TEN years after its promulgation, the 2016 ruling of the arbitral tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague on the China-Philippines conflict over the South China Sea draws focus of interest invariably on the legal angle. This matter is amply taken care of by the book “The South China Sea Arbitration Awards: A Critical Study” published by the Chinese Journal of International Law in 2018. For legal implications, the book is the best reference this column can recommend.

Suffice for this space for now to clarify that what the PCA ruled on was the legality of the nine-dash line map. China’s contention is that it’s sovereignty over the South China Sea region is based not on that map but on its territorial and maritime domain, internationally recognized since antiquity.

But the ruling having been made, what it evidently accomplished in international perception is the justification of the Philippines’ claim to its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) according to standards of the United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea. At that, everything else follows, like sovereign rights over waters and land resources within such EEZ. It so happens that within this reckoning, certain EEZs of the Philippines overlap with those of China. No problem here really, if only the two countries were left only to themselves to settle the matter.

In fact, China and the Philippines were in such mode of talks pursuant to the Declaration of Conduct of Parties among China and the Asean nations.

Whatever differences China and the Philippines have with their EEZs had already been the subject of friendly, mutually beneficial discussions.

As early as half a year ago of the PCA ruling, this column already predicted that the Philippines would win the case. The prediction was the product of a pragmatic view that the ruling was a handiwork of the United States to advance America’s strategic designs against China in the Asia-Pacific.

Remember that the arbitration affair came as an offshoot of the standoff between the Philippine MV Gregorio del Pilar and a battleship of the People’s Liberation Army Navy over Scarborough Shoal in 2012. China had attained naval war ascendance over the US in the Asia-Pacific.

Beginning in 2010 when it launched in the South China Sea an aircraft carrier refurbished from an old one acquired from Russia, the People’s Liberation Army Navy had by 2012 grown to outpace the US Navy if only in size such that, as shown by actual simulation war exercises, although losing 50 battleships, China still had 48 with which to continue fighting, whereas the US had no more.

In 2012, China had the numbers to absorb more losses than the US and keep fighting.

Thus was the US pragmatism for that period: Execute a one-step backward until such time that it could make the strategically advantageous two-steps forward whenever that would be.

What resulted was the Philippines virtually surrendering Scarborough Shoal to China already.

Not evident to the public was the back-channeling that happened previous to the withdrawal of the Philippine Navy ship from the standoff.

It had been said, albeit in whispers, that then-Foreign Affairs secretary Albert del Rosario (of the reputedly CIA-controlled Stratbase ADRi think tank) had been ordered by America to prevail upon then-president Benigno Aquino III to have the MV Gregorio del Pilar withdraw, with even then-senator Antonio Trillianes IV contributing a share in the effort by doing the necessary similar groundworks with China.

That was how an open military clash already between China and the US was avoided.

And in place of hostilities were the four-year-long PCA arbitration proceedings.

So, we see that the PCA ruling was a strategic design by America to keep its world hegemony.

The first time this column got ​crystallized on this idea was in 2017 when in a talk to his troops in Mindanao, then-president Rodrigo Roa Duterte warned that there was no way the Philippines, because weak, could fight China. But give him time, he said, before his term ends, he will make that fight, that is “talk to China within the four corners of the PCA [arbitral] ruling.”

Indeed, in the general debate at the United Nations General Assembly in 2020, President Duterte was not unlike any ordinary American Boy yodeling, “The 2016 PCA ruling has become part of international law.”

It just seems an irony of history that simply by virtue of verbiage and a gift for grandstanding, the Digong for a time succeeded in putting his image forward as an enemy of America.

But he had all of six years of the Philippine presidency to have written to the US president that he wanted the military treaties binding the Philippines to America ended. As provided in those treaties, after a year of that writing, those treaties (Mutual Defense Treaty of 1951, Visiting Forces Agreement of 1998 and Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement of 2016) would have ended.

Duterte never did.

In that sense, he had been an outstanding benchmark of high-end endorsement of the arbitral ruling as part of international law — indubitably a strong justification for US incursion into the South China Sea region.

Is it pure coincidence that the arbitral ruling came about at the very inception of the Rodrigo Roa Duterte presidency in the Philippines?

And since its promulgation, it has become the battle cry of every member of high Philippine officialdom championing the US cause in its rivalry with China.

Mark the recent Chinese sanctions banning travel to Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao by National Defense Secretary Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro Jr. and his immediate family. Those sanctions came as a consequence of Gibo​ strong​ly invoking the 2016 arbitral ruling in slamming China as the greatest disruptor of peace in the South China Sea region.

Admit it or not, war or peace in Asia-Pacific has come to hinge on whether to accept or reject the 2016 arbitral ruling.

By the wording of the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), when either the US or the Philippines is attacked in the Pacific, the other is obliged to retaliate. In the laser beaming by China Coast Guard of personnel of the Philippine Coast Guard, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged for applying the MDT, but President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. objected. He must not be that submissive to the US after all. His apparent subordination to the US would not go so far as throwing the Filipino nation​ to the ravages of war with China — such a war being purely for the pleasure of America.

At the moment, the nation is in tumult. Calls for the president to resign get louder every day. Those calls are reminiscent of the two similar upheavals in the past. Sitting presidents were ousted at the behest of the US as punishment for those presidents defying US wishes.

How sure are we that the current agitations for the resignation of President Marcos are not another US machination for replacement of a defiant president by someone willing to implement the 2016 arbitral ruling according to US strategy in the first place?