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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Philippines’ Duterte Tells China: ‘There Is No Other Way But War’

Friday, April 23, 2021

Categories: ASCF News Terrorism

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The Philippines cannot retake parts of the West Philippine Sea illegally occupied by China without going to “war,” Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said this week.

The West Philippine Sea is Manila’s name for the section of the disputed South China Sea directly west of the Philippines. China refused to recall a 220-strong fishing fleet from the West Philippine Sea, originally moored at the Philippines’ Julian Felipe Reef but now believed to have scattered throughout the Philippines’ sovereign maritime territory, since early March.

“For me, there is no other way but a war. If we promote a war against China and America, it can be accelerated. But at what cost to us? That is the problem. But we can retake it only by force. There is no way that we can get back what they call [the West] Philippine Sea without any bloodshed. That’s true,” Duterte said during a nationally televised address on Monday.

“You know the cost of war. And if we go there really to find out and to assert jurisdiction, I said, it would be bloody. It will result in a violence that we cannot maybe win,” the president added.

Monday’s address marks Duterte’s first official statement on the Chinese occupation of Julian Felipe Reef, over a month after the Philippine Coast Guard first spotted China’s massive fishing fleet moored “in line formation” along the reef’s shore on March 7. Duterte previously faced criticism for his reluctance to criticize China’s illegal presence within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which includes the West Philippine Sea and grants Manila the sole right to fish and explore for natural resources in its immediately surrounding waters.

“We are not in possession of the sea,” Duterte claimed of the West Philippine Sea on Monday.

“I asked [Philippine Defense] Secretary [Delfin] Lorenzana: Can we go there? Can we send our ships to the Spratly Islands?”

The Philippines’ Spratly Island chain is located near Julian Felipe Reef and is also illegally claimed by Beijing.

“It’s to show Filipinos that, no matter how many times we return there, nothing happens because we are not in the possession of the sea. They have it,” Duterte said.

Defense Secretary Lorenzana, who was present during Duterte’s address via Zoom, spoke up to correct the president, insisting the Philippines remains in full possession of the West Philippine Sea.

“Mr. President, there is no obstacle to us going there. Even our Navy ships keep going to Pag-asa Island and their ship[s] there …. Our ships can go there. In fact, our ships in Palawan regularly conduct resupply missions to the islands in the Kalayaan Island Group,” Lorenzana said.

Palawan is a Philippine province located near Julian Felipe Reef. The presence of China’s fishing fleet in the reef’s waters since March 7 directly violates Philippine maritime sovereignty. Manila filed multiple diplomatic protests against Beijing ordering it to recall the vessels over the past month but to no avail. The Philippine military previously said it believes the fishing fleet is manned by Chinese militia members. China refuses to move the boats and instead doubled down on its continued presence at Juan Felipe Reef, illegally claiming sovereignty over the sea structure. While the fleet largely dispersed from the reef in recent weeks, the Philippines believes the vessels remain within the boundaries of the nation’s EEZ.

Manila ordered increased “maritime sovereignty patrols” near Julian Felipe Reef and throughout the West Philippine Sea in response to the incursion, including daily flyovers of Juan Felipe Reef by Philippine fighter jets. The Philippine Navy and Air Force deployed nearly a dozen additional ships and five aircraft to the West Philippine Sea this week to reinforce the sovereignty patrols.

An independent arbitral tribunal established by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) ruled in 2016 that Beijing’s claims to nearly 90 percent of the South China Sea were illegal. China refused to accept the ruling of the landmark case brought by the Philippines, and pushed forward with its illegal claims to nearly all of the valuable waterway since then.

Photo: Etienne Oliveau/Pool/Getty Images

Link: https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2021/04/22/philippines-duterte-tells-china-there-other-way-war/

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