US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the foremost target of his wrath, but the foreign minister lashed out as well at the Southeast Asians who had been so bold as to mention the South China Sea. He reminded his ASEAN counterparts of their countries’ economic ties to China, as if those links could be broken at any time.

Hillary in Hanoi
At a ‘press availability’ afterwards, Secretary Clinton made no mention of Yang’s outburst. Instead she described the US position as:

(1) opposed to ‘the use or threat of force by any claimant’;

(2) favouring a collaborative process for resolving these disputes in accord with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (despite, I would add, the failure of the US to ratify it, an omission she said her administration hoped to correct);

(3) supporting the ‘Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea’ (DOC) that China and the ASEAN states co-signed in 2002, encouraging the parties to agree on ‘a full [i.e., binding] code of conduct,’ and offering to ‘facilitate initiatives and confidence building measures’ consistent with the Declaration; and

(4) believing that, ‘consistent with customary international law, legitimate claims to maritime space in the South China Sea should be derived solely from legitimate claims to land features’

Reviewing Clinton’s four points in the light of China’s behaviour, one could conclude that, on the first score, Beijing has already used force — against Vietnamese fisherman, for example. As for observing the Law of the Sea, although China did sign on, its endorsement was conditioned with reservations that — in the published view of analyst Marvin Ott and the unpublished opinions of several of my informants – make that ratification ‘almost meaningless.’

Clinton’s third point, in support of the DOC, could be taken as a criticism of China’s unwillingness to upgrade the Declaration into a binding code of conduct. Last but not least, Clinton’s case for deriving legitimate claims to sea space ‘solely from legitimate claims to land features’ seems to contradict the sheer amplitude of Beijing’s claim, encompassing as it almost does the entire South China Sea.

However, China is not the sole claimant state. It would be wrong to blame China alone for a legal limbo that owes much to the unwillingness of the Southeast Asian  claimants to sort out their differences among themselves.

Who said what
Now fast-forward two months, from July 23 in Hanoi to September 24 in Manhattan for the Second US-ASEAN Leaders Meeting.

In their Statement the leaders reaffirmed the importance of ‘regional peace and stability, maritime security, unimpeded commerce, and freedom of navigation’ in keeping with international law and the Law of the Sea — ‘and the peaceful settlement of disputes.’ But the reference to non-violence looked as if it had been tacked on, as if the drafters had debated the extent to which the phrase could be read as targeting Beijing.

In contrast, the ‘Read-out’ offered by the White House following the meeting said the leaders had agreed on the importance of the ‘peaceful resolution of disputes, freedom of navigation, regional stability, and respect for international law, including in the South China Sea.’

It was surely not lost on Chinese observers that the White House had put peaceful dispute-settlement first, as if to remind Beijing to calm down and play by the rules, the leaders had put it last, as if not to annoy Beijing. Still more telling, of course, was the mention of the Sea in the Read-out but not in the Joint Statement.

Across the governments of ASEAN a spectrum of attitudes runs from those most willing to give China the benefit of the doubt to those most doubtful of China’s benefit to them. As for the divergence of Southeast Asian and American perspectives on China, suffice it to recall this remark by a high-ranking official in an ASEAN country: ‘Remember,’ he told me, ‘for us in Asia, the US is geopolitical, but China is geographical.’ In other words: Faraway friends are welcome and helpful, but the local landscape is a permanent fact. One has to adapt to it — and to the seascape — to survive.

But proximity is not destiny. The Obama administration’s remarkable effort to reach across the Pacific to Southeast Asia is neither deluded nor doomed. At least it may enhance the ability of Southeast Asians to hedge against overdependence on China. At best it should facilitate free transit and stable relations across the South China Sea.

What next?
Based on events so far, it would be wildly premature to predict either a Sino-American cold war in Southeast Asia or malign Chinese hegemony over the region. It appears instead that ASEAN under Indonesian leadership in 2011 may try to revive the languishing effort to nudge the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea toward something less aspirational and more enforceable. An opportunity to move in this constructive direction may arise at a meeting between China and ASEAN that may be held in Kunming in January 2011.

In the meantime, China could gain credibility by rethinking the contradiction between its support for a multilaterally driven regional community spanning Southeast and Northeast Asia on the one hand, and its insistence on hub-and-spokes bilateralism regarding the South China Sea on the other.

ASEAN could refurbish its own credibility by incentivising its four claimant members — Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam — to cease being part of the problem of maritime discord and to become instead part of the solution. Because maritime peace and access are in the interest of all Southeast Asian states, ASEAN should do more than wait for its four implicated members to resolve their contending claims on their own.

Finally, in Washington, it is time for the Obama administration to broaden and deepen its renewed engagement with the region. Priorities should include a more vigorous pursuit of trade and investment, so that Southeast Asian leaders think of Americans as more than specialised dispensers of regional security alone, and an effort to ratify the Law of the Sea, so that American insistence on Chinese conformity with the Law does not seem hypocritical.

For ultimately the question for all those concerned with the South China Sea — China other claimant states, and the US as well — is this: Will you ignore the rules? Or will you uphold them to the benefit of peace and prosperity in this vital part of the world?

Donald K Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Forum at Stanford University. His website can be found here.

 

A longer version of this article was originally published here in the Asia Times Online.