10 Years Ago, the Philippines Won a Major Victory in the South China Sea. Did It Matter? — SkimNews
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- The Hague arbitral tribunal ruled in July 2016 in favor of the Philippines, with five judges finding under UN Law of the Sea that most of China's claims to vast swaths of the South China Sea were invalid.
- Beijing dismissed the verdict as 'nothing but a scrap of paper' and has not retreated from its claims by 'a single inch' in the ten years since, according to the source.
- China's coast guard now harasses Philippine coast guard vessels and civilian fishermen with water cannons, military-grade lasers, and ramming attempts, with the source describing those tactics as routine.
- The South China Sea has become one of Asia's most dangerous flashpoints, where high-pressure water cannons, naval ramming, and high-seas brawls are already common and 'a much bigger conflict is just one mistake away.'
- The source directly poses whether one of the biggest international lawsuits in history was 'just a massive waste of time,' given the absence of an enforcement mechanism behind the verdict.
Why it matters: Without an enforcement mechanism behind the 2016 ruling, the Philippines gained a sweeping legal win but zero territorial concessions — and a decade of escalating water-cannon and ramming incidents demonstrates that international arbitration can be rendered toothless when a major power simply ignores it, leaving fishermen and coast guard crews to absorb the cost.
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