South China Sea tensions | Aquino says Asia tensions remind him of pre-War Nazi Germany

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III delivers a keynote speech at the special session of the International Conference on “The Future of Asia” in Tokyo

Philippine President Benigno Aquino said the situation in Asia reminds him of the international community’s failure to contain Nazi Germany before World War II.
Aquino made the remarks on a state visit to Japan aimed at bolstering security ties between the countries to counter an increasingly assertive China, which has been building new islands in the South China Sea in waters also claimed by the Philippines. Aquino said the U.S.’s military presence is the best hope for checking China’s ambitions and that the situation made him recall Nazi Germany’s occupation of its neighbors.
“They tested the waters and they were ready to back down if for instance France said stop. But unfortunately nobody said stop,” Aquino said, referring to documentaries he saw of the period. “The commentators of these documentaries were saying: what if somebody said stop to Hitler at that time or Germany at that time. Could we have avoided World War II?”
Aquino has been rallying Asian countries to more aggressively respond to China’s efforts to enforce its claims to 80 percent of the South China Sea. China has created more than 2,000 acres of land in waters claimed by Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia, in addition to the Philippines, and is building an airstrip capable of handling its largest military aircraft.
Aquino also addressed the Japanese parliament yesterday, where he received a standing ovation and warned that the dispute cannot be settled through military force.
“For both our nations, we know that harmony is a collective achievement and not one that can be dictated through coercion,” he told the legislature. “We steadfastly uphold that military might can never be the arbiter for the resolution of disagreements.”
Aquino will meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today, who shares some of Aquino’s concerns about China’s assertiveness. Japan is engaged in its own territorial dispute with China in the East China Sea, where ships and planes from both countries regularly tail each other around a chain of islands claimed by both countries. Isabel Reynolds, Bloomberg