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Navigating troubled waters:

New perspectives and approaches to defusing the South China Sea

Giang Vu, The London Globalist, 2012 Publication

  
Defining the biggest threat
 
The Western media has this year completed a decade portraying the troubled War on Terror as the most significant threat to international peace in the post-Cold War era. They could not be more wrong. Yes, the Middle East is a volatile, oil-rich region of great importance, but it is without any significant resident power to challenge US military hegemony. The very fact that the Taliban resorts to fighting in the shadows with improvised explosive devices and commits terrorist atrocities on the population is a sign of their military weakness, not strength. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are often compared to the Vietnam War. They are indeed nothing like the Vietnam War: they are conflicts where there existed such a great imbalance of forces that the major population centers were all under coalition control within months of fighting. In contrast, American forces never occupied North Vietnam. And the total coalition casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are around 7,600 at the time of writing – minuscule compared to the 55,000 American casualties incurred in the Vietnam War. In short, the fight in the Middle East is by most objective measures a small one and, in the larger picture, does not pose a significant threat to the international order.
 
Meanwhile, taking the back seat in the Western attention is a much more substantial crisis brewing another quarter-way around the world, in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2009, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) first drew international attention to a hitherto largely unnoticed arms race fast brewing in this vast and populous area. It is a phenomenon largely rooted in the changing regional balance of power, a result of China’s rapid industrialization and militarization. And while the political instability of nuclear-armed North Korea ensures that tensions in the Yellow Sea will continue to dominate the regional headlines, the SIPRI report stressed that similarly worrying developments are taking place in the South China Sea. Here, both the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan are locked in simmering territorial disputes with Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei – disputes that have drawn legitimate concerns as well as opportunistic interest from the US-led alliance, an ambitious India, and arms dealers from Russia to Israel. Here, are vital sea-lanes accounting for 50% of global shipping tonnage, rich fishing waters, and possibly the third largest untapped oil reserves in the world. Here, memories of bloody conflicts long past are resurrected to fuel xenophobia and ultra-nationalism. Here, some of the world’s largest and most advanced armed forces are constantly expanding their budgets (with Malaysia leading the pack at 722% in four years), extending their influence in governments, strengthening military alliances, and preparing themselves for the eventualities of armed engagement – protracted or otherwise.
 
Denial and its consequences
 
Yet, amidst the bustling arms trade, each nation is passionately asserting that their intentions are completely peaceful, that escalating tensions are in no way their fault. And therein lies the gravest danger – that the very scale of the impending crisis, and the closing window of opportunity to defuse it – seem lost upon policy makers and political commentators alike. The governments involved must publicly recognize the gravity of the current military buildup and initiate serious multilateral efforts aimed at resolving the territorial claims at the root of the problem in fairness and adherence to international law; or they will surely face the scourge of an all-out arms race.
 
An arms race is nothing less than a diplomatic abyss, as nations are driven to build more and more weapons to attain parity with or superiority over their rivals, resulting in a vicious cycle. There exist only three historical resolutions to an arms race: when one side collapses economically under the weight of skyrocketing production and maintenance costs, prompting them to sue for peace, as in the Cold War; when a full-scale conflict breaks out – which happened in most cases, but most famously in WWI; or when the arms race simply continues on, draining resources and preventing meaningful cooperation, as in North vs. South Korea. None of these scenarios are in the least bit attractive to any party.  Even the first scenario will only result in a Pyrrhic victory, seeing as the economies of the region have become so integrated into the global economy that significant damage to any could produce ripple effects far beyond their borders. This point applies even to the smaller ASEAN economies, as was shown in the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.
 
Most importantly, the humanitarian implications of a full-scale war in such a heavily populated region are incalculable. A major conventional conflict in East/Southeast Asia amongst these industrialized nations will not yield casualty figures in the thousands, but in the millions or tens of millions. Clearly, the stakes are far too great for us to allow the budding arms race in Southeast Asia to reach its point of no return, when the rational voices in government lose control to the spirited rhetoric of nationalistic hawks.
 
The failure of bilateralism and balance of power
 
I do not believe we have yet reached that point; but we are undoubtedly approaching it very quickly. The past three years have rang what was perhaps our last alarm bell: China’s declaration that the South China Sea is now a core national security interest on par with Taiwan and Tibet; Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia’s increasing resort to defense spending sprees to counteract this perceived threat; India’s acceleration of her “Look East” policy through joint military exercises and provocative oil exploration with Vietnam; and Vietnam’s naval exercise with the USS George Washington, an open invitation for her erstwhile enemy to act as a counterweight to China in the region. It is evident that the early emphasis on bilateral negotiations and closed-door dealings, championed by China, has not produced lasting settlements. Instead it has driven China’s neighbors into the arms of her opportunistic Great Power counterparts – the very outcome she had initially hoped to avoid.
 
It is now apparent that every nation considers a balance of power to be the framework for future peace. But no stable balance of power can exist if it is constantly subject to rapid military buildup and centered on a critical, yet unsolved, territorial issue. Furthermore, as their budgets swell, oft-belligerent military commanders are likely to gain political clout within major powers like China, Indonesia, and Thailand. On top of that, as Vietnam demonstrates, even a more authoritarian government’s cooperative efforts [with China] can still be negatively influenced by the populace’s ultra-nationalist fervor. There has to be a safer, more reliable solution.
 
Towards a multilateral settlement
 
Fatalistic as this article has been up to this point, I am at heart a resolute optimist with plenty of reason to be. While the past decade has seen fast rising tensions, it has seen faster rising cooperation. I take hope in the success of the 2010 ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which brought all the relevant powers under a formal framework of discussion, and allowed the US and Chinese military leaderships to (temporarily) reconcile some of their differences. I take hope in the continued integration of regional economies into international trade networks, giving them massive economic stakes in the peace and well being of their trade partners. I take hope in the regional press’s slow but steady transition towards more moderate viewpoints, in ASEAN’s continued growth in internal solidarity, and in the commitment from most regional powers to abstain from nuclearization – indications that our perilous situation is being acknowledged by the countries walking the tightrope. I take hope because these are the foundations for serious future efforts in multilateral negotiations that form the only way to a secure, lasting, and affordable peace.
 
To be clear, mine is not an idle hope, but is borne of concrete actions, and sustained only by continued efforts on all sides. When they have finished embroiling themselves in extended wars of attrition in the less crucial regions of the world and tearing their social fabrics apart over economic policy, the Western democracies will find that they can actually do something to facilitate the process of conciliation and lawful management of the South China Sea. The governments and peoples in the region may be looking for a way out, but without an internationally recognized framework for demarcation such as a clarification of UNCLOS vis-à-vis the specific regional conditions, these governments will be forced to take steps to look after their own national interests rather than the collective one. This is where the West comes in. The European experience with international legal frameworks and justice, coupled with American hard-power support – not for any one side but for the implementation of such frameworks – will prove invaluable for the maintenance of long-term peace and prosperity in the region and, thereby, the world.
Image Source: http://community.middlebury.edu

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