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Background:
Decades of tension, competition, and confrontation across the South China Sea (SCS) have longed raised fears that one spark could lead to an eruption of violence between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Yet on one ordinary day, the ‘eruption’ did come, though in a form that none of the major or regional powers had expected.
Four days ago around midnight, a mild earthquake gently rocked the island of Luzon. Surviving witnesses noted that if it disturbed them from their sleep at all, they shrugged it off as a heavy vehicle passing by their home. But the tremor unlocked something deep below the earth’s surface— two hours later, the Taal Volcano just south of Manila blasted an eruption column skyward. Through late morning, some of the civilian population living around Manila Bay was able to evacuate north as ash and debris rained down on them.
Then, at 10:37 a.m. local time, the largest phreatomagmatic eruption of the last 10,000 years tore Taal apart. With a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 7, the blast obliterated the environs of Manila Bay and southern Luzon. It also released one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded human history, in turn generating tsunamis that devastated the coastal regions of the SCS. Taal continued erupting at a catastrophic rate for three straight days, blanketing the SCS and neighboring countries in clouds, ash, and debris. Though the rate of eruption has slowed, Taal remains active and poses an unpredictable threat to the region.
Figure 1. Tsunami waves swamp a coastal village in eastern Malaysia.
Figure 2. Tsunami and current ash cloud impact zones from Taal's eruption.
With tsunami floods ravaging coastal communities across the SCS, the governments of Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia have clamored for aid. Meanwhile, civil order has completely broken down in the Filipino archipelago. The never-ending rain of debris, volcano generated thunderstorms, and hundreds of wildfires have utterly isolated the Manila Bay environs from the outside world.
Figure 3. Taal's continued eruption column, viewed from 200 miles away in northern Luzon.
A handful of government officials escaped to northern Luzon, and using the few communications links not destroyed by the eruption, reached out to the U.S. government for humanitarian assistance. However, members of the opposition party—historically friendlier toward China— established themselves in a different part of northern Luzon and made the same request of the PRC using their own networks. Both the American and Chinese governments promised to spare no effort in aiding the “legitimate” Filipino government—but which government is legitimate?
That question carries its own seeds of conflict, but the more immediate challenge is the utterly unprecedented humanitarian crisis consuming the SCS. In Luzon, the problem will be delivering sufficient humanitarian aid to those displaced by the eruption—and more refugees stream north every hour. Near the southern end of the SCS, opportunistic criminal and terrorist groups have formed an alliance of convenience to raid global shipping lanes.
These shipping lanes carry much-needed relief supplies, as well as commercial traffic to prevent Taal’s eruption from cratering the global economy. Both the U.S. and PRC must decide how to allocate forces against each problem; both know that their actions now will affect their influence in the region, as well as gain potential advantages should they directly confront each other in the future…
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