Biden’s Risky Bet on the Philippines to Counter China

Early in the 21st century, China began asserting what it calls its “historic rights” to control of one of the world’s great waterways, covering the vast majority of the 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea.

China drew up new maps featuring what became known as the “nine-dash line,” which dangled southward from the Chinese mainland lolling like the tongue of an overheated cow to lap waters that drew close to the shorelines of many other countries in the region. Old arguments were revived and refined from the...