As predictably as the annual monsoon
sweeps across the South China Sea, the question of
which country, or countries, own which parts of
the maritime region has grown annually more
vexing.
The typhoon season ends, the
fishing fleets set sail and efforts to find oil
and gas beneath the seabed resume. A series of
tense face-offs ensue between China and Vietnam or
China and the Philippines. Diplomats enjoin all
parties to refrain from acts that will inflame the
situation.
The story by now seems so
familiar, and the tangle of claims so perplexing,
that readers can hardly be faulted for mousing
over to another story. The truth is, however, that
recent events have
altered experts'
assessment of the South China Sea disputes and may
yet show the way to a game-changing initiative.
Going back several years now, China's
behavior vis-a-vis Vietnam and the Philippines has
been so egregiously assertive that even the
friendliest of "China hands" are hard put to find
excuses. Until recently, Washington's wisdom was
that China is a bumptious new superpower that if
carefully and respectfully handled can be reasoned
into mature "partnership".
However,
Beijing's insistence that its claim to ownership
of the South China Sea running nearly up to the
beaches of Singapore is "absolute" just doesn't
fit the model. Nor does its unrelenting harassment
of Filipino and Vietnamese fishermen or its
semi-successful efforts to intimidate oil
companies under contract by Manila or Hanoi to
explore their offshore economic zones. Acts like
these don't jibe with China's claim that its
objective is regional peace and stability.
Profound disillusionment has set in with
and within the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN). The 10-nation group has proven a
wholly inadequate foil to China's challenge.
Though the US, Japan, Australia and other
over-the-horizon powers would much prefer to
support a regional approach to preserving the
peace, ASEAN just can't get out in front. The
grouping works on the principle of consensus;
unfortunately for Manila and Hanoi, ASEAN's
current chairman is China's client, Cambodia.
Thailand, Myanmar and Laos are also notably averse
to crossing Beijing.
ASEAN has been trying
to forge a consensus on a binding "code of
conduct" for the South China Sea. On July 9,
heading into the annual ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)
with the US, China and other dialogue partners,
there were reports that ASEAN senior officials had
at last reached agreement on a draft code.
Instead, the meeting ended in chaos; participants
couldn't even agree to issue a wrap-up communique.
"Utterly irresponsible," muttered
Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa to
reporters. "China bought the chair, simple as
that," summarized another unnamed ASEAN official.
Further, the notion that China isn't
really spoiling for a fight looks increasingly
strained. In late April, the International Crisis
Group, a Brussels-based think tank, issued a
lengthy report that described Beijing as not
really in control of the situation, despite
appearances to the contrary. Instead, said the
ICG, China's central government is driven by
public opinion and hamstrung by the
ill-coordinated initiatives of its coast guard
forces, oil companies and provincial governments
on the South China Sea littoral. It was an
important report, based on many interviews and
doubtless reflecting the comments of hundreds of
officials in China and elsewhere.
And yet,
excepting perhaps the first few hours of a
face-off between well-armed Chinese fishery
protection vessels and Philippine patrol boats at
a reef 145 off Luzon, nothing that has happened
since then substantiates the ICG's premise that
China's core problem is internal policy
incoherence.
Coherent
aggression When China's diplomats blew off
the ASEAN Code of Conduct draft this month, it was
just one more event that by its nature must have
had Beijing's approval. That closely followed the
China National Offshore Oil Company's startling
invitation to foreign oil companies last month to
tender bids for the right to explore nine tracts
just off Vietnam's coast.
At almost the
same time last month came China's proclamation
that the Paracel and Spratly Islands and the
Macclesfield Bank (which according to China
includes the Scarborough Shoal that it has lately
contested with the Philippines) are now a Chinese
administrative entity called Sansha City. Hainan
Province has urged this step for years; up until
recently, the central government has refused
permission.
In a more ambiguous category
are two other recent events: China's announcement
that frigates of its Maritime Surveillance Agency
would regularly patrol the Spratlys and the
deployment of a 32,000-ton factory ship to support
a fleet of smaller fishing boats that
Singapore-based experts say are fast depleting
South China Sea marine resources.
Against
this, Hanoi's riposte - a vote by its National
Assembly to pass a law on the management of
Vietnam's maritime frontiers which does not
specify where these are - seems like a
comparatively small move. The Vietnamese and
Philippine governments wish they could do more to
blunt the southward creep of Chinese maritime
power but their general staffs, if not members of
their legislatures, know that their armed forces
are considerably outgunned.
After years of
neglect, the Philippine armed forces are barely
capable of maintaining domestic order, let alone
deterring Chinese encroachment. Vietnam's navy,
air and air defense forces have made strides over
the past decade and could likely hold their own in
a dust-up with China's blue water marine
surveillance and fisheries enforcement craft. An
armed confrontation would, however, give the
Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) cause to
intervene in order to - as Chinese demagogues
frequently urge - "teach Vietnam a lesson".
To restore a balance, Manila and Hanoi
have sought military aid wherever it can be found.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino has relied in
particular on US readiness to ramp up bilateral
cooperation under a 60-year-old mutual defense
treaty. Vietnam has spread its net wider, buying
arms from Russia, France, Canada and the
Netherlands, enlisting Indian help in submarine
warfare training and multiplying
military-to-military contacts with the US,
Australia and Japan.
Washington gladly
supports exercises aimed at building the capacity
of Southeast Asian allies to mount a credible
deterrent to China. However, it has consistently
discouraged suggestions that its Pacific Fleet
assume an active policing role in the South China
Sea area. Nor under current circumstances can the
US agree to sell lethal weapons to Vietnam. The
American Congress, already wary of another
open-ended military venture abroad, will demand
palpable moderation of the Communist regime's
treatment of its internal critics, a quid pro quo
that Hanoi simply will not concede.
That
leaves diplomacy - or does it? After Cambodia,
Brunei is up next as ASEAN's chair, followed by
Chinese allies Myanmar in 2014 and Laos in 2015.
In short, last week the odds against effective
action by ASEAN to ward off South China Sea
clashes and perhaps to foster real problem-solving
by the feuding claimants just got a lot longer.
An obvious work-around would be for a
subset of ASEAN members, the five or six that are
most strongly opposed to the South China Sea's
incorporation into greater China, to come forward
with their own initiative. Ideally, Vietnam,
Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei, cheered on
by Indonesia and Singapore, would sort out among
themselves just what it is they claim and do not
claim, as proposed in recent articles by
independent analysts. None of the claimants
would have to give up their claims at this point,
the analysts have argued. But by clarifying the
legal basis of their maritime claims and
separating these from the more difficult but
geographically much smaller disputes based on
claims to land features, they would be able to
present a united front to China on this crucial
point: the only acceptable basis for maritime
claims in the South China Sea is international
law.
The process just described would
challenge the political ingenuity of all six of
the Southeast Asian states just mentioned,
particularly Vietnam and Malaysia. Vietnam has
asserted that it is ready to rely on international
law to settle claims, but doing so may play badly
with citizens who, like counterparts in China,
cling to an expansive notion of Vietnam's
"historical seas". As for Malaysia, it simply
needs to stand up and be counted. So far, Malaysia
and Brunei seem to have allowed themselves to
imagine that China will be satiated once it has
drunk its fill of the waters offshore Vietnam and
the Philippines.
China has relied on
assertions that its sailors and fishermen
traversed "China's South Sea" in the past,
evidently considering that and its growing naval
strength to be sufficient argument. As long as the
claims of the other littoral states remain
ambiguous, the strategic deadlock will persist - a
situation that creates optimal conditions for
China to create more "facts" and to cut bilateral
deals at the expense of other claimants.
Conversely, if the ASEAN states with most
at stake can forge a common position anchored in
principles of international law, they will have a
far more compelling claim to support by others -
once again, most notably, by the US.
David Brown is a retired
American diplomat who writes on contemporary
Vietnam. He may be reached atnworbd@gmail.com.
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