Vietnam and the Philippines also began to patch their frayed ties with China. In June, high-ranking Vietnamese and Chinese officials pledged to resolve their maritime conflicts by negotiation and carried out two days of ‘goodwill’ joint patrols in the Gulf of Tonkin. Last month, the Philippine Foreign Minister visited Beijing for talks to ease tensions.
The US — which saw a downturn in relations with China after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared a national interest in freedom of navigation and peaceful conflict resolution in the South China Sea — managed to renew military-to-military exchanges with China in May.
Yet, ASEAN should remain wary of strong undercurrents beneath the calming waters.
The one-page guidelines agreed to last month are unlikely to arrest the deepening security dilemma among key claimants. They reportedly referred only to the possible implementation of uncontroversial ‘joint cooperation activities’, they are characteristically non-binding, and they required Southeast Asian states to drop their long held assertion of ASEAN’s right to develop a common position on the issue vis-a-vis China.
China has neither backed down on, nor clarified the extent of, its expansive claims (the infamous ‘nine dotted lines’). There is still no agreement on the physical area to which the Declaration of Conduct will apply.
Meanwhile, the sabre-rattling continues. In June, both China and the US conducted naval exercises in the South China Sea — the US with the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand and Singapore. Labelled ‘routine’ exercises, more can be expected in the months ahead.
Various claimants are engaged in serious naval arms acquisitions. At a regional defence ministers’ dialogue in Singapore in June, the Vietnamese Defence Minister, General Phung Quang Thanh, publicly acknowledged that his country was buying six Kilo-class attack submarines along with Sukhoi fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles from Russia. A week after the guidelines were agreed to, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III asserted his government’s intention to beef up naval capabilities while taking delivery of its first Hamilton-class cutter from the US, which will become the Philippine Navy’s largest combat vessel.
But the more dangerous undercurrent comes off the heat of great power politics.
Despite thawing relations between the military top brass, there are worrying trends in US-China relations. After positive talks with his Chinese counterpart last month, the US military chief, Mike Mullen, still insisted that the US would continue air and naval reconnaissance activities near China’s coast.
The US foreign policy and defence establishment is increasingly assertive towards China. The Obama administration reacted strongly to Chinese actions in maritime disputes with both Japan and Southeast Asia last autumn. This June, then-Secretary of Defence Robert Gates announced Washington’s intention to sustain a superior military presence in the region, including stationing combat ships designed to patrol the shallower littoral waters of Southeast Asia.
Republican senator John McCain also declared publicly that the US must not be ‘pushed out’ of the Asia Pacific. Conservative observers like Walter Lohman of the Heritage Foundation counsel that ‘maintaining a positive relationship [with China] is not worth jeopardising America’s real interests at stake: freedom of the seas, commitment to treaty allies, and peace and security in the Pacific’.
Meanwhile, China’s military build-up continues apace, including the pursuit of aircraft carriers and a blue-water navy. Moreover, Chinese policymakers are upset by Obama administration officials’ remarks about America’s ‘return to Asia’, and some ASEAN states’ seeming headlong rush into an American embrace. Vice-Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai recently warned Southeast Asian states against ‘playing with fire’ in trying to involve Washington in the South China Sea disputes.
Washington’s clear interest in the maritime conflicts has forced Chinese foreign-policy strategists to view Southeast Asia through the lens of relations with the US. Such a China–ASEAN–US ‘triangle’ carries risks for ASEAN.
The US–China dispute in the South and East China Seas over acceptable military operations is likely to trigger conflict more serious than cable-cutting or structure-building by rival claimants in the Spratlys.
The 2001 collision of a US spy plane with a Chinese fighter, and the 2009 confrontation over the alleged intrusion by the US naval ship Impeccable into Chinese territorial waters, illustrate the dangers of what may sometimes be conflated under ‘freedom of navigation’ in the ‘high seas’ by American policymakers but are regarded as infringements of sovereign territorial waters and airspace by China.
This putative China–ASEAN–UStriangle is also a deeply unequal one. In June, the high level US–China strategic dialogue was expanded for the first time to include a dialogue specifically on the Asia Pacific region. While this was welcomed by Asian observers for dampening regional tensions, in future this bilateral channel might equally be used by these two great powers to limit certain Southeast Asian interests and agendas.
ASEAN needs to be wary of losing control over its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, and of the territorial disputes with China being used by China and the US to send messages of resolve to each other.
Claimant states should also not rely on US pressure to persuade China to formalise and seek international legal arbitration for its territorial claims. Since the US did not ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, it has little credibility on this issue.
Thus, ASEAN needs once again to find a balance between facilitating the US in deterring potential Chinese aggression, peacefully resolving conflicts with China, and risking being sidelined by the great powers pursuing their larger global interests.
Evelyn Goh is Associate Professor of International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London.
An earlier version of this article appeared in The Straits Times on 10 August 2011.