Various claims from Sabah to the islands of the West Philippine Sea
The gardeners met and saw how, of late, in modern times (meaning the past few decades) various states make various territorial claims that sometimes lead to violent conflict.
It often takes bigger forces, like imperial forces, to prevent or stop such conflicts.
The Philippine state claims Sabah. That’s not a small island but a fairly big and rich one.
Well, newer state Malaysia claims and occupies the same.
The old Romans were “right” about “might”: possession is nine-tenths of the law – meaning might is right? Malaysia refuses to go to the World Court and weaker though bigger Philippines refuses to fight. When it did, it was through a privateer effort by no less than the President of the Republic that therefore caused quite a scandal in the Philippines itself, and brought cause for conflict in the whole Southeast Asian region.
For one thing, the militant recruits were Muslim who realized they were going to be sent to kill their brother and sister Muslims, who, like them, have no concept of “nation” but of Ummah or the One Islamic Community worldwide. So, they could not agree to what they were recruited for, and therefore they had to be massacred in Corregidor Island where they trained. This was in the late sixties to late seventies.
Following these events, the Philippine state could not afford to lose its head, or it would surely lose its face. So, we sobered up and listened to Indonesia and America and agreed to talk of regional peace.
To start with, Islamic Malaysia was already supporting Islamic separatist Philippine movements. In the overall formula for dubious peace we had to eat humble pie and allow erstwhile foe Malaysia to facilitate productive peace talks between the government of the Philippines and Philippine Muslim separatists. How could Malaysia be so lucky?
Well, we are always quite trusting, and forgetful. But the whole thing just might work this time, after all, especially because the only remaining global imperial power wants it to: as I write, the GOP (government of the Philippines) and the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) may already have inked again an agreement for peace via a transition government towards a more authentic and expanded autonomy in Muslim Mindanao.
Is our present government losing any sleep over our claim to Sabah? It sure does not look it at all. But it really should, or why get us all hyper-excited about much smaller islands in the West Philippine Sea – another name for the old South China Sea?
www.arturotolentino.com
But just for fun, one can recall pathetic distinctions made by the senatorial ‘genius’ and foreign policy ‘expert’ Arturo M. Tolentino. He said Malaysia has de facto sovereignty over Sabah while they recognize that we (through the Sultanate of Jolo in the Philippines) do continue to have ownership of it. So, there…how convenient to have forgotten that in law sovereignty and ownership use the same Latin word – dominium- as well as the same Greek word – – because in fact they mean the same; but Tolentino was a brilliant mind.
The Nation-State
Toffler
Many gardeners are aware of the studies of scholar Alvin Toffler that point out how most states today are nation-states.
In this view nation-states came about only after the industrial revolution of about 300 years ago. A new mode of production that could produce so much more wealth had been discovered, invented and installed. People discovered or invented machines to produce goods, including machines, with the ability to mass-produce, to unlock the secrets of the material world, and even alter the face of the earth for better or for worse.
Aside from mass production, the industrial way led to mass consumption, mass education, mass media and mass movements – and politics all linked together to form a truly new system that swept across Western Europe and North America and is still spreading to other parts of the world as well.
It simply engulfed local agrarian-based societies wherever it spread – bringing urbanization, looser adherence to tradition and moral codes, shattering many other cultural patterns and, more often than not, wiping out local powers in favor of more centralized – yes – nation states.
This new economic mode made new politics – the nation state. Its strange new ways destabilized relationships within and between countries, created power vacuums and power shifts, led to the expansion of national markets and the accompanying ideology of nationalism.
Thus, in a strict and accurate sense – nation states, warring within and between each other, were the product of this Industrial Wave.
The Civilization-State
Jacques
In the case of China, however, says the scholar and commentator Martin Jacques, what we have is not merely a nation state but more in essence a civilization-state.
“The longest continually existing polity in the world, it dates to 221 BC and the victory of the Qin. Unlike Western nation-states, China’s sense of identity comes from its long history as a civilization-state.” What is similar to this – Israel? Indonesia? Or perhaps the Ummah of Muslim countries? In part, maybe, but not quite – because China’s sense of geography has been consistent through all these hundreds of years across the millennia.
To be sure, therefore, the Chinese state enjoys a very different kind of relationship with society compared, say, with the Western state. “It enjoys much greater natural authority, legitimacy and respect, even though not a single vote is cast for the government -” in return for what and why?
The reason is that the Chinese sees the state as the guardian, custodian and embodiment of their civilization. “It is defined by its extraordinarily long history and also its huge geographic and demographic scale and diversity. The implications are profound: Unity is its first priority, plurality the condition of its existence (which is why China could offer Hong Kong and Taiwan ‘one country two systems,’ a formula alien to a nation-state).”
They’d even use Communism and the Communist Party to more strongly unify all China first of all rather than achieve socialism at all.
After supporting Vietnam in the latter’s fight against America, China without so much as a by your leave occupied the Paracel islands that Vietnam so seriously claimed. And there they’ve stayed up to now.
Today Vietnam lashed out at China’s moves to establish a military garrison and station troops in Sansha in these disputed Paracel Islands. It was China’s powerful Central Military Commission that approved the formal establishment of a military garrison for the South China Sea.
Sansha is the new city China is building and the garrison is there. Chinese effective claims cover a wide expanse of the West Philippine Sea, overlapping with Manila’s and other South East Asian countries’ sovereign territories.
Major General Zhu Chenghu
Major General Zhu Chenghu, an influential teacher and strategy researcher at Beijing’s National Defense University, has dismissed the entitlement of all rivals to the disputed waters. He said there had been no disputes in the South China Sea before the 1970s when maps published by rival claimants also acknowledged it was Chinese territory. “Relevant countries did not begin to lay claim to islands and sea waters in the area until the discovery of large amounts of oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea,” he said.
Well, the Major General should be shown old maps like those of 1744 by Jesuit map makers that clearly show the disputed islands as first of all standard references for explorers and travelers and acknowledged by governments and regimes. They clearly show Panatag Shoal, also called Panacot, just off the Philippine coast, as being truly part of the Philippine islands.
Sansha puts under its jurisdiction over 200 islets, sandbanks and reefs in the West Philippine Sea, including the cluster of islands and atolls further south called the Spratlys. China also placed Manila-claimed territories like the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) and Bajo de Masinloc or Scarborough Shoal, where the two Asian nations recently figured in a tense standoff, under Sansha jurisdiction.
UNCLOS or the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea? China did not sign, and the Philippines did so with reservation. So, is this “law” theirs to use and appeal to?
A July 13 meeting of the Association of Southeast Nations broke up without a joint statement for the first time in 45 years because members could not agree on how to refer to China’s behavior in the disputed waters.
Nonetheless, the Philippines called on China “to fully and sincerely abide by the spirit and letter” of the ASEAN-China Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea or DOC, a non-binding code of conduct that discourages aggressive actions and construction of new structures in the contested waters that could spark armed conflicts.
And this gardener believes with most Chinese and foreign security policy analysts that China wants to avoid military conflict across sea lanes that carry an annual $5 trillion in ship-borne trade, particularly if it raises the prospect of U.S. intervention. Who wants to be nipped in the proverbial bud as far as military ambitions are concerned? American President Obama has already warned against “accidents” happening in what he still calls the South China Sea.
The 1944 Battle for Leyte Gulf was the biggest naval battle in all world history. The Battle for the West Philippine Sea can beat that record but must not be given a chance to. FINIS.
Charles Avila
The Gardener