Tensions in the South China Sea have risen to their highest level in at
least two years in the wake of the disastrous breakup of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers meeting in Phnom Penh.
Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan, an eternal optimist, admitted that the summit
was an "unprecedented" failure in ASEAN's history, and Indonesia's
foreign minister rushed to mediate tensions between ASEAN members lest they
explode again.
At nearly the same time, a
Chinese naval frigate ran aground in a disputed area of the sea, raising
regional suspicions that Beijing was trying to bolster its claim to the entire
South China Sea.
As it has over the past three
years, the Obama administration has taken a cautious but firm position on South
China Sea sovereignty and adjudication of disputes. While noting that the
United States does not have any claim on the South China Sea, the Obama
administration has more vocally backed the ASEAN claimants' rights on
territorial claims, even saying that freedom of navigation and a resolution of
claims accepted by all nations was a U.S. "national interest."
The administration also has upped
its assistance to mainland Southeast Asia, such as announcing earlier this
month $50 million in new funding for the Lower Mekong Initiative, a project for
Mekong River nations like Laos. Regional partners of the United States like the
Philippines are rapidly buying up arms, while at the same time, China and most
of the Southeast Asian claimants of portions of the sea (Vietnam, the
Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan) are ramping up rhetoric about their
claims and increasingly sending naval and "civilian" fishing boats
into the sea to test adversaries' positions.
Yet at the same time, there
remains some room for compromise among all sea claimants and the United States.
Chinese officials recognize that their increasingly vocal positions on the sea
have alienated many Southeast Asian nations and pushed countries like Vietnam
and the Philippines closer to the United States. At the same time, though some
ASEAN nations like Cambodia are drawing nearer to China, while others such as
the Philippines are moving closer to Washington, all ASEAN nations realize that
Southeast Asian states must generally provide a united front on issues if they
are to be treated as a major power in East Asia.
Hardening Territorial Claims
Tensions over the South China Sea,
which is strategically vital and believed to contain rich deposits of
petroleum, go back decades, but over the past two years they have escalated
dramatically. China, which in theory claims nearly the entire sea, has in
recent years publicly advocated its claims more forcefully. This can be
attributed to various causes: Perhaps U.S. economic problems distracted it from
Asia in the latter half of the 2000s; China's leadership recognizes Beijing's
own rising naval strength; China's government is responding to growing
nationalism; China's resources companies want to expedite exploration of the
sea; or some combination of these and other factors.
Then last summer, ASEAN appeared
willing to simply let China move any resolution down the road by publicly
celebrating the drafting of an agreement between Southeast Asian states and
China to resolve South China Sea disputes peacefully. But the agreement was not
a binding code of conduct, and it skirted any real resolution of key issues
like overlapping territorial claims to the sea and exploration of its potential
undersea resources. ASEAN's weak stand may have encouraged Beijing to take a
harder-line position this year.
This spring and summer, the
Southeast Asian claimants (except Malaysia, which has taken a more passive
role) and China have hardened their positions by putting into place more
physical manifestations of their claims. The sides have turned virtually
uninhabited rocks into new provinces and states. Earlier this year, China
announced that the disputed Paracel and Spratly Islands, as well as another
area of the sea, have become a Chinese administrative area called Sansha City,
with its own governing officials.
They have begun staking out oil
and gas claims as another physical manifestation of their power: China National
Offshore Oil Company recently invited foreign oil companies to offer it bids to
explore potential blocks that are just off of the coast of Vietnam. And they
have increasingly used non-military boats to make their points. Last month, for
instance, Beijing declared that it would expand the fleets of fishing vessels
it will be sending to disputed regions of the sea.
Many Southeast Asian diplomats claim
that these boats are essentially paramilitary vessels, yet Vietnam and the
Philippines increasingly use the same types of boats to stake their claims.
Meanwhile, Philippine officials are increasingly pressing Washington for
higher-quality military equipment. Vietnam and the Philippines also have been
inviting foreign petroleum companies to engage in joint exploration projects in
contested areas.
Following the ASEAN foreign
ministers' meeting, several critical indicators will show whether all sides are
willing to step back from the dispute, which now increasingly threatens to turn
into a shooting war. (After considerable arm-twisting from Indonesian leaders
on July 20, ASEAN eventually reached what it called a consensus on the sea, but
this simply papered over divisions and had little new of substance.) Observers
are watching to see how publicly China discusses the new "territory"
of Sansha. And many Southeast Asian officials are watching to see whether
Beijing disburses large new grants or low-interest loans to Cambodia and
Malaysia, the two ASEAN nations that have taken a much lower-profile approach
to the sea (Cambodia virtually advocated the Chinese position during the
summit).
Ultimately, Beijing's signals
that it was willing to once again begin negotiating a code of conduct that
would govern how ships act in disputed maritime waters would be the sign that
China is stepping back from the brink. On the Southeast Asian side, Vietnam and
the Philippines' willingness to call back some of their fishing boats, as well
as Hanoi's willingness to stop passing resolutions in its legislature claiming
portions of the sea, would be important calming signs.
ASEAN's Divisions
More than at any other time, the
dispute this year also has done serious damage to ASEAN claims to be able to
handle important regional issues and in the future drive regional integration.
Even some of the most ardent backers of the organization now wonder whether
ASEAN's traditional consensus style is defunct. This is hardly the first time the
consensus approach has proven counterproductive: ASEAN failed, in the past, to
take strong positions even on conflict within Southeast Asia, as occurred in
East Timor in 1999, because of this adherence to consensus and noninterference,
a sharp contrast from some other regional organizations like the African Union.
The desire for consensus is
further challenged by the new closeness between China and some of the mainland
Southeast Asian states, raising fears in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Brunei,
among others, that countries like Cambodia, Laos, and even Thailand will be
pawns of China.
Phnom Penh, which holds the chair
of ASEAN this year, has become increasingly dependent on Chinese aid and
investment. Two-way trade between China and Cambodia is estimated to roughly
double between now and 2017 to $5 billion, while China has become by far the
largest aid donor in Cambodia.
Laos and Thailand have become
increasingly dependent on China as well. Creating a binding code of conduct
signed by the Southeast Asian claimants and China seems very unlikely, at least
for now.
Preventing a Conflict
The priority on all sides should
be to avoid military conflict [editor's note: See CFR Contingency Planning
Memorandum by expert Bonnie Glaser]. ASEAN and China both have good reasons to
avoid a shooting war in the South China Sea. Even as China spars with Vietnam,
the Philippines, and other countries, it is becoming the largest trading
partner and one of the biggest direct investors of most Southeast Asian states
since an ASEAN-China free trade area came into effect.
For the United States, avoiding
conflict in the sea would help prevent the overstretch of the military, which
does not want to take on the role of policing the South China Sea, while also
giving Washington time to help upgrade forces and to foster greater unity among
ASEAN members on the South China Sea issue. The United States should help the
Southeast Asians and the Chinese develop a hotline between political and
military leaders to help prevent sea incidents from escalating. In addition,
the ASEAN nations could go to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea
and solicit an opinion on the disputed claims, which might help make its
position stronger. ASEAN nations and China also could work to cooperate on
resource extraction from the sea.
Finally, as many ASEAN officials
already have noted, if the organization is to compete with China and other
Asian powers and seriously negotiate a code of conduct for the Sea, it needs to
strengthen its Secretariat, giving it more powers, a higher-profile
secretary-general, and far greater resources.
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