In The South China Sea, Water Gun Fights Risks Nuclear Escalation

An increasingly volatile territorial dispute

The Second Thomas Shoal is near the Spratly Islands. It’s tiny!

It sounds trite to say so, but there’s a possibility that water gun fights off the coast of the Philippines escalates to all-out war between two nuclear-armed powers.

On June 17th, the Chinese Coast Guard clashed with Philippine naval vessels en route to resupplying a stranded Philippine ship on a formation known as the Second Thomas Shoal. This desolate shoal is very much in the territorial waters of the Philippines, but China nonetheless claims it as Chinese sovereign territory. The Chinese have routinely harassed Philippine ships in the area, but on June 17th, the Chinese Coast Guard attacked the Philippine naval vessels with water cannons, swords, and axes in the most violent incident of its kind in years. A Philippine sailor was seriously injured. This kind of escalation risks drawing in the United States due to the longstanding Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Philippines, which obliges the US to come to the defense of the Philippines. This has the potential to draw the US and China into direct conflict.

My interview guest today is Prashanth Parameswaran, founder of the ASEAN Wonk newsletter and fellow at the Wilson Center. We kick off by discussing what exactly happened during the June 17th incident before having a broader conversation about the dynamics in which this territorial dispute in the South China Sea draws the US and China closer to conflict--and how to escape that trap.

The podcast episode is freely available across all listening platforms, like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The full transcript is available immediately below the fold for our paying supports.

Programming note: I’m heading to the Aspen Security Forum next week. This is one of the major annual national security and foreign policy conferences, set in the Colorado mountains. It tends to attract very senior officials, including the Secretary of State, CIA Director, National Security Advisor and many of their international counterparts. I’ll be collecting Global Dispatches interviews on-site. Drop me a line if you’ll be there, too!

Prashanth Parameswaran: Just to reinforce what you said earlier because it’s important: the Arbitral Tribunal ruling in July 2016 found that China really has not any lawful kind of maritime claims to the waters around Second Thomas Shoal, which, as you pointed out, lies within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, which all countries are entitled to. Now, when the ruling was issued, the Philippine president who was then tasked with promoting the ruling was former president Rodrigo Duterte, who basically set aside the ruling and wanted closer relations with China.

And now you have a dynamic where President Marcos has since come to power in the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and he has a very different approach to the South China Sea and the United States and China. He is much closer to the United States in terms of the U.S.-Philippine alliance. And so that’s why you’ve had a revival of this issue. And so what we’ve been seeing is a number of incidents, including China firing water cannons on Philippine vessels, all the way leading up to the the June 17th incident.

That was significant because you didn’t just have an instance where you had water cannons, but in this case, you actually had Chinese maritime personnel who were wielding weapons. Based on footage that we’ve seen that’s public, and anybody can view it, they had knives and an ax. They forcibly boarded and intercepted the Philippine vessel. And the Philippines soldiers were sort of in rubber boats trying to deliver supplies to the garrison in Second Thomas Shoal that I mentioned. And several soldiers were injured as a result on the Philippine side. One lost a thumb. And that made a lot of headlines because this is essentially another step up that China has taken in the escalation ladder in the South China Sea.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Like you go from shooting water guns at people to boarding a ship with knives and axes, and apparently getting to like fist fights that result in the loss of a thumb. And the idea is, so what could happen next?

Prashanth Parameswaran: Right. If this were to happen to Malaysia or Vietnam or Brunei, which are the three other South China Sea claimants, which also have claims against China, the United States would not be involved as directly. But in the Philippines is a treaty ally. And not just a treaty ally, but under the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty that was signed back in 1951, it says that in the event of an armed attack, both sides will act to meet the common dangers that they’re confronting. Now, you can parse and say what constitutes an armed attack, what doesn’t constitute an armed attack? But I think we are getting very close to a situation where we could see the Mutual Defense Treaty invoked. And now, if the Mutual Defense Treaty is invoked, the United States enters into an armed confrontation with China on the side of the Philippines, possibly on its own, possibly in concert with other allies and partners. That would be a huge escalation.

And that’s where we see a lot of worries about potential escalation that evolves beyond just the Philippines and China. On the surface, it’s just about the Philippines and China, but it really is about a lot more in terms of the stakes.

Full transcript below the fold. Also, a huge thank you to everyone who has been supporting our newest show, “To Save Us From Hell.” Our fourth episode is coming on Thursday! A subscription to Global Dispatches unlocks all episodes of To Save Us From Hell.