 And it's perhaps more than it should be, because U.S. credibility is very much at stake. The Chinese have thrown down the gauntlet. And this is all very much a test of American reliability, trying to discredit the United States, show that, well, you Filipinos think that you can count on them. Well, where are they? And the same argument will be deployed against other countries as well. Grant Newsom, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, the author of When China Attacks. I'm John Madden.