Will the Philippines Take Sides as US, China Send Military Units to Disputed Sea?

TAIPEI - A wave of U.S. and Chinese military activity in the contested South China Sea is making it challenging for the Philippines, at the heart of the maritime dispute, to stick with the neutral foreign policy it has formulated over the past half-decade, analysts say.

The U.S. Navy’s Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group “is operating in the South China Sea,” the Navy said on its website June 14. The group is flying aircraft, conducting maritime strike exercises and training for surface-air unit coordination. It calls this voyage part of the Navy’s “routine presence in the Indo-Pacific.” U.S. officials have said exercises like these – it carried out 10 last year – support Asian allies, including the Philippines, with which the U.S. has had a Mutual Defense Treaty since 1951. China’s navy, for its part, has increased surveillance on one of its artificial-island military bases in the sea, the U.S. Naval Institute’s USNI News reported June 10. It says a Chinese intelligence-gathering ship and a maritime patrol aircraft, plus one other plane, have appeared at Fiery Cross Reef in the sea’s Spratly Islands, where Manila occupies 10 other features.