Philippines warns of region-wide conflict over South China Sea reef dispute

The Philippine ambassador to Washington has warned that a conflict with China over a contested reef in the South China Sea could engulf countries across the Indo-Pacific, raising the spectre of a possible nuclear war.

Jose Manuel Romualdez said the dispute with China over the Second Thomas Shoal had created an incendiary situation. In recent months, the Chinese coast guard has violently blocked Philippine boats from carrying out supply missions to marines stationed on the Sierra Madre, a marooned ship on the reef.

“It’s the most dangerous time . . . weapons of mass destruction are very real,” Romualdez told the Financial Times in an interview. “You have several countries, major powers that have large arsenals of nuclear power.”

“If anything happens, the entire Asian region will be completely included,” he added.

The Second Thomas Shoal has become the most dangerous flashpoint in the Indo-Pacific as China employs increasingly aggressive measures — including firing water cannons, dangerously ramming vessels and wielding weapons — to disrupt Philippine efforts to resupply the marines.

The US has repeatedly warned Beijing that the 1951 US-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty applies to the vessel and its crew.

Manila ran the ship aground in 1999 to bolster its claim to the reef. China asserts sovereignty over the shoal, but an international tribunal in 2016 rejected its claim.

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell said the crisis was caused by one of many Chinese provocations that could “spark conflicts that would devastate the global economy”.

Asked how a dispute over a reef could spark a major conflict, Romualdez used the example of the first world war, which was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr recently said the killing of a Filipino on the shoal would cross a “red line”. “It’s an analogy, but it could happen that way,” Romualdez said.

He warned that China was testing US resolve with its actions around the reef. “I don’t think . . . China should just simply dismiss [the mutual defence treaty] as something that is not serious, because it is serious,” he said.

Campbell declined to specify the conditions under which the Philippines or US would invoke the treaty, but he said it was important to “draw very clear, public and private lines” about what was needed to maintain peace and stability.

Romualdez also refused to be drawn on the circumstances that would invoke the treaty but said the two allies had discussed options.

Speaking before the most recent incident at the reef on June 17, he warned that the Second Thomas Shoal and other disputes in the South China Sea were more dangerous than the situation around Taiwan because Beijing claims most of the South China Sea — even though the 2016 tribunal invalidated the Chinese claim to waters inside its “nine-dash line”.

“The South China Sea is an entire area and trillions of dollars [of trade] pass through that area. Do we really want to have one country to control that passageway? I don’t think so,” Romualdez said.

The dispute comes as the US is bolstering alliances in the Indo-Pacific. The Philippines last year granted the US military access to four new bases in the country but Manila has not made clear whether the US could use them in the event of a war with China over Taiwan.

Romualdez said the access was intended to enhance the Philippines’ defence strategy, not for offensive operations. But he said it was possible Manila would let the US military use the bases at a time of war.

“If our defence establishment finds it possible for us to allow the use of the . . . sites to defend Taiwan because it will affect us, then most likely we will agree,” he said.

“We just hope it never happens. But if it does, obviously, countries like the Philippines . . . will play a role in the Asian theatre.”