The US, China and the South China Sea – What’s Changed?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Can the South China Sea dispute be stuffed back into the bottle?

Every few years one of the world’s more complex international disputes becomes news as it did on July 23, 2010 at the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Hanoi when Hillary Clinton publicly outlined the Obama administration’s position on the South China Sea.  (Photo above right: by PHKushlis, Singapore Strait 2009.)

Had Vietnam not made its disagreement with China on this issue a priority at the meeting, perhaps Clinton would not have publicly spelled out US South China Sea policy then and there. Or perhaps she would have - because this problem and its ramifications have been festering for decades.  The Chinese began to be more assertive in the region as early as 1995, but only recently have they described the South China Sea as an area of "core interest," according to former US diplomat Robert Fitts in an interview in The Nation (Bangkok),  a Chinese term normally reserved for Taiwan and Tibet to fend off international criticism.

Meanwhile, the US has long considered regional stability and freedom of navigation in that large sea that collides with the Pacific Ocean of national interest.

Chinese - US naval "games"

Chinese harassment of an unarmed US surveillance ship last year in the South China Sea reportedly 75 miles south of Hainan Island, according to the Times of London and the resulting dispute between the US and China as to whether the ship was in international or Chinese economic waters may have been part of the Obama administration’s calculation in Clinton’s statement at this year's ASEAN forum under Vietnamese leadership.

As various analysts have indicated, the US Seventh Fleet is the primary deterrent to stepped-up Chinese incursions in the region. US support for an ASEAN multilateral approach to settlement of this dispute flies in the face of China’s insistence that the claims be settled bilaterally but it just makes good geopolitical sense – from a US perspective. It’s the old "united we stand, divided we fall" principle which the Vietnamese, among others were delighted to hear, but a minority of ASEAN members disagreed.

The South China Sea – a waterway that extends from the Straits of Singapore and Malacca to the Taiwan Strait - is the second most trafficked sea lane in the world through which over 10 million barrels of crude oil are shipped per day. The sea also contains over 200 mostly uninhabited islands that lie off Southeast Asia’s coast - but it’s the fish and the oil, gas and mineral reserves that lie beneath the seabed that underlie much of the dispute.

Maybe the US does have a dog in this fight after all

For years the US position on the South China Sea was hands off – the American argument was that the dispute should be settled peacefully between and among the parties themselves as best they could and that the US took no legal position with respect to the conflicting claims.

This was how James Baker phlegmatically saw it when he was Secretary of State at the end of the Cold War. But then, Baker didn’t have a dog in the Yugoslav fight either preferring to concentrate on the big fish – the Soviet Union and the Middle East – and let the civil wars that had begun to rage in Yugoslavia by the time he left office to the EU and others to attempt to handle.

Mischief Reef's Ramifications

The Chinese decision to occupy Mischief Reef in 1995 signaled the beginning of a change in US policy in reaction to the more aggressive Chinese stance. Although the US refused to help the Philippines – Mischief Reef’s absentee claimant – wrest the reef from the Chinese “fishermen” who had put up stakes there, the Mischief Reef affair did several things: it caused the various ASEAN claimants to pull together in collective response and to place the dispute on the forthcoming ASEAN Regional Forum agenda. Furthermore, it raised ASEAN suspicions about China’s long term intentions. Their collective action was effective. It helped change Chinese behavior.

It also resulted in a slightly stronger US statement to the effect that the US viewed “with serious concern any restriction on maritime activity in the South China Sea that was not consistent with international law” and for the Chinese Foreign Minister to respond that China would “pursue a solution . . . consistent with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.” By 1999, however, tensions had risen again and State Department spokesman James Rubin urged China to “avoid actions that increase tensions in the region.”

The policy Clinton enunciated last Friday may, or may not, help change the equation. The Chinese are probing for weaknesses in ASEAN but also in the US defense posture and resolve in Asia and the Pacific.

US policy changes, strategic and deliberate

As in the past, Clinton reiterated the need for a peaceful solution reached by the parties involved, but for the first time in history, she offered American help with dispute resolution. She also stated that peaceful resolution should be “through a collaborative process” - presumably code words for ASEAN - and must honor the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. So yes, there are changes in US policy towards the South China Sea. They are strategic and deliberate and its tabling at the meeting was coordinated with ASEAN members ahead of time. The question is, how effective will they be?