David Day @DavidFDay - Twitter Profile

3 months ago

@GordianKnotRay @Chinaembmanila @jaytaryela @GordonGChang @AndrewSErickson @ajphelo @BassiJustin @brentdsadler @CollinSLKoh @graham_euan @franco_jose72 @BDHerzinger @Joel_P_Atkinson Amen, Ray. Amen.

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Ray Powell

@GordianKnotRay

3 months ago

My response to 🇨🇳@Chinaembmanila's rebuttal of 🇵🇭@jaytaryela's recent post: ----- You call the 2016 arbitral award “illegal, null and void” and accuse the #Philippines of bad faith for invoking it. You rest that accusation on the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the #SouthChinaSea and on the principle that agreements must be kept. Fine. Let’s take that argument at face value. The DOC commits its signatories to resolve disputes peacefully, respect freedom of navigation, and exercise self-restraint in activities that would “complicate or escalate” tensions. #China signed those commitments too, so let’s measure its actions against its own signed agreement. 📍 China dredged and filled thousands of acres of coral reef to build artificial islands in the Spratlys, converting pristine reefs into military outposts with runways, harbors, sensors and missile systems. 📍 China seized control of Scarborough Shoal in 2012 and has increasingly blocked Filipino fishermen’s access, devastating the livelihoods of communities up and down the Zambales coastline. 📍 China’s coast guard and maritime militia have repeatedly blocked, rammed, water-cannoned and swarmed smaller Philippine vessels to forcibly assert its absurdly vast maritime claims based on unilaterally declared “historic rights.” Let's recall that on August 11th of last year, China turned a peaceful Philippine patrol into a deadly high-speed intercept in which a 7,500-ton PLA Navy destroyer bore down on a 350-ton Philippine Coast Guard vessel before colliding with a China Coast Guard ship involved in the same pursuit. This happened while China was enforcing an undeclared (but very real) 30-nautical-mile exclusion zone around the Scarborough Shoal--one which clearly violates the freedom of navigation China promised to respect under the DOC. That is certainly not the peaceful self-restraint China signed up to. 📍 It is aggression masked as law enforcement--until the mask drops and the guided-missile destroyer shows the world its true, violent face. 📍 It is gaslighting--invoking an agreement as a weapon against a smaller neighbor while blatantly ignoring your own obligations under the very same agreement. 📍 It is highly escalatory and precisely the kind of collision risk the 2016 tribunal correctly found unlawful. Now you urge the Philippines to abandon the award and “return to bilateral dialogue.” But why on earth would any rational party do that? If China routinely abrogates the pledges it made to all of ASEAN under the DOC, why should the Philippines now trust it alone, one-on-one, bound by no rule Beijing is willing to accept above its own coercive will backed by violence?

GordianKnotRay's tweet photo. My response to 🇨🇳@Chinaembmanila's rebuttal of 🇵🇭@jaytaryela's recent post:

-----

You call the 2016 arbitral award “illegal, null and void” and accuse the #Philippines of bad faith for invoking it. You rest that accusation on the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the #SouthChinaSea and on the principle that agreements must be kept.

Fine. Let’s take that argument at face value.

The DOC commits its signatories to resolve disputes peacefully, respect freedom of navigation, and exercise self-restraint in activities that would “complicate or escalate” tensions. #China signed those commitments too, so let’s measure its actions against its own signed agreement.

📍 China dredged and filled thousands of acres of coral reef to build artificial islands in the Spratlys, converting pristine reefs into military outposts with runways, harbors, sensors and missile systems.

📍 China seized control of Scarborough Shoal in 2012 and has increasingly blocked Filipino fishermen’s access, devastating the livelihoods of communities up and down the Zambales coastline.

📍 China’s coast guard and maritime militia have repeatedly blocked, rammed, water-cannoned and swarmed smaller Philippine vessels to forcibly assert its absurdly vast maritime claims based on unilaterally declared “historic rights.”

Let's recall that on August 11th of last year, China turned a peaceful Philippine patrol into a deadly high-speed intercept in which a 7,500-ton PLA Navy destroyer bore down on a 350-ton Philippine Coast Guard vessel before colliding with a China Coast Guard ship involved in the same pursuit. This happened while China was enforcing an undeclared (but very real) 30-nautical-mile exclusion zone around the Scarborough Shoal--one which clearly violates the freedom of navigation China promised to respect under the DOC.

That is certainly not the peaceful self-restraint China signed up to.

📍 It is aggression masked as law enforcement--until the mask drops and the guided-missile destroyer shows the world its true, violent face.

📍 It is gaslighting--invoking an agreement as a weapon against a smaller neighbor while blatantly ignoring your own obligations under the very same agreement.

📍 It is highly escalatory and precisely the kind of collision risk the 2016 tribunal correctly found unlawful.

Now you urge the Philippines to abandon the award and “return to bilateral dialogue.” But why on earth would any rational party do that? If China routinely abrogates the pledges it made to all of ASEAN under the DOC, why should the Philippines now trust it alone, one-on-one, bound by no rule Beijing is willing to accept above its own coercive will backed by violence?

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