Aquino militarized the Scarborough dispute when he sent the warship BRP Gregorio del Pilar in 2012 to confront Chinese civilian ships. Senator Trillanes, who was Aquino’s special envoy at the time, claimed that Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario had falsely told Aquino that Chinese ships had left Scarborough at the same time that Philippine ships did.

The suit’s decision that no geographical feature in the Spratly islands can have a 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone – which surprised most legal experts – in effect declared most the seas there as international waters, which the US' powerful blue-water fleet can freely patrol.

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