Philippine Navy Beefs Up in the Battle of the South China Sea

Photo from PN

By Chester B Cabalza

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2019 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

After a hundred of years, two decades, and another year of stretching a naval muscle, the Philippines, touted as an archipelagic nation but not yet as a maritime power in Southeast Asia, will launch a steel-cutting ceremony of two missile-capable frigates armed with sensors and weapons, adept of detecting and neutralizing surface, sub-surface and air threats on May 23 at the shipyard of South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries.

Coinciding with a joint celebration of the Philippine Navy’s 121^st founding anniversary on May 27 and the country’s Independence Day on June 12, the 107-meter combat ships baptized as BRP Jose Rizal and BRP Antonio Luna, a bonhomie of symbols for brain and brawn, apparently are designed to be operated with anti-submarine helicopters cap with heavy missile and torpedo weaponry due for 2020 and 2021.

As a naval warfare service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), currently possessing a strength of 24,000 active service personnel, including the 7,500-strong Marine Corps, it brings to Philippines’ high seas dignified surface-to-air missiles patrol ships far from the initial small fleet of eight Spanish steam launches captured by General Emilio Aguinaldo when he established a naval force emanating from the pages of the Biak-na-Bato Constitution. 

The turn-around AFP modernization story encapsulated from the foresight on increased territorial defense capability after a series of maritime insecurities starting from the 1995 Chinese structures on Mischief Reef in the Spartlys until the 2012 Scarborough Shoal standoff. The two major maritime and territorial insults to Philippines’ national sovereignty and territorial integrity succumbs for the passage of the Revised AFP Modernization Act of 2012, replacing the original version crafted 17 years in between.   

On the eve when the Philippines won a landmark maritime case against China penned by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, observers see it as the beginning of an end. The case arbitrarily has ended with no enforcement seal but it only has intensified power play between China and the US, two opposing titans, eventually dwarfing the Philippines. 

As Manila grapples for an independent foreign policy amidst closer ties with Beijing and Moscow against Washington’s allies from Tokyo, New Delhi and the European Union combined, in case a naval warfare erupts amongst major powers in the South China Sea, which powerful navy in the world becomes supreme in terms of assets and capabilities?

Of the powerful navies worldwide – the United States, Russia, China, India and Japan are perceived to be the mighty top five in the following order.

Still the reigning superpower, the U.S. boasts of possessing 72 all nuclear-powered submarines, 63 destroyers and 11 large aircraft carriers. Compared to China’s 69 submarines of which only 10 are nuclear-powered, 34 destroyers and two aircraft fleets. The U.S. has survived two world wars unlike China’s inexperience which has not yet led a world war victory. Two of 2019’s best fighter jets are manufactured in the U.S. fuelling the increased sales of F-35 Lightning II and Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. Furthermore, the world’s biggest aircraft fleet comes from the United States’ Ford-class, a colossal nuclear-powered warship, outsizing China’s Liaoning.    

As the Philippines constantly thinks of deterrence, the state of mind brought about by the existence of a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction, it must exude a power projection or the ability to apply all or some of the country’s elements of national power to rapidly and effectively deploy and sustain forces in and from multiple dispersed locations to respond to crises and contribute to deterrence while enhancing regional stability.

The purpose of the armed forces of a small state is not to wage war but to avert it. There is a significant difference even if the task of war prevention implies a credible ability to fight.

The main reason for this is that small state cannot hope to achieve victory in war in the strictly military sense. Instead, the purpose of the war is to end it on acceptable terms. The armed forces of the small state contribute to averting war first by maintaining the sovereignty of the state and by enforcing national jurisdiction in peacetime, in an efficient and credible manner.

Secondly, the armed forces are an instrument of the state in crisis management, not least for their deterrent effect on the opposition. Deterrence works when the costs of armed aggression in the mind of potential aggressor seem larger than the benefits of going to war, so that in the end he decides to keep the peace.

In this perceived Battle of the South China Sea, war is not an immediate solution. And in war no one wins and everybody losses.

But if there are two scenarios in which cases China can displace the United States and its allied friends in the Philippines to become victor to the heart of Philippine government and lessen Filipinos’ anti-Chinese sentiments in one of Southeast Asia’s most acculturated countries. 

For China, the win-win solution will only happen if the Philippines sets side the sovereignty issue in the South China Sea and bandwagons with the new regional power through joint exploration, joint conservation of the environment, joint development and tourism, and sit down to incessantly engage dialogue with China by sharing with them their vision and will in the newly concocted geopolitical Indo-Pacific region.

Or for China to cleverly fight in the battle while courting for best allies like Russia with superior naval assets and capabilities with enduring experience in world wars.