In the waters off Aparri, a small port at the far north end of the Philippines, fishermen are pulling in their nets and going home. For two long days, their boats will be confined to harbour; the fish stalls in the market will be empty.
“It’s very sad, and we are all affected by this,” says Bernard Gurosperehino, a local fish seller. “If they don’t go to the sea, we have nothing to sell.” The cause is not the familiar dangers of storms. Last weekend, Aparri found itself the staging ground for a piece of geopolitical theatre on a large and violent scale.
It is the latest performance of Balikatan, the largest bilateral joint military exercises between the forces of the United States and the Philippines. The exercises, whose name means “shoulder to shoulder” in the Philippines language, Tagalog, have been held annually for 40 years. This year they come at a time of growing tensions with China, which is making aggressive claims to territory on two sides of the Philippines.
To the west, Chinese government vessels stake their claims to almost all of the South China Sea — the Philippines and Chinese coast guard have both made recent landings on a bank of coral named Sandy Cay, a coral reef which is also claimed by Vietnam.
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On Thursday, Manila and Beijing gave conflicting accounts of a confrontation close to another disputed atoll, Scarborough Shoal, where the Philippines claimed to have “driven out” a Chinese research vessel surveying the sea bed. The Chinese military accused the Filipinos of “aggressive and unsafe” behaviour and urged them to “immediately cease … infringement, provocation and distorted speculation”.
To the north, the People’s Liberation Army continues intense and menacing air and sea exercises in the strait that divides the Philippines from Taiwan, the self-ruling island that China claims as its own. In both seas, Beijing insists on the right to enforce its territorial claims by force if necessary.
The dilemma that this poses is felt strongly in Aparri, across the water from Taiwan, which needs its fishing, and has much to lose from any conflict there.
“For us it’s 50-50, because of course we need money for food, for our family,” says Gurosperehino. “We also need [our armed forces] to train more for our protection and safety … We don’t want war and [to] get hurt.”
Just a few miles away, on the dusty northern shores of Cagayan province, hundreds of US and Filipino soldiers push through blistering heat, fighting off a mock invasion. Some 9,000 troops from the Philippines, 5,000 from the US, and 200 from Australia have taken part in the three weeks of exercises that continue until Friday.
France and South Korea have sent official observers, which also include nine British military officers and a handful of Royal Marines. Western participants’ officers stop short of spelling it out but in the armed forces of the Philippines there is little pretence about who the imagined enemy is: China.
“They’re acting like they have the sole ownership of these waters but the waters do not belong to them,” said Brigadier General Michael Logico, speaking to The Times in Camp Aguinaldo, the Manila headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. “We consider these aggressive acts as illegal and coercive.”
Much international attention has been on the South China Sea but the Bashi Channel, which divides the Philippines and Taiwan, is also a potential zone of conflict. If China was to invade, it would seek to secure the sea lanes around the island — waters in which the fishermen of Aparri make their living.
Strategists speak of the importance of the “first island chain” that stretches from Japan, through Taiwan and the Philippines and into Indonesia. At present the islands are broadly pro-western democracies. If Beijing were to take Taiwan, the Philippines would be vulnerable to further Chinese incursion.
“The area north of us is a flashpoint, especially south of the Bashi Channel,” Logico said, referring to the 60-mile body of water that splits southern Taiwan from the Philippines’ northern province of Batanes.
“We have to secure that [area], because once other regional players want to make more aggressive moves on that part of the region, we will definitely be involved. Because of our proximity, we belong to that battlespace,” he added.
For the first time, the US has deployed “ship killer” missiles, known as NMESIS, in a “full battle test” in northern Batanes province. How long these systems will remain in the country is unclear but after last year’s exercise US Typhon missile systems were “left behind” by the Americans in what looks like an effort to arm the Philippines by stealth.
For Manila, the drills are therefore also seen as a way of increasing deterrence capabilities in the face of rising threats. But the presence of such weapons also makes Aparri’s surrounding province of Cagayan a potential target for Chinese preemptive attack.
“There are so many issues,” says Gurosperehino. “We need to be safe. We need to train more, and be more experienced. We need peace, we don’t need war.”
