Why the Philippines is deploying navigation buoys in the South China Sea

Earlier this month, the Philippine Coast Guard deployed five 30-foot navigation buoys near islands and reefs within its territory in the South China Sea, saying the move highlighted the nation’s “unwavering determination to protect its maritime borders”.

Within two weeks, China had deployed three navigation buoys of its own, placing two near the Manila beacons at Irving Reef and Whitsun Reef, to guarantee the “safety of navigation”.

The tit-for-tat deployments marked a new front in a longstanding dispute over the sovereignty of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes that is considered a flashpoint for the conflict in Pacific Asia. .

But the buoys also underscored an increasingly proactive approach by the Philippines to enforcing its maritime rights, analysts say.

“Such a move illustrates Manila’s awareness of the changing nature of regional geopolitics,” said Don McLain Gill, a Manila-based geopolitical analyst and professor at De La Salle University.

“The Philippines also recognizes that no other external entity can effectively support its legitimate interests other than itself.”

China claims almost all of the South China Sea and has for years militarized artificial islands, while deploying coast guard ships and a state-backed armed fishing fleet around disputed areas.

In 2016, an international tribunal ruled in favor of Manila and against Beijing’s expansive historic claims to the region, but China has since refused to recognize the ruling.

The Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam and Taiwan all have claims at sea, and Manila’s deployment of buoys prompted an official protest from Hanoi.

Since taking office in June last year, the Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been more eloquent in condemning China’s aggressive actions in the region and has restored traditional military ties with the United States.

Raymond Powell, South China Sea leader at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for Homeland Security Innovation, said the recent deployment of buoys showed the Philippines’ new resolve to “proactively assert its maritime interests.”

‘A war of buoys’

While some praised Marcos Jr. for the deployment, others criticized the move as an unnecessary provocation.

Philippine security analyst Rommel Banlaoi said the unilateral action increased security tensions and could have “unintended negative consequences.”

“What the Philippines did was problematic because the international community recognizes the South China Sea as disputed waters,” said Banlaoi, who chairs the advisory board of the Center for China Studies at New Era University School of International Relations.

“This could trigger a buoy war,” he said in an interview last week with local radio station DZBB.

Philippine National Security Adviser Eduardo Año said the buoy deployment was meant to enforce the 2016 arbitration ruling in The Hague.

“This is not a provocation. What we call provocations are those who perform dangerous maneuvers, aim lasers, block our ships, harass our fishermen,” he told reporters in an interview, referring to recent Chinese actions in the South China Sea.

Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines Institute of Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, said the installation of the buoys demonstrated that the Philippines was exercising jurisdiction over its waters in order to enhance the safety of navigation.

“Such buoys are harmless devices that warn all other ships of potential dangers and should in no way be considered as a provocation or a threat,” Batongbacal told BenarNews.

He asked why critics are silent on China’s construction of artificial islands, installation of anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, and deployment of missile boats and large coast guard ships that actively interfere with Philippine ships in its maritime territory.

angry vietnam

The buoy’s deployment not only triggered another round of recriminations between Beijing and Manila, but also prompted a rebuke from Vietnam, which claims parts of the Spratly Islands as its own.

When asked about the Manila action, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pham Thu Hang said Hanoi “firmly opposes all acts that violate Vietnam’s sovereign rights.”

However, analysts say the dispute is unlikely to escalate as Vietnam has much bigger problems to deal with in terms of China’s incursions into its territorial waters.

TO Chinese survey shipescorted by the Chinese Coast Guard and maritime militia, it was found within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone for several days from May 7, often within fifty nautical miles of its southern coast.

Powell said the raids were “much more provocative than the Philippine buoys.”

“I think Vietnam’s pro forma protest over the latter will be largely noticed and forgotten, both in Hanoi and Manila,” Powell told BenarNews.

Vietnam’s reaction to the Philippine move was natural “because of its potential political ramifications at the national level,” Gill said. But he added that Southeast Asian nations have a history of settling maritime disputes amicably.

In 2014, for example, the Philippines and Indonesia resolved a maritime border dispute after two decades of negotiations using international law, in particular the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

“Unlike China, Southeast Asian countries have illustrated a fairly positive track record of being able to compromise and resolve bilateral tensions between them given the countries’ collective desire to maintain stability in the region,” Gill said.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.