Episode Info
- Season20
- Episode4
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Episode Summary
President Xi and President Biden meet face-to-face for the first time since tensions frayed over a visit to Taiwan by the United States Speaker of the House of Representatives and the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon enraged Washington. America’s allies in the South China Sea are watching closely—will Biden and Xi patch things up, and what does that mean for Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea, one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints? Also, One Decision’s Sir Richard Dearlove reacts to the news that former Prime Minister David Cameron, who has been promoting projects for China’s Belt and Road Initiative has made a sudden comeback as the new Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mcfarlane: You're listening to One Decision, the podcast that looks at the choices made that shape our world. I'm your host, Julia McFarlane.
Dearlove: And I'm Richard Dearlove, former chief of British intelligence, otherwise known as MI6.
Mcfarlane: Together, Richard and I talk to the top decision makers and influencers, the people who shape world events, to try to understand what it is that drives the defining choices and decisions that have global impact and affect us all. Now, Richard, our big geopolitical theme this week is the very tense situation in the South China Sea and how President Biden and President Xi are actually meeting this week in California for the big APEC Economic Summit. And part of what is hoped will be achieved is the reestablishing of direct military to military contact, something that has been cut off for more than a year since the previous US speaker, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan and set off a lot of alarm bells in Beijing. We've got two great voices from The Philippines today because the view from The Philippines is particularly interesting with regards to this issue. But before we get to that, there have been some new developments here in The UK that I think we ought to briefly discuss. And I thought it might be quite fun in order to get into that to start off with a quiz question for you, Richard. Who was it who famously said, I was the future once? I'm not sure is the answer. Who was it? David Cameron. Oh, was David Cameron. He was the future David Cameron referring to the outgoing Tony Blair. But yes, David Cameron. Why has David Cameron been in the news lately, Richard?
Dearlove: Well, to everybody's surprise, to some people's shock, he's come back as foreign secretary. And although he's no longer a member of parliament, it means we will have a foreign secretary who sits in the House of Lords. That has happened before, so they've had to ennoble him, but he will not be on the government front bench, so his parliamentary business will be dealt with by a deputy who I think is Andrew Mitchell at the moment. I that's who it is. Yeah. No. That's right. So I've been interviewed about this, I've said some quite radical things because I have rather strong views about David Cameron. Politically, first of all, he was the prime minister who, in my view, you know, made a mess of Brexit. And, of course, he thought he walked on water because having won two referendums, the one on Scottish independence and the second on proportional representation in the British Parliament, he walked into a third one on, as it were, the future of The UK in the EU and much to his shock and surprise but not mine I have to say he lost that referendum rather badly and then you know walked away from power in a rather irresponsible fashion rather than accepting the results of the referendum and doing what was necessary. And he would have had the authority to do it even though he had opposed a Brexit resolution. So that's the first point. I mean, the second point, China. I've said I think many times on this podcast that he and his most influential minister, who at the time was George Osborne, you know, they were the couple that developed this intimate relationship with China, that The UK was going to be China's chosen partner, and they rushed off to China with a galaxy of British business leaders looking for a privileged relationship, with really taking no account of the sort of implications of getting into a clinch, which they certainly started to do with the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping in particular. And there were one or two people who made themselves deeply unpopular like me, shouting from the sidelines saying hang on a moment, this is ridiculous. The issue crystallized around Huawei, the 5G contract. I mean we won't get into all of that because we've discussed it before.
Mcfarlane: Well you're certainly not pulling your punches. It's interesting that that period that you described when the Brits under David Cameron were very much reaching out to China and courting Chinese business, this is referred to still as the so called golden era. And there was a state visit, President Xi was received by the Queen. Interesting that it was called the golden era. It does it's not it's not referred to as a big blunder.
Dearlove: Yeah. Well, I mean, Xi's visit to The UK was famous. There was a lot of suppressed opposition to Xi's presence in London. And then there was a huge rout inside Buckingham Palace, because Buckingham Palace is an old building, a rather wonderful old building, and Xi apparently has to have his room temperature at 27 degrees centigrade and they couldn't get the room temperature up in the suite in which he lived anywhere near that. So he was grumpy for the whole time.
Mcfarlane: That's a little bit of history which probably our listeners have never heard before. That's so interesting. I suppose that the last thing I wanted to ask you just before we move on to the situation in the South China Sea is obviously David Cameron is the person who as Prime Minister, he tried to negotiate with the Europeans. He got very, very little for his deal. And this was before The UK went to the polls to vote on the future of the relationship with Europe, where they voted for Brexit. He didn't manage to get very much from the EU. Of course, a lot of those leaders have now changed. He was a prime minister who was very involved in the NATO intervention into Libya. He wanted to carry out airstrikes on Assad, on the Syrian government. He was stopped by doing so through his own parliamentary process. He did eventually authorise airstrikes on ISIS terrorists in Syria. He's quite an interventionist Prime Minister. As we've discussed, he's been quite friendly with Beijing and even quite recently, he's been enlisted to drum up foreign investment in a very controversial Belt and Road Initiative project in Sri Lanka. So he has got ties. He was known as an interventionist prime minister. As a foreign minister, what do you think the world can expect from Britain with a man like this being the diplomat in chief?
Dearlove: Well, the answer is I'm not sure, and I think his appointment raises lots of questions and doesn't provide at this stage any answers. The charitable interpretation of his appointment is that he's extremely well networked, he knows all these leaders, he has good personal relationships with them because that's something I think he was good at. And maybe he's a lot wiser than he was when he was Prime Minister because of the way so much of his foreign policy went wrong. But the less charitable view is, why would you appoint him foreign secretary when his foreign policy legacy is hardly glittering? And, you know, we've enumerated why it isn't glittering. Say you've got the policy with China, you've got Brexit, you've got Libya, you've got Syria, you've got all sorts of things which were pretty disastrous. I think it's a somewhat desperate act by Rishi to bring back a figure who I presume internationally retains a certain amount of respect. But it's pretty extraordinary given the number of Conservative MPs that there are still at the moment, that he couldn't find from amongst them one, as it were, convincing foreign secretary. Someone said to me recently, Richard, you're far better qualified to be foreign secretary than David Cameron, and all they would have had to do is stick you in the House of Lords. And I think it's actually a pretty peculiar move and pretty worrying. But I'm quite a generous person, and I'm prepared, as it were, to give you the benefit of the doubt and see how this plays out. But you touched on an important point about Cameron is that he's actually pretty compromised financially in terms of his engagement with China. He's also been I think vice chair of one of the big Chinese investment funds for The UK. So I mean obviously he will have to give all that up and he must he's done so already I'm sure. But on the other hand he comes in with significant baggage. There's no question. So let's see what happens.
Mcfarlane: Richard, before someone is called up to lead the Foreign Office, and of course the Foreign Office is the department responsible for MI6, do MI6 or MI5 or a mixture of the two, do they carry out due diligence on prospective foreign ministers to find out exactly how they're compromised? And do you think that would have been done for David Cameron?
Dearlove: Well, that's certainly not the responsibility of the intelligence service, but the security service obviously has a role.
Mcfarlane: So MI5, not MI6?
Dearlove: You know, unless you are actually director general of the security service, how that works in practice, you're not really involved in it. It's obviously a very sensitive area of government. But, I mean, the director general of the security service has a certain amount of autonomy on issues of national security.
Mcfarlane: So I'm sure it's all been looked at. So we can assume that since he has been installed as foreign minister, he has passed the vetting process. Essentially, the security services have looked at his ties and found nothing of note.
Dearlove: Yeah. And the government ministers are not vetted because they're representatives of the people. I mean, the irony is he's not an elected representative of the people. He's been appointed. I mean, this was one of the worries when it appeared that Corbyn might become prime minister. You can't vet an elected prime minister.
Mcfarlane: Well, no. But Cameron hasn't been elected. He's gone into the lords. And when Lord Lebedev of Siberia ascended into the House of Lords, there was a vetting process on him.
Dearlove: You've raised a very interesting issue and to be honest you might think I should know the answer but I don't know the answer. I would be very surprised if Cameron given his background had been vetted. What he's probably been asked to do is to declare all the relationships that he has had which might sort of impinge on his responsibilities and either to walk away or put them in blind trusts or whatever. He certainly wouldn't be allowed to retain any of those. And I just hope that, you know, he's dotted the i's and crossed the t's and remembers everything he's done. You know, that's often a problem.
Mcfarlane: Well, let's hope so. Let's hope so. Let's move on to our main topic of discussion now. The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit is taking place this week in California. And the biggest item on the agenda is that long awaited President Biden and President Xi Jinping meeting. It's the first time the two leaders have had some face time since the G20 summit last year in Indonesia. There's been an awful lot that's happened since. There was the fracas over that errant Chinese spy balloon. There was the rebuffing of The US defense secretary, heightened tensions after a Chinese warship sailed dangerously close to a US navy destroyer in the South China Sea. No one is more concerned about escalation in that particular part of the woods in Southeast Asia than The Philippines, who've argued that China's claim to the so called nine dash line are unfounded. The Philippines contest ownership of this particular atoll in the Spratly Islands called the Second Thomas Shoal. Now the Chinese have tried to block The Philippines from accessing this area. In the 1990s, a Filipino ship deliberately ran aground this atoll and they've occupied it ever since. There's a contingency of Marines who are stationed there. But it is a bit of a ticking time bomb because this ship is dangerously in need of urgent repairs and The Philippines can't send anything to it other than small supply boats and vessels. So, amid all the talk about escalation over Taiwan, it's here in the South China Sea that confrontation could escalate between China and one of America's close allies in the region, The Philippines. And this is what we wanted to take a look at this week. Our first guest is former Rear Admiral Rommel Ong. I began by asking him about the background to this dispute and the instance of close escalation.
INTERVIEW: REAR ADMIRAL ROMMEL ONG
Ong: Personally, my benchmark for increased tension in South China Sea is 2012, and it coincides with the ascension of Xi Jinping to power in the Chinese Communist Party. Over the years, we see him accruing power and taking out his rivals within the party. My concern is, if we go back to January of this year, in the recent selection of the members of the Seven Man Standing Committee of the party, all the members are now part of Xi Jinping's faction. To me, that means granted that China has only one party, the CCP, but the factions provide the check and balance within the party. Considering that the Seven Man Standing Committee are all aligned with Xi Jinping, now there's no check and balance, and most likely, adventurous decisions by, let's say, the CMC, the Central Military Commission, or command structure will be basically left unchecked. And Xi Jinping has more or less a sort of an open check in terms of trying to create actions that may destabilise Southeast Asia.
Mcfarlane: Rommel, talk to me about the BRP Sierra Madre. I think this is such a fascinating symbol of the conflict in the South China Sea. What this is, a Philippine Navy transport ship, which has been deliberately run aground onto the Second Thomas Shoal, this island that's occupied by The Philippines. And The Philippines has used that as a way of staking their claim. It is not in good condition right now. It's very rusty. The Marines onshore, they need food, they need resources. Your Navy has been unable to replenish supplies because they have repeatedly been blocked by Chinese vessels. Talk to me about the latest, what you know about the condition of the ship, how it is for the Marines who are stuck there on this island, what's the latest that you've heard?
Ong: Okay, before I answer that, first off, that ship was run aground sometime in the late 90s as a response to the Chinese occupation of Mischief Reef and establishment of then what they call a fisherman's shelter. The BRP Sierra Madre was deliberately grounded on Second Thomas Shoal to check further advance of China towards Philippine territory. Right now, Sierra Madre, as you said, is a decrepit vessel, but it's still a commissioned vessel. The Navy still maintains that as part of its list of active vessels, precisely to preserve the legal fiction that it is an active commissioned vessel, and it has all the rights of a fully operational warship. That said, I wouldn't say that the Navy was unable to resupply or sustain our troops that are based there. We were able to do so, I think, of course under challenging circumstances. Normally run supply boats and it's currently being escorted by Philippine Coast Guard vessels on a periodic basis. The challenge in Second Thomas Shoal is number one, we need to actually either repair Sierra Madre to such extent to arrest the deterioration. But that's a short term stop gap measure. What we really need to do is to construct a new facility inside Second Thomas Shoal. If we lose Sierra Madre or if we are unable to provide an alternative structure for our troops, we will lose Second Thomas Shoal, and most likely it will be seized by China's Maritime Forces. Legal experts in The Philippines would avoid using the word blockade, but to me as a naval person, operationally it is essentially blockade that is being manifesting there in Second Thomas Shoal. And for China to do that, it has utilized a combination of its Navy, its Coast Guard, and its Fisheries militia operating together to create sort of a brittle wall around Second Thomas Shoal that makes it challenging for us to do our resupply missions.
Mcfarlane: Can I ask a really obvious question, and I'm sorry if it's a very stupid question, but what if you were to send a helicopter to airdrop supplies and maintenance crews and engineers to carry out works, what would the Chinese do? Because if they were to fire on that helicopter, they would essentially be starting a war.
Ong: Well, that's a very good question and I ask that question to myself here in The Philippines, Manila. Why not use other options? My guess is, number one, it has to do with calculations being made by the Philippine government. I'm not privy to the decision, so I'm going to make a guess. It may be they're trying to avoid the perception of escalation, and they're trying to stick with something that works and which everybody's familiar with, and those are actually using supply boats to do the resupply missions. But I do agree with you and we are capable of doing vertical replenishment at sea. But whether that option is going to be exercised or implemented, I think that would be a political decision.
Mcfarlane: That's very interesting. You characterise what China is doing around this particular island as a blockade. Is it an impenetrable blockade? You said that you have been able to send some supplies. Do you know how often that happens? Do you know if they've been able to send any supplies and resources recently?
Ong: Well, just to correct your impression, so far all resupply missions are able to break through and do the resupply mission. More often, there are maybe one or two incidents that the supply boat would turn back, but that is few and far in between. More often than not, around maybe just to make a guess, 95 to 98% of the time the resupply mission is able to break through the blockade being run by the Chinese maritime forces around Second Thomas Shoal.
Mcfarlane: That's so interesting. So from what I understand, there are supplies able to be sent to this island, but in order to do what you really need to do, which is to carry out large maintenance and repairs to the ship, or in fact better to build a more permanent physical outpost or settlement, that is what's being totally blocked by the Chinese. Is that right? It's only the smallest supply vessels can get through.
Ong: Correct.
Mcfarlane: Was there a particular incident during your time when you were serving as such a high ranking officer? Was there a particular incident where things were very tense with the Chinese? Is there an incident that you can talk us through what it was like being involved at such a high level in a confrontation with China and what that was like?
Ong: Most of the confrontations are tense, but they are managed. There are two operating tiers in terms of incidents at sea involving the Chinese and Philippine Maritime Forces. There's the one that's happening on the ground, then there's the optic side of it, the battle of narratives. More often than not, it's the battle of narratives that is more interesting compared to what's happening on the ground. So incidents are expected, they are tense, but so far both sides are able to manage to avoid escalating the tension beyond exchange of words.
Mcfarlane: That was Rear Admiral Rommel Jude Ong. Now for a wider look at the geopolitics of this and how the Philippine leadership has been dealing with this issue, we also have joining us this week Richard Heydarian, who's a columnist and political author also from The Philippines. My first question to him was: What did he make of the effort by Biden and Xi to de escalate between themselves? And what does that mean for allies like The Philippines?
INTERVIEW: RICHARD HEYDARIAN
Heydarian: We of course want The United States and China to establish some basic guardrails in their bilateral relationship, whether this is Philippines, whether this is Indonesia or Singapore. We have different threat perceptions towards China, but all of us agree that we do not want the conflict between the two superpowers, because no one is going to win. And it's going to be even worse for us in The Philippines because we're US treaty allies, so we'll be forced into any conflict by China, whether we want it or not. So actually, we don't want it. We don't want any conflict. We want guardrails. And we know that those guardrails were somehow agreed upon during the G20 summit last year in Bali, where Indonesia, Jokowi, President Jokowi played a very important role of bringing these two giants together. But the reality is that over the next six months, things went south again. You know, American tech sanctions, hacking scandal of the American commerce secretary, and then of course the giant Chinese balloon, whatever it was, and you know, being shot down by the Americans because of accusation of espionage. So we're hoping they'll pick up where they left off last year in November, established the guardrails. But having said that, in The Philippines, we're also interested in American commitment to our part of the world, especially on the military front. I mean, you in Europe, you're still dealing with the fallout of the Ukraine Russia conflict, and then now we have a new front again opening up in The Middle East with fears of greater conflict. So imagine, where does that leave the Americans when it comes to a potential conflict in Taiwan or in the South China Sea? So we want reassurance from Biden on that.
Mcfarlane: And I just want to briefly go back to what you said about it being a little bit of a false paradigm that we frame the world in terms of The US versus China, and that is the only theatre by which we see all of these things. How have your allies in the region responded to the Chinese expansionism in the area? And particularly with regards to the view from The Philippines, is it The US who you are working closest with, or are other allies stepping up to the plate more?
Heydarian: Right, great question. I mean, you know, I do believe that America is no longer the superpower that it used to be, it's not a hyperpower. It cannot just dictate the terms of international security the way it used to do. But I think The United States is a very pivotal player. At the same time, as pivotal as America is, and as a rising power as China is, I think there's a lot of room for exercise of strategic agency by everyone. And if you look at it, The Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, a lot of our European partners, we are middle powers in one way or another. None of us are major powers like China and United States, but we do have some room for maneuver. And we can say no, not only to China, we said no to America during Trump administration, right, on many issues. In fact, ASEAN, for instance, stood very strongly against Trump's protectionist foreign policy. And many in ASEAN were extremely enraged by Trump's, for instance, predisposition towards conflicts in The Middle East, which resonates with hundreds of millions of Muslims in Southeast Asia and beyond. So for me, that's an important thing. And President Marcos Junior, I think, initially he was open to have good relationship with both The United States and China. And the reality is that The United States has turned out far more friendly to him than perhaps he expected earlier. I mean, remember, Marcos has court cases, human rights, corruption cases against them in The US. So Marcos Jr. was realistically worried about how a democracy promotion agenda kind of president like Biden was going to approach him. Guess what? Biden rolled out the red carpet. Biden sent top three, you know, cabinet members, defense secretary, vice president, the secretary of state to The Philippines over the coming months, once Marcos was elected. And then the Chinese took The Philippines for granted. They thought they had another Duterte, right? And you know, just quickly, I mean Duterte was essentially the most friendly Filipino leader ever to China and the most hostile Filipino leader to The United States. I've written a whole book on that, you can just read that. We have no time to do that. So, Marcos Junior didn't come here choosing between the two. He wanted to have, you know, what our Indian friends call multi alignment, right? Have the cake and eat it too, have good economic relations with China, good security cooperation with The United States. But China gave him nothing. So when he went to China, in fact, he chose China as his first state visit destination. He went to China in January of this year ahead of Japan, ahead of White House, and nothing came out. The Chinese gave no concessions on the South China Sea and no concessions on the Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure. That's why I called it pledge trap, not debt trap, because nothing came in, no major Chinese infrastructure projects came in. So once Marcos Jr. felt he's not being respected by China, once on the cheap, he said, No, I'm different. We are Marcoses. We are OG. So he pivoted back to our traditional allies to leverage that, right? I mean this is the thing, the Marcoses have been in this business for half a century. You can Google pictures of Marcos Junior and Mao Zedong in the 1970s. So you know, I don't think the guy has ever graduated from any school. I mean, he went to Oxford, he attended Oxford, he went to Wharton, he never graduated. But the guy has really a lot of lifelong experience in dealing with high stakes geopolitics. So it's not like Marcos Junior's pro Western anti China. No, he's just not the amateur that Duterte was, and once he realized he's not being taken seriously, he pivoted, right? But the question right now is what does The US have to offer us? But speaking of Marcos Junior, he also wants a diversified foreign relations. I mean, I'm not his spokesman, just to be clear, but this is my understanding and I've been saying this for a year and it looks like it's turning out, right? You know, this kind of analysis is being borne by reality. I mean, if you look at Marcos Junior, he's actually looking at the network of alliances and partners, and one of them is Britain. Of course, you know, he spent a lot of time in The United Kingdom. He attended the King's coronation earlier this year. He has a soft spot. He's our first Anglophile president. Perhaps he will be the only Anglophile president for quite some time. We're a very Americanized country, for better or for worse. And he wants to also strengthen relationship with one country you mentioned a while ago, Japan. So Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was in Manila earlier this month and he launched the first ever Japanese overseas security assistance. So actually the unsung hero, I mean usually Japan is seen as a Robin to the Batman of The United States, but they're more like Flash to the Batman in the Justice League, right, if you look at it that way. And the Japanese have been really helpful to The Philippines, both economically and increasingly on the security front. So what Marcos wants to do is to have more leverage when he deals with China with fortified relationship, not only with The United States, but also with Japan, South Korea, India, which is providing us supersonic missile systems, with Australians, our traditional partners, and of course our new friends, our newfound friends or lost cousins there in Europe, who share a lot of our fundamental values and threat perceptions towards China.
Mcfarlane: I read an article that you wrote recently where you noted, and I didn't realize this at the time, that ASEAN said nothing in 2016 when The Hague ruled in favour of The Philippines with regards to those disputed islands in the Spratly Islands chain. And that ASEAN have been really quite quiet over standing up for The Philippines. There was something that the Singaporean leader Lee even sort of warned The Philippines to sort of almost to pipe down and sit down and stop trying to start military confrontation with China. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but that is essentially the subtext of what he was trying to tell Manila was to, you know, stop stirring the pot with China. How disappointing has the behavior of ASEAN been to The Philippines? Is it something that Manila has raised? Is it something that The Philippines feel like their neighbours are not showing enough solidarity? Or is it that they are all sort of threatened by China and trying to figure out how they handle their own approach with regards to these tensions and this dispute?
Heydarian: Right. I mean, this is another very important thing to discuss. I mean, ASEAN, how I wish it were an alliance. If you look at ASEAN as an organization, meaning, you know, this 10 member nations organization in Southeast Asia, which expanded just from less than a half a dozen to now 10 since the end of the Cold War. I'll just be honest, I'm going to make a lot of enemies again in the region and I'm going to ruffle feathers in the Department of Foreign Affairs among my diplomatic friends. But honestly ASEAN as a 10 has been almost useless, right, to us as far as helping us dealing with China in the South China Sea. Almost, because to a certain degree, at least they provide a kind of a medium for dialogue. Now I say this from a position of love because ASEAN back in the day was very assertive and proactive in dealing with multiple conflicts during the Cold War period. Interventionists in the Cambodian conflict and post Cambodian reconstruction, very helpful to, you know, East Timor's transition into democracy. So actually ASEAN back in the day, when there were fewer members, like minded members, was far more effective than today. So today, more numbers, higher number, but lower quality essentially when it comes to dealing with high stakes geopolitical issue. I think ASEAN is very useful to The Philippines on economic front, social front and matters, but on the South China Sea, just short of useless, right? Sorry for saying that. So I think, you know, this is a problem. We see deafening silence from ASEAN countries whenever China is bullying The Philippines. Where do you get statements? You get statements even from South Korea and India, which are usually very neutralists on this issue because they have their own dynamic with China. And where is Malaysia? Where is Indonesia? Where is Singapore for that matter? So that's why I think the well meaning, well intentioned statements and you know, cautionary remark by Lee Hsien Loong, the Singaporean Prime Minister, was not received very well in Manila. The idea is that, hey, you guys are not helping us, now you're telling us not to help ourselves or not to get help from others to help ourselves. It doesn't work that way. Now I don't think that's what the Singaporean Prime Minister necessarily meant, but this is how it went down in The Philippines precisely because of that bitterness. In fact, in 2012, when Cambodia, a very China dependent country under Hun Sen regime, was the chairman of ASEAN, they even tried to block discussion of the South China Sea disputes just months after we had months of naval standoff with the Chinese. And in 2016, as you mentioned, when the arbitration award came out, ASEAN as a whole hasn't mentioned it yet, right? So the best hope we have is to work bilaterally or what you call mini laterally with some of the few countries in the region. I think Vietnam is a very good potential partner for The Philippines because I think they have very realistic perceptions about threats from China. They have a thousand years supposedly of struggle against China. But some of the other countries out there, I'm not going to mention whom, but you can guess, it looks like they're far more concerned with their economic interests vis a vis China, and they're far more worried with The US China conflict in the region than helping The Philippines or at least giving The Philippines credit for drawing the line. Because we are not, I mean, I'll put it this way, I feel one of the problems we have is strategic gaslighting. You know, when smaller countries try to draw the line, suddenly we are being accused as agent provocateur. So we just don't like any statement that kind of makes it feel as if it's The Philippines' fault for trying to protect its own sovereign rights. We have no choice. We had six years of subservient foreign policy under Duterte, we got nothing out of it. We only got pledges, pledge trap. Now The Philippines is changing tack, so the least I wish from the rest of ASEAN is do not gaslight us for just trying to do what is right for our national interest.
ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE
Mcfarlane: Richard Heydarian speaking to us earlier. Richard, welcome back. I suppose the first thing I wanted to ask you about was Admiral Rommel talking about the situation on the ground with the Second Thomas Shoal. And I was struck by what he was saying about how it's not just a military issue, it's also a conflict of narratives, competing narratives. China's playing this very carefully. They want what they want or Xi wants what Xi wants, but he also doesn't want to set the world on fire or at least he doesn't want to do that just yet. Are you relatively relaxed that we won't have an opportunistic Putin style sudden invasion like we saw with Ukraine?
Dearlove: Well, I think the Chinese have, for a significant amount of time, been pushing the boundaries in the South China Sea, and it all revolves around this historic claim, and it's an imperial Chinese claim to what's called the nine dash line, which actually has no standing in international law, though the Chinese argue that it has deep historical roots and therefore this area is legitimately theirs. So this is a sort of unresolved international territorial dispute. And I mean, I think that what the Chinese have done is they've picked off already the softer targets. That means they've occupied various shoals and islands, most of which I think are in the Spratlys. And some of those they've actually fortified. And some of those, in one or two cases, they even built airstrips. So they've pushed out this sort of security line closer and closer to The Philippines. And you're right, it's a history of competing narratives. And there's no question that The Philippines' position is the correct international judicial one in terms of their claim to what's called the Second Thomas Shoal. And of course they ran this ship aground on it. It's an old transport, military transport vessel. And the shoal actually is tidal. So it only pokes up above the water at low tide. And they wanted, as it were, to make sure that they had a physical presence on it, it was a rather clever thing they did. So the ship's been sitting there for quite a long time actually, and it's rusting and falling to pieces. And they're faced with the problem of what to do next. And the Chinese are incredibly, I mean, they won't allow any other power on their side of the Pacific to fortify any of the shoals because they say that this is an aggressive move despite the fact that they've done it themselves. And of course, it's a, you know, Goliath versus a relatively tiny country. And the only assurance that The Philippines have got that they can resist the Chinese lies in their defense agreements with The United States, which I think dates back to the 1950s.
Mcfarlane: Yeah. I mean, one must always strive for balance and objectivity with these sort of things. But just to paint a picture for our audience, the Spratly Islands and particularly this particular atoll, this reef, the Second Thomas Shoal, it is right next to a Filipino island. It is miles away from China. It is nowhere near the Chinese mainland. But what the Chinese have said is they've produced these documents, just historical documents that they say well, it's a map. It's basically a map of the South China Sea. And you can see that the island of Hainan is the closest to it, but it's still way, way away from the Spratly Islands. There is a demarcation around these atolls where it claims to be Chinese territory. These documents date, I think, also from the mid twentieth century. These documents haven't been recognised by the international legal community. It is quite odd. And if China were to fully occupy all these areas it claims, it means that Chinese maritime territory would go right up and eat into The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia. How does it make any sense, really? How did the Chinese justify this?
Dearlove: Well, I think it's an assertion of their regional power. And, you know, it's part of their sort of aggressive nationalist agenda. And, I mean, if you look at a map, I think the nine dash line pretty much cuts off the islands which are just to the north of the top of The Philippines. I think it's called the Luzon Strait. And they push their territorial claims right down into those areas. And of course, up until recently, this wasn't really an issue because the Chinese were not pressing it. And there was a period of time, I think, when the Chinese acted quite clandestinely in pushing themselves out and over some of these islands. By the time that the international community began to focus on what was happening, you know, it was a sort of fait accompli, it was a de facto occupation. And I think what The Philippines are definitely trying to do now is to draw a red line and say, far enough, no further. But I think the potential for accidental conflict, given that there have been all sorts of incidents with fishing boats and coast guard boats, and denial of Filipino fishermen to traditional fishing grounds, there have been all sorts of problems. And there are little incidents going on all the time. And I think the danger is that one of these may escalate into something much, much more serious.
Mcfarlane: So I guess well, the key question for this week then is if Biden and Xi kiss and make up, what do you think that means?
Dearlove: Well, I don't think that they're going to kiss and make up. What they're going to do is to try to, I think, set a floor under the relationship so it doesn't crash into the basement, if you see what I mean. And I don't think we should exaggerate the benefit that will come out of this meeting. The most urgent thing you've already mentioned, which is what's called mil to mil communications. But I think what's interesting over the last three, four months maybe it's a bit longer than that now, six months there have been a number of quite influential meetings between Chinese and American officials. And so the Xi Biden meeting is a follow-up to those. And I think they're basically only going to get the relationship back onto a talking basis, a contact basis, a communications basis. But I mean, for example, I don't see any change in American policy on the banning of certain chips and certain chip technology, which has been one of the big issues for the Chinese. So I don't think we should expect a dramatic improvement. But I think there's another important aspect to this, and I was reading some stuff this morning because it's Xi's sort of tenth anniversary since his coronation in 2013. And there's no question that over the last four or five months things actually haven't gone particularly well for Xi. What I mean by that is, okay, his security regime, his dominance is mighty and not contested, but the economy in China is going badly. And there are all sorts of worries and concerns. And I think the problem for Xi is when you're in a position of such dominance, you're also in a position of total responsibility.
Mcfarlane: I.E. it's your fault. Yeah, well there's no one else to blame. You're the only one in charge.
Dearlove: Exactly. And there are tensions in the Chinese leadership, there must be. So that's happening within a sort of sealed envelope that we can't see. But you know China internally probably at the moment isn't in a happy state. I'm not sort of predicting anything dramatic happening. But I think there are all sorts of reasons why Xi at the moment may want to make some gestures of moderation, let's put it like that. And the key gesture of moderation would be a slightly less and I think this is what we ought to think about a slightly less confrontational relationship with The United States, which is of course the key to Chinese foreign policy. It's one of the key issues for The United States as well. So I think that's probably what we're looking at.
Mcfarlane: No serious indicators of World War three anytime soon. Some good news to end on this podcast. Who's to say we don't always bring good news on this geopolitics podcast? It's not always doom and gloom. No. Well, I mean, one says, isn't Ukraine a big distraction, The Middle East a great distraction, won't Xi move on Taiwan?
Dearlove: I don't think at the moment that is likely. I'm not saying it's off the agenda, but I think it's receded. I think the risk of a Taiwanese crisis has receded, and I think that there will be a certain amount of reassurance that will come out of the mere fact that the two have met, the two have talked, and they will sort of be setting up the red telephone so that, you know, the general staff of both militaries can talk to each other if things look like going, you know, haywire.
Mcfarlane: That's it for this week's episode of One Decision. We drop new episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Drop us a line. Tell us your thoughts. What decisions have impacted you and where you live? You can write to us. Our email is 1decision@1decisionpodcast.com. From me and the team, thank you for listening, and see you next time.
