This is John Bachelor, conversation with my colleague Gregory Coppley of Defense and Foreign Affairs in Perth, Australia,

about the provocations by the People's Liberation Army, Navy, and Air Force these last weeks and months against the Philippines. Why? And should we expect

them to get worse? Gregory Coppley on the strategic value of the ramming, the harassment, threats by the People's

Liberation Army Navy in the South China Sea against the Philippines.

More of this later.

Yep, it's what the Soviets used to call Probasilla,

probe until you reach contact.

And this is an attempt to just see what the US in particular

will do to respond to that and the Allies.

So it's really testing US determination

at this critical political time in the U.S. while

Washington is preoccupied with the coming elections. So they're looking to see

whether the U.S. will upgraded support for the Philippines.

The Philippines itself is feeling comfortable

with the support it's getting,

has upgraded its defenses enormously,

and so the P.R.C. is really just trying to probe and see whether there are

weak points in the Philippines and therefore weak points in the overall

alliance which includes Japan, Taiwan, Australia, India, Vietnam and South

Korea and so on.