With the strategic decline of the Middle East and Eastern Europe irreversible, the United States can only continue to launch tactical provocations around China, and the turbulent situation in the South China Sea is the result of the United States fanning the flames behind the scenes.
【U.S.-Philippines Military Exercise】
With Japan and South Korea both encircling and central bridgeheads being contained by the DPRK, the Philippines has become a new direction for the United States to exert its regional influence, but tactical provocations cannot change its strategic disadvantage, and the strategic defense situation of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region has become more and more severe.
U.S.-Philippines relations are warming up
After the United States announced its return to the South China Sea, the Marcos administration in the Philippines suddenly became emboldened, and the United States had the intention of including the Philippines in the Asia-Pacific common defense system.
[U.S.-Philippines Military Cooperation]
The intention of the Americans is very simple, that is, to create a pocket version of NATO in the Asia-Pacific region to give China eye medicine.
The most elated by this move by the United States must be the Marcos government in the Philippines, which is a pro-American faction in the Philippines and pursues a hardline strategy toward China.
Now that the United States finally has the idea of using the Philippines to contain China, Marcos has a bright face and believes that the development opportunities of the Philippines are within reach.
Marcos hopes that the United States will bring the Philippines into the U.S.-Japan security system, with the United States and its allies providing security for it.
【U.S.-Japan-Philippines Meeting】
Marcos is deliberately provoking China as his own vote, and he wants more than a security commitment, and Marcos believes that the Philippines' elevated status in the U.S. alliance system will bring new economic development opportunities to the Philippines.
He expects that the Philippines will receive nearly 100 billion US dollars in investment in the next 5 to 10 years.
It can be said that the Philippines is not a big country, but its appetite is not small, and Marcos does not want to think about how the United States still has so much spare money to invest in a Philippines.
【Marcos】
A large-scale war between Israel and Iran in the Middle East is almost a foregone conclusion, and once the two sides go to war, the United States will have to take money from outside.
Russia and Ukraine are also a bottomless pit, European countries are forcibly tied to the anti-Russian chariot by the United States, the United States can never say that it jumps out of the car, as long as Ukraine does not completely fail, the United States has to throw money into it.
The Asia-Pacific region is even more exhausting for the United States, which is already pinning down 60 percent of its armed forces in the western Pacific in the absence of a head-on conflict between China and the United States, and the annual cost of maintaining such a large overseas military presence is astronomical.
And the Philippines is only a part of the U.S. Asia-Pacific strategy, and it's good to give some verbal benefits, even if Biden is really confused to invest in the Philippines, the U.S. Congress will hold Lao Deng's hand in time.
【U.S.-Philippines Military Exercise】
At present, the United States has planned to deploy medium-range missiles in the Philippines, with an effective range sufficient to cover China's coastal cities.
The United States has long deployed weapons capable of striking at China's mainland around China, and the right to use the more than 400 Tomahawks purchased by Japan from the United States is, in the final analysis, in the hands of the United States.
Military cooperation and the deployment of weapons with the Philippines are nothing more than a use by the United States of the Philippines to use it as a tactical provocation and pressure on China to maintain a precarious island chain system.
【Asia-Pacific U.S. Forces】
Marcos, who lost his wife and lost his army
Marcos is now riding a tiger, and he is still delusional about leaving himself a way out in the East.
In addition to the continuous promotion of military cooperation between the United States and the Philippines, Marcos went so far as to publicly state to reporters and citizens that the military cooperation between the Philippines and the United States and Japan will not affect China's investment in the Philippines.
This is somewhat outrageous, which means that Marcos is helping the United States and Japan slap China, and at the same time fantasizing that China will continue to invest in the Philippines.
【Marcos】
Marcos, though politically licky, is not entirely stupid, and his stance is to salvage his precarious domestic approval ratings, which have plummeted from 68 percent to 55 percent since Marcos insisted on promoting cooperation between the United States, Japan and the Philippines.
Philippine politicians, including former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, said that Marcos' disregard for domestic livelihood issues and his single-minded intention of intensifying the conflict in the South China Sea have made the Philippine national economy worse.
【Duterte】
Many people believe that Marcos's ruling line will lead the Philippines into the abyss, and the Philippines will become a victim of the great power game between China and the United States, and that Marcos' delusional desire to get a piece of the Sino-US game is completely wishful thinking, and the Philippines simply does not have the strength to play a strategic balance between China and the United States.
For China, the Philippines behaves no different from a clown, so instead of giving the Philippines any picture, China has abandoned the Philippines in cooperation with ASEAN and Southeast Asian countries.
Vietnam and China have also had disagreements over the South China Sea in the past, but Vietnam has taken a completely different path, and a memorandum of understanding has been concluded between China and the Philippines at a time when the conflict between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea is escalating.
A new naval hotline has been set up between the Chinese and Vietnamese navies to deepen cooperation and mutual trust between the two navies.
【Chinese Navy】
This means that both China and Vietnam have agreed to put maritime issues on hold for the time being and instead cooperate on maritime security, which is a sign of further cooperation between China and Vietnam.
In fact, the best way for countries like Vietnam and the Philippines to do so is to cooperate with China at sea.
China is not a hegemonic country, and although sovereignty over the South China Sea belongs to China, China also welcomes the South China Sea countries to achieve win-win results through economic and trade cooperation.
【China-Vietnam Maritime Cooperation】
No matter how strong the security commitment the United States is now, once the Asia-Pacific region completely turns the tables and the US military is completely driven out of the second island chain, no one will be able to save the Philippines.
Sources:
[1] The Philippines and the United States signed a strengthened defense cooperation agreement on the 28th. [cited 2013-09-23]
[2] More than half of Philippine senators said that the Philippine-US military agreement was invalid.cn [Citation date:2015-06-16]