face of proof made out there by impartial reporting and the Philippine Coast Guard.
Examples of the transparency technique at work are plentiful. In October 2023, a journalist from ABS-CBN Information was onboard a Philippine Coast Guard vessel and documented a Chinese language flotilla intercepting and ramming a resupply mission to the Sierra Madre, a World Conflict II–period ship that the Philippines intentionally beached on Second Thomas Shoal to perform as an outpost in 1999. In April 2024, a reporter from The Telegraph was onboard a Philippine Coast Guard ship navigating close to Scarborough Shoal when a China Coast Guard vessel started firing a watercannon whereas one other China Coast Guard vessel carried out blocking maneuvers. In August 2024, the Philippine Coast Guard launched footage that undeniably displayed harmful maneuvers on the a part of the China Coast Guard, comparable to immediately ramming Philippine vessels.
You will need to observe whether or not the governments of different members of the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations take inspiration from Manila’s transparency technique. The Indonesian Maritime Safety Company launched footage of an incident in October 2024 the place considered one of its vessels drove away a China Coast Guard vessel that was working inside the Indonesian unique financial zone off the Natuna Islands. This degree of transparency is sort of uncommon when in comparison with the responses of different littoral South China Sea states. Indonesia and Malaysia primarily protest China’s expansive maritime claims diplomatically, comparable to by way of notes verbales (i.e., semi-formal diplomatic communications) or by having their overseas ministries refute Chinese language-state publications that contradict their maritime claims. Hanoi is extra forthright than Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur: Vietnam has traditionally confronted China within the South China Sea, as evident within the 1988 Johnson South Reef skirmish and in a number of standoffs within the 2010s. Hanoi additionally makes use of authorized means and has beforehand revealed footage of confrontations. Nevertheless, in 2024, Hanoi was extra cautious about publicizing South China Sea flashpoints (with exceptions), rendering Manila’s systematic use of media salient in comparison with different members of the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations.
Imposing Prices Under the Threshold
The idea of the grey zone is a topic of debate. One creator argued in 2015 that analysts must abandon the idea altogether. In these pages, two authors have engaged Chinese language main sources to argue that Chinese language navy leaders conceptualize using navy pressure on a spectrum. They emphasize that the time period gray-zone is absent from Chinese language sources. Nevertheless, the U.S. Division of Protection depends on this time period to know China’s strategic method to its adversaries, and so do analysts who work on Russian and Iranian overseas coverage. The widespread use of the time period is indicative of the idea’s worth in describing occasions under the brink of battle. Though scrutiny of the idea is essential, basically, China’s actions within the South China Sea intentionally function within the ambiguous zone between battle and peace, which is denoted by the idea. Due to this fact, regardless of some conceptual debate, the central coverage problem stays: deter Chinese language navy confrontations that happen under the brink?
Grey-zone techniques are efficient as a result of they intention to avoid a state’s defensive commitments. Whereas all states are dedicated to defending themselves in opposition to aggression, there are uncertainty gaps as to the precise “purple traces” that the state will provoke battle over. Thomas Schelling wrote: “There’s a threshold under which the dedication is simply not operative, and even that threshold itself is normally unclear.” Commitments are eroded when these gaps are exploited by the aggressor and the defender doesn’t reply, because it units the precedent that such actions might be left unpunished. Regardless of the disruptiveness of China’s gray-zone techniques, China has confronted comparatively few penalties for utilizing them as a result of the below-the-threshold character of those techniques evade punishment. Manila’s transparency technique goals to appropriate this by imposing prices and due to this fact direct penalties, affecting Beijing’s strategic calculus when it considers utilizing gray-zone techniques to attain its overseas coverage targets.
Manila’s method is due to this fact a nuanced technique of imposing prices to supply a deterrent. Standard deterrence measures sometimes embody growing navy capabilities and creating stronger alliance commitments (which the Philippines has additionally dedicated to).
Proposals for enhanced Philippine deterrence have targeted on the standard method. Certainly, there are requires america to reassert its commitments to defending its ally, arguing that Washington must persistently warn Beijing to not set in movement Article 5 of the United States–Philippines Mutual Protection Treaty. Derek Grossman notes the choice of updating the treaty in order that gray-zone aggression would set off it. There are additionally numerous requires enhancing United States help to Philippine resupply operations to the Sierra Madre, with the intention to “undermine China’s confidence that it will possibly comfortably keep within the grey zone.” Herzinger has gone additional to argue for the institution of a mixed ahead working base on Second Thomas Shoal.
These proposals depend on enhancing the standard deterrence posture that gray-zone techniques are already designed to avoid. Arguably, the U.S.–Philippine alliance is stopping typical navy assaults and imposing a ceiling on the depth of the means utilized by Beijing. However China has resorted to gray-zone techniques exactly as a result of these techniques fall marginally under the ceiling of alliance and navy deterrence. Because of this the transparency technique is efficient, because it imposes prices to below-the-threshold actions.
Deterring Under the Threshold
The Philippines’ transparency technique is an epitome of building a deterrent focused at gray-zone techniques. Manila’s technique deters China’s techniques by difficult Beijing’s worldwide fame and the credibility of China’s diplomatic positions, which maintain that China abides by worldwide legislation and is “Dedicated to Peace, Stability, and Order within the South China Sea.” In the long term, the Philippines’ technique may trigger Beijing’s decision-makers to position a ceiling on the depth of the gray-zone techniques that China exerts in opposition to the Philippines. The logic that underlies the Philippines’ transparency technique needs to be a supply of inspiration to policymakers and strategists that intention to successfully reply to gray-zone techniques.
Kurtis H. Simpson, Ph.D. is a senior defence scientist at Defence Analysis and Improvement Canada’s Centre for Operational Analysis and Evaluation, specializing within the Indo-Pacific. The Centre for Operational Analysis and Evaluation gives strategic evaluation and joint focusing on experience to Canada’s Division of Nationwide Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces. Over his profession, Simpson has labored on Indo-Pacific affairs at World Affairs Canada, the Privy Council’s Workplace, and the Division of Nationwide Defence.
Raphael Racicot is a pupil researcher at Defence Analysis and Improvement Canada’s Centre for Operational Analysis and Evaluation. An ex-officer within the Canadian Armed Forces, Raphael is pursuing an M.A in Worldwide Affairs on the Norman Paterson Faculty of Worldwide Affairs at Carleton College.
Jacob Benjamin is a pupil researcher at Defence Analysis and Improvement Canada’s Centre for Operational Analysis and Evaluation. Jacob is a Ph.D. candidate on the College of Waterloo and the Balsillie Faculty of Worldwide Affairs. Jacob’s private work on the Indo-Pacific has appeared in Worldwide Journal, Canadian Naval Overview, and The Diplomat.
The views expressed are these of the authors and don’t essentially replicate the official coverage or place of the Division of Nationwide Defence or another group of the Canadian authorities.
Picture: Philippine Coast Guard by way of Fb.
