On The Radar

Japan has made its first export sale of defense equipment, with the Philippines signing a contract for sophisticated fixed and mobile air surveillance radars to cover potential flashpoints, including the South China Sea.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric Corp. will supply an improved version of its J/FPS-3 radar for the fixed sites, along with the J/TPS-P14 for mobile radar. The deal is worth US $100 million, and delivery is scheduled for 2022.

In 2014, Japan ended prohibition of military exports, which was put in place following World War 2. Since that time Japan has bid for a number of projects globally without success.

The easing of restrictions on arms sales was part of a push by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to reform Japan’s defense posture and boost Japan’s domestic defense industry, driven in part by China’s rapidly modernizing military and increasing assertiveness. Abe announced Aug. 28 that he is resigning from his post due to health reasons; this is one we reason we said he changed Japan for the better.

The radars will initially focus on airspace over the southern portion of the South China Sea, the southern islands of the Philippine archipelago as well as the strategic Benham Rise. The latter is an underwater plateau, 150 nautical miles east of the main Philippine island of Luzon, that is potentially rich in natural resources.

The Philippines is one of six southeast Asian countries that claim parts of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, where China has carried out massive land reclamation and military construction projects on some of the islands and features it has occupied, dwarfing the smaller scale projects undertaken by some of the other claimants.

It’s another sign the Philippines is shifting back to the U.S. after a flirtation with China. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been trying to benefit from the competition between China and the United States, but he’s had little success.

Under Trump, the U.S. thinks America First. Along with Japan and Taiwan, the Philippines is key to the American strategy of using its navy to contain China. But the U.S. is tired of paying other countries bills, and is playing a game of chicken, betting authoritarian China is not a comfortable partner for most nations. The way Xi’s hyper-nationalist China blunders around the world makes that a good bet.

On cue, China continues to assert that aggressive nine-dash line claim to most the South China Sea for economic and military reasons: the area may be flush with natural gas and the islands are part of its anti-access/area denial strategy to combat the U.S. It was the Filipinos who took Beijing’s claim to the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague after a clash near Scarborough Shoal; the court essentially called China’s claim ridiculous.

China was also the predominant economic and military power in East Asia until the nineteenth century. It granted or withheld trade privileges according to an elaborate system of tribute, in which other countries had to send diplomatic missions, bestow gifts, and kowtow to the Chinese emperor. The Chinese then determined the prices and quantities of all goods traded. You took their offer, or you took nothing.

As Americans believe their country is a “shining light on a hill,” Chinese believe a world with Beijing at the center of a new tribute system is the natural order of things. Or, as China’s former Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi put it, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact.”

China sees the Philippines as a very small country.

That has lead the Philippines to look around at other countries in region, which include a rebuilding Japan. That’s what makes this more important than just a relatively small sale of radars. As countries in the region wake-up to the China threat, they realize they must stick together or kowtow together.