Lost Authority: China’s pressure campaign risks ‘end of the world’

America’s allies believe the Biden administration’s credibility is deteriorating on the world stage and it has lost control of escalation management in conflict zones, namely the Middle East and Ukraine. This Washington Examiner series, Lost Authority , will look at the reasons why. Read Part 1 and Part 2 .

Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping ’s expansionist forces continue to cross “red lines” in the South China Sea , according to a senior Philippine envoy who warned that the habit could bring about “the end of the world.”

“The red lines have been crossed on many occasions, especially when it comes to our territory,” Philippine Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez told the Washington Examiner. “As a sovereign country, we will continue to do whatever we can to protect our sovereignty and our territorial rights.”

That plucky posture represents a sea change from not many years ago, when then-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced a “separation” from the United States during a 2016 state visit in Beijing. Duterte would back that declaration with a series of threats to scrap a key defense agreement , but his attitude paid scant dividends with respect to China’s assertion of sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, as evidenced by the Chinese coast guard’s violent harassment of Philippine forces and fishermen in the region. Incumbent Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. jettisoned that policy after taking office in 2022, preferring instead to put a spotlight on China’s coercion campaign while expanding coordination with the United States and other democratic powers.

“The Philippines is in a much stronger position today than it was a year and a half ago, [but] this is pretty dangerous,” Gregory Poling, an expert on South China Sea tensions at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner. “They had two choices. They could either buckle … or they could accept a pretty significant risk of escalation on the bet that China would stick with gray zone and wouldn't escalate the military force. And so far, that bet has paid off.”

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That’s not to say that Xi has relented. A series of collisions last week near the Sabina Shoal demonstrated Beijing’s willingness to use military force against the Philippines while enlarging the list of hotspots in the region. That persistent harassment points to a vulnerability in U.S. efforts to manage the competition with China: President Joe Biden’s team has notched some major strategic achievements in the region, such as a landmark deal to provide American and British nuclear submarine technology to Australia, while working to establish “a floor” in the competition with Beijing. Those efforts haven’t stopped Xi from ratcheting up pressure on allies and partners across the region.

“China is carefully trying not to do things that [would] directly provoke the U.S., but it's sort of taking on its aggression on other people — you know, the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan,” a Pentagon strategist told the Washington Examiner. “As far they're concerned, if they can weaken the alliance network without touching the U.S., and the U.S. won't intervene directly…it sort of weakens the entire premise of U.S. power and leadership at the same time.”

These controversies are simmering against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war, a conflict that Russian President Vladimir Putin expected to produce an easy victory, only to face a protracted struggle enabled chiefly by China’s support for his defense industry. Putin may exemplify for Xi the perils of hubris, as U.S. officials have suggested . But Biden’s emphatic anxiety about the possibility of escalation “is not helpful for the cause of deterrence,” the Pentagon strategist suggested, while the political infighting over U.S. aid to Ukraine could raise Xi’s hopes that the U.S. political leaders won’t stay unified in a crisis.

“It again proved [their perception that] it’s difficult for democracies to wage wars, even defensive wars,” Dr. Maris Andzans, the director of Director of the Center for Geopolitical Studies in Latvia, told the Washington Examiner. “This situation just underlined how vulnerable a president is, even if he has majority in [the] Senate but not in the House, it might be complex.”

LOST AUTHORITY: US ALLIES LOSING RESPECT FOR BIDEN’S APPROACH TO ESCALATION MANAGEMENT

The strategic crosscurrents tugged away at the allies in the lead-up to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s arrival in Beijing. On Sunday, a Chinese coast guard ship rammed a Philippine vessel attempting to deliver supplies to local fishermen near the Sabina Shoal, according to footage released by Philippine officials. The next day, a Chinese military reconnaissance plane entered Japan’s airspace. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman maintained that “China has no intention to intrude into any country’s airspace,” but Japanese Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi condemned the incursion as “a serious violation of our country's sovereignty, [and] also a threat to our safety.” Against that backdrop, China’s top diplomat insisted that the United States must defer to Beijing’s territorial demands, from the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea.

“The United States must not use bilateral treaties as an excuse to undermine China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, nor should it support or condone the Philippines's actions of infringement," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Sullivan, per state media.

In parallel, the U.S. Navy admiral who leads the Indo-Pacific Command traveled to Manila on Tuesday and affirmed that it would be “entirely reasonable” for U.S. forces to provide escorts to Philippine ships under the terms of the mutual defense treaty. Marcos’ administration, according to Romualdez, believes that this treaty is an “ironclad” commitment — backed by the fearsome might of the world’s most powerful military.

“The United States has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons … and the most sophisticated equipment to fight a modern war, so to speak,” said Romualdez. “I don't think anyone in the United States wants to go that far, because they know what the consequences are for the world. So I hope that China is well aware of that. Maybe they are, and that's the reason why they're not doing what they want to do.”

Yet the grandeur of the U.S. military is belied by a failure to meet a suite of needs that have been identified for years by the military officials tasked with preparing for — and, if necessary, fighting — a war in the Indo-Pacific. Retiring U.S. Navy Adm. John Aquilino, in the final months of his tenure as the commander of Indo-Pacific Command, emphasized that Congress has neglected to provide funding for crucial priorities, such as the defense of Guam, which is U.S. territory, and the procurement of weapons needed to fight in that theater.

“I am not trying to generate a bill for a bill’s sake. These are critical capabilities, and they are joint-enabling capabilities,” Aquilino told the Council on Foreign Relations in April before touting his request for a “Maritime Strike Tomahawk” cruise missile. “The ability to deliver fires from all domains and synchronize them is what we need to do. So the weapons we’ve asked for are not just single-service weapons; those are going to go to three services. And ultimately, we’d love to get them into the other — air domain to be able to deliver from air platforms if needed.”

That rhetoric contained an implicit jab at, and appeal to, the Pentagon bureaucracies in charge of the purse strings, to judge from another former officials description of the budget and spending process.

“It’s a service-dominated procurement acquisition system where they still end up, I think, prioritizing legacy, conventional platforms that aren't necessarily optimized for the China fight,” said Randall Schriver, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific affairs for two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. “The combatant commander priorities inform the service plans for acquisition and procurement, but they don't drive it, in all cases. … There are competing priorities.”

Against that backdrop, Biden submitted a budget that “fails to keep pace with inflation and our adversaries,” as House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) noted. In the meantime, officials from Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Andrew Sugimoto, the deputy commander for the Pacific, are suggesting that a public shaming campaign could be a key initiative to halting China’s aggression.

“China wants to have a vibrant economy, and if nations condemn the actions and [Chinese officials] see the economy as something that may be … damaged,” Sugimoto said this week, then “perhaps they will change the way they do business.”

That’s not nothing — “reputational costs are important,” the Pentagon strategist acknowledged, surmising that China’s current economic struggles have helped to restrain Xi — but there’s something hair-raising about

“I think what the Chinese see is the U.S. committing [to] partners and allies, saying the right things about improving our [military] posture, but they know our gaps,” Schriver said.

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Philippine officials are trying to manage the tensions until China is willing to “seriously discuss this in a civilized way,” as Romualdez put it. The ambassador, who was born just two years after the end of the Second World War, the alternative is just too devastating.

“We want the waters to be calm, but the waters are being disturbed. And who's disturbing it? Obviously, [China], nobody else,” he said. “So the whole world has to realize the effect that it will have. … People don't realize that how serious it could be is because you have countries like China and Russia and the United States and other countries that have, now, nuclear weapons. That is the ultimate in perhaps calling it the end of the world because it's no longer going to be a classic war that happened in World War II.”