Recently a vibrant debate has erupted over whether of the Philippines' assertive transparency in the South China Sea has "failed" because Beijing has not been deterred from its aggression. 

Just today I woke up to Derek Grossman's article in Nikkei Asia on this topic. Derek's view deserves a complete reading, and is more nuanced than the binary question the article's provocative title seems to suggest, when it screams that "Philippines and Vietnam's South China Sea strategies have failed: Manila's 'transparency' and Hanoi's 'opacity' are outdated approaches to deter China". 

Derek's skepticism also reflects that expressed in recent op-eds by prominent Filipino think-tankers Justin Baquisal ("transparency in and of itself is not a strategy") and Julio Amador III ("Manila has not achieved any substantial gains in its fight for control of [Second Thomas] Shoal.")

The through line here is that assertive transparency alone has not yet been able to achieve the blunting of Beijing's moves against Second Thomas Shoal and across the West Philippine Sea. This is disappointing but foreseeable. 

In fact, Ben Goirigozarri and I did foresee it and pointed this out in our report on assertive transparency back in January:

Although assertive transparency is already moving the needle on the conditions necessary to deter and defeat gray zone aggression, as a single nation's isolated tactic it is far from certain it can succeed in the face of China's very robust, mature and comprehensive maritime gray zone strategy.

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Like any tactic, transparency is best employed as part of a more comprehensive national strategy ... it will be important for Manila to build out a realistic vision of how it wants this informational tool to work alongside its diplomatic, military, economic and other elements of national power to help it achieve core strategic objectives.

Of course, the point of Derek's article is that nothing (including Hanoi's far quieter approach) appears to have curbed China's South China Sea ambitions, because, "The unfortunate reality is that the Philippines' and Vietnam's reputation-focused strategies are outdated, designed for a China that no longer exists."

Indeed, this has been an important lesson of the limits of Manila's transparency campaign. That does not, however, necessarily offset the remarkable successes the Philippines has achieved through assertive transparency.

As Ben and I argued, the assertive tactic sets three conditions for deterring and defeating gray-zone activities. These conditions include strengthening national resilience, building international support, and imposing reputational costs upon the malign actor.

All three conditions have clearly been comprehensively addressed over the past 18 months, and the first two continue to pile up gains for the Philippines. Let us count the ways:

National resilience: Democracies require the solid backing of the general public in order to commit precious resources to national security, especially when kitchen-table issues nearly always demand attention. 

Esoteric or invisible security problems generally don't get prioritized or funded.

In the past 18 months, however, a groundswell of visceral awareness produced by compelling images has powered a strong new interest in the public. This has overflowed to its elected representatives and public servants, who are now overhauling the country's national defense strategy and improving its maritime security capacity. 

The Philippines' new national security concept is focused on "comprehensive archipelagic defense" as opposed to counterterrorism. The Armed Forces of the Philippines is now organizing its strategy around this concept "to develop the country's capability to protect its entire territory including its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to ensure that the next generation of Filipinos will be able to enjoy its natural resources." Spending is also being reprioritized to support the new approach. 

The Philippine Coast Guard has also received substantial new support, including a 1.3B-peso budget increase in the current fiscal year. Meanwhile, legislators are pushing for additional modernization plans and in order to "serve as a basis for potential legislative action aimed at funding these crucial enhancements." 

These are very real and highly necessary long-term commitments produced in large part because the nation has coalesced behind the threat brought home to them on their television sets and through their social media feeds. 

International support: Perhaps even more striking than the Philippines' intensified commitment to defending its sovereign rights has been the avalanche of support that has come in from around the world for its morally right but precarious position. This not just included statements of support, but also concrete commitments to systematically build up the Philippines' national security and economic power. 

Japan, for example, has pledged support for five large, new coast guard vessels and a new coastal surveillance radar system. Tokyo has also just completed a reciprocal access agreement with Manila to improve joint military training and interoperability between the two countries, and Paris is now moving quickly in the same direction. Canada has provided dark vessel detection capability to improve the Philippines maritime domain awareness. 

Meanwhile joint South China Sea maritime patrols with the U.S. and other partners are quickly growing in size and frequency.

Perhaps the most noteworthy development that has emerged from this new international attention was the recent U.S.-Japan-Philippines trilateral summit in April of this year. Not only did this symbolize a strengthening of economic and security ties between the participants, but the Philippines walked away with several concrete commitments, including U.S. and Japanese support for a new Luzon Economic Corridor intended to build out the infrastructure backbone of a modernized Philippine economy. 

So prominent has Manila's voice become, in fact, that President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. was invited to deliver the keynote address at the Indo-Pacific's premier annual geopolitical gathering, the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

Reputational cost: There is really no question whether China's aggression has suffered real harm under the bright lights of Philippine cameras. Global condemnation of Beijing's actions has been overwhelming and continues to grow.

This outrage has included not just Manila's traditional U.S. treaty ally, but has been reflected in strong statements across the free and developed world. This recent one from the Group of Seven (G7) was especially pointed:

We continue opposing China’s dangerous use of coast guard and maritime militia in the South China Sea and its repeated obstruction of countries’ high seas freedom of navigation. We express serious concern about the increasing use of dangerous maneuvers and water cannons against Philippine vessels. In this regard, we reaffirm that there is no legal basis for China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea, and we oppose China’s militarization, and coercive and intimidation activities in the South China Sea. We re-emphasize the universal and unified character of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and reaffirm UNCLOS’s important role in setting out the legal framework that governs all activities in the oceans and the seas. We reiterate that the award rendered by the Arbitral Tribunal on 12 July 2016 is a significant milestone, which is legally binding upon the parties to those proceedings, and a useful basis for peacefully resolving disputes between the parties.

Ultimately, this brings us back to the question of why Manila's assertive transparency campaign has not been sufficient to deter Beijing's aggression. Grossman argues compellingly that it's because China's threshold for pain in this area has increased dramatically over the past decade.

[Xi's China] also cares far less about its international reputation and is content flouting international law and norms of behavior if doing so suits Beijing's interests.

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[Shaming Beijing] has been entirely ineffective at changing Chinese behavior because Xi has already embraced the bad guy role. Or, from his perspective, Xi must uphold Chinese sovereignty in the South China Sea, no matter the reputational cost.

This seems undeniably true, but it doesn't mean that Beijing is completely immune to reputational harm. The Chinese Communist Party continues to deploy its international propaganda machine in a near-daily drumbeat, exposing the extent of its desperation to try to somehow justify its aggression. 

Thus far, however, it has mostly succeeded only in awakening Philippine resistance and accelerating the formation of exactly the kind of international anti-China blocs it decries.

So if Xi's China is not yet deterred by transparency, perhaps hope lies in the long-term defeat of its gray zone strategy--especially if other countries join the effort, recognizing the opportunities the tactic presents to countering the Middle Kingdom's expansionist designs.

It does seem clear that Manila's perseverance has at least chased Beijing out of the shadows and into the bright light of day, revealing the magnitude of its mendacity and the threat it presents to the region for the world to see.

On the other hand, by holding fast against Manila's assertive transparency campaign, Beijing has consolidated its control over a rusty Philippine ship--one which has almost no military value. For this it has been willing to suffer far greater strategic setbacks, awakening the Philippines and much of the world to its audacious designs and filling China's adversaries with a firm resolve to unite and resist.

So then, has transparency then "failed"?