As 4 defense chiefs hit dangerous activities in SCS
New United States Indo-Pacific Command chief Admiral Samuel Paparo said Washington must be ready to answer China’s “grey zone activities.”
This as the defense chiefs of the Philippines, Japan, the United States, and Australia collectively called out China’s “dangerous use” of coast guard and maritime militia vessels in the South China Sea.
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The Chinese Embassy in Manila said the “temporary special arrangement” reached during the term of former President Rodrigo Duterte allowed small scale fishing around the West Philippine Sea but restricted access by military, coast guard and other official planes and ships. It said the Marcos administration’s decision to renege on the deal is “the basic reason for the ceaseless disputes at sea between China and the Philippines over the past year and more.”
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The statement was made after the quadrilateral meeting among Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, Japanese Minister of Defense Kihara Minoru, and Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defense Richard Marles at the US Indo-Pacific Command headquarters in Honolulu, Hawaii.
In a joint readout, the four ministers said they “strongly” object to the dangerous use of coast guard and militia vessels, and that they are seriously concerned over the ongoing situation in the East and South China Sea.
“They reiterated serious concern over the PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) repeated obstruction of Philippine vessels’ exercise of high seas freedom of navigation and the disruption of supply lines to Second Thomas Shoal, which constitute dangerous and destabilizing conduct,” it read.
The defense ministers also emphasized the need to uphold freedoms of navigation and overflight, and called on China to abide by the 2016 Arbitral Ruling on the South China Sea.
Paparo, for his part, said: “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its rapid build-up of forces.”
“We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and expansionist claims in the Indo-Pacific region,” Paparo said. Some call it the grey zone. My friend General (Romeo) Brawner from the Republic of the Philippines has a phrase called ICAD and he has renamed grey zone, which sounds otherwise benign and dull into ICAD which is Illegal, Coercive, Aggressive, and Deceptive,” he added.
Security and maritime law experts define grey zone operations as tactics or activities that are below the threshold of what constitute an aggression to prevent the country from using self-defense.
In the West Philippine Sea, experts see Beijing’s dangerous use of coast guards and maritime militia vessels as well as water cannons against Filipino civilian vessels as examples of grey zone tactics.
Paparo said the US Indopacom will also concentrate on ways to help partners maintain peace while safeguarding their sovereign rights.
“We will safeguard the international order characterized by transparency, cooperation, fair competition, and the rule of law. We’ll bring all to bear in all domains, harnessing an integrated capability supporting partnerships to maintain peace and security while safeguard sovereign rights,” he said.
The Indopacom is America’s oldest and largest combatant command responsible for an area described by Austin as a “priority theater of operations” for the US.
It consists of at least 380,000 soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, guardians, coast guardsmen, and US Department of Defense civilians.
