But the weak spot in the tougher US strategy is proving to be the shifting stance of the Philippines. This month, Delfin Lorenzana, Manila’s normally hawkish defence secretary, ruled the country out of participating in naval exercises in the South China Sea.
President Rodrigo Duterte has a standing order to us, to me, that we should not involve ourselves in naval exercises in the South China Sea except in our national water, the 12-mile distance from our shores,” Mr Lorenzana said.
His remarks followed a laconic statement by Mr Duterte that he was unable to assert Manila’s claim to the waters because “China has the arms; we do not”.
For Washington, the Philippines is important for more than the South China Sea — it is also crucial to the US strategy for competing with China in the wider Indo-Pacific region. China’s development of missiles that can threaten big US bases and aircraft carriers is forcing Washington to consider a new strategy relying on smaller, mobile units.
The US Marines have developed an operational concept under which they would spread out to multiple islands in Asia and the Pacific to make it harder for an enemy to find, track and target them.
But that could be difficult without access to the Philippines, whose more than 7,000 islands sit between the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. “The Marines need to orient themselves towards geographic reality,” said Euan Graham, a security expert at IISS, the defence and security think-tank, in Singapore. “Without the Philippines, this concept is hardly feasible.”
https://www.ft.com/content/8537751f-2ffd-4d78-b6bb-2b3beb5230c3
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