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INTERNATIONAL OPINION ON THE SOUTH CHINA SEA ISSUE PART II

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TITLE PUBLISHER COUNTRY PAGE I. Defending Japan and the

Philippines is not Entrapment The National

Interest United States

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II. Comment: Why Beijing should let international law reign in the South China Sea

Special Broadcasting Service

Australia

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III. Obama will step warily Bangkok Post Thailand 9 IV. Asia’s Cauldron: is geography

destiny? The Conversation Australia 11

V. Philippines throws rocks at China The Nation Thailand 14 VI. Settle maritime claims through

jaw-jaw The Straits Times Singapore 17

VII. The Post-Deng China: The End of China’s Soft Power?

Huffington Post World

United States

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VIII. China’s Military Chiefs Lecture the Visiting US Defense Secretary

Bloomberg United States

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IX. Can China Rise Peacefully? The National Interest

United States

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X. Keynote Address at the Asia Society Policy Institute Launch

US Department of State

United States

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XI. Philippines China Dispute: One-up Against China

The Establishment Post

Singapore 66

XII. ASEAN's challenge: A swaggering China

Los Angeles Times United States

67

XIII. Creative countermeasures needed to deal with Manila’s S. China Sea schemes

Global Times China 69

XIV. Rusty “Cauldron” The National Interest

United States

71

XV. El Indio: Divided by Two? Jakarta Globe Indonesia 74 XVI. When is a Rock Not a Rock? Foreignpolicy.com United

States 76

XVII. Tom and Jerry in the South China Sea – OPED

Eurasia Review United States

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XVIII. Ma may face questions on China stance: academic

Taipei Times Taiwan 82

XIX. The Philippines Takes China to Court, but It's Public Opinion That Will Decide

Huffington Post Politics

United States

85

XX. China’s Rise is Waking Up the Neighbors

China Spectator China 87

XXI. Risky Games in the South China Sea

New York Times United States

90

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XXII. Crimea and South China Sea Diplomacy

The Diplomat Brussels 91

XXIII. The Philippines' UNCLOS Claim and the PR Battle Against China

The Diplomat United States

94

XXIV. Philippines Takes China to Court: End of Diplomacy in the South China Sea?

Huffington Post World

United States

97

XXV. Countering China in the South China Sea

The National Interest

United States

101

XXVI. South China Sea disputes: The gloves are off

Aljazeera Qatar 105

XXVII. South China Sea Disputes Enter a Dangerous Phase: The U.S. Pivot Gathers Steam

Huffington Post United States

108

XXVIII. The U.S. and China’s Nine-Dash Line: Ending the Ambiguity

Brookings United States

112

XXIX. Binding Vietnam and India: Joint energy exploration in South China Sea

Observer Research Foundation

India 116

XXX. The Sino-Philippine Maritime Row: International Arbitration and the South China Sea

Center for a New American Security

United States

119

XXXI. A question of Chinese sovereignty The Japan Times Japan 124 XXXII. China and Vietnam: Danger in the

South China Sea China-US Focus United

States 127

XXXIII. China's Benign Foreign Policy Image at Odds with South China Sea Stance

Oilprice.com United States

130

XXXIV. ANALYSIS/ South China Sea disputes: Harbinger of regional strategic shift?

The Asahi Shimbum Japan 133

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Defending Japan and the Philippines Is Not Entrapment Jeffrey Ordaniel | April 15, 2014 In August 2013, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel declared while in Manila that the US-Philippines alliance is ―an anchor for peace and stability‖ in the region. In October of the same year, US Secretary of State John Kerry emphasized in Tokyo that the ―US-Japan alliance is the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in Asia Pacific.‖ Notwithstanding these bold pronouncements from high-ranking US officials, some in America have expressed concerns over the possibility of entrapment in case the two US allies‘ separate disputes with China turn violent. Some are concerned that Washington could get dragged into a war with China over tiny islands that the US has no national interest in. Others argue that Washington‘s long-standing policy of strategic ambiguity should be applied on the East and South China Seas in order to deter the Chinese from changing the relevant status quos, and the Japanese and the Filipinos from getting too emboldened. These beg two important questions. First, will militarily defending Japan and the Philippines over their disputes with China really mean entrapment of the US? Second, will ambiguity in American security commitments to Tokyo and Manila result in

Regarding the first question, it is important to dissect what the East and South China Sea disputes involve. On the East China Sea dispute, it must be noted that it was only in 2008 when China started to send civilian law-enforcement vessels to the territorial waters of the islands in contention. In retrospect, this was the start of Beijing‘s attempt to revise the status quo of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Over the years, the frequency of incursions increased dramatically. Recently, such attempt to alter the status quo was extended to the relevant airspace with China sending paramilitary aircraft and declaring an air-defense identification zone. In 2010, Beijing used economic coercion to prevent Tokyo from sentencing a Chinese fishing trawler captain who deliberately rammed his ship into Japanese Coast Guard vessels. Furthermore, the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute involves maritime boundary questions. This is significant because the East China Sea is an important sea lane, where energy and trade for South Korea and Japan pass through. It is also a strategic common that is the gateway to mainland East Asia and an immediate connection to the South China Sea, a very important choke point.

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On China‘s dispute with the Philippines, it must be noted that Beijing‘s ambiguous ―nine-dash line‖ claim effectively turns much of the South China Sea, including areas long considered part of the global commons, as China‘s own territorial waters. Given that $5.3 trillion worth of trade passes through the South China Sea every year, $1.2 trillion of which is US trade, the significance of the dispute between Manila and Beijing cannot be underestimated. Beijing has been using coercion and intimidation to change the status quo of the islands and maritime domains in the South China Sea. In 1995, Chinese forces occupied and built a garrison on the Mischief Reef, a submerged maritime feature located 129 nautical miles west of a major Philippine landmass and 599 nautical miles southeast of Hainan, the nearest Chinese landmass. Under customary international law and its codified version, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), submerged maritime features cannot be claimed by any state as a territory under its sovereignty. Hence, their control is dependent on whichever exclusive economic zone (EEZ) or continental shelf they are located. Moreover, in 2012, China also successfully flipped the status quo of the Scarborough Shoal, another maritime feature within the Philippines‘ exclusive economic zone, after a tense standoff. Quite recently, China has been attempting to eject Manila‘s military presence in the Second Thomas Shoal, another submerged maritime feature within the Philippines‘ UNCLOS-mandated continental shelf. In March 2014, China twice implemented a blockade which tried to prevent the Philippine military from provisioning and rotating its troops in the shoal. Months prior to those incidents, China has been sending naval frigates and civilian maritime law enforcement vessels to contested waters in an apparent attempt to intimidate the Philippine government. All of these reveal two issues. First, the disputes in the East and South China Seas involve a rising revisionist power trying to alter the status quo, not by the rule of law or peaceful, nonhostile means, but by intimidation and coercion. Second, the disputes involve not just the islands themselves, but maritime domains critical for the control of valuable trade routes and strategic commons. What then do these two issues mean for the United States? They mean that militarily defending Japan and the Philippines is not simply giving a favor to longstanding allies. It‘s not entrapment. Clearly committing to their defense means defending two important US national interests: 1) the rule of law, and 2) securing freedom of navigation and unimpeded lawful commerce in very strategic trade routes and critical choke points. These two alone are enough justifications for Washington to clearly stand by with its two Pacific allies. Regarding the second question, it is obvious that America‘s ―strategic ambiguity‖ has not been effective in preserving East Asian status quo. Strategic ambiguity is not a wise answer to China‘s approach of ―salami slicing‖ and ―talk-and-take‖ policy in East Asian seas. China has shown that it is not interested in signing a binding code of conduct in the South China Sea nor in clarifying its claims to be in line with UNCLOS. While both

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Philippine president Benigno Aquino and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe have been repeatedly stressing the importance of upholding the rule of law, Beijing has been continually rejecting multilateral platforms and international arbitration for resolving disputes. Recent incidents indicate that China is becoming more inclined to use intimidation, coercion and even force against its neighbors to attain its objectives. With all these, Washington should be very specific with its security commitments to both Tokyo and Manila, before it‘s too late. If Japan doubts the security guarantee of its US alliance, the ramifications would be deleterious. Other American allies would consequently also doubt the US. Why? Because if the US could consider an abandonment of the world‘s third largest economy, what guarantee is there that Washington would not do the same to other allies? In a way, the US-Japan alliance is the ultimate measure of America‘s rebalance to Asia. Furthermore, doubts in the US-Philippines alliance are more likely to embolden China to use force since, unlike Tokyo, Manila has a weak military and a significantly lower deterrent capability. Ambiguity also increases miscalculation and could result in a vicious arms race. On the one hand, China might perceive the two US alliances as not very credible—resulting in military adventurism. On the other hand, Japan and the Philippines might perceive the ambiguous US commitments to be too weak a security guarantee and so result in an overshoot of military buildup, increasing regional tensions further. Those are just a few possible consequences of US commitments being open to interpretation, in addition to others that can exacerbate the already tensed geopolitical and security landscape of the region. In conclusion, while it is understandable for some to put an emphasis on America‘s economic relations with China, Washington should be clear with its treaty allies in the Pacific for reasons outlined above—promoting the rule of law, preserving freedom of navigation and unimpeded lawful commerce, and protecting strategic global commons and critical chokepoints. These are indispensable and long-term US national interests. Being clear with its security commitments could drastically restrain China from further destabilizing revision of relevant status quos and deter it from using threat or force, while at the same time reducing the security uncertainties of US allies and smaller powers in East Asia. The US-Japan and the US-Philippines alliances, would then be the cornerstone and an anchor, respectively, of peace and stability in the region—not an entanglement. Jeffrey Ordaniel is a PhD Student at the School of Security and International Studies, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo.

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Comment: Why Beijing should let international law reign in the South China Sea By ZiadHaider Source Foreign Policy 14 APR 2014 - 12:41PM The perilous churn in the South China Sea, dubbed "Asia's Cauldron" by one leading strategic analyst, stems from the overlapping claims of six states - Brunei, China, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam - over a body of water vital to global trade, which contains energy resources and abundant fish stock in its vast depths. Negotiations over a maritime Code of Conduct to stabilize interactions in the South China Sea have been outpaced by the jockeying of ships between China and the Philippines. In the wake of a dangerous and asymmetric two-month standoff over the disputed Scarborough Shoal beginning in April 2012, Manila has rightly sought recourse in international law to manage the dispute through arbitration. For the sake of regional stability and its own interests, Beijing should follow suit. The legal wrangling started in January 2013, when the Philippines notified China of its intent to bring a challenge under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an international treaty governing the rights and responsibilities of states in their use of the oceans and seas. (Both China and the Philippines are parties to UNCLOS, while the United States has yet to ratify it.) The Philippines argued then that China's so-called "nine-dash line," which encompasses virtually the entire South China Sea, was unlawful and contrary to UNCLOS. China's response was to reject the Philippines' notification letter altogether, noting Beijing had opted out of UNCLOS procedures for settling disputes that involve sovereignty claims or maritime boundaries. Beijing must now take a clear and hard look at the merits of abstaining any further. While it may have a legal basis to abstain, acting on it could be strategically shortsighted. Given Beijing's assertions that its nine-dash line is grounded in international law, a greater show of confidence would be to defend its position before a neutral tribunal. Beijing will have the chance, if it chooses. Despite China's protestations, a five-member Arbitral Tribunal was assembled to hear the Philippines' claims; on March 30, the Philippines announced that it had filed its brief, here called a Memorial, elaborating its

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challenge. (Intriguingly, Beijing may have asked Manila to delay filing its Memorial in exchange for a mutual withdrawal of ships from the contested Scarborough Shoal.) China's willingness to abide by international norms would not only telegraph confidence, but could help offset the growing anxiety generated by its military modernisation and maneuverings among neighbors who fear the Beijing doctrine may be veering toward realpolitik. For its part, the United States has expressed its support for the Philippines' submission. President Barack Obama's visit to the Philippines in late April will provide an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of such a rules-based approach to managing the dispute. Yet that largely depends on how Beijing responds. To be sure, nationalist public sentiment stoked by Beijing may have painted China into a corner. Hours after the Philippine Foreign Secretary announced the Memorial's submission on March 30, the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded that it did not accept the Philippines' submission of the dispute for arbitration and called on the Philippines to return to bilateral talks. With its Foreign Minister stating that China will never accede to "unreasonable demands from smaller countries" in the South China Sea, its Defense Minister stating that China will make "no compromise, no concessions," and official media outlets wading in with criticism of the Philippines' "unilateral" actions in filing its Memorial, it will be that much harder to backtrack. Yet submitting to an international tribunal is by no means beyond the pale for Beijing. China regularly engages in the WTO dispute settlement system and has a relatively strong compliance record in the face of adverse rulings, largely due to the reputational costs of non-compliance. Arbitrating the South China Sea dispute is assuredly more fraught than commercial disputes, grating as it does on China's rawest nerve: territorial sovereignty. That is why it must be complemented by all claimant states exploring the equivalent of an amicable settlement: shelving questions of who owns what and focusing on joint development of resources for which compelling precedent exists. For now, however, Manila's lawyers have staked out important legal ground in the South China Sea. Beijing should consider meeting them there. © 2014, Foreign Policy

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Obama will step warily

Published: 14 Apr 2014 at 00.13 Newspaper section: News US President Barack Obama will travel to East Asia and our region next week. It is a ―make-up‖ visit for having missed last October‘s Asean meetings because of the US government‘s financial crisis and partial shutdown. His visit will focus on issues that could have strong effects on this country and its neighbours. Three of his four stops are in Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines. The common topic is how to respond to steadily increasing pressure from China over disputed areas of the South China Sea. At his other stopover, in South Korea, the major common issue is the always vexing North Korea. Again, Beijing‘s role in the problem is central, since China continues to maintain tight ties with Pyongyang. The visit to Southeast Asia comes at a time when relations with China have grown prickly. Earlier this month, Indonesia changed its long-standing policy, and announced it contests Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, specifically in the Natuna Island chain. That means China now has territorial disagreements with half the Asean countries – Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia. Jakarta‘s reversal; from its previous position of having no such disputes with Beijing followed almost directly on the heels of a similar statement by Malaysia. While Kuala Lumpur has often registered formal claims to territory claims by China, the situation recently became more tense. Chinese ships began patrols near islands long claimed by Malaysia. To add tension, Chinese-Malaysian relations have plummeted recently. China has criticised Kuala Lumpur‘s handling of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370. Mr Obama will visit the Philippines last, on April 28-29. Manila and Hanoi both are resisting China‘s South China Sea claims. The Philippines has taken China to the United Nations‘ court of opinion, whileVietnam has begun a military buildup, marshalling friends including both the US and China. Recently, the Philippines made Beijing look foolish when its troops evaded Chinese ships to resupply a few soldiers flying the Philippines flag on barren Second Thomas Shoal. On the military side, Mr Obama has a tough job ahead, and it is unclear just how he will handle it. The US has long maintained it has no official opinion about ownership of disputed territory in the China Sea. But it has strong military defence treaties with both Japan and the Philippines. In the case of the latter, Mr Obama is likely to sign an

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agreement to build a new US base on Philippines territory, in waters facing the Spratly Islands. It is certain the US does not back Chinese claims to the Spratlys. This gives Mr Obama precious little wriggle room to try to make the case that Washington offers some sort of neutral position. Manilaand Tokyo will look for Mr Obama to voice strong support. The wrong word, even the wrong nuance, by Mr Obama could badly damage the often tense ties with Beijing. It will be a delicate manoeuvre for theUS leader to balance a greater military buildup in the Asean region with assurances it will not directly challenge China over Beijing‘s assertive territorial claims. Mr Obama will also be trying to press the region into moving ahead on his moribund Trans-Pacific Partnership. The White House spin is that Mr Obama will be stressing close ties with friends and allies on his trip next week. In fact, he will be tip-toeing along a diplomatic tightrope with no dependable safety net.

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Asia’s Cauldron: is geography destiny? 12 April 2014, 6.31pm AEST Mark Beeson Professor of International Politics at Murdoch University How times change. One of the more unexpected ideas to emerge from Tony Abbott‘s largely successful tour of northeast Asia is that Australia‘s relationship with China can be built on mutual trust. It‘s a nice idea, no doubt, but one that seems strikingly at odds with not only China‘s recent behaviour, but Australia‘s, too. After all, Australian strategists are currently urging the greatest expenditure on military modernisation ever undertaken in this country. Actions, as they say, speak louder than words. Nevertheless, the growing consensus in this country is that Australia doesn‘t need to make a choice between its geography and its history. Australia can have amicable and productive relationships with countries that see themselves as potential rivals – even foes. This is a beguiling idea, but is it true? Can Australia have mutually enriching commercial ties with China while simultaneously playing a prominent role in an alliance relationship with the US, which many in China see as designed to contain them? In the absence of outright conflict, perhaps. But Australia‘s behaviour, and that of many of its Asian neighbours, suggests that there aren‘t too many regional leaders who are prepared to place much reliance on the emollient words of their counterparts elsewhere. Such scepticism also pervades Robert Kaplan‘s latest book, Asia‘s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of the Stable Pacific. The unresolved territorial disputes in the South China Sea provide the particular focus for a set of realist arguments about power and what he sees as the implacable logic of geography. As Kaplan spelled out in his earlier book, The Revenge of Geography: China‘s most advantageous outlet for its ambitions is in the direction of the relatively weak states of Southeast Asia. The current volume takes up the story of China‘s rise and what he sees as the inevitable desire to extend its power and influence throughout its immediate neighbourhood. Plainly, an Asian region dominated by China would be very different; China is of the region in a way the US is not. America‘s role as a so-called ―off-shore balancer‖ has made it more attractive for many of its allies for this reason.

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East Asia without an American presence would, Kaplan thinks, be devoid of moral and ideational struggles over the future basis of international order. Kaplan claims: It is not ideas that Asians fight over, but space on the map. Recent events in Eastern Europe serve as a sobering reminder that occupying the philosophical and ethical high ground may be of little efficacy or comfort when dealing with an autocratic thug who treats international norms and principles with contempt. A similar calculus informs policy in the South China Sea and helps to explain China‘s continuing reluctance to allow legal principles or multilateral institutions to address the region‘s long-running and increasingly fraught territorial disputes. Given China‘s growing predilection for exploiting its growing strategic leverage over its weaker neighbours, there is consequently only one option, Kaplan believes: …because China is geographically fundamental to Asia, its military and economic power must be hedged against to preserve the independence of smaller states in Asia that are US allies. And that, in plain English, is a form of containment. Random House Click to enlarge Whether you agree with Kaplan‘s analysis or not, he does have the great merit of calling a spade a spade. Such language stands in sharp contrast to the circumlocutions that our own policymakers adopt – possibly for very understandable reasons – when dealing with China. Whether their Chinese counterparts will be convinced by our declarations of friendship remains to be seen. Ultimately, however, it may not matter. China cannot afford to alienate all its neighbours. There are good material reasons for believing that Chinese policymakers may exercise self-restraint. China‘s all-important economic development is not going to happen in isolation. Territorial boundaries may still matter more in East Asia than just about anywhere else, as Kaplan claims, but this does not mean that they inevitably dictate national policy choices as a consequence. Certainly war remains a real possibility in East Asia. But as even Kaplan concedes: Beijing‘s goal is not war—but an adjustment in the correlation of forces that enhances it geographical power and prestige. This is a long way short of the pursuit of territorial expansion that fuelled many of the conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries. In this regard, at least, the underlying logic of conflict really does seem to have been reshaped by greater economic interdependence. The big question, as ever, is whether human beings have the capacity to learn from their mistakes and not repeat them. One might have hoped that the proverbial penny had dropped about the ultimate efficacy of war by now. There are good, empirically

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robust reasons for thinking that it may have, given the remarkable decline in inter-state violence. Any long-term decline in conflict is a refutation of the materially and geographically deterministic logic Kaplan sees as determining our collective fate. Current events in Eastern Europe and the South China Sea in particular provide compelling and consequential experiments that may demonstrate whether such optimism is justified.

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Philippines throws rocks at China Keith Johnson Foreign Policy Washington April 10, 2014 1:00 am Beijing's bid to grab South China Sea from regional rivals faces first major challenge at international tribunal A diplomatic stand-off between China and the Philippines that flared up two years ago in a dispute over fishing rights at a tiny shoal in the South China Sea is coming to a head after Manila decided to ignore Chinese threats and sue Beijing at an international tribunal. The legal case marks the first time that an arbitration panel will examine China's contentious and disputed claims to most of the South China Sea, one of the world's busiest byways for shipping and a potentially rich source of oil and natural gas. The 4,000-page suit, filed before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, amounts to what is basically an existential question about rocks. Or rather, it's about the Philippines' desire for scores of specks in the South China Sea to be officially classified by the international panel as rocks, rather than islands. On such arcane definitions can hang the fate of nations - or in this case, the extension of economic rights of states to the seas and seabed off their coasts. Simply put, islands are land, which entitle their owners to enjoy exclusive economic rights for 200 nautical miles in all directions, including rights to fishing and energy extraction. Rocks aren't, and don't. If the tribunal rules against the Philippine claim, then the stakes in the battle for those specks of land would be much higher: whichever side eventually has its claims to the specks recognised by international law would be able to lay claim to vast areas potentially rich in resources. If Beijing loses the case, it will have to choose whether to abide by an international court or ignore its ruling and claim those seas anyway. "What kind of great power will China be? Are they willing to play by the rules of the game or overthrow the system?" said Ely Ratner, deputy director of the Asia-Pacific Security Programme at the Centre for a New American Security, a think-tank. "As much as there ever is, this is a clear-cut test of their willingness to bind themselves to rules that may end up not being in their favour."

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It hasn't started well. China has refused to participate in the international arbitration, and has several times admonished Manila for what it calls "unilateralism" and "provocation". Beijing summoned the Philippine ambassador last week for a tongue-lashing, two days after Chinese coast guard vessels tried unsuccessfully to block a Philippine resupply run to another disputed shoal. Much of the world is watching. The United States has expressed support for the Philippines' effort to seek arbitration under international laws governing the use of the sea; Japan, embroiled in its own volatile territorial dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, has also publicly backed Manila. But other countries in Southeast Asia who have their own territorial disputes with China have stayed quiet so far. Meanwhile, big oil companies are watching the legal showdown to see if it helps establish clarity that could make it easier to explore for oil and gas in a region that could have plenty of both. The case is meant as a frontal challenge to China's infamous "Nine-dashed line", Beijing's vague but threatening effort to lay claim to nearly the entirety of the South China Sea to the detriment of neighbours including the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia. Many scholars, though, think that China's claims are essentially bunk. The Law of the Sea Convention, which China signed and ratified, abolished the idea of historical claims as a way to determine maritime rights. Not surprisingly, Paul Reichler, the Washington lawyer who helped craft Manila's lawsuit, agrees. China, he says bluntly, "is violating international law and the [Law of Sea] Convention". The suit doesn't seek to determine who actually owns the disputed specks of land, which include, fittingly enough, Mischief Reef. Instead, the issue is who owns the waters around them. Manila argues that the waters between its shores and the specks belong to the Philippines, because they are inside the 200-mile exclusive economic zone every country has. China says those waters belong to it. In a nutshell, China says that it has the right to defend its own territory, and any disputes should be settled in a bilateral fashion, rather than through international arbitration. The stand-off is sparking fresh fears of an armed conflict in the region. "China was winning all its neighbours over to China's peaceful rise, and they have completely unravelled that in the region. Now, there are very few countries in the region who are not somewhere on the wary to sceptical to outright scared part of the spectrum," said Holly Morrow, an Asia expert at Harvard University's Belfer Centre.

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Particularly acute have been the naval tensions between China's muscular civilian patrol vessels and the overmatched coast guards of neighbouring states. US navy ships, including a guided missile destroyer, have also recently had close calls with Chinese vessels in the South China Sea. Experts worry that the lawsuit will prompt Beijing to take an even more aggressive stance in a bid to cow Manila. "The rhetoric is becoming more shrill, and it's designed to dial up the pressure on the Philippines. In my mind, it's to threaten the use of force to change the dynamics in the negotiations" between the two sides, said Peter Dutton, the director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College. Manila's quest for legal satisfaction in The Hague is an uphill struggle. The arbitration panel can't impose a settlement, and relies on the acquiescence of both parties to implement any ruling; China has made clear it will not cooperate. But in the court of public opinion, a Philippine victory sometime next year would make it much easier for Manila and Southeast Asian nations to push back against what they see as Chinese encroachment.

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Settle maritime claims through jaw-jaw Published on Apr 10, 2014 The Philippines' decision to contest China's vast claims over the South China Sea was advanced when it recently submitted a formal plea before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (Itlos). A 4,000-page, 10-volume memorial contains Manila's arguments, evidence and maps to support its case against China's nine-dash line, which encloses 90 per cent of the South China Sea. Those expansive claims have put Beijing at loggerheads with Manila and others who are determined to defend what they too believe to be legitimately theirs. That the Philippines has gone about the defence by appealing to international law might be dismissed as an instance of a weaker country taking its case to the world because it cannot hope to win it militarily against a far stronger country. But that precisely is what international law is for. The law exists as an impartial forum where countries big and small can present and argue their cases on legal merit. So it is with Itlos,which has no conceivable reason to be partial to any side. By taking its case to the United Nations tribunal, Manila has secured a tactical victory, if nothing else yet. When the tribunal rules, it will clarify the legal position for the world to see. Its ruling will be legally binding, whether or not it can be enforced. That the Philippines has submitted its detailed case in the face of acute Chinese displeasure constitutes a political victory, both at home and among its international partners who are watching how it behaves under Chinese pressure. By responding angrily to Manila's move, Beijing has demonstrated a certain impatience bordering on intemperance that is troubling. Indeed, it has declared flatly that it will not budge even if the Philippines wins its case. China's dismissive attitude does not sit well with the reputation which it is building of being a responsible member of the international community, since it gave up economic isolationism and political prickliness to rejoin the global mainstream after the Cultural Revolution. It is in Beijing's interest to counter perceptions of high-handedness that might erode the welcome which countries great and small have extended to China as it took its rightful place in regional and global affairs. China remains an invaluable international partner as the world's economic centre shifts to Asia.

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The Post-Deng China: The End of China's Soft Power? Posted: 04/09/2014 8:24 pm EDT Updated: 04/09/2014 8:59 pm EDT In the last three decades the world came to witness one of history's most dramatic stories of economic transformation in the once-isolated, formerly frail China. It marked a decisive end to the country's "century of national humiliation" (beginning with the First Opium War in 1839 and ending with the conclusion of World War II in 1945) and decades of political instability, ideological zealotry, and economic mismanagement under the watchful gaze of Mao Zedong. The rise of Deng Xiaoping, a pragmatist in practice and a nationalist at heart, represented the inflection point that eventually propelled China to the top of the global economic and political hierarchy. In retrospect, however, one could argue that it was precisely Mao's radical ideological experimentation that provided a perfect Hegelian antithesis to a centuries-old process of political decay and economic stagnation in China that coincided with the rise of Western colonialism. Following this line of argumentation, Deng reflected a new synthesis in China's national consciousness, one that was founded upon an astute mixture of technological modernity and traditional Confucian thought. China's pragmatic turn in the last decades of the 20th century represented its growing appreciation of and confidence in mastering the virtues of capitalism for the benefit of national development. And along this process China managed to inspire both admiration and fear among its peers. Falling back on a long tradition of sophisticated statecraft, however, the post-Cold War era saw not only the demise of the Soviet threat to China (a critical factor in binding Washington and Beijing in the twilight years of Chairman Mao) but the emergence of a capable diplomatic core that impressively burnished China's public diplomacy and international image. The first decade of the 21st century saw a perceptible shift in public opinion with respect to China, thanks to the Bush administration's aggressive display of unilateral hubris. But there was also a critical economic component. China's economic miracle not only represented an attractive model of state-led capitalist development (with a so-called "Beijing Consensus" supposedly reshaping the terms of international trade and investment) but created a "commodity boom" that dramatically enhanced the economic fortunes of many developing and emerging economies. This represented the "peaceful rise" dimension of China's unrelenting national development. In recent years, however, more and more countries have come to focus on China's military might rather than its economic success.

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The sheer scale of environmental challenges in China and the breadth of structural vulnerabilities afflicting its economy have partially undermined the attraction of its development strategy. And the brewing territorial disputes between China and its East Asian neighbors have played a critical role in reshaping international discourse vis-à-vis its intentions -- and the long-term implications of a prospective Sino-centric order in Asia. The Age of Skepticism Western powers can understandably treat China's rise as a direct challenge to their centuries-old global dominance. Although both China and the West are essentially capitalist in economic practice, there is a palpable difference in terms of their politico-ideological outlook. China's (arguably) successful management of capitalist accumulation in recent decades progressively undercuts the purported inseparability between private enterprise and parliamentary representation -- the cornerstone of (official) Western political thought. But what is even more interesting is how many countries across Asia have come to view China's rise with growing skepticism. Throughout my engagements across Asia, from Tehran to Tokyo, I sensed growing anxiety toward China's international influence. A decade ago perceptions of China were significantly more sympathetic. For instance, in sanctions-hit Iran, which has been forced into barter deals with China, many businessmen have been complaining about China's allegedly opportunistic business practices. Ordinary consumers have been complaining about the safety of cheap Chinese imports, which have also battered local manufacturers. In Japan the ongoing dispute in the East China Sea has alarmed many ordinary citizens, who are worried about their country's ability to defend itself. Gradually the Abe administration is gaining more public support for his proposed revision of Japan's pacifist post-World War II constitution, paving the way for proactive and nimble Japanese armed forces in the near future. Across Southeast Asia popular views toward China have been mixed, but the ongoing maritime disputes in the South China Sea have set off alarm bells in the Philippines and Vietnam, which have welcomed a greater American strategic footprint in the region to stave off Chinese territorial assertiveness. While China has consistently maintained that it prioritizes harmonious and peaceful relations with its neighbors and accords equal respect to fellow developing countries, there is a growing consensus that "balance of power" dynamics explain Beijing's renewed assertiveness in international affairs. After all, the aftermath of the 2008-09 Great Recession, which severely undermined the global standing of Western powers, precipitated the emergence of a new China that is more vocal about its interests and more capable of asserting it

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The Post-Deng China Throughout the 1990s the Clinton administration vigorously encouraged the integration of China into the global networks of production, arguing that a poor and isolated China with little stake in the international system is always more dangerous. The liberals argued that subjecting China to economic globalization and integrating it as a status-quo power would redress its historical grievances and tame its excessive passions. Refusing to opportunistically revalue its currency, China played an extremely constructive role during the 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis. It devoted a lot of energy to resolving many of its territorial disputes, even proposing joint development in areas of overlapping maritime interests. By the first decade of the 21st century, China had become the leading trading partner of most Asian countries, serving as a pivotal element of economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region. In recent years, however, the views of American political scientist John Mearsheimer, a major proponent of the thesis that China's rise will not be peaceful, have gained more currency. The world is beginning to see the less-benign dimensions of China's rise. In the words of Indian strategist Brahma Chellaney, China's territorial strategy represents "a steady progression of steps to outwit opponents and create new facts on the ground." The swift defeat of (Soviet-armed) Iraq in the Gulf War served as a formative experience in China's modern military strategy, inspiring a massive military modernization program that focuses on information warfare, blue-water naval power, and Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2/AD) capabilities. The short-term objective is to secure and consolidate China's territorial claims in the region while preparing the country for a long-term run at Pacific supremacy -- obviously at the expense of Washington. The rapid expansion in China's military capabilities, meanwhile, has been reinforced by the country's ability to sustain its economic momentum, while most leading Western powers have struggled to recover from the 2008-09 Great Recession. In this sense China has managed to rise in both absolute and relative terms. The other critical factor is how the erosion of communist ideology amid massive economic liberalization has reignited popular nationalism, with many ordinary Chinese citizens eager to witness China's restoration to its historical glory as the center of East Asian order. As an economic powerhouse armed with a nuclear deterrent, China is well aware that neither the West nor its neighbors can afford a direct confrontation. From a military standpoint, the hardliners in China believe that they can afford to constantly push the boundaries of their territorial claims without triggering a massive backlash. Their strategic calculus is not based on chess, which places a premium on decisive victory, but on the ancient Chinese game of Go. As veteran Filipino journalist Narciso Reyes argues, a Go-inspired strategy aims at gaining "more territory than your adversary" and, in contrast to chess-like strategies, represents a "low-risk, incremental

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undertaking involving the consolidation of gains, focusing its attack on the enemy's weak points and group, and avoiding their strong positions." After all, it might take decades before China can credibly match the conventional capabilities of the U.S. As China confronts the prospect of a regional counter-alliance comprising Japan, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Australia, Singapore and the U.S., the moderates within the Chinese leadership can once again reassert Deng's emphasis on self-discipline, humility, and strategic restraint. But the advent of popular nationalism combined with China's continued struggle with shoring up its domestic legitimacy amid a difficult period of economic reform could prevent a moderate recalibration of China's territorial posturing. It will take immense political will and creative diplomacy by disputing countries to prevent the tragedy of a great power confrontation in Asia. At the end of the day, China is a legitimate powerhouse that should be peacefully integrated into the the emerging global order.

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China's Military Chiefs Lecture the Visiting U.S. Defense Secretary By Bruce Einhorn April 09, 2014 U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is visiting Beijing, and yesterday he got an earful about China‘s favorite bête noir: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Chinese are waging rhetorical war against Japan‘s nationalist leader, who spent much of last year traveling around the region and courting support from other Asian countries that feel threatened by China‘s rise. Now Hagel enters the scene after having dared to express support for Japan—and criticism of China—shortly before arriving in Beijing. That evidently was too much for some Chinese military officials. After meeting the Pentagon boss, Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan made sure to emphasize China‘s determination to stick to a hard line in the dispute with its longtime rival. ―We will not compromise, nor concede, nor trade on territory and sovereignty,‖ he said, according to a report in the official China Daily newspaper. Hagel may have been hoping for some sign of flexibility from the Chinese in their dispute over a collection of deserted rocks in the East China Sea, but Chang said he shouldn‘t bother. ―We will not tolerate these being infringed upon,‖ the Chinese defense chief declared, ―even the least bit.‖ And Chang wasn‘t the only official souring Hagel‘s welcome. Fan Changlong, one of the country‘s top military officials, reprimanded Hagel for criticizing China‘s unilateral declaration of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea. ―I can tell you, frankly,‖ the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission told Hagel, ―the Chinese people, including myself, are dissatisfied with such remarks.‖ The men running the People‘s Liberation Army have good reason to be in a testy mood. China has territorial disputes with many of its neighbors, some of which are treaty allies of the U.S., and as China attempts to throw its weight around its backyard, the U.S. is there to backstop these rivals. And it‘s not just U.S. support for Japan that irks Chinese leaders. The Philippines, one of several Southeast Asian countries with territorial disputes with China, is another American ally. President Benigno Aquino‘s government took to the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration on March 30 to challenge Chinese claims in the South China Sea. The response from Beijing was to dismiss the court‘s authority to hear the case in the first place.

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That plays into the hands of Japan‘s Abe, who wants other Asian countries to join Japan in standing up to China. The rejection of the Court of Arbitration‘s authority feeds the impression that a country that decides to annex the entire South China Sea and declare an air-defense zone in the East China Sea just wants to play by its own rules. ―China‘s refusal to join the arbitration will cost it both from a legal standpoint and public-opinion view,‖ Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political & Electoral Reform in Manila, told Bloomberg News. ―It will be viewed by the global community as a rogue state that doesn‘t recognize international law.‖ Compare China‘s treatment of the court with the way Japan has reacted to a legal setback of its own. The day after the Philippines made its argument to the Court of Arbitration, the International Court of Justice, another United Nations body that meets in the Hague, ruled that Japan must halt its annual whale hunt in the Southern Ocean. The Japanese government quickly announced it was calling off next year‘s hunt. Japan, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Koji Tsuruoka, will ―abide by the judgment of the court as a state that places great importance on the international legal order.‖ The whale hunt was already an embarrassment for the Japanese, so Abe is probably relieved an outside court has given him a reason to call it off. At the same time, the court provided a welcome opportunity for Abe to show that Japan, unlike a certain neighbor, is an Asian power that‘s ready to follow international law.

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Can China Rise Peacefully? John J. Mearsheimer | April 8, 2014 (Editor‘s Note: The following is the new concluding chapter of Dr. John J. Mearsheimer‘s book The Tragedy of the Great Power Politics. A new, updated edition was released on April 7 and is available via Amazon.) With the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, the United States emerged as the most powerful state on the planet. Many commentators said we are living in a unipolar world for the first time in history, which is another way of saying America is the only great power in the international system. If that statement is true, it makes little sense to talk about great-power politics, since there is just one great power. But even if one believes, as I do, that China and Russia are great powers, they are still far weaker than the United States and in no position to challenge it in any meaningful way. Therefore, interactions among the great powers are not going to be nearly as prominent a feature of international politics as they were before 1989, when there were always two or more formidable great powers competing with each other. To highlight this point, contrast the post–Cold War world with the first ninety years of the twentieth century, when the United States was deeply committed to containing potential peer competitors such as Wilhelmine Germany, imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. During that period, the United States fought two world wars and engaged with the Soviet Union in an intense security competition that spanned the globe. After 1989, however, American policymakers hardly had to worry about fighting against rival great powers, and thus the United States was free to wage wars against minor powers without having to worry much about the actions of the other great powers. Indeed, it has fought six wars since the Cold War ended: Iraq (1991), Bosnia (1995), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001–present), Iraq again (2003–11), and Libya (2011). It has also been consumed with fighting terrorists across the globe since September 11, 2001. Not surprisingly, there has been little interest in great-power politics since the Soviet threat withered away. The rise of China appears to be changing this situation, however, because this development has the potential to fundamentally alter the architecture of the international

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system. If the Chinese economy continues growing at a brisk clip in the next few decades, the United States will once again face a potential peer competitor, and great-power politics will return in full force. It is still an open question as to whether China‘s economy will continue its spectacular rise or even continue growing at a more modest, but still impressive, rate. There are intelligent arguments on both sides of this debate, and it is hard to know who is right. But if those who are bullish on China are correct, it will almost certainly be the most important geopolitical development of the twenty-first century, for China will be transformed into an enormously powerful country. The attendant question that will concern every maker of foreign policy and student of international politics is a simple but profound one: can China rise peacefully? The aim of this chapter is to answer that question. To predict the future in Asia, one needs a theory of international politics that explains how rising great powers are likely to act and how the other states in the system will react to them. We must rely on theory because many aspects of the future are unknown; we have few facts about the future. Thomas Hobbes put the point well: ―The present only has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only, but things to come have no being at all.‖ Thus, we must use theories to predict what is likely to transpire in world politics. Offensive realism offers important insights into China‘s rise. My argument in a nutshell is that if China continues to grow economically, it will attempt to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. The United States, however, will go to enormous lengths to prevent China from achieving regional hegemony. Most of Beijing‘s neighbors, including India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, and Vietnam, will join with the United States to contain Chinese power. The result will be an intense security competition with considerable potential for war. In short, China‘s rise is unlikely to be tranquil. It is important to emphasize that my focus is not on how China will behave in the immediate future, but instead on how it will act in the longer term, when it will be far more powerful than it is today. The fact is that present-day China does not possess significant military power; its military forces are inferior to those of the United States. Beijing would be making a huge mistake to pick a fight with the U.S. military nowadays. Contemporary China, in other words, is constrained by the global balance of power, which is clearly stacked in America‘s favor. Among other advantages, the United States has many consequential allies around the world, while China has virtually none. But we are not concerned with that situation here. Instead, the focus is on a future world in which the balance of power has shifted sharply against the United States, where China controls much more relative power than it does today, and where China is in roughly the same economic and military league as the United States. In essence, we are talking about a world in which China is much less constrained than it is today.

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The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. The next section contains a brief review of the core elements of my theory, which are laid out in detail in Chapter 2. I then summarize my discussion of America‘s drive for hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, which is considered at length in Chapter 7. It is clear from this story that the United States has acted according to the dictates of offensive realism for most of its history. The subsequent section focuses on how an increasingly powerful China is likely to behave. I maintain that it, too, will act according to my theory, which is another way of saying it will effectively emulate the United States. In the next section, I explain why the United States as well as Beijing‘s neighborsare likely to form a balancing coalition to contain China. Then I consider the chances that a Sino-American war will break out, making the argument that it is more likely than a war between the superpowers was during the Cold War. In the penultimate section, I attempt to refute the two main counterarguments to my gloomy forecast. Finally, I argue in a brief conclusion that the best reason to think my prognosis may be wrong has to do with the limits of social science theory. OFFENSIVE REALISM IN BRIEF In its simplest form, my theory maintains that the basic structure of the international system forces states concerned about their security to compete with each other for power. The ultimate goal of every great power is to maximize its share of world power and eventually dominate the system. In practical terms, this means that the most powerful states seek to establish hegemony in their region of the world while also ensuring that no rival great power dominates another area. The theory begins with five assumptions about the world, which are all reasonable approximations of reality. First of all, states are the key actors in international politics, and no higher authority stands above them. There is no ultimate arbiter or leviathan in the system that states can turn to if they get into trouble and need help. This is called an anarchic system, as opposed to a hierarchic one. The next two assumptions deal with capabilities and intentions, respectively. All states have offensive military capabilities, although some have more than others, indeed sometimes many more than others. Capabilities are reasonably easy to measure because they are largely composed of material objects that can be seen, assessed, and counted. Intentions are a different matter. States can never be certain about the intentions of other states, because intentions are inside the heads of leaders and thus virtually impossible to see and difficult to measure. In particular, states can never know with complete confidence whether another state might have its gun sights on them for one reason or another. The problem of discerning states‘ intentions is especially acute when one ponders their future intentions, since it is almost impossible to know who the leaders of any country will be five or more years from now, much less what they will think about foreign policy.

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The theory also assumes that states rank survival as their most important goal. This is not to say it is their only goal, for states invariably have numerous ambitions. However, when push comes to shove, survival trumps all other goals, basically because if a state does not survive, it cannot pursue those other goals. Survival means more than merely maintaining a state‘s territorial integrity, although that goal is of fundamental importance; it also means preserving the autonomy of a state‘s policymaking process. Finally, states are assumed to be rational actors, which is to say they are reasonably effective at designing strategies that maximize their chances of survival. These assumptions, when combined, cause states to behave in particular ways. Specifically, in a world where there is some chance—even just a small one—that other states might have malign intentions as well as formidable offensive military capabilities, states tend to fear each other. That fear is compounded by what I call the ―9-1-1‖ problem—the fact that there is no night watchman in an anarchic system whom states can call if trouble comes knocking at their door. Accordingly, they recognize they must look out for their own survival, and the best way to do that is to be especially powerful. The logic here is straightforward: the more powerful a state is relative to its competitors, the less likely its survival will be at risk. No country in the Western Hemisphere, for example, would dare attack the United States, because it is so much stronger than any of its neighbors. This reasoning drives great powers to look for opportunities to move the balance of power in their favor, as well as to prevent other states from gaining power at their expense. The ultimate aim is to be the hegemon: that is, the only great power in the system. When people talk about hegemony today, they are usually referring to the United States, which is often described as a global hegemon. However, I do not believe it is possible for any country—including the United States—to achieve global hegemony. One obstacle to world domination is that it is very difficult to conquer and subdue distant great powers, because of the problems associated with projecting and sustaining power over huge distances, especially across enormous bodies of water like the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This problem is less acute when dealing with minor powers, but even so, the power of nationalism makes it extremely difficult to occupy and rule a hostile country. The paramount goal a great power can attain is regional hegemony, which means dominating one‘s surrounding neighborhood. The United States, for example, is a regional hegemon in the Western Hemisphere. Although it is plainly the most powerful state on the planet by far, it is not a global hegemon. Once a state achieves regional hegemony, it has a further aim: to prevent other great powers from dominating their geographical regions. In other words, no regional hegemon wants a peer competitor. The main reason is that regional hegemons—because they are so dominant in their neighborhood—are free to roam around the globe and interfere in other regions of the world. This situation implies that regional hegemons are likely to try to cause trouble in each other‘s backyard. Thus, any state that achieves regional hegemony will want to make sure that no other great power achieves a similar position, freeing that counterpart to roam into its neighborhood.

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Most Americans never think about it, but one of the main reasons the United States is able to station military forces all around the globe and intrude in the politics of virtually every region is that it faces no serious threats in the Western Hemisphere. If the United States had dangerous foes in its own backyard, it would be much less capable of roaming into distant regions. But if a rival state achieves regional dominance, the goal will be to end its hegemony as expeditiously as possible. The reason is simple: it is much more propitious to have two or more great powers in all the other key areas of the world, so that the great powers there will have to worry about each other and thus be less able to interfere in the distant hegemon‘s own backyard. In sum, the best way to survive in international anarchy is to be the sole regional hegemon. THE AMERICAN PURSUIT OF HEGEMONY The United States is the only regional hegemon in modern history. Five other great powers—Napoleonic France, Wilhelmine Germany, imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union—made serious attempts to dominate their respective regions, but they all failed. The United States did not end up dominating the Western Hemisphere in a fit of absentmindedness. On the contrary, the Founding Fathers and their successors consciously and deliberately sought to achieve hegemony in the Americas. In essence, they acted in accordance with the dictates of offensive realism. When the United States finally gained its independence from Britain in 1783, it was a relatively weak country whose people were largely confined to the Atlantic seaboard. The British and Spanish empires surrounded the new country, and hostile Native American tribes controlled much of the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. It was a dangerous neighborhood for sure. Over the next seven decades, the Americans responded to this precarious situation by marching across their continent to the Pacific Ocean, creating a huge and powerful country in the process. To realize their so-called Manifest Destiny, they murdered large numbers of Native Americans and stole their land, bought Florida from Spain (1819) and what is now the center of the United States from France (1803). They annexed Texas in 1845 and then went to war with Mexico in 1846, taking what is today the American southwest from their defeated foe. They cut a deal with Britain to gain the Pacific northwest in 1846 and finally, in 1853, acquired additional territory from Mexico with the Gadsden Purchase. The United States also gave serious thought to conquering Canada throughout much of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the Americans invaded Canada in 1812 with that goal in mind. Some of the islands in the Caribbean would probably have become part of the United States had it not been for the fact that numerous slaves were in that area and the northern states did not want more slaveholding states in the Union. The plain truth is that in the nineteenth century the supposedly peace-loving United States compiled a

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record of territorial aggrandizement that has few parallels in recorded history. It is not surprising that Adolf Hitler frequently referred to America‘s westward expansion as a model after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. ―Here in the East,‖ he said, ―a similar process will repeat itself for a second time as in the conquest of America.‖ There was another job to be done to achieve regional hegemony: push the European great powers out of the Western Hemisphere and keep them out. This goal is what the Monroe Doctrine is all about. The United States was not powerful enough to act on those principles when President James Monroe articulated them in 1823; but by the end of the nineteenth century, the European great powers had become minor players in the Americas. The United States had achieved regional hegemony, which made it a remarkably secure great power. A great power‘s work is not done once it achieves regional hegemony. It must then ensure that no other great power follows suit and dominates its own area of the world. During the twentieth century, four countries had the capability to strive for regional hegemony: Wilhelmine Germany (1890–1918), imperial Japan (1937–45), Nazi Germany (1933–45), and the Soviet Union (1945–90). Not surprisingly, each tried to match what the United States had achieved in the Western Hemisphere in the preceding century. How did the United States react? In each case, it played a key role in defeating and dismantling those aspiring hegemons. The United States entered World War I in April 1917, when it looked as if Wilhelmine Germany might win the war and rule Europe. American troops played a critical role in tipping the balance against the Kaiserreich, which collapsed in November 1918. In the early 1940s, President Roosevelt went to great lengths to maneuver the United States into World War II to thwart Japan‘s ambitions in Asia and especially Germany‘s ambitions in Europe. After entering the war in December 1941, the United States helped to demolish both Axis powers. Since 1945, American policymakers have taken considerable pains to limit the military capabilities of Germany and Japan. Finally, the United States steadfastly worked to prevent the Soviet Union from dominating Eurasia during the Cold War and then helped relegate it to the scrap heap of history between 1989 and 1991. Shortly after the Cold War ended, George H. W. Bush‘s administration boldly stated in its famous ―Defense Guidance‖ of 1992, which was leaked to the press, that the United States was now the lone superpower in the world and planned to remain in that exalted position. American policymakers, in other words, would not tolerate the emergence of a new peer competitor. That same message was repeated in the equally-famous National Security Strategy issued by George W. Bush‘s administration in September 2002. There was much criticism of that document, especially its claims about the value of ―preemptive war.‖ But hardly a word of protest was raised regarding the assertion that

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the United States should check rising powers and maintain its commanding position in the global balance of power. The bottom line is that the United States worked hard for over a century to gain hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, and it did so for sound strategic reasons. After achieving regional dominance, it has worked equally hard to keep other great powers from controlling either Asia or Europe. What does America‘s past behavior tell us about the rise of China? In particular, how should we expect China to conduct itself as it grows more powerful? And how should we expect the United States and China‘s neighbors to react to a strong China? FOLLOWING IN UNCLE SAM‘S FOOTSTEPS If China continues its striking economic growth over the next few decades, it is likely to act in accordance with the logic of offensive realism, which is to say it will attempt to imitate the United States. Specifically, it will try to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. It will do so primarily because such domination offers the best way to survive under international anarchy. In addition, China is involved in various territorial disputes and the more powerful it is, the better able it will be to settle those disputes on terms favorable to Beijing. Furthermore, like the United States, a powerful China is sure to have security interests around the globe, which will prompt it to develop the capability to project military power into regions far beyond Asia. The Persian Gulf will rank high on the new superpower‘s list of strategically important areas, but so will the Western Hemisphere. Indeed, China will have a vested interest in creating security problems for the United States in the Western Hemisphere, so as to limit the American military‘s freedom to roam into other regions, especially Asia. Let us consider these matters in greater detail. Chinese Realpolitik If my theory is correct, China will seek to maximize the power gap with its neighbors, especially larger countries like India, Japan, and Russia. China will want to make sure it is so powerful that no state in Asia has the wherewithal to threaten it. It is unlikely that China will pursue military superiority so that it can go on a rampage and conquer other Asian countries. One major difference between China and the United States is that America started out as a rather small and weak country located along the Atlantic coastline that had to expand westward in order to become a large and powerful state that could dominate the Western Hemisphere. For the United States, conquest and expansion were necessary to establish regional hegemony. China, in contrast, is already a huge country and does not need to conquer more territory to establish itself as a regional hegemon on a par with the United States. Of course, it is always possible in particular circumstances that Chinese leaders will conclude that it is imperative to attack another country to achieve regional hegemony. It

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is more likely, however, that China will seek to grow its economy and become so powerful that it can dictate the boundaries of acceptable behavior to neighboring countries, and make it clear they will pay a substantial price if they do not follow the rules. After all, this is what the United States has done in the Western Hemisphere. For example, in 1962, the Kennedy administration let both Cuba and the Soviet Union know that it would not tolerate nuclear weapons in Cuba. And in 1970, the Nixon administration told those same two countries that building a Soviet naval facility at Cienfuegos was unacceptable. Furthermore, Washington has intervened in the domestic politics of numerous Latin American countries either to prevent the rise of leaders who were perceived to be anti-American or to overthrow them if they had gained power. In short, the United States has wielded a heavy hand in the Western Hemisphere. A much more powerful China can also be expected to try to push the United States out of the Asia-Pacific region, much as the United States pushed the European great powers out of the Western Hemisphere in the nineteenth century. We should expect China to devise its own version of the Monroe Doctrine, as imperial Japan did in the 1930s. In fact, we are already seeing inklings of that policy. For example, Chinese leaders have made it clear they do not think the United States has a right to interfere in disputes over the maritime boundaries of the South China Sea, a strategically important body of water that Beijing effectively claims as its own. China also objected in July 2010 when the United States planned to conduct naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, which is located between China and the Korean Peninsula. In particular, the U.S. Navy planned to send the aircraft carrier USS George Washington into the Yellow Sea. Those maneuvers were not directed at China; they were aimed instead at North Korea, which was believed to have sunk a South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan, in the Yellow Sea. However, vigorous protests from China forced the Obama administration to move the exercises out of the Yellow Sea and farther east into the Sea of Japan. Sounding a lot like President Monroe, a Chinese spokesperson succinctly summed up Beijing‘s thinking: ―We firmly oppose foreign military vessels or planes entering the Yellow Sea and other waters adjacent to China to engage in activities that would impact on its security and interests.‖ More generally, there is considerable evidence that Chinese leaders would like to develop the capability to push the U.S. Navy beyond the ―first island chain,‖ which is usually taken to include the Greater Sunda Islands, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan. If this were to happen, China would be able to seal off the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the Yellow Sea, and it would be almost impossible for the U.S. Navy to reach Korea in the event of war. There is even talk in China about eventually pushing the U.S. Navy beyond the ―second island chain,‖ which runs from the eastern coast of Japan to Guam and then down to the Moluccan Islands. It would also include the small island groups like the Bonin, Caroline, and Marianas Islands. If the Chinese were successful, Japan and the Philippines would be cut off from American naval support.

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These ambitious goals make good strategic sense for China (although this is not to say China will necessarily be able to achieve them). Beijing should want a militarily weak and isolated India, Japan, and Russia as its neighbors, just as the United States prefers a militarily weak Canada and Mexico on its borders. What state in its right mind would want other powerful countries located in its region? All Chinese surely remember what happened over the last century when Japan was powerful and China was weak. Furthermore, why would a powerful China accept U.S. military forces operating in its backyard? American policymakers object when other great powers send military forces into the Western Hemisphere, because they view those foreign forces as potential threats to American security. The same logic should apply to China. Why would China feel safe with U.S. forces deployed on its doorstep? Following the logic of the Monroe Doctrine, would not China‘s security be better served by pushing the American military out of the Asia-Pacific region? All Chinese surely remember what happened in the hundred years between the First Opium War (1839–42) and the end of World War II (1945), when the United States and the European great powers took advantage of a weak China and not only violated its sovereignty but also imposed unfair treaties on it and exploited it economically. Why should we expect China to act differently than the United States? Are the Chinese more principled than we are? More ethical? Are they less nationalistic? Less concerned about their survival? They are none of these things, of course, which is why China is likely to follow basic realist logic and attempt to become a regional hegemon in Asia. Although maximizing its prospects of survival is the principal reason China will seek to dominate Asia, there is another reason, related to Beijing‘s territorial disputes with some of its neighbors. As Taylor Fravel points out, China has managed to settle most of its border conflicts since 1949—seventeen out of twenty-three—in good part because it has been willing to make some significant concessions to the other side. Nevertheless, China has six outstanding territorial disagreements, and there is little reason—at least at this juncture—to think the involved parties will find a clever diplomatic solution to them. Probably China‘s most important dispute is over Taiwan, which Beijing is deeply committed to making an integral part of China once again. The present government on Taiwan, however, believes it is a sovereign country and has no interest in being reintegrated into China. Taiwanese leaders do not advertise their independence, for fear it will provoke China to invade Taiwan. In addition, China has ongoing disputes with Vietnam over control of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, and with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam over the Spratly Islands, which are also located in the South China Sea. More generally, China maintains that it has sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, a claim disputed not only by its neighbors but by the United States as well. Farther to the north in the East China Sea, Beijing has a bitter feud with Japan over who controls a handful of small islands that Tokyo calls the Senkaku Islands and China labels the Diaoyu Islands.

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Finally, China has land border disputes with Bhutan and India. In fact, China and India fought a war over the disputed territory in 1962, and the two sides have engaged in provocative actions on numerous occasions since then. For example, New Delhi maintains there were 400 Chinese incursions into Indian-controlled territory during 2012 alone; and in mid-April 2013, Chinese troops—for the first time since 1986—refused to return to China after they were discovered on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control. It appears that China has been stepping up its cross-border raids in recent years in response to increased Indian troop deployments and an accompanying growth in infrastructure. Given the importance of these territorial disputes to China, coupled with the apparent difficulty of resolving them through the give-and-take of diplomacy, the best way for China to settle them on favorable terms is probably via coercion. Specifically, a China that is much more powerful than any of its neighbors will be in a good position to use military threats to force the other side to accept a deal largely on China‘s terms. And if that does not work, China can always unsheathe the sword and go to war to get its way. It seems likely that coercion or the actual use of force is the only plausible way China is going to regain Taiwan. In short, becoming a regional hegemon is the best pathway for China to resolve its various territorial disputes on favorable terms. It is worth noting that in addition to these territorial disputes, China might become embroiled in conflict with its neighbors over water. The Tibetan Plateau, which is located within China‘s borders, is the third-largest repository of freshwater in the world, ranking behind the Arctic and Antarctica. Indeed, it is sometimes referred to as the ―third pole.‖ It is also the main source of many of Asia‘s great rivers, including the Brahmaputra, the Irrawaddy, the Mekong, the Salween, the Sutlej, the Yangtze, and the Yellow. Most of these rivers flow into neighboring countries, where they have a profound effect on the daily lives of many millions of people. In recent years, Beijing has shown much interest in rerouting water from these rivers to heavily populated areas in eastern and northern China. Toward that end, China has built canals, dams, irrigation systems, and pipelines. This plan is in its early stages and has yet to change the flow of these rivers in a meaningful fashion. But the potential for trouble is substantial, because the neighboring countries downstream are likely to see a marked reduction in their water supply over time, which could have devastating economic and social consequences. For example, the Chinese are interested in diverting the Brahmaputra River northward into the dying Yellow River. If this happens, it would cause major problems in India and especially in Bangladesh. China is also working to redirect water from the Mekong River, a diversion that is almost certain to cause big problems in Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. In its efforts to begin rerouting the rivers flowing out of the Tibetan Plateau, China has acted unilaterally and shown little interest in building international institutions that can help manage the ensuing problems. Given that water is becoming an increasingly

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scarce resource in Asia, this problem is likely to get worse with time and, given the enormous stakes involved, might even lead to war between China and one or more of its neighbors. In addition to pursuing regional hegemony, a rising China will have strategic interests outside of Asia, just as the United States has important interests beyond the Western Hemisphere. In keeping with the dictates of offensive realism, China will have good reason to interfere in the politics of the Americas so as to cause Washington trouble in its own backyard, thus making it more difficult for the U.S. military to move freely around the world. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union formed a close alliance with Cuba in good part for the purpose of interfering in America‘s backyard. In the future, relations between the United States and a country like Brazil will perhaps worsen, creating an opportunity for China to form close ties with Brazil and maybe even station military forces in the Western Hemisphere. Additionally, China will have powerful incentives to forge ties with Canada and Mexico and do whatever it can to weaken America‘s dominance in North America. Its aim will not be to threaten the American homeland directly, but rather to distract the United States from looking abroad and force it to focus increased attention on its own neighborhood. This claim may sound implausible at present, but remember that the Soviets tried to put nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba in 1962, had more than 40,000 troops in Cuba that same year, and also provided Cuba with a wide variety of sophisticated conventional weapons. And do not forget that the United States already has a huge military presence in China‘s backyard. China will obviously want to limit America‘s ability to project power elsewhere, in order to improve Beijing‘s prospects of achieving regional hegemony in Asia. However, China has other reasons for wanting to pin down the United States as much as possible in the Western Hemisphere. In particular, China has major economic and political interests in Africa, which seem likely to increase in the future. Even more important, China is heavily dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf, and that dependence is apt to grow significantly over time. China, like the United States, is almost certain to treat the Persian Gulf as a vital strategic interest, which means Beijing and Washington will eventually engage in serious security competition in that region, much as the two superpowers did during the Cold War. Creating trouble for the United States in the Western Hemisphere will limit its ability to project power into the Persian Gulf and Africa. To take this line of analysis a step further, most of the oil that China imports from the Gulf is transported by sea. For all the talk about moving that oil by pipelines and railroads through Myanmar and Pakistan, the fact is that maritime transport is a much easier and cheaper option. However, for Chinese ships to reach the Gulf as well as Africa from China‘s major ports along its eastern coast, they have to get from the South China Sea into the Indian Ocean, which are separated by various Southeast Asian

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countries. The only way for Chinese ships to move between these two large bodies of water is to go through three major passages. Specifically, they can go through the Strait of Malacca, which is surrounded by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, or they can go farther south and traverse either the Lombok or the Sunda Strait, each of which cuts through Indonesia and leads into the open waters of the Indian Ocean just to the northwest of Australia. Chinese ships then have to traverse the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea to reach the Persian Gulf. After that, they have to return to China via the same route. Chinese leaders will surely want to control these sea lines of communication, just as the United States emphasizes the importance of controlling its primary sea routes. Thus, it is hardly surprising that there is widespread support in China for building a blue-water navy, which would allow China to project power around the world and control its main sea lines of communication. In brief, if China continues its rapid economic growth, it will almost certainly become a superpower, which means it will build the power-projection capability necessary to compete with the United States around the globe. The two areas to which it is likely to pay the greatest attention are the Western Hemisphere and the Persian Gulf, although Africa will also be of marked importance to Beijing. In addition, China will undoubtedly try to build military and naval forces that would allow it to reach those distant regions, much the way the United States has pursued sea control. Why China Cannot Disguise Its Rise One might argue that, yes, China is sure to attempt to dominate Asia, but there is a clever strategy it can pursue to achieve that end peacefully. Specifically, it should follow Deng Xiaoping‘s famous maxim that China keep a low profile and avoid becoming embroiled in international conflicts as much as possible. His exact words were ―Hide our capacities and bide our time, but also get some things done.‖ The reason it makes sense for China to bide its time is that if it avoids trouble and merely continues growing economically, it will eventually become so powerful that it can just get its way in Asia. Its hegemony will be a fait accompli. But even if that does not happen and China eventually has to use force or the threat of force to achieve hegemony and resolve its outstanding disputes, it will still be well positioned to push its neighbors and the United States around. Starting a war now, or even engaging in serious security competition, makes little sense for Beijing. Conflict runs the risk of damaging the Chinese economy; moreover, China‘s military would not fare well against the United States and its current allies. It is better for China to wait until its power has increased and it is in a better position to take on the American military. Simply put, time is on China‘s side, which means it should pursue a low-key foreign policy so as not to raise suspicion among its neighbors. In practice, this means China should do whatever it can to signal to the outside world that it has benign intentions and does not plan to build formidable and threatening

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military forces. In terms of rhetoric, Chinese leaders should constantly emphasize their peaceful intentions and make the case that China can rise peacefully because of its rich Confucian culture. At the same time, they should work hard to keep Chinese officials from using harsh language to describe the United States and other Asian countries, or from making threatening statements toward them. In terms of actual behavior, China should not initiate any crises with its neighbors or the United States, or add fuel to the fire if another country provokes a crisis with China. For example, Beijing should go out of its way to avoid trouble over sovereignty issues regarding the South China Sea and the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. It should also do what it can to limit defense spending, so as not to appear threatening, while working to increase economic intercourse with its neighbors as well as the United States. Chinese leaders, according to this logic, should emphasize that it is all to the good that China is growing richer and economic interdependence is on the rise, because those developments will serve as a powerful force for peace. After all, starting a war in a tightly connected and prosperous world is widely believed to be the equivalent of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Finally, China should play an active and cooperative role in as many international institutions as possible and work with the United States to keep the North Korean problem under control. While this approach is intuitively attractive, it will not work in practice. Indeed, we already have evidence that China cannot successfully employ Deng Xiaoping‘s prescribed foreign policy over the long run. Before 2009, Beijing did a good job of keeping a low profile and not generating fear either among its neighbors or in the United States. Since then, however, China has been involved in a number of contentious territorial disputes and is increasingly seen as a serious threat by other countries in Asia. This deterioration in China‘s relations with other countries is due in part to the fact that, no matter what Beijing does to signal good intentions, they cannot be sure what its real intentions are now, let alone in the future. Indeed, we cannot know who will be in charge of Chinese foreign policy in the years ahead, much less what their intentions will be toward other countries in the region or the United States. On top of that, China has serious territorial disputes with a number of its neighbors. Therefore, China‘s neighbors already focus mainly on Beijing‘s capabilities, which means they look at its rapidly growing economy and increasingly formidable military forces. Not surprisingly, many other countries in Asia will become deeply worried because they know they are probably going to end up living next door to a superpower that might one day have malign intentions toward them. This problem is exacerbated by the ―security dilemma,‖ which tells us that the measures a state takes to increase its own security usually wind up decreasing the security of other states. When a country adopts a policy or builds weapons that it thinks are defensive in nature, potential rivals invariably think that those steps are offensive in nature. For example, when the United States moves aircraft carriers near the Taiwan Strait—as it did in 1996—or when it redeploys submarines to the western Pacific,

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American leaders honestly believe those moves are defensive in nature. China, on the other hand, sees them as an offensive strategy of encirclement, not as part of a defensive strategy of containment. Thus, it is not surprising that the Economist reported in 2009, ―A retired Chinese admiral likened the American navy to a man with a criminal record ‗wandering just outside the gate of a family home.‘‖ All of this is to say that almost anything China does to improve its military capabilities will be seen in Beijing as defensive in nature, but in Tokyo, Hanoi, and Washington it will appear offensive in nature. That means China‘s neighbors are likely to interpret any steps it takes to enhance its military posture as evidence that Beijing not only is bent on acquiring significant offensive capabilities but has offensive intentions as well. And that includes instances where China is merely responding to steps taken by its neighbors or the United States to enhance their fighting power. Such assessments make it almost impossible for Chinese leaders to implement Deng Xiaoping‘s clever foreign policy. In addition, China‘s neighbors understand that time is not working in their favor, as the balance of power is shifting against them as well as the United States. They therefore have an incentive to provoke crises over disputed territorial claims now, when China is relatively weak, rather than wait until it becomes a superpower. It seems clear that Beijing has not provoked the recent crises with its neighbors. As Cui Tiankai, one of China‘s leading diplomats, puts it, ―We never provoked anything. We are still on the path of peaceful development. If you look carefully at what happened in the last couple of years, you will see that others started all the disputes.‖ He is essentially correct. It is China‘s neighbors, not Beijing, that have been initiating most of the trouble in recent years. Nevertheless, it is mainly China‘s response to these crises that has caused its neighbors as well as the United States to view China in a more menacing light than was the case before 2009. Specifically, Chinese leaders have felt compelled to react vigorously and sometimes harshly because the disputes ―concern China‘s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and there is strong public sentiment on these issues.‖ As Suisheng Zhao notes, since 2008, the Chinese government ―has become increasingly reluctant to constrain the expression of popular nationalism and more willing to follow the popular nationalist calls for confrontation against the Western powers and its neighbors.‖ This means in practice that Beijing boldly restates its claims and emphasizes not only that there is no room for compromise but that it will fight to defend what it considers to be sovereign Chinese territory. In some cases, the Chinese feel compelled to deploy military or paramilitary forces to make their position crystal clear, as happened in April 2012, when a crisis flared up between China and the Philippines over control of Scarborough Shoal, a small island in the South China Sea. The same kind of intimidating behavior was on display after September 2012, when China and Japan became embroiled in a crisis over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The Chinese government has also shown little hesitation in threatening or employing economic sanctions against its rivals. Naturally, such hard-nosed pronouncements and actions

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raise the temperature and undermine Chinese efforts to pursue a low-profile foreign policy. Finally, at the most basic level, the United States and almost all of China‘s neighbors have powerful incentives to contain its rise, which means they will carefully monitor its growth and move to check it sooner rather than later. Let us look more closely at how the United States and the other countries in Asia are likely to react to China‘s ascendancy. THE COMING BALANCING COALITION The historical record clearly demonstrates how American policymakers will react if China attempts to dominate Asia. Since becoming a great power, the United States has never tolerated peer competitors. As it demonstrated throughout the twentieth century, it is determined to remain the world‘s only regional hegemon. Therefore, the United States will go to great lengths to contain China and do what it can to render it incapable of ruling the roost in Asia. In essence, the United States is likely to behave toward China largely the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War. China‘s neighbors are certain to fear its rise as well, and they, too, will do whatever they can to prevent it from achieving regional hegemony. Indeed, there is already substantial evidence that countries like India, Japan, and Russia, as well as smaller powers like Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam, are worried about China‘s ascendancy and are looking for ways to contain it. In the end, they will join an American-led balancing coalition to check China‘s rise, much the way Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and eventually China, joined forces with the United States during the Cold War to contain the Soviet Union. Uncle Sam versus the Dragon China is still far from the point where it has the military capability to make a run at regional hegemony. This is not to deny there are good reasons to worry about potential conflicts breaking out today over issues like Taiwan and the South China Sea; but that is a different matter. The United States obviously has a deep-seated interest in making sure that China does not become a regional hegemon. Of course, this leads to a critically important question: what is America‘s best strategy for preventing China from dominating Asia? The optimal strategy for dealing with a rising China is containment. It calls for the United States to concentrate on keeping Beijing from using its military forces to conquer territory and more generally expand its influence in Asia. Toward that end, American policymakers would seek to form a balancing coalition with as many of China‘s neighbors as possible. The ultimate aim would be to build an alliance structure along the lines of NATO, which was a highly effective instrument for containing the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The United States would also work to maintain its domination of the world‘s oceans, thus making it difficult for China to project power

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reliably into distant regions like the Persian Gulf and, especially, the Western Hemisphere. Containment is essentially a defensive strategy, since it does not call for starting wars against China. In fact, containment is an alternative to war against a rising China. Nevertheless, war is always a possibility. There is no reason the United States cannot have substantial economic intercourse with China at the same time it implements a containment strategy. After all, Britain, France, and Russia traded extensively with Wilhelmine Germany in the two decades before World War I, although they had also created the Triple Entente for the purpose of containing Germany. Even so, there will probably be some restrictions on trade for national security reasons. More generally, China and the United States can cooperate on a variety of issues in the context of a containment strategy, but, at root, relations between the two countries will be competitive. Given its rich history as an offshore balancer, the ideal strategy for the United States would be to stay in the background as much as possible and let China‘s neighbors assume most of the burden of containing China. In essence, America would buck-pass to the countries located in Asia that fear China. But that is not going to happen, for two reasons. Most important, China‘s neighbors will not be powerful enough by themselves to check China. The United States will therefore have little choice but to lead the effort against China and focus much of its formidable power on that goal. Furthermore, great distances separate many of the countries in Asia that will be part of the balancing coalition against China—think of India, Japan, and Vietnam. Thus, Washington will be needed to coordinate their efforts and fashion an effective alliance system. Of course, the United States was in a similar situation during the Cold War, when it had no choice but to assume the burden of containing the Soviet Union in Europe as well as in Northeast Asia. In essence, offshore balancers must come onshore when the local powers cannot contain the potential hegemon by themselves. There are three alternative strategies to containment. The first two aim at thwarting China‘s rise either by launching a preventive war or by pursuing policies aimed at slowing Chinese economic growth. Neither strategy, however, is a viable option for the United States. The third alternative, rollback, is a feasible strategy, but the payoff would be minimal. Preventive war is an unworkable option simply because China has a nuclear deterrent. The United States is not going to launch a devastating strike against the homeland of a country that can retaliate against it or its allies with nuclear weapons. But even if China did not have nuclear weapons, it would still be hard to imagine any American president launching a preventive war. The United States is certainly not going to invade China, which has a huge army; and crippling China with massive air strikes would almost certainly require the use of nuclear weapons. That would mean turning China into a ―smoking, radiating ruin,‖ to borrow a phrase from the Cold War that captures how the U.S. Air Force intended to deal with the Soviet Union in the event of a shooting war. The nuclear fallout alone from such an attack makes it a nonstarter. Furthermore, it is hard

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to know for sure whether China will continue its rapid rise, and thus whether it will eventually be a threat to dominate Asia. That uncertainty about the future also cuts against preventive war. Slowing down Chinese economic growth is certainly a more attractive option than nuclear war, but it, too, is not feasible. The main problem is that there is no practical way of slowing the Chinese economy without also damaging the American economy. One might argue that the Chinese economy would suffer greater damage, thus improving America‘s relative power position vis-à-vis China at the same time Chinese growth was slackening. But that is likely to happen only if the United States can find new trading partners and China cannot. Both conditions are necessary. Unfortunately, many countries around the world would be eager to increase their economic intercourse with China, thus filling the vacuum created by Washington‘s efforts to cut back its trade with and investment in China. For example, the countries in Europe, which would not be seriously threatened by China, would be prime candidates to take America‘s place and continue fueling Chinese economic growth. In short, because China cannot be isolated economically, the United States cannot slow its economic growth in any meaningful way. Britain actually faced the same problem with a rising Germany before World War I. It was widely recognized in the British establishment that Germany‘s economy was growing at a more rapid pace than Britain‘s, which meant the balance of power between the two countries was shifting in Germany‘s favor. A fierce debate ensued about whether Britain should try to slow German economic growth by sharply curtailing economic intercourse between the two countries. British policymakers concluded that this policy would hurt Britain more than Germany, in large part because Germany could turn to other countries that would take the exports it sent to Britain, as well as provide most of the imports Germany received from Britain. At the same time, the British economy would be badly hurt by the loss of imports from Germany, which would be hard to replace. So, Britain continued to trade with Germany—even though Germany gained power at Britain‘s expense—simply because it was the least-bad alternative. The third alternative strategy to containment is rollback, in which the United States would seek to weaken China by toppling regimes that are friendly to Beijing and perhaps even by fomenting trouble inside China. For example, if Pakistan is firmly in China‘s camp, which is certainly possible in the future, Washington could seek to help bring about regime change in Islamabad and help put in place a pro-American leader. Or the United States might attempt to stir up unrest inside China by supporting irredentist groups in Xinjiang or Tibet. Although the United States mainly pursued a containment strategy against the Soviet Union in the Cold War, we now know that it engaged in elements of rollback as well. Not only did it try to foment unrest inside the Soviet Union during the late 1940s and early 1950s, but it also tried to overthrow numerous government leaders around the world who were perceived to be pro-Soviet. In fact, Washington launched several covert

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operations targeting China directly in the 1950s and 1960s. These efforts at rollback had only a small effect on the balance of power between the two superpowers and did little to hasten the demise of the Soviet Union. Still, American leaders pursued rollback where and when they could, and there is little reason to think future policymakers in Washington will eschew this policy against a powerful China. However, containment will be America‘s most effective strategy by far. There is a small possibility China will eventually become so powerful that the United States will not be able to contain it and prevent it from dominating Asia, even if the American military remains forward deployed in that region. China might someday have far more latent power than any of the four potential hegemons the United States confronted in the twentieth century. In terms of both population size and wealth—the building blocks of military power—neither Wilhelmine Germany, nor imperial Japan, nor Nazi Germany, nor the Soviet Union came close to matching the United States. Given that China now has more than four times as many people as the United States and is projected to have more than three times as many in 2050, Beijing would enjoy a significant advantage in latent power if it had a per capita GNI (gross national income) equivalent to that of either Hong Kong or South Korea. All that latent power would allow China to gain a decisive military advantage over its principal rivals in Asia, especially when you consider that China would be operating in its backyard, while the Unites States would be operating more than 6,000 miles from California. In that circumstance, it is difficult to see how the United States could prevent China from becoming a regional hegemon. Moreover, China would probably be the more formidable superpower in the ensuing global competition with the United States. But even if China‘s GNI does not rise to those levels, and it ends up with not quite as much latent power as the United States, it would still be in a good position to make a run at hegemony in Asia. All of this tells us the United States has a profound interest in seeing Chinese economic growth slow considerably in the years ahead. That outcome might not be good for American prosperity, much less for global prosperity, but it would be good for American security, which is what matters most. What Will the Neighbors Do? Regarding China‘s neighbors, the key question is whether they will join forces with the United States and balance against China, or bandwagon with a rising China. Some observers might argue that there is a third option, which is to sit on the sidelines and remain neutral. It will not be possible, however, for countries in Asia to sit this one out. Almost every state will have to choose sides, not just because Beijing and Washington will put enormous pressure on them to choose their side, but also because most of those states—which are much weaker than either China or the United States—will reasonably want to have a powerful protector in the event their security is threatened. Given the survival imperative, most of China‘s neighbors will opt to balance against it, much the way most of the countries in Northeast Asia and Europe that were free to

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choose in the Cold War opted to join with the United States against the Soviet Union. The reason is simple: China poses a more serious threat to most countries in Asia than the United States does, and states invariably balance against their most dangerous foe, not bandwagon with it. China is more threatening for largely geographical reasons. Specifically, China is a local power in Asia; it sits either right next door or within easy striking distance of the countries in its neighborhood. The same was true of the Soviet Union during the Cold War; it was a direct threat to conquer West Germany and Japan, among other countries in Europe and Northeast Asia. The United States, on the other hand, is much less threatening to China‘s neighbors. Although America is obviously the most powerful player in the Asia-Pacific region and will remain so for some time, it is a distant great power that has never had substantial territorial designs in either Asia or Europe. The main reason is that it is too far away to engage in conquest in those regions. The United States has to project its power over huge distances as well as two massive bodies of water—the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans—just to reach those strategically important regions. Thus, there is little danger of being swallowed up or dominated by the United States, as there was with the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1990, and will be with China as it grows more powerful. None of this is to deny that the United States has used military force against various countries in Asia and Europe. After all, it fought two major wars in Asia (Korea and Vietnam) during the Cold War. The key point, however, is that the American military did not threaten to conquer and subjugate those countries, as a potent China might do. Another dimension of America‘s position in Asia highlights why it is less threatening than China‘s. As a distant great power, the United States has the option of greatly reducing its military presence in that region, and it could conceivably bring all of its troops home. China obviously does not have that option. In fact, the greatest fear China‘s neighbors have regarding the United States is that it will not be there for them in a crisis, not that the American military might attack and vanquish them. This is the main reason why the Obama administration announced in the fall of 2011 that the United States would ―pivot to Asia,‖ which is a pithy way of saying it would actually increase its presence in the region. Washington was trying to reassure its Asian allies that, despite its focus on the greater Middle East and the closely related war on terror in the decade after September 11, they could still depend on the United States to guard their backs. One might argue that China has an ace in the hole that will allow it to force at least some of its neighbors not to balance with the United States and instead bandwagon with Beijing. A number of Asian countries, including Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, trade extensively with China and heavily invest there as well. Thus, their prosperity is dependent on their maintaining good relations with China. This situation, so the argument goes, gives China significant economic leverage over those trading partners, which means that if they join an American-led balancing coalition, Beijing can threaten to cut economic ties and undermine their prosperity. Indeed, it should be able to use that economic leverage to coerce those countries into joining forces with China.

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It is important to emphasize that in this story the Chinese economy is not seriously hurt if economic intercourse with one or more of these neighbors is curtailed or even halted. In other words, this is not a case of mutual vulnerability, which is what underpins the theory of economic interdependence, a subject I deal with below. Here there is one-way vulnerability, which is what gives Beijing the capability to blackmail its neighbors and thus undermine or at least seriously weaken any anti-China balancing coalition the United States might try to organize. In essence, this is a situation in which economic and political-military considerations are in conflict; that raises an important question: which factor will ultimately prevail? My argument is that security considerations almost always trump economic considerations and that states opt for balancing over bandwagoning whenever they must choose between those strategies. The underlying logic of my position should be clear by now. Countries balance against powerful rivals because it is the best way to maximize their prospects of survival, which must be their highest goal. Bandwagoning with a more powerful state, in contrast, lessens the bandwagoner‘s prospects for survival, because the more formidable state is free to become even more powerful and thus more dangerous. The economic-coercion argument, however, has a different logic; it stresses prosperity over survival. The core claim is that a state with significant market power can seriously hurt the economy of the target state, and that the threat of economic punishment will be enough to coerce the vulnerable country into bandwagoning with the more powerful state. There is no question that severe economic pain is a scary prospect, but not surviving looms as an even greater peril. Survival, in other words, is a more powerful imperative than prosperity, which is why realist logic usually trumps arguments based on economic coercion, and why China‘s neighbors will balance against it. Indeed, there is already considerable evidence that countries like India, Japan, and Russia, along with smaller powers like Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam, are worried about China‘s ascendancy and are beginning to look for ways to contain it. India and Japan, for example, signed a ―Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation‖ in October 2008, mainly because they are worried about China‘s growing power. India and the United States, which had testy relations throughout the Cold War, have become good friends over the past decade, in large part because both fear China. In July 2010, the Obama administration, which is populated with individuals who preach to the world about the importance of human rights, announced that it was resuming relations with Indonesia‘s elite special forces, despite their rich history of human rights abuses. The reason for this shift is that Washington wants Indonesia on its side as China grows more powerful, and, as the New York Times reported, Indonesian officials ―dropped hints that the group might explore building ties with the Chinese military if the ban remained.‖ Singapore, which sits astride the critically important Strait of Malacca and worries about China‘s growing power, badly wants to improve its already close ties with the United States. Toward that end, it built a deepwater pier at its Changi Naval Base so that the U.S. Navy could operate an aircraft carrier out of Singapore if the need arose. And the

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decision by Japan in mid-2010 to allow the U.S. Marines to remain on Okinawa was driven in part by Tokyo‘s concerns about China‘s growing assertiveness in the region and the related need to keep the American security umbrella firmly in place over Japan. As China becomes more powerful, relations among China‘s neighbors will grow even closer, as will their relations with the United States. Finally, a word about Taiwan‘s future is in order. Given Taiwan‘s importance for controlling the sea-lanes in East Asia, the United States has a powerful incentive to prevent China from seizing it. Moreover, American policymakers care greatly about credibility and reputation, which makes it even less likely that the United States would abandon Taiwan. This is not to deny that China might eventually become so powerful that the U.S. military cannot defend that island. In the meantime, however, Taiwan is likely to be part of an American-led balancing coalition aimed at China, which will surely infuriate Chinese of all persuasions and intensify the security competition between Beijing and Washington. In sum, my theory says if China continues its striking economic growth over the next few decades, it is likely to end up in an intense security competition with the United States and its neighbors. I have said much about the specific policies we would expect the relevant actors to pursue. For example, we should expect to see China articulate its own version of the Monroe Doctrine and seek to push the U.S. military out of the Asia-Pacific region. And we should expect most of China‘s neighbors to join an American-led balancing coalition aimed at checking Beijing. But more must be said about what a security competition between China and the United States would look like. In particular, we need to know what indicators to keep an eye on in the years ahead to determine whether my prediction is proved correct. What Would Security Competition Look Like? If a Sino-American security competition developed, it would have twelve main ingredients. To begin with, there would be crises, which are major disputes between the two sides in which there is a serious threat that war will break out. Crises might not occur frequently, but it would be surprising if there were none over long stretches of time. Arms races would be another central feature of the rivalry. Both superpowers, as well as China‘s neighbors, would expend significant amounts of money on defense in order to gain an advantage over the other side and prevent it from gaining an advantage over them. We should expect to see proxy wars, in which Chinese and American allies fight each other, backed by their respective patrons. Beijing and Washington are also likely to be on the lookout for opportunities to overthrow regimes around the world that are friendly to the other side. Most of those efforts would be covert, although some would be overt. We should also see evidence of each side‘s pursuing a bait-and-bleed strategy when there is an opportunity to lure the other side into a costly and foolish war. And in cases where there is no baiting, but the other side nevertheless finds itself in a protracted war,

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we would expect to see its rival pursue a bloodletting strategy, in which it seeks to prolong the conflict as much as possible. Moving away from the battlefield, we would find abundant evidence of government officials in Beijing and Washington identifying the other side as their number one threat. Public and classified documents outlining military strategy would clearly depict the other country as a dangerous adversary that needs to be countered. Furthermore, American and Chinese think tanks that deal with national security issues would devote a large portion of their attention to scrutinizing the rival superpower and portraying it as a formidable and threatening adversary. Of course, some people in both countries will reject this confrontational approach and instead recommend deep-seated cooperation with the other side, perhaps even including appeasement of the adversary on certain issues. Over time, we would expect these individuals to be marginalized in the discourse and policy debates. Beijing and Washington can also be expected to put travel restrictions on visitors from their rival, as the Soviet Union and the United States did during the Cold War. We would, furthermore, anticipate seeing the United States bar Chinese students from studying subjects at American universities that have direct relevance for the development of weapons and other technologies that might affect the balance of power between the two countries. In related moves, both countries would surely place selected export controls on goods and services that have a significant national security dimension. The likely model here for the United States is CoCom, which it established during the Cold War to limit the transfer of sensitive technologies to the Soviet Union. None of this is to deny the likelihood of substantial economic intercourse between China and the United States in the midst of their security competition. Nor is it to deny that the two superpowers will cooperate on a handful of issues. The key point, however, is that the relationship between the two countries will be conflictual at its root and that the struggle between them will manifest itself in the ways described above. Of course, my argument is not just that there will be an intense security competition but that there will also be a serious chance of war between China and the United States. Let us consider in more detail the possibility that China‘s rise will lead to a shooting war. IS WAR LIKELY? The United States and the Soviet Union fortunately never came to blows during the Cold War, although both countries fought wars against smaller states, some of which were allied with their rival. The fact that both sides had large nuclear arsenals is probably the key reason the superpowers never fought against each other. Nuclear weapons, after all, are a major force for peace simply because they are weapons of mass destruction. The consequences of their use are so horrible that it makes policymakers extremely cautious if they think there is even a small chance they might be used in a conflict.

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Given the history of the Cold War and given that China and the United States both have nuclear arsenals, one might surmise there is little chance those two countries will shoot at each other in the foreseeable future. That conclusion would be wrong, however. Although the presence of nuclear weapons certainly creates powerful incentives to avoid a major war, a future Sino-American competition in Asia will take place in a setting that is more conducive to war than was Europe during the Cold War. In particular, both geography and the distribution of power differ in ways that make war between China and the United States more likely than it was between the superpowers from 1945 to 1990. Of course, one cannot predict the likelihood of a Sino-American war with a high degree of certainty, but one can make informed estimates. The Geography of Asia Although the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States spanned the globe, its center of gravity was on the European continent, where massive armies and air forces equipped with nuclear weapons faced off against each other. Both superpowers cared greatly about two other regions, Northeast Asia and the Persian Gulf, but they cared the most about the balance of power in Europe. Indeed, the core of American and Soviet military power was located near what was called the Central Front, in the heart of Europe. Not surprisingly, when the Pentagon ran war games simulating a major superpower conflict, Europe was the centerpiece of the fight. In the thirty years prior to the Cold War, Europe was a remarkably deadly region; in fact, both the United States and the Soviet Union (Russia before 1917) fought on the same side in World War I as well as in World War II. Nevertheless, there was no war in Europe after 1945, and although there were a handful of crises over Berlin, they did not escalate to the use of force. The main reason is that a war in the center of Europe would probably have turned into World War III with nuclear weapons, because there was a serious prospect of inadvertent, if not purposeful, escalation to the nuclear level. No policymaker on either side was willing to countenance a conflict in which his or her country stood a reasonable chance of being annihilated. This terrifying prospect explains not only why Europe was so stable during the Cold War but also why the American and Soviet militaries never clashed with each other. The geography of Asia is fundamentally different from that of Europe in the Cold War. Most important, there is no equivalent of the Central Front in Asia to anchor stability, as China grows more powerful. Instead, Asia has a number of places where fighting might break out, but where the magnitude of any individual war would be nowhere near as great as it would have been in Europe between 1945 and 1990. This is due in large part to the fact that the likelihood of nuclear escalation in these potential conflicts is much smaller than it was in Europe during the Cold War. First of all, there were thousands of nuclear weapons in Europe, and they formed an integral part of NATO declaratory policy and military doctrine throughout the Cold War. Furthermore, it was widely believed that victory in the initial battles of a European conflict would cause a profound

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shift in the global balance of power; this conviction created powerful incentives for the side that was losing to use nuclear weapons to salvage the situation. Nuclear weapons are unlikely to play anywhere near as prominent a role in Asia‘s potential trouble spots. In effect, this means that the costs of all the likely wars in Asia will be significantly less than what would have been the costs of a war in the heart of Europe during the Cold War. Given that the likelihood of war increases as the potential costs decrease, this makes a Sino-American conflict more likely than was a Soviet-American war. One might argue that the risk of war is still low because the stakes in these potential Asian wars are rather small, thereby giving China and the United States little incentive to fight with each other. But, as discussed above, the stakes in a Sino-American security competition are enormous. China‘s security would be greatly enhanced if it drove the American military out of Asia and established regional hegemony, while the United States has a deep interest in maintaining its present position in Asia. Therefore, both parties will be sensitive to reputational concerns in virtually every crisis and unwilling to back down. In essence, leaders will tend to think that even though the prospective wars in Asia might be small-scale compared with a war on the Central Front, all those conflicts are nevertheless closely linked to one another, and thus it is imperative not to let the other side prevail in any crisis. At the same time, both parties will be prone to see the costs of using force as relatively low. This situation is not conducive to stability and peace in the region. Consider the Korean Peninsula, which is probably the only place where China and the United States might conceivably end up fighting a major conventional land war. The odds of such a conflict are low, but it is more likely than was a war between the superpowers in Europe. For one thing, it is not difficult to imagine scenarios where South and North Korea become involved in a war, and both China and the United States—which has about 19,000 troops stationed in South Korea—get dragged into the fight. After all, that is what happened in 1950; Chinese and American forces then fought against each other for almost three years. Furthermore, the scale of the war would be less in a future Korean conflict than it would have been in a NATO–Warsaw Pact conflict; that makes war in Asia more thinkable. In addition to Korea, one can imagine China and the United States fighting over control of Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and the sea lines of communication that run between China and the Persian Gulf. The costs associated with these potential conflicts (as with the one in Korea) would be nowhere near as great as the costs of a superpower war in the heart of Europe would have been during the Cold War. Furthermore, because a number of the possible conflict scenarios involve fighting at sea—where the risks of nuclear escalation are lower—it is easier to imagine war breaking out between China and the United States than between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. It is also worth noting that no territorial dispute between the superpowers—Berlin included—was as laden with intense nationalistic feelings as

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Taiwan is for China. Thus, it is not hard to imagine a war erupting over Taiwan, though the odds of that happening are not high. A final point about nuclear weapons is in order. The preceding discussion emphasized that war is more likely in Asia than it was in Europe during the Cold War, in part because of the reduced risk of escalation to the nuclear level. Nevertheless, there will always be some chance of inadvertent nuclear use in a future Asian war, and that possibility will work to buttress stability in a crisis. In other words, one should not think that nuclear weapons would have hardly any deterrent effect in Asia. Indeed, the mere presence of those weapons in the arsenals of the key countries in the region will have a significant impact on how the relevant leaders will think and act in a future crisis. Still, the likelihood of escalation, and even the consequences, will be much lower than would have been the case in a NATO–Warsaw Pact conflict, thus making a future conventional war involving China and the United States a more serious possibility. Polarity and War The second reason Asia is likely to be more war-prone than Europe was during the Cold War has to do with the different distribution of power between the two cases. Bipolarity prevailed in Europe, where the Soviet Union ruled the eastern half of the continent and the United States dominated the western half. One might think Asia is likely to be bipolar if China continues its rise, with the Americans on one side and the Chinese on the other. But this is unlikely, because there will be other great powers in Asia. Russia already qualifies as one, and if Japan gets nuclear weapons, it will as well. India, which now has a nuclear arsenal, is not far from the point where it will be considered a great power. All of this is to say that Asia will be a multipolar system. Indeed, it will be an unbalanced multipolar system, because China is likely to be much more powerful than all the other Asian great powers, and thus qualify as a potential hegemon. War is more likely in multipolarity than in bipolarity, in part because there are more great powers in multipolar systems and therefore more opportunities for great powers to fight with each other as well as with smaller countries. In addition, imbalances of power are more common in multipolarity, because the greater number of countries in multipolarity increases the chances that the underpinnings of military power will be distributed unevenly among them. And when you have power asymmetries, the strong are hard to deter when they are bent on aggression. Finally, there is greater potential for miscalculation in multipolarity, in terms of assessing both the resolve of opponents and the strength of rival coalitions. This is due in good part to the more fluid nature of international politics in a multipolar world, where there are shifting coalitions and significant potential for states to buck-pass to each other. To make matters worse, unbalanced multipolarity is the most dangerous distribution of power, because it contains a potential hegemon, which not only has markedly more power than any other state in the region but also has strong incentives to use the sword to gain hegemony. A potential hegemon can, moreover, elevate the level of fear among

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its rivals, which sometimes causes them to pursue risky strategies that might lead to war. In short, the bipolarity of the Cold War was a more peaceful architecture of power than the unbalanced multipolarity that lies ahead if China‘s economy continues to grow rapidly. In addition, the geography of the Central Front was more conducive to peace than is the geography of Asia. These two considerations taken together do not mean that a Sino-American war is sure to happen, but they do tell us it is more likely than was a Soviet-American war between 1945 and 1990. Communism and Nationalism One might counter this pessimistic assessment by arguing there was an ideological dimension to the Cold War that made it especially dangerous—communism versus liberal capitalism—which will be absent from the growing rivalry between China and the United States. For example, Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of modern Singapore, says, ―Unlike U.S.– Soviet relations during the Cold War, there is no irreconcilable ideological conflict between the United States and a China that has enthusiastically embraced the market. Sino-American relations are both cooperative and competitive. Competition between them is inevitable, but conflict is not.‖ Ideology of any sort, of course, falls outside the scope of my realist theory of international politics. Nevertheless, the subject merits some discussion because ideology doubtless played a role in fueling the Cold War, although a subsidiary one. The conflict was driven mainly by strategic considerations related to the balance of power, which were reinforced by the stark ideological differences between the superpowers. Furthermore, it seems clear that this potent ideological cleavage will not matter much in shaping future relations between Beijing and Washington. After all, China is now hooked on capitalism, and communism holds little attraction inside or outside of China. So this development appears to point toward a Sino-American security competition that will be less fearsome than the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. That is the good news. The bad news, however, is that a different ideology—nationalism—is likely to play a role in energizing the rivalry between China and the United States, as well as between China and its neighbors. Nationalism, which is the most powerful political ideology on the planet, holds that the modern world is divided into a multitude of distinct social groups called nations, each desiring its own state. This is not to say every nation gets its own state or to deny that many states have more than one nation living within their borders. The members of each nation have a strong sense of group loyalty, so powerful, in fact, that allegiance to the nation usually overrides all other forms of identity. Most members typically believe they belong to an exclusive community that has a rich history dominated by remarkable individuals and salient events, which can be triumphs as well as failures. But people do not simply take pride in their own nation; they also compare it with other nations, especially those they frequently interact with and know well.

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Chauvinism usually emerges as most people come to believe that their nation is superior to others and deserves special recognition. This sense of specialness sometimes leads nations to conclude that they are the ―chosen‖ people, a perspective that has a rich tradition in both China and the United States, among other countries. Nations at times go beyond feeling superior to other nations and wind up loathing them as well. I call this phenomenon ―hypernationalism,‖ which is the belief that other nations are not just inferior but are dangerous, and must be dealt with harshly, if not brutally. In such circumstances, contempt and hatred of the ―other‖ suffuses the nation and creates powerful incentives to use violence to eliminate the threat. Hypernationalism, in other words, can be a potent source of war. One of the main causes of hypernationalism is intense security competition, which tends to cause people in the relevant nation-states to demonize each other. Sometimes leaders use hypernationalism as part of a threat-inflation strategy designed to make their publics aware of a danger they might otherwise not fully appreciate. In other cases, hypernationalism bubbles up from below, mainly because the basic nastiness that accompanies security competition often causes the average citizen in one nation-state to despise almost everything about the rival nation-state. A major crisis can readily add fuel to the fire. Contemporary China is ripe for hypernationalism. In the years between Mao‘s decisive victory over the Kuomintang in 1949 and his death in 1976, communism and nationalism were powerful forces that worked hand in hand to shape almost every aspect of daily life in China. However, after Mao‘s passing, and certainly after the military crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989, communism lost much of its legitimacy with the Chinese public. In response, China‘s leaders have come to rely much more heavily on nationalism to maintain public support for the regime. It would be a mistake, however, to think that nationalism is merely propaganda purveyed by the leadership for the purpose of sustaining the public‘s allegiance to the state. In fact, many Chinese citizens passionately embrace nationalist ideas of their own volition. ―The 1990s,‖ as Peter Gries notes, ―witnessed the emergence of a genuinely popular nationalism in China that should not be conflated with state or official nationalism.‖ What makes nationalism in contemporary China such a potent force is that it is both a top-down and a bottom-up phenomenon. Not only has nationalism become a stronger force in China in recent years, its content has also changed in important ways. During Mao‘s rule, it emphasized the strengths of the Chinese people in the face of great adversity. They were portrayed as heroic fighters who had stood up to and ultimately defeated imperial Japan. Gries explains, ―This ‗heroic‘ or ‗victor‘ national narrative first served the requirements of Communist revolutionaries seeking to mobilize popular support in the 1930s and 1940s, and later served the nation-building goals of the People‘s Republic in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. . . . New China needed heroes.‖

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That proud narrative, however, has largely been abandoned over the past twenty-five years, replaced by one that represents China as a victim of aggression by the world‘s other great powers. In particular, great emphasis is placed on what the Chinese refer to as their ―century of national humiliation,‖ which runs from the First Opium War (1839–42) until the end of World War II in 1945. China is depicted during that period as a weak but noble country that was preyed upon by rapacious great powers and suffered deeply as a consequence. Among the foreign devils are Japan and the United States, which are said to have taken advantage of China at almost every turn. The theme of China as a helpless victim is not the only strand of Chinese nationalist thought. There are a number of positive stories as well. For example, Chinese of all persuasions take great pride in emphasizing the superiority of Confucian culture. Nevertheless, pride of place in Chinese present-day nationalist thought belongs to narratives that emphasize the ―century of nationalist humiliation,‖ which, as Gries notes, ―frame the ways that Chinese interact with the West today.‖ Indeed, ―for China‘s military, avenging humiliation remains a key goal.‖ We have already seen evidence of how China‘s lingering anger and resentment toward Japan and the United States can exacerbate a crisis and seriously damage relations between them. The accidental U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the 1999 Kosovo war was seen by most Chinese as just another example of a powerful country taking advantage of and humiliating China. It generated large protests and outrage against the United States in China. The Chinese reacted similarly in 2001, when an American spy plane collided with and downed a Chinese military aircraft over the South China Sea. And skirmishing between China and Japan over ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in 2012–13 ignited a firestorm of anti-Japanese protests across China, some of which were violent. The intensified security competition that lies ahead will only increase China‘s hostility toward Japan and the United States, and it is likely to turn into an acute case of hypernationalism. Of course, this development will, in turn, further intensify the security competition and heighten the possibility of war. In essence, ideology will matter in Asia in the future just as it mattered during the Cold War. But the content will be different, as hypernationalism in China, and possibly other Asian countries as well, will replace the dispute between communism and liberal capitalism. That said, the main driving force behind Sino-American relations in the decades ahead will be realist logic, not ideology. HOPE FOR A PEACEFUL RISE There are various counterarguments to my claim that China cannot rise peacefully. Indeed, one frequently hears two optimistic stories about the future relationship between China and the United States. The first is based on a cultural theory. Proponents claim that China‘s Confucian culture will allow a rapidly growing China to avoid an intense security competition with its neighbors as well as with the United States. The other argument is based on the familiar liberal theory of economic interdependence. Specifically, conflict is said to be unlikely because the major countries in Asia—as well

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as the United States—are economically intertwined, which means that if they fought with each other they would threaten the prosperity that is so important to all of them. On close inspection, however, neither of these theories provides a sound basis for avoiding trouble ahead in Asia. Confucian Pacifism An especially popular claim among Chinese is that their country can rise peacefully because it has a deeply Confucian culture. Confucianism, they argue, not only promotes moral virtue and harmony but also explicitly rules out acting aggressively toward neighboring countries. Instead, the emphasis is on self-defense. China, so the argument goes, has historically acted in accordance with the dictates of Confucianism and has not behaved like the European great powers, Japan, or the United States, which have launched offensive wars in pursuit of hegemony and generally acted according to the dictates of realism. China, in contrast, has behaved much more benignly toward other states: it has eschewed aggression and pursued ―humane authority‖ instead of ―hegemonic authority.‖ This perspective is popular among academics as well as policymakers in China. Many Chinese scholars like it because they see it as an alternative to the principal international relations theories, which are said to be Eurocentric and therefore oblivious to China‘s exceptional culture. Confucianism is obviously a China-centric theory. For example, Xin Li and Verner Worm write, ―Chinese culture advocates moral strength instead of military power, worships kingly rule instead of hegemonic rule, and emphasizes persuasion by virtue.‖ Yan Xuetong, who is probably China‘s best-known international relations theorist in the West, maintains, ―The rise of China will make the world more civilized. . . . The core of Confucianism is ‗benevolence‘. . . . This concept encourages Chinese rulers to adopt benevolent governance . . . rather than hegemonic governance. . . . The Chinese concept of ‗benevolence‘ will influence international norms and make international society more civilized.‖ Chinese policymakers offer similar arguments. For instance, the former premier Wen Jiabao told a Harvard audience in 2003, ―Peace loving has been a time-honored quality of the Chinese nation.‖ And one year later, President Hu Jintao declared, ―China since ancient times has had a fine tradition of sincerity, benevolence, kindness and trust towards its neighbors.‖ The clear implication of these comments is that China, unlike the other great powers in history, has acted like a model citizen on the world stage. There are two problems with this theory of Confucianism. First, it does not reflect how Chinese elites have actually talked and thought about international politics over their long history. In other words, it is not an accurate description of China‘s strategic culture over the centuries. More important, there is little historical evidence that China has acted in accordance with the dictates of Confucianism. On the contrary, China has behaved just like other great powers, which is to say it has a rich history of acting aggressively and brutally toward its neighbors.

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There is doubtless a prominent Confucian strand in Chinese culture going back more than 2,000 years. But as Alastair Iain Johnston points out, a second and more powerful strand is at play in Chinese thinking about international politics. He calls it the ―parabellum paradigm‖ and notes that it places ―a high degree of value on the use of pure violence to resolve security conflicts.‖ This paradigm, he emphasizes, ―does not make significantly different predictions about behavior from that of a simple structural realpolitik model.‖ That is why he uses the term ―parabellum paradigm‖ interchangeably with ―cultural realism,‖ which is the title of his book. Very important is Johnston‘s contention that Confucianism and cultural realism ―cannot claim separate but equal status in traditional Chinese strategic thought. Rather, the parabellum paradigm is, for the most part, dominant.‖ The discussion up to now has assumed that Confucianism is essentially peaceful and does not advocate initiating war for any reason. But that assumption is not true. As Yan Xuetong makes clear, the high premium Confucianism places on morality does not rule out employing war as an instrument of statecraft. Indeed, it mandates that China be willing to wage just wars when another country is behaving in ways that China‘s leaders deem immoral. Yan writes, ―Some claim that Confucius and Mencius advocate ‗no war‘ and are opposed to all war. In fact, they are not opposed to all war, only to unjust wars. They support just wars.‖ He further says, ―Confucius thinks that reliance on preaching to uphold the norms of benevolence and justice is inadequate. Hence he thinks the way of war should be employed to punish the princes who go against benevolence and justice.‖ Of course, this justification for war is remarkably pliable. As almost every student of international politics knows, political leaders and policymakers of all persuasions are skilled in figuring out clever ways of defining a rival country‘s behavior as unjust or morally depraved. Hence, with the right spinmeister, Confucian rhetoric can be used to justify aggressive as well as defensive behavior. Like liberalism in the United States, Confucianism makes it easy for Chinese leaders to speak like idealists and act like realists. And there is abundant evidence that China has behaved aggressively toward its neighbors whenever it could over the course of its long history. In his survey of Chinese foreign policy since the second millennium BCE, the historian Warren Cohen writes, ―In the creation of their empire, the Chinese were no less arrogant, no less ruthless, than the Europeans, Japanese, or Americans in the creation of theirs.‖ He adds, ―Historically, a strong China has brutalized the weak—and there is no reason to expect it to act differently in the future, to behave any better than other great powers have in the past.‖ The political scientist Victoria Tin-borHui observes that when we look at Chinese foreign policy over time, what we see is ―the primacy of brute force rather than ‗humane authority.‘‖ She notes, ―It is difficult to understand such prevalence of military conflicts throughout Chinese history from only the perspective of Confucian thought.‖ Numerous other scholars make similar arguments. Yuan-Kang Wang, for example, writes, ―Confucian culture did not constrain Chinese use of force: China has been a practitioner of realpolitik for centuries, behaving much like other great powers have

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throughout world history. . . . Chinese leaders have preferred to use force to resolve external threats to China‘s security, take on a more offensive posture as the country‘s power grew, and adopted expansive war aims in the absence of systemic or military constraints.‖ Finally, the historian Hans J. van de Ven writes, ―No one even with only a casual interest in Chinese history can be unaware that China‘s capacity for war in the last few centuries has proved truly awesome. . . . It is plain that China‘s history has in fact been at least as violent as Europe‘s.‖ One might concede that China has done little more than pay lip service to Confucianism in the past, but argue that it has undergone an epiphany in recent years and now embraces that peaceful worldview while rejecting balance-of-power logic. There is little evidence, however, that such a change has taken place. Indeed, it is not unusual for experts on China to note that realism is alive and well there. Thomas Christensen, for example, argues that ―China may well be the high church of realpolitik in the post–Cold War world,‖ while Avery Goldstein says, ―China‘s contemporary leaders, like their predecessors in Imperial China, prize the practice of realpolitik.‖ In sum, there is little basis for the claim that China is an exceptional great power that eschews realist logic and instead behaves in accordance with the principles of Confucian pacifism. Almost all of the available evidence indicates that China has a rich history of trying to maximize its relative power. Furthermore, there is no good reason to think China will act differently in the future. Make Money, Not War Probably the most frequently heard argument that China‘s rise can be peaceful is based on the theory of economic interdependence. This perspective has two components. First is the claim that China‘s economy is inextricably bound to the economies of its potential rivals, including Japan and the United States. This linkage means not only that China and its trading partners depend on each other to keep prospering but also that prosperity in turn depends on peaceful relations among them. A war involving them would have disastrous economic consequences for all the belligerents. It would be tantamount to mutual assured destruction (MAD) at the economic level. Second, prosperity is the main goal of modern states. Publics today expect their leaders to deliver economic growth; if they fail, they are likely to be thrown out of office. In some cases, there might be significant unrest at home and the regime itself be threatened. This imperative to get rich means no rational leader would start a war. Indeed, even security competition among the relevant countries is likely to be moderate, not just because leaders prefer to concentrate on maximizing their country‘s wealth, but also because of the danger that an intense rivalry might inadvertently lead to war. In a world of economically interdependent states, leaders have a marked aversion to conflict, for fear it will put an end to prosperity as well as their political careers. It would be wrong to argue that economic interdependence does not matter at all for the fostering of peace. Leaders do care greatly about their country‘s prosperity, and in

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certain circumstances that concern will help dampen any enthusiasm they might have for war. The key question, however, is whether such calculations are likely to decisively influence policymakers in a wide variety of circumstances. In other words, will the impact of economic interdependence be weighty enough to serve as a firm basis for peace between China and its potential rivals over a long period of time? I believe there are good reasons to doubt that concerns about mutual prosperity will keep Asia peaceful as China grows more powerful. At the most basic level, political calculations often trump economic ones when they come into conflict. This is certainly true regarding matters of national security, because concerns about survival are invariably at stake in the security realm, and they are more important than worries about prosperity. As emphasized, if you do not survive, you cannot prosper. It is worth noting in this regard that there was substantial economic interdependence and prosperity among the European great powers before 1914. Nevertheless, World War I happened. Germany, which was principally responsible for causing that conflict, was bent on preventing Russia from growing more powerful while at the same time trying to become a hegemon in Europe. Politics overwhelmed economics in this important case. Politics also tends to win out over concerns about prosperity when nationalism affects the issue at stake. Consider Beijing‘s position on Taiwan. Chinese leaders have stressed that they will go to war if Taiwan declares its independence, even though they believe the ensuing conflict would damage China‘s economy. Of course, nationalism is at the core of Chinese thinking on Taiwan; that island is considered sacred territory. One might also note that history is littered with civil wars, and in almost every case there was substantial economic interdependence between the combatants before the fighting broke out. But political calculations proved to be more influential in the end. There are three other reasons to doubt the claim that economic interdependence can sustain peace in Asia in the face of an increasingly powerful China. The theory depends on permanent prosperity to work, but there is no guarantee there will not be a trade war or a major economic crisis that undermines that assumption. Consider, for example, how the ongoing euro crisis is doing serious damage to the economies of many European countries. But even in the absence of a severe global economic downturn, a particular state might be having significant economic problems, which could put it in a position where it had little to lose economically, and maybe even something to gain, by starting a war. For instance, a key reason Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990—despite their close economic ties—is that Kuwait was exceeding its OPEC oil production quotas and driving down Iraq‘s oil profits, which its economy could ill afford. Another reason to question economic-interdependence theory is that states sometimes start wars in the expectation that victory will bring them substantial economic and strategic benefits and that those prospective benefits will be greater than the prosperity lost from damaged inter-dependence. For example, it is widely believed there are abundant natural resources on the floor of the South China Sea. However, China and its neighbors disagree significantly over who controls that large body of water. Although it

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is unlikely, one can imagine a more powerful China using military force to gain control over the South China Sea so that it can exploit its seabed and fuel Chinese economic growth. The final reason for doubting this theory of peace is that economically interdependent countries can sometimes fight wars and still avoid incurring significant economic costs. To begin with, a country can take aim at a single rival, devise a clever military strategy, and win a quick and decisive victory. In fact, most states go to war thinking they will achieve a swift triumph, although it does not always work out that way. When it does, however, the economic costs are not likely to be significant, since the fight is with a single rival and success comes quickly. The economic costs of war are usually greatest when states get involved in protracted wars with multiple countries, as happened in the two world wars. But leaders do not take their country to war expecting that outcome; indeed, they expect to avoid it. Furthermore, as discussed earlier, nuclear weapons make it extremely unlikely that China will end up fighting a major conventional conflict resembling World War II. In fact, any wars that break out in Asia are likely to be limited in terms of both goals and means. In such circumstances, the economic costs of fighting are likely to be limited and thus do not pose a significant threat to the prosperity of the belligerents. Winning a small-scale war might indeed add to a country‘s prosperity, as might happen if China seized control of the South China Sea. Furthermore, there is abundant evidence that states at war with each other often do not break off economic relations. In other words, states trade with the enemy in wartime, mainly because each side believes it benefits from the intercourse. Jack Levy and Katherine Barbieri, two of the leading experts on this subject, write, ―It is clear that trading with the enemy occurs frequently enough to contradict the conventional wisdom that war will systematically and significantly disrupt trade between adversaries.‖ They add that ―trading with the enemy occurs during all-out wars fought for national independence or global dominance as well as during more limited military encounters.‖ In short, it is possible for a country to fight a war against a rival with which it is economically interdependent, and not threaten its own prosperity. All of these reasons make it hard to be confident that economic interdependence can serve as a firm foundation for peace in Asia in the decades ahead. This is not to deny, however, that it might serve as a brake on war in certain circumstances. CONCLUSION The picture I have painted of what is likely to happen if China continues to rise is not a pretty one. Indeed, it is downright depressing. I wish I could tell a more hopeful story about the prospects for peace in Asia. But the fact is that international politics is a dangerous business, and no amount of goodwill can ameliorate the intense security competition that sets in when an aspiring hegemon comes on the scene in either

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Europe or Asia. And there is good reason to think China will eventually pursue regional hegemony. It is worth noting, however, that although social science theories are essential for helping us make sense of the remarkably complicated world around us, they are still rather crude instruments. The ability of even our best theories to explain the past and predict the future is limited. This means every theory confronts cases that contradict its main predictions. Given the grim picture I paint, let us hope that if China becomes especially powerful, the actual results of that development will contradict my theory and prove my predictions wrong. John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is on the advisory council of The National Interest. ―Excerpted from The Tragedy of Great Power Politics by John J. Mearsheimer.Copyright © 2014 by John J. Mearsheimer.With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.‖

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Keynote Address at the Asia Society Policy Institute Launch William J. Burns Deputy Secretary of State New York City April 8, 2014 Introduction Thank you, Dick, for that kind introduction, and good afternoon everyone. It‘s an honor to be at the Asia Society, an institution for which I have enormous respect. It‘s an honor to be among so many friends and former colleagues, like Dick Solomon, Henrietta Fore, and your superb President, JosetteSheeran. And I just want to add a special word about one of my most distinguished predecessors, former Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead. In my own checkered 33-year career in the Foreign Service, I‘ve never worked for a finer public servant or a more decent human being. So it‘s wonderful to see you again. It‘s also an honor to help launch an exciting new initiative, the Asia Society‘s Policy Institute. I know that Henry Kissinger, for whom I have great admiration, opened your program this morning. I must admit that leaves me feeling a little like Fred Kaps. For those of you who weren‘t watching a lot of American television a half-century ago, Fred Kaps was the Dutch magician who had the epic misfortune of appearing on stage just after the Beatles made their inaugural appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. To add to my misfortune, I don‘t even have Fred‘s magic tricks to offer. What I can promise is that I will try to be relatively brief. Shaping the Pacific Century My starting point is straightforward, and nowhere is it better understood than here at the Asia Society. As far out as I can see into the 21st century, no region will be more consequential for American interests and for the shape of the global system than the Asia-Pacific. Stretching from Southwest Asia to the western coast of the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region holds more than half the world‘s population and a growing middle class. In recent decades, it has produced advances in economic growth and poverty reduction unprecedented in human history. It is a region which generates half of global economic output and half of all global trade. It is a region which matters enormously to the rest of

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the world – from our partners in the Gulf, whose oil exports move increasingly toward rising demand in the east; to our allies in Europe, whose economic revival hinges increasingly on Asian growth. Alongside all that economic dynamism there remain huge challenges – military buildups, maritime disputes, nuclear proliferation, massive environmental problems, festering inequality, corruption, and rising nationalist currents. None of those challenges is unique to the Asia-Pacific. All of them reflect the wider complexity of navigating an international landscape shaped by both the transformational forces of globalization and more familiar national and geopolitical impulses. Over the past few months, we‘ve seen those impulses at work in Europe. Russia‘s aggression in Ukraine has violated basic international norms and posed a direct challenge to the rules of the road which have shaped the global order in which the Asia-Pacific has grown and prospered. It has, as President Obama warned last month, put us all at a ―moment of testing.‖ Many Asian nations are watching events in Europe and wondering what they mean for their security and for the region‘s future. It seems to me that out of that crisis, out of that moment of testing, comes an important opportunity, a powerful reminder of the enduring value of commonly-accepted rules of the road and a regional architecture of cooperation that will benefit the entire Asia-Pacific. Never has there been a moment when it has been more important for the United States to underscore our commitment to the long-term ―rebalancing‖ of our foreign policy toward Asia, to the relationships and alliances and architecture and rules of the road which have animated this Administration‘s efforts over more than five years. As a Pacific nation in the midst of a Pacific century, we are fully commitment to this historic undertaking. That is exactly why the President is taking a unique trip to four countries in the region later this month: Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Two in Northeast Asia and two in Southeast Asia; three are treaty allies; two are in the current round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and two have expressed an interest to join; and all are democracies who work with us on regional and global challenges. In the fall, the President will return to Asia – to Burma, China, and Australia, for the East Asia, APEC, and G-20 Summits. Taken together, both trips highlight our enduring commitment to enhancing security, prosperity, human dignity, and effective regional architecture across the Asia-Pacific. Let me touch briefly on each of these four dimensions of our strategy. Security Across the Asia-Pacific region, there is no shortage of regional security threats. But two stand out as particularly dangerous – North Korea‘s provocations and the maritime disputes in the East and South China Seas.

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The North Korea challenge has vexed every Administration since Truman – but it has become even more acute under the erratic leadership of Kim Jong Un. Over the past few weeks and months, North Korea has launched multiple short and medium-range ballistic missiles. It has attempted to ship arms and related material from Cuba, and appears to have restarted its reactor at Yongbyon. It has amended its constitution to declare itself a nuclear state and elevated the pursuit of nuclear weapons as a top strategic priority. And of course, it continues to hold U.S. citizen Kenneth Bae and to commit outrageous violations of human rights. Through a combination of pressure, dialogue, and diplomacy, we are working actively – in close coordination with our allies – to sharpen the choice facing North Korea: to continue to defy its international obligations and deepen its isolation, or to honor its commitments and rejoin the international community as a responsible member. We‘ve consistently said we are willing to engage when countries show a credible and serious interest in abiding by their obligations. This was true in Burma. It‘s the case with Iran. And it can be the case with North Korea as well. But we are not willing – to borrow a phrase from former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates – to ―buy the same horse twice.‖ We are not going to talk for the sake of talks or respond to North Korean provocations with inducements and concessions. While we will maintain our pressure on North Korea, we also continue testing the potential for diplomacy. Coordination with our allies, who share our deep concern about the growing North Korean threat, is a top priority. This is why the trilateral summit in The Hague with President Obama, President Park, and Prime Minister Abe was so important. It sent a clear message that we have a united approach toward North Korea, and that North Korea will not succeed in driving a wedge between us and our allies. Also central to our approach is active coordination with China – a country with significant political and economic influence over North Korea. Despite its concerns about Kim Jong Un, China remains reluctant to push North Korea too hard due to longstanding fears of possible instability. At the Nuclear Security Summit, Presidents Xi and Obama exchanged views on credible terms for resuming serious negotiations on denuclearization. We have no illusions about the Kim Jong Un regime or the obstacles to progress. But our interests and the future of the regional security order of the Asia-Pacific demand that we make every effort we can to make progress. The tensions arising from territorial and maritime disputes in the Asia-Pacific are also of deep concern to us and to our allies and partners in the region. Both the South China and East China Seas are vital thoroughfares for global commerce and energy. Well over half of the world‘s merchant tonnage flows through the South China Sea, and over 15 million barrels of oil per day transited the Strait of Malacca last year. A simple

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miscalculation could set off an unintended clash that no side seeks, that no side wants, and that no side can fully control. We have a deep stake, therefore, in ensuring that these disputes are dealt with peacefully, diplomatically, and in accordance with international law. As we‘ve made clear on numerous occasions, we take no position on questions of sovereignty over disputed land features in the South China Sea, but we do care about how those questions are resolved. We firmly oppose the use of intimidation, coercion, or force to assert a territorial claim. We firmly oppose any claims in the South China Sea that are not derived from land features or otherwise comport with the international law of the sea. And we firmly oppose any suggestion that freedom of navigation is a privilege granted by big states to small ones as opposed to a right protected by international law. In my January visit to Beijing, I had the opportunity to discuss a number of our concerns about China‘s recent behavior, including its restrictions on access to Scarborough Reef; pressure on the long-standing Philippine presence at the Second Thomas Shoal; the risky activity by China‘s maritime agencies near the Senkaku Islands; and the sudden, uncoordinated, and unilateral imposition of the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone. And I raised our growing concern about a pattern of behavior in the South China Sea that reflects an incremental effort by China to assert control over the area contained in the so-called ―nine-dash line‖ -- despite the objections of its neighbors, and despite the lack of an explanation or apparent basis under international law regarding the scope of the claim itself. Actions like these are leading to heightened tensions across the region and threatening diplomatic progress. It‘s vitally important that all parties exercise restraint, lower rhetoric, and maintain open channels of dialogue. And it‘s vitally important that regional institutions take the lead in reinforcing international law and facilitate practical cooperation among claimants to resolve disputes. China and ASEAN have been talking for many years about a Code of Conduct that would regulate behavior and put in place mechanisms – such as hotlines – to prevent disputes and dangerous escalation. We support the rapid negotiation of a meaningful Code of Conduct. And we support the exercise of peaceful means to resolve maritime disputes without fear of any form of retaliation. Those peaceful means include arbitration. All countries should respect the right of any State Party, including the Republic of the Philippines, to avail itself of the dispute resolution mechanisms provided for under the Law of the Sea Convention. Now some may ask why, given the many areas of tension across this part of the world, small rocks and islands in the middle of the sea are generating so much concern and so much attention. It‘s not because the future of these islands will permanently shift the regional balance of power. It‘s because the way in which countries pursue their claims reveals whether the threat of force or the rule of law will govern disputes and whether the same rules will apply to big and small countries alike. And it‘s because all countries,

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big and small, stand to lose if rules are devalued, dialogue breaks down, misreadings and misinterpretations multiply, and fears and tensions spiral. Economic Security and stability in the region are essential for continued economic growth. But for that growth to be sustainable and equitable, we will need to work together to strengthen the foundations of a rules-based, free, transparent, and market-oriented economic order in the Asia-Pacific. That is precisely the vision behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership – an ambitious, comprehensive, and high-standard trade and investment agreement among twelve countries that together make up 40% of the global economy. If we get this right, our economies stand to gain millions of new and better jobs, billions of dollars of new investment, and processes that will lower barriers to trade while strengthening intellectual property and protecting the environment and the health and safety of our citizens. Together with its European counterpart – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – these two agreements will unite two-thirds of the world economy in support of open and fair economic competition and ensure that the high-standard rules of free market economies will become the standard for global trade and investment. As we work to complete negotiations on the TPP, we are not losing sight of the enormous energy and environmental challenges associated with economic growth and development. With our government‘s commitment to reducing harmful emissions, our decreasing dependence on foreign oil, and our development and promotion of technologies that generate clean, efficient, and renewable energy, we have a good story to tell – and a lot to share with the region. The damage that irresponsible economic growth is doing to our lands, seas, and air is a challenge without parallel in the coming years. That‘s why Secretary Kerry has made partnerships on energy, oceans, and climate change a core element of our relationships with key players in the region, including two of the region‘s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, China and India. It‘s why he has made addressing environmental threats to sustainable development a priority, including along the Mekong River – a powerful economic engine that underpins much of the economic growth and vitality of Southeast Asia. And it‘s why he has made improving energy efficiency and promoting the use of renewable and other clean sources of energy – including through the U.S.-India Partnership to Advance Clean Energy and our U.S.-Asia Pacific Comprehensive Energy Partnership – a core part of our diplomacy. The logic for enhanced cooperation on energy and climate is as compelling as it is clear. We can‘t afford to let this opportunity pass. Governance and Human Dignity

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Nor can we afford to take our eyes off the enormous opportunity to advance human dignity and good governance across the Asia-Pacific. We have no interest in imposing models or dictating to societies how they should organize or govern themselves. But the lessons learned from Warsaw to Ulaanbaatar more than two decades ago and from Tunis to Sana‘a earlier this decade underscore the central truth that no regions, and no regimes, are exempted from the obligation to be accountable to their citizens and respect their rights. The promise of stability, when based on the denial of human dignity, economic opportunity, and universal rights, is a false promise. A region long claimed by some to be ill suited for democracy, Asia today is home to India and Indonesia, the first and third-largest democracies in the world, and to democratic success stories stretching from Timor Leste to the Republic of Korea. Across the region, we‘ve seen how freedom of expression, assembly, and association has only strengthened societies – not weakened them. It allows citizens to mobilize and work with their governments to improve public health, reduce corruption, address social tensions, and deal effectively with environmental challenges. The wave of democracy that has swept across the region in recent decades continues, but challenges remain, from Thailand to Cambodia and Fiji to Hong Kong to Burma. In Hong Kong, we continue to hope that the promise of universal suffrage will be fulfilled. In Burma, we are encouraged by the determination with which the government is working with the country‘s major ethnic groups to end decades of civil conflict. But we remain deeply worried about the violence in Rakhine State and the government‘s decision to curtail the activities of humanitarian organizations. As a partner invested in Burma‘s long-term success we will continue to work alongside the region‘s many vibrant democracies to encourage nonviolence, facilitate dialogue, support reform, and harness Burma‘s potential to play a positive role in the region. Architecture The security, economic, and governance principles at the heart of our efforts in the Asia-Pacific will not uphold themselves. They require a strong architecture of cooperation – an overlapping and mutually reinforcing set of alliances, partnerships, and multilateral institutions. Our five treaty allies in the Asia-Pacific – Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand – are the strongest partners we have in promoting the rules and norms we all share. And they are the fulcrum of our strategic turn to the region. These alliances are built on the strong foundation of shared interests and values, democratic ideals, respect for human rights, and the rule of law. And they are built on the friendship and people-to-people ties that enrich our respective cultures and bind us together ever closer. From our revision of our Defense Guidelines with Japan to our work with South Korea on countering the threat from North Korea, and from the

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rotations of Marines in Darwin to the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement we are discussing with the Philippines to the 2012 U.S.-Thailand Joint Vision Statement, we are transforming each of these alliances to ensure they are prepared for the 21st century. As we strengthen our alliances, we are also transforming our partnerships with emerging powers from Indonesia to India. No partnership has undergone a greater transformation over the past couple decades than our relationship with India. And I remain convinced that as we look at the next two decades and beyond, our strategic interests will remain far more aligned than not. This is especially true in the Asia-Pacific, where our joint-efforts to promote regional security and political and economic openness are gradually becoming a defining dimension of our partnership. In addition to our annual Strategic Dialogue, we‘ve also embarked on a series of efforts to identify practical areas of cooperation across East Asia, including through our trilateral with Japan and our East Asia consultations, the latest round of which concluded at the end of March in Washington. No bilateral relationship in the 21st century is likely to matter more than the ties between China and the United States. History is full of examples of collisions between rising and established powers. But there is nothing preordained about this. Our economies are inescapably intertwined. And neither of us can solve the great challenges of our time – from climate change to proliferation – unless we work together. Building a cooperative partnership with China is therefore a hugely important goal for the United States. This is why we have established mechanisms like the Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the Strategic Security Dialogue, which I lead for the U.S. side. The SSD brings together our civilian and military leaders to discuss ways to build mutual trust, expand cooperation, and manage our differences on some of the most sensitive issues in the bilateral relationship – from nuclear weapons to cyberspace. When we agree to work together on these kinds of issues – the very issues that threaten to undermine regional and global security – we will also be working to develop a long-term, constructive U.S.-China relationship. But a true partnership is one in which we can discuss our differences openly, not sweep them under the rug. And whether it‘s on human rights, maritime disputes, or government-sponsored cyber-enabled economic theft, we raise issues of concern candidly and consistently with the Chinese. We do this not because we seek to contain China but because we want to work with China to help ensure that all Pacific nations find a way to rise together in a prosperous, peaceful, and stable Asia-Pacific. Finally, our alliances and partnerships must support the construction of effective regional institutions, which lower the barriers to collective action on shared challenges no state can tackle on its own. They facilitate constructive dialogue and practical cooperation and information sharing. And they serve as key platforms for conflict resolution. From APEC to ASEAN to the Pacific Islands Forum, we are investing resources and diplomatic capital in these key forums.

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At the center of the region‘s institutions is ASEAN – an organization of 10 states with a combined population of 600 million people. In the last 5 years, we‘ve taken historic steps to deepen the U.S.-ASEAN partnership, from signing the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, to naming our first-ever resident U.S. Ambassador to ASEAN, to participating at the head of state level in the annual East Asia and U.S.-ASEAN Summits. Just last week, Secretary Hagel convened the first ever meeting of ASEAN defense ministers in Honolulu, an unprecedented gathering that deepened our military partnerships and defined collaborative approaches on key issues such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. And we want to do even more. The hard truth is that few of the challenges I‘ve spoken about here today – whether it‘s maritime disputes in the South China Sea or the dangers of climate change – will be possible to solve without strong regional institutions to bring states together around common goals. And few of these challenges can be solved without sustained American leadership. Conclusion Let me conclude with a quick final thought. I know many people voice concerns about whether – given political pressures at home and competing demands abroad – we will be able to maintain our commitment to the Asia-Pacific. It reminds me of a question Orville Schell posed to Dr. Kissinger at the Asia Society a few years ago. When asked whether he was optimistic about the future of Sino-American relations, Dr. Kissinger answered: "I‘m determined." We‘re determined too. We‘re determined not only to build a cooperative relationship with China that delivers results, but also to strengthen our alliances, deepen our partnerships, open markets, and reinforce regional institutions. And we are determined to steadily widen the arc of nations working in common cause to promote security, economic growth, and human dignity across the Asia-Pacific. Future generations will look back at this moment of testing and judge us by whether we had the foresight and courage to make the most of our interdependence, or whether we succumbed to the familiar traps of mistrust, zero-sum politics, and conflict. That is the great challenge of our time. And that is the great test for American diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific across the rest of the Obama Administration, and for many Administrations to come. No challenge, and no test, will matter more to the United States in the new century unfolding before us. Thank you.

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Philippines China Dispute: One-up Against China BY SINGAPORE INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS ON 07 APR 2014 The decision of the Philippines to lodge a case on disputed waters in the South China Sea with an international tribunal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) has been met with strong criticism from China. The Chinese foreign ministry insisted that the ―direct cause of the Philippines China dispute is the former‘s illegal occupation of some of China‘s islands and reefs in the South China Sea‖. However, it should be highlighted that the Philippines is not asking the tribunal to rule on the sovereignty of the islands and reefs in the South China Sea. Rather, it is posing a technical question to the tribunal: can China‘s ―nine-dash line‖ negate the Philippines‘ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) under Unclos? Unclos grants a 200-nautical mile EEZ extending from a country‘s coastline. China‘s ―nine-dash line‖ – drawn up by China over the South China Sea to demarcate its claims – is just 30 to 50 miles away from the coast of the sovereign territory of the Philippines. In bringing the Philippines China dispute to an international tribunal, the Philippines is internationalising the dispute, as observers noted. That is the most logical step for a country to take in a territorial dispute, especially when it is faced against a larger and more powerful country – China. Whatever the merits of the Philippines‘ case are, its decision to take the matter to an international tribunal is certainly preferable to staging hostile manoeuvres at sea. China does not seem likely to file a counter-memorial, as it can exercise its right to abstain from the tribunal. In 2006, China made a statutory statement about such disputes when it ratified Unclos. This exempts them from a mandatory settlement of disputes over sea delimitation and territorial disputes. Beijing‘s admonition to Manila – to ―come back on the right track‖ of resolving the dispute through bilateral negotiation – does not seem a realistic solution. Bilateral negotiations have made precious little headway. Beijing would do well to respond carefully to the Philippines China dispute that is before the Unclos tribunal, or else be deservedly seen as a big bully to the other claimant states of the South China Sea islands and shoals. Until then, the Philippines will have the moral upper hand over China in this long- standing maritime dispute. This article was kindly contributed by the Singapore Institute for International Affairs and appeared first on SIIA Insights.

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ASEAN's challenge: A swaggering China Beijing's relationship with its neighbors is moving in the wrong direction. By Odd Arne Westad April 7, 2014 For a long time China has prided itself on the gradual improvement and solidification of its relations with the countries of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, mainly through economic means. Since Deng Xiaoping in the 1970s, Chinese leaders have emphasized the significance of shedding decades, if not centuries, of mistrust and confrontation and moving toward cooperation and integration. The China-ASEAN free-trade zone, which came into effect four years ago, was intended to be the symbol of this new relationship. Over the last five years or so, however, many of the most promising aspects of this cooperation have come into doubt. There are several reasons for this. China has gone through a leadership transition, during which there has been no strong hand at the tiller in terms of foreign relations. There also have been uncertainties on the ASEAN side — in some countries more than others — over the prospect of being overwhelmed by a China that is expanding rapidly economically. But most important, the relationship has increasingly been held hostage by the conflict over sovereignty in the South China Sea. Neither side has managed to find a half-decent way of negotiating on the issue. Some people would say that the downward turn in the relationship is an unavoidable part of China's rise. Great powers, the theory goes, invariably throw their weight around and antagonize their neighbors. Look at the United States in the 19th century. How many Mexicans, or Cubans, or even Canadians would have seen the United States as a benign power then? Ultimately, however, smaller nations make their peace with the great power, as they get used to its peculiar ways and the great power learns that more can be achieved through integration and interdependence than through land (or sea) grabs and military posturing. But the China-ASEAN relationship is not necessarily moving in this direction. Chinese nationalism is more than matched by that of China's neighbors. The sheer unreasonableness of Beijing's position on how far its ownership extends in the South China Sea will feed long-term antagonism between the two sides. So too will the perceived Chinese intention to reduce or even break up ASEAN as part of its aspirations to instead deal with individual Southeast Asian countries. Bringing in the United States, Japan or even India to counterbalance China is likely to lead to more conflict, not less.

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So the picture for the future is not rosy. The key is to increase the levels of interaction and trust between China and ASEAN. History shows that this can be done, even with a rising great power. But for it to happen, both sides must emphasize those aspects of interaction that bind them rather than those that force them apart. It is obvious that the main part of such an invigorated relationship will be economic. But there are other parts that need emphasis: Cultural exchanges, educational ties and security consultations all play a role in building long-term trust. First, however, the different sides need to negotiate effectively over issues that really matter in the relationship now. This is where South China Sea issues come into play. My guess is that economically and strategically, resources and sea lanes in the South China Sea will be less important long term in the ASEAN-China relationship than the economic ties that connect their hardworking and endlessly inventive peoples. But for now, progress in these negotiations is essential to create trust on other matters. Is the South China Sea an issue for ASEAN as whole? Chinese leaders and some leaders in Southeast Asia would say no, or yes but only with great qualifications. Some would prefer to handle the issue country by country. They would be wrong. Strategic cohesion on the issue of upholding the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Seas is a basic matter for the future of ASEAN, as is joint support and advice in terms of member states' negotiations with outside powers. China, for its part, needs to rein in a self-centered and sometimes confrontational foreign policy, which is unlikely to succeed. Without a continuous, forward-looking process of negotiations, the ASEAN-China relationship will go nowhere. It's doubtful that President Xi Jinping seeks to antagonize neighbors on whom China's continued rise to some extent depends. He may have the wisdom to realize where his and country's interests lie. Tensions, conflicts and terrible accidents are almost certain to happen. The challenge will be to handle them in ways that stress the unavoidable need for long-term cooperation. Odd Arne Westad, a professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, is the author of "Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750."

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Creative countermeasures needed to deal with Manila’s S.China Sea schemes Global Times | 2014-4-7 23:13:01 By Zhou Fangyin After over a year's preparation, the Philippine government has submitted 4,000 pages of evidence to an international tribunal, challenging China's legitimate claim to the South China Sea within the nine-dash line and declaring its "sovereignty" over some isles including the Ren'ai Reef. The Chinese government and scholars have rebuked Manila's attempt to seek international arbitration on this issue, and most of these criticisms can hold water. But China needs to be more aware of the real challenge imposed by Manila. It is trying to push forward the case, though an illegitimate basis, to reverse its disadvantaged position. If the international tribunal accepts the case, Manila will be encouraged to hype up the "legitimacy" and "rationality" of such an attempt. China's stand and claim will be put at a disadvantage if Manila gets such an endorsement from the international tribunal. Whether international arbitration should be employed over the South China Sea dispute is not only an issue concerning the applicability of international laws, but represents the political bout between both nations. Manila's ultimate purpose is greater than acquiring a favorable verdict from the international tribunal, and China should also realize that its countermeasures must be more varied besides arguing in terms of international laws, otherwise China might lose ground in the future. Over the past year, when Manila was preparing for the application of international arbitration, China has been facing growing pressure from the Philippines. It is obvious that Manila does not expect a decisive verdict once and for all, but is trying to limit the possible approaches of addressing the South China Sea dispute for its own good. If Manila could have its way, China's consistent advocacy for a framework of bilateral talks would become much less effective. China's legitimate claims based on historical and legal causes would even become unconvincing arguments. What Manila wants is that with the facilitation of the international pressure, it can force China to play by its rules.

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In order to gain the upper hand, China has to break through the path paved by the Philippines. Manila is setting up a trap, and China cannot get away unless it can think out of the box. China needs to carry forward three policies to make sure the situation in the South China Sea will not be unfavorable to China. First, China needs to prove its resolution about defending its territorial integrity and sovereignty more explicitly in front of the countries such as the Philippines, and let them know giving up these inordinate ambitions is the wise choice. In this case, China must have the courage and determination to push it forward till the desired effect can be achieved. Second, China must make the Philippines aware that it will pay a price for constantly challenging China. Manila should be more clearly shown what cost it has to pay if it insists on taking its own course. Third, China must also restrain itself from aggressive moves, showing Manila that bilateral talks can lead to a more productive future, and confrontation will not. Chinese diplomacy needs to take a lesson from the Philippines' effort of seeking international arbitration. China must realize that strategic restraint, which sometimes can reassure its neighbors, but can also lead to some serious consequences, in which the most critical one is the corrosion of China's strategic deterrent. This is part of the reason why some neighboring countries continue disturbing China without fear or concern. Finding a way to sustain a balance among reciprocal cooperation, strategic deterrent and appropriate placation is a long-standing problem for China. Chinese diplomacy needs more creative and suitable policies. The author is a professor at the Guangdong Research Institute for International Strategies. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

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Rusty "Cauldron" Walter Lohman | April 7, 2014 Robert Kaplan, author of Asia‘s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific, would be a most interesting dinner companion. Obviously well travelled and extremely well read, he has a remarkable capacity for linking disparate thoughts and impressions in insightful ways. No surprise there. One is not named one of the world‘s Top 100 Global Thinkers for nothing. Unfortunately, however, Kaplan‘s intellectual chops do not make for sound analysis of the environment in which American interests are being pursued in the South China Sea. In fact, having read some of his earlier work, Kaplan does not seem to have brought his full talents to bear on the topic. As a result, the collection of observations in ―Asia‘s Cauldron‖ could very well lead him and the strategic community who most admire him astray on policy prescriptions. Kaplan is a ―realist.‖ His book is less about the six-party dispute over the South China Sea than it is about the balance of power in the region, and firsthand overviews of the countries that comprise it. For theoretical context, he relies heavily on the work of political scientist John Mearsheimer and cites others from Thucydides and Machiavelli to Kenneth Waltz. Predictably, he also relies on supposed self-evident lessons of geography. (He determines, of course, where geography, particularly the constraints of distance, is superseded in order to fit his theses, e.g. concept of the ―IndoPacific.‖) Geography is critical to understanding political dynamics in East Asia, as is the balance of military forces, population sizes and diversity, and GDP growth, among other factors. But a realism too tightly drawn on these material factors is as divorced from today‘s realities in Asia as it is from the century and place of its greatest success—nineteenth-century Europe. In a sense, Kaplan recognizes this in what he calls the ―humanist dilemma:‖ A situation in which ―morality may mean giving up some of our most cherished ideals for the sake of stability.‖ ―It is the balance of power itself, even more than the democratic values of the West,‖ he maintains, ―that is often the best preserver of freedom.‖ This is a conclusion that will be prohibitively difficult to sell, not only in Washington, D.C., but also in many capitals in the Western Pacific. This is also a reality. Ideals matter to the United States. The content and consistency of America‘s commitment to morality in its foreign policy can be, and is, hotly debated. What is beyond question is that the U.S. has often been motivated by humanitarian causes,

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from military responses to natural disasters to comprehensive sanctions against tyrannical governments. Moral values condition and constrain American policy options. This is a well-known feature of the policy environment found by our friends, allies, and potential adversaries in Asia. Kaplan‘s eclectic approach to disputes in the South China Sea also leads to what are in my opinion, serious mischaracterizations and misjudgments about the current state of affairs. I will look at just three. First, his depiction of the Philippines is uncharitable to say the least. It is, he says, ―less a country than a ramshackle empire ruled from Luzon.‖ Whatever motivates such a sweeping conclusion, it cannot be an objective examination of the facts. It certainly could not have been gleaned from contact with the professionals in the Philippines public service he cites. They are among the best any government service can produce. Does the Philippines have more than its fair share of opportunistic, irresponsible politicians? Probably. But the country that created President Macros also created President Aquino—not to mention his near-sainted parents. There are many other people of principle in the service of their nation in both government and civil society. Think Foreign Secretary Albert Del Rosario and former President Fidel Ramos. Hope for the U.S.-Philippines is much deeper than the window Kaplan says was opened by a combination of President Aquino‘s election and Filipino vulnerability. The Washington-Manila relationship has been recovering for many years now—even prior to the 2002 start of our counterterror cooperation in Mindanao. Such are the pitfalls of analysis that begins with reference to a painting by Henri Matisse and seeks to roll up one hundred years of history in a twenty-page chapter entitled ―America‘s Colonial Burden.‖ In a more serious examination of the problems presented American policy makers in the South China Sea, Kaplan would have told the full story of Scarborough Shoal in 2012. The Philippines had long ago re-learned the value of the US-Philippines alliance—if they had indeed forgotten it—at Mischief Reef in 1995. What they learned in 2012 was that they cannot bank on America‘s clout with the PRC. All observers—including Obama administration officials—tell the same story. The U.S. leaned on the Philippines to remove their ships from Scarborough on the promise that it would demand the same of the Chinese. The Philippines did as asked; the Chinese—whether or not they were ever actually asked by the U.S.—did not. Second, there are several details concerning China‘s interest that require clarification. At one point, Kaplan asserts that Chinese officials never identified South China Sea as a ―core interest.‖ This directly contradicts Secretary of State Clinton, who told an Australian journalist in November 2010 that State Councilor Dai Bingguo, widely regarded at the time as the most powerful player in Chinese foreign policy outside the Politburo Standing Committee, told her precisely that it was. In another section, Kaplan cites a Taiwanese professor‘s interpretation of the famous nine-dash map at the

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centerof the whole controversy as saying it represents ―ownership of the islands and their offshore waters...rather than ownership of the whole South China Sea itself.‖ This may be the professor‘s perspective, and hopefully it reflects the Taiwanese government‘s position. In fact, one of the most positive things that could happen in this dispute is that Taiwan would officially and publicly so clarify its position. It is not at all clear, however, that this is the PRC‘s position, despite the private assurances sometimes given by their own scholars. Only public, official positions count on this one. Third, Kaplan‘s various references to ASEAN seem to rest on an understanding of the organization that is basically a reflection of the Obama administration‘s demonstrated interest in it. By this I mean, knowing the administration‘s focus on ASEAN, he builds his best realist case for it. The biggest problem with this is that President Obama is no realist. He has made clear on more than one occasion his disdain for the concept of great-power competition. But given that there are others in the administration who likely do see the world in geopolitical terms, it is worth looking at what ASEAN‘s potential role in such competition is not. ASEAN is decidedly not ―banding together in the face of a rising great power like China,‖ as Kaplan holds. After all, it was only a few short years ago that all most of Washington knew about ASEAN was that the member states ―did not want to choose‖ between the U.S. and China. This brings me to what is an extremely valuable insight from ―Asia‘s Cauldron‖—Kaplan‘s conception of a ―South China Sea Region.‖ Because of the divisions within ASEAN, it is a much more useful geopolitical reference point than ―Southeast Asia‖ or ―ASEAN.‖ Even within the ―South China Region,‖ there are significant differences in interests and perspective. Kaplan touches on those. But narrowing the discussion to maritime Southeast Asia dispenses with the danger of analyzing ASEAN‘s role in the South China Sea through its own myths of community. Probably more central to Kaplan‘s purpose, this final, valuable insight also eases the comparison between America in the Caribbean and China in the South China Sea. This and other topics raised by the book, including the ―humanist dilemma,‖ as Kaplan calls it, are worth exploring in some seriousness and depth without foregone conclusions drawn from geography. Underdeveloped and in writing, I am afraid they are discussions which will provide the Chinese with justification and our allies and friends with chagrin. They are the sorts of topics best explored in ranging, real-time conversation where the thoughts and associations of a great intellect are free to roam. Walter Lohman is director of The Heritage Foundation‘s Asian Studies Center.

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El Indio: Divided by Two? By Jamil Maidan Flores on 05:54 pm Apr 06, 2014 What are the Chinese and the Americans up to? They‘re up to something good. At least that‘s what they appear to be. On the margins of the Nuclear Security Summit held recently in The Hague, President Xi Jinping of China and President Barack Obama of the United States held a bilateral summit. In that dialogue they agreed to inform each other well in advance of significant military moves, and to draft a code of conduct so their navies and air forces don‘t shoot each other due to a mistake or an impulse. They promised to boost their military-to-military relations in spite of Beijing‘s assertiveness about its claim to almost every square inch of the South China Sea and Washington‘s scornful dismissal of the claim. This comes as no surprise to me. Top military brass from both sides have been exchanging visits since many months ago, and you can be sure they didn‘t spend their time together commenting on Kim Jung-un‘s haircut. The giveaway was the weird swap of pleasantries between the two navies right after a harrowing incident in the South China Sea early last December. The American cruiser USS Cowpens, operating in international waters, had to resort to desperate nautical acrobatics to avoid ramming a Chinese amphibious ship that was blocking its way. Instead of railing at the close shave with customary venom, the Chinese Defense Ministry said: ―Relations between the Chinese and US militaries enjoy excellent prospects for development and both sides are willing to boost communication, coordinate closely, and work to maintain regional peace and stability.‖ On the other hand, an American admiral told US Congress that the incident may be blamed on the inexperience of the officers and sailors of the Chinese navy; he absolved them of any aggressive intentions. Love‘s in the air. A China-US code of conduct on the high seas isn‘t a bad idea. But the result could be that the entire China Sea would be neatly divided between a regional power and a global power. When two elephants agree not to collide, will the small mammals living between them be safe and secure in their holes? Not necessarily! Come to think of it, Asean and China are negotiating towards a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. I haven‘t heard much about this lately. Will China abandon this process to rush toward a code of conduct with the US?

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When that happens, go ask Asean: will you be mere spectators while just two big boys shape the security lay of the South China Sea? Where‘s your driver‘s seat? Your centrality?Your regional architecture of Dynamic Equilibrium? If China cares at all for Asean, it should conclude a legally binding Code of Conduct with the grouping before it rushes to a similar agreement with the US. For its part, before the US negotiates with China, it should consult long and hard with Asean and take into account the latter‘s anxieties about the regional seascape. And, for good measure, also those of Japan, South Korea, India, and the Antipodes — Australia and New Zealand. Thus, although projected negotiations between China and the US toward a maritime code of conduct are formally bilateral, they should have an underlying multilateral character. Otherwise, in a body of water teeming with naval war machines of many countries, the resulting code won‘t work. Moreover, in countries left out of the process, a sense of grievance could spring up and fuel heady nationalist and jihadist rhetoric in years ahead. There‘s no substitute for multilateralism. Hence the region‘s best option is still to move right away toward an overall and legally binding code of conduct involving the participants to the East Asia Summit, an Indo-Pacific treaty of friendship and cooperation. That‘s your best bet for regional peace. Jamil Maidan Flores is a Jakarta-based writer whose interests include philosophy and foreign policy. He is also an English-language consultant for the Indonesian government. The views expressed here are his own.

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When is a Rock Not a Rock? BY KEITH JOHNSON APRIL 4, 2014 A diplomatic standoff between China and the Philippines that flared up two years ago in a dispute over fishing rights at a tiny shoal in the South China Sea is coming to a head after Manila decided to ignore Chinese threats and sue Beijing in an international tribunal. The legal case marks the first time that an arbitration panel will examine China's contentious, and oft-disputed, claims to most of the South China Sea, one of the world's busiest byways for shipping and a potentially rich source of oil and natural gas. The suit itself, a gargantuan, 4,000 page "memorial" filed before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, amounts to what is basically an existential question about rocks. Or rather, it's about the Philippines' desire for scores of specks in the South China Sea to be officially classified by the international panel as rocks, rather than islands. On such arcane definitions can hang the fate of nations -- or in this case, the extension of economic rights of states to the seas and seabed off their coasts. Simply put, islands are land, which entitle their owners to enjoy exclusive economic rights for 200 nautical miles in all directions, including rights to fishing and energy extraction. Rocks aren't, and don't. If the tribunal rules against the Philippine claim, then the stakes in the battle for those specks of land would be much higher: whichever side eventually has its claims to the specks recognized by international law would be able to lay claim to vast areas potentially rich in resources. If Beijing loses the case, it will have to choose whether to abide by an international court or ignore its ruling and claim those seas anyway. "What kind of great power will China be? Are they willing to play by the rules of the game or overthrow the system?" said Ely Ratner, deputy director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank. "As much as there ever is, this is a clear-cut test of their willingness to bind themselves to rules that may end up not being in their favor." It hasn't started well. China has refused to participate in the international arbitration, and has several times admonished Manila for what it calls "unilateralism" and "provocation."

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Beijing summoned the Philippine ambassador Monday for a tongue-lashing, two days after Chinese coast guard vessels tried unsuccessfully to block a Philippine resupply run to another disputed shoal. Much of the world is watching. The United States has expressed support for the Philippines' effort to seek arbitration under international laws governing the use of the sea; Japan, embroiled in its own volatile territorial dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, has also publicly backed Manila. But other countries in Southeast Asia who have their own territorial disputes with China have stayed quiet so far. Meanwhile, big oil companies are watching the legal showdown to see if it helps establish clarity that could make it easier to explore for oil and gas in a region that could have plenty of both. The case is meant as a frontal challenge to China's infamous "Nine-dashed line," Beijing's vague but threatening effort to lay claim to nearly the entirety of the South China Sea to the detriment of neighbors including the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Beijing inherited that map, and its ambitious claims, from the Nationalist government it defeated in the Chinese civil war in the 1940s. The expansive map has even become a fixture inside new Chinese passports. Many scholars, though, think that China's claims are essentially bunk. The Law of the Sea Convention, which China signed and ratified, abolished the idea of historical claims as a way to determine maritime rights. Not surprisingly, Paul Reichler, the Washington lawyer who helped craft Manila's lawsuit, agrees. China, he says bluntly, "is violating international law and the [Law of Sea] Convention." The suit doesn't seek to determine who actually owns the disputed specks of land, which include, fittingly enough, Mischief Reef. Instead, the issue is who owns the waters around them. Manila argues that the waters between its shores and the specks belong to the Philippines, because they are inside the 200-mile exclusive economic zone every country has. China says those waters belong to it. The suit has enraged Beijing, with the Chinese foreign ministry this week vowing that the Philippines will "face consequences" for making its legal case. While China refuses to take part in the arbitration -- which won't stop the process -- it has fired off a volley of arguments in recent days, the most detailed of which came from the Chinese embassy in Manila. In a nutshell, China says that it has the right to defend its own territory, and any disputes should be settled in a bilateral fashion, rather than through international arbitration. "No matter how the Philippine memorial is packaged, the direct cause of the disputes between China and the Philippines is the latter's illegal occupation of some of China's islands and reefs in the South China Sea," Zhang Hua, the embassy spokesman, said in a posting on its website. "The Chinese side is steadfast in defending its territorial sovereignty and maritime interests and rights. The Philippines' plot is doomed to fail." The standoff is sparking fresh fears of an armed conflict in the region.

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The standoff is sparking fresh fears of an armed conflict in the region. In recent years, China has ruffled feathers throughout Southeast Asia by pressing what many see as excessive territorial claims, and beefing up its civilian and military forces to back up its aggressive diplomacy. "China was winning all its neighbors over to China's peaceful rise, and they have completely unraveled that in the region. Now, there are very few countries in the region who are not somewhere on the wary to skeptical to outright scared part of the spectrum," said Holly Morrow, an Asia expert at Harvard University's BelferCenter. Particularly acute have been the naval tensions between China's muscular civilian patrol vessels and the overmatched coast guards of neighboring states. U.S. navy ships, including a guided missile destroyer, have also recently had close calls with Chinese vessels in the South China Sea. Experts worry that the lawsuit will prompt Beijing to take an even more aggressive stance in a bid to cow Manila. "The rhetoric is becoming more shrill, and it's designed to dial up the pressure on the Philippines. In my mind, it's to threaten the use of force to change the dynamics in the negotiations" between the two sides, said Peter Dutton, the director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. Manila's quest for legal satisfaction in The Hague is an uphill struggle. The arbitration panel can't impose a settlement, and relies on the acquiescence of both parties to implement any ruling; China has made clear it will not cooperate. But in the court of public opinion, a Philippine victory sometime next year would make it much easier for Manila and Southeast Asian nations to push back against what they see as Chinese encroachment. "The Philippines and other regional states would gain a strong public relations edge," making it easier for beleaguered countries in the region push back against Beijing, said Caitlyn Antrim, an expert on the Law of the Sea at the Stimson Center. Given China's interests in ensuring free navigation in more distant waters such as the Indian and Arctic oceans, the case may force it to rethink its strategy, she said. "At some point China will have to choose either to fight for regional control, or global freedom of the seas."

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TOM AND JERRY IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA – OPED APRIL 3, 2014 By Gary Sands While Russia aggressively claws back some of its lost territory in Eastern Europe, another large power is playing a more patient cat-and-mouse game over territory claimed in a remote outpost of the South China Sea. The outpost consists solely of a large, rusting World War II transport vessel that the Philippine navy intentionally ran aground in 1999 to mark its claim to the reef, which Manila calls the Second Thomas Shoal or Ayungin and Beijing calls Ren‘ai reef. Manila says the shoal lies within its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) while China claims the shoal lies within its so-called nine-dash line or ―cow‘s tongue‖ that encompasses 80-90 percent of the South China Sea. The transport vessel may be wrecked, but it is not abandoned, on board are eight Filipino soldiers who live for three months at a time in harsh conditions. On Saturday, the Chinese Coast Guard attempted to block a Philippine government vessel carrying food, water and fresh troops and supplies to the shipwrecked vessel. By sailing for shallow waters around the reef, the Philippine government vessel was able to slip past two larger Chinese coastguard ships trying to block its path and dock beside the wrecked ship. During the pursuit, the Chinese sent a radio message warning the ship that it was entering Chinese territory. Philippine troops wearing civilian clothes and journalists then flashed ―V‖ for the peace sign at the Chinese. The incident was also witnessed by a U.S. navy plane, a Philippine military aircraft and a Chinese plane, all visible from their markings, which flew above the ships at different intervals. The incident follows an unsuccessful attempt on March 9 to replace the soldiers, who had been scheduled to go home three weeks ago, when two Philippine supply vessels were blocked by Chinese ships. The Philippines resorted to dropping food and water by air instead. While the increased presence of Chinese Coast Guard ships around the disputed waters are Beijing‘s way of showing strength, the risk of confrontation is lessened by their ships‘ lack of military weaponry.

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The incident came just a day before Manila filed a case against China at an arbitration tribunal in The Hague, following a similar attempt in January 2013 after Chinese government ships took control of a disputed shoal off the northwestern Philippines. Manila is seeking a ruling at the Permanent Court of Arbitration under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to confirm its right to exploit the waters in its EEZ. In response to the filing, China reiterated on Sunday that it would not accept international arbitration, saying the only way to resolve the dispute was through bilateral negotiations, blaming the dispute on Manilas‘ ―illegal occupation‖ of the islands. The U.S. State Department accused China‘s coastguard of ―harassment‖ and stated all countries should respect the right of any state to use dispute resolution mechanisms under the Convention on the Law of the Sea. The U.S., a treaty ally of the Philippines, is not a signatory to the Convention. With the filing by Manila, the question remains as to how a ruling by The Hague would be implemented on the ground. Manila may be thinking a favorable ruling would imply that China, as a responsible member of the global community, would abide by the outcome of the ruling and stop harassing Filipino ships in the area. But this is far from certain, given Beijing‘s unbending resolve, powerful military, and strong nationalist forces at home. Indeed, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said last week that China will never accept nor participate in the international arbitration pushed by the Philippines. The Philippine military is not nearly as strong as the Chinese military, and would require substantial investment in arms and military training to take on the likes of China on its own. What the Philippines could do is harness the military assets of other nations who have similar claims over maritime territory with China. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam all have overlappimg claims with China in the South China Sea, yet so far none of the nations have publicly stepped forward to support a general cause. Economic considerations and competing claims with each other makes the division of the spoils more complex. But a banding together of these nations as brothers in arms is what Beijing fears most. Using its economic clout against the smaller trading nations, Big Brother China has used its economic and trading clout to demand that claimants settle their territorial disputes through one-on-one negotiations, a process which is clearly in favor of the larger and richer brother. Besides banding together, claimant nations can also turn to Uncle Sam, the great naval power in the region, which Beijing wants to keep out of the region much as the U.S. once sought to restrict the activities of the Europeans in their backyard, the Caribbean. The U.S., as a treaty ally, is pledged to come to the assistance of the Philippines and

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Vietnam, but the last thing Washington wants to deal with is another distraction on top of Russia‘s territorial grab. This banding together of brothers, together with implicit support from Washington, should reasonably take place under the auspices of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but Filipino efforts to accelerate negotiations within ASEAN on a meaningful code of conduct have yet to gain traction. This month U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to visit four countries in Asia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. The trip is significant given efforts to rebalance U.S. diplomatic and military resources toward Asia were hindered when a U.S. government shutdown led Obama to cancel his visit last year. This month, free-trade agreements intended to loosen economic dependence on trading with China and U.S. defense treaties pledging support for Asian nations will be on the agenda. In addition to the expected offer of reassurance to U.S. regional allies, Obama should push the claimant countries to combine their efforts in resolving the territorial disputes in a peaceful and legal fashion, either through ASEAN or through the Hague. Without a concerted effort on behalf of the claimant countries, Big Brother Beijing will continue its policy of chipping away at disputed territories and possibly increase the intensity and frequency of its assertive actions. Gary Sands covers China Foreign Policy for the New-York based Foreign Policy Association. His articles have appeared in South China Morning Post, Washington Times, U.S. News and World Report, International Policy Digest and Indo-Pacific Review.

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Ma may face questions on China stance: academic

‗OUT OF LINE‘:：A US professor says Washington may ask Taipei to detail its own

claims to the South China Sea and join it in condemning Beijing‘s belligerence By William Lowther / Staff reporter in WASHINGTON Thu, Apr 03, 2014 - Page 4

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) may face some very difficult questions from

Washington in the near future, a US academic has said. George Washington University professor Robert Sutter told a conference on ―Taiwan and the World‖ this week that the US was frustrated with China and could use ―a little help‖ from Taipei.

“US-China relations have been pretty stable; both countries are pragmatic and they

want to continue working together because positive engagement helps them both,‖ he said. However, over the past two years, China has pressed maritime claims in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, the academic said.

“They are treating others, as far as sensitivity is concerned, as they treat Taiwan,‖ he

said. The problem for the US is what to do about it, Sutter said.

“It‘s not good, but it‘s real,‖ he said.

While not directly using military force, China is employing coercion and intimidation, he said, adding that as a result, US President Barack Obama‘s administration has recently been a lot tougher in its rhetoric when dealing with Beijing.

“They are taking sides in that they are condemning China‘s practices in these

disputes,‖ he said.

“They didn‘t use to do that too much, but they are doing it fairly routinely now,‖ Sutter

said. Washington believes that China is ―out of line‖ and that its acts run counter to international norms, and it is in this context that Taiwan may be asked to become involved, he said.

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Sutter said that former US National Security Council director for East Asian Affairs Jeffrey Bader recently indicated that Taiwan should clarify its ―nine-dash line‖ claim in the South China Sea. While Bader — now an academic at the Brookings Institution — was not speaking in an official capacity, he has close links to the Obama administration and has a reputation for being very careful over matters concerning cross-strait relations. It may only be a matter of time before the US officially asks Taipei to explain and detail its own claims to the South China Sea, academics said. Sutter said that with the US criticizing China for deviating from international norms and using intimidation and coercion, Taiwan may be asked to join the US in condemning Beijing. Taiwan shares US values and the question may arise, ―will they join in calling China out on some of these fairly egregious kinds of behaviors,‖ he said. David Keegan, a highly regarded retired US Department of State official, has authored a paper in which he argues that Taiwan should be brought into the US‘ Asia rebalancing policy, he said.

“Does Taiwan want to be rebalanced in this way?‖ Sutter asked. ―Is Taiwan willing to

do this? It‘s a risk.‖ Sutter also asked what Taiwan would do if the US decided to conduct significant military exercises in the East and South China seas in areas that Taiwan claims as under its control.

“What would happen? Would Taiwan remain quiet? What would they do?‖ he asked.

―US frustration will continue because the Chinese are determined to advance their claims in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.‖

“What will Taiwan do in this situation? My sense is that they will not do much,‖ he

added.

Tamkang University professor Edward Chen I-hsin (陳一新) said in a paper presented at

the conference that Washington‘s promotion of democracy, freedom and human rights in the Asia-Pacific region had benefited Taiwan.

“Taiwan will in turn contribute to the peace, prosperity and stability in the Asian-Pacific

region by further improving its relations with the states in the region and China and the US in particular,‖ he said.

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“Although Taiwan has benefited greatly from the US rebalancing to Asia policy,

Taiwan has to rely more on itself in the future while welcoming support from other states,‖ Chen added. Besides promoting cross-strait exchanges and cooperation, Taiwan hopes to ride on the tide of Washington‘s rebalance to participate in the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership and Asia-Pacific economic integration, Tamkang University associate professor Li Da-

jung (李大中) said.

“This will not only allow Taiwan to avoid being marginalized, but will also have the

symbolic meaning of breaking into new international fronts,‖ Li said.

“As for security and political aspects, Taiwan has been particularly concerned with

whether Washington will factor Beijing‘s attitude, or US-China ties, in living up to its security commitment to Taiwan,‖ he said.

“Taiwan wants to make sure that it will not be sacrificed and its interests undermined

when the US is pushing its rebalancing strategy with full speed,‖ Li added.

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The Philippines Takes China to Court, but It's Public Opinion That Will Decide T. Dean Reed Posted: 04/03/2014 3:06 pm EDT Updated: 04/03/2014 3:59 pm EDT Just as a Philippines ship eluded Chinese gunboats by sailing into safe waters in order to feed Filipino troops, the Philippines government, the brave David of Asia, has outmaneuvered Goliath China by going to two courts to get its seized lands and seas returned. The first is a world court in The Hague in the Netherlands where a five-judge tribunal will determine if China has violated international law by its continuing efforts to take over the South China Sea. The second court is the Court of World Opinion, and the Philippines are counting on a groundswell of support if China is found guilty in The Hague and refuses to obey the court's orders. China is refusing to take part at The Hague, but it has already shown signs of fear of public opinion branding it as a rogue nation. The first sign came when China appeared to blink and made last-minute offers if the Philippines wouldn't file its case. The offers were believed to include withdrawal from contested islands and reefs and a huge trade-and-aid package to the Philippines, described as leading to a new golden age of cooperation between the two countries. Now China denies any such offer -- "sheer fabrication" -- because no formal offer was made, only back-channel efforts that were rejected by the Philippines. China has resumed its litany of bluster and threats, warning the Philippines of untold consequences. The next sign came when China displayed anger that the Philippines told the world how its supply ship successfully evaded Chinese naval forces by entering shallow waters at Second Thomas Shoal to feed and rotate troops stationed there. Journalists were aboard, and the story immediately received worldwide acclaim. The case at The Hague will be lengthy and involved. Lawyers for the Philippines have filed an initial request, called a memorial, that extends to 4,000 pages. A decision on whether China has violated the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea, which it signed , isn't expected until 2015. Five judges will decide -- a chief judge from Ghana, and judges from France, Poland, the Netherlands and Germany. But evidence is already being presented to the Court of World Opinion, and China doesn't like what it sees. The case in The Hague marks the first time China has ever been challenged legally about its intrusions into the South China Sea, where it claims

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almost all the islands, reefs and sea lanes as its own. Moreover, if the international court decides in favor of the Philippines, the decision could have a marked effect on similar disputes with Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. China insists its differences with the Philippines and the other countries should be discussed bilaterally with each of the smaller nations. It doesn't want ASEAN, the 10-member Association of South-East Asia Nations, directly involved, and certainly not the United Nations, even though China agreed to ASEAN's declaration in 2002 committing to international law, including the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea. Twelve years later, however, little progress has been made to turn that declaration into a code of conduct for the South China Sea, and that appears to suit China just fine. An effective code would prohibit military exercises in disputed waters, which China undertakes regularly and would be loatheto cease. World opinion is supportive of the Philippines' decision to go to the international tribunal, a peaceful act taken only after years of Chinese forceful occupation of Philippine territory. The United States has issued statements that the Philippines legal course is right and proper. What is unknown is China's ultimate reaction. It has already threatened the Philippines with retaliation, yet to be defined. In an earlier dispute, China stopped Philippine imports of bananas, leaving the fruit to rot on Chinese docks. The next round is expected to be more serious than the "banana war," particularly if China considers military action to dislodge the Philippines from Second Thomas Shoal, site of the successful Philippines evasion of the Chinese gunboats. What is also unknown is how the United States and other countries will respond if China takes actions that exacerbate the situation. The stalwart president of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino, standing up to an aggressive China, has noted that other countries say they are standing behind him. He would feel more assured if those countries, including the United States, stand beside him, not behind.

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China's rise is waking up the neighbours Benjamin Herscovitch 3 Apr, 11:30 AM While delivering a speech in Paris last week, President Xi Jinping shrewdly gave China‘s ‗smile diplomacy‘ a Gallic twist by quoting France‘s favourite autocrat. Amid the inking of agreements on high-tech transfers and industry cooperation, Xi approvingly cited Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte‘s prophecy that when the Chinese lion ‗wakes she will shake the world.‘ The Chinese president then quickly reassured his audience of China‘s benign intentions: ‗Today, the lion has woken up. But it is peaceful, pleasant and civilised.‘ Xi‘s rhetorical gesture set the right tone, but it is hard to reconcile with Beijing‘s bullish claims to vast areas of disputed territory and the bellicose sentiments emanating from elements of the People‘s Liberation Army and the state-controlled Chinese media. Capitals across Asia are well aware of this disconnect and are already hedging against the risk of a violent Chinese lion. This emerging ‗concert of Asia‘ is bad news for Beijing: It means closer defence partnerships between the United States and China‘s neighbours, and increased military and diplomatic cooperation between nations on the Middle Kingdom‘s maritime and continental peripheries. Despite being undermined by budgetary woes on the home front, the US military and diplomatic ‗pivot‘ to Asia has been embraced abroad as a counterweight to Chinese power. Tokyo is planning to extend the mandate of its self-defence force to allow it to fight alongside American forces if they are attacked, while US marines have been rotating through Darwin since 2012. Having ejected US military bases from the Philippines 23 years ago, Manila announced last month that it will soon welcome temporary American defence facilities.

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Meanwhile, Singapore will host two more US combat ships by the end of 2016 -- bringing the total American naval deployments to the city-state to three ships over the next three years. Beyond traditional American allies and partners, the US pivot has even received support from one of Washington‘s former enemies. US warships now regularly visit Vietnam‘s Cam Ranh Bay to receive repairs, and with Washington offering Hanoi US$18 million worth of naval aid last year, US-Vietnamese defence cooperation has been upgraded to a comprehensive partnership. China probably foresaw that its rapid rise would prompt a ramped up US military and diplomatic presence in the Western Pacific. But more worryingly for Beijing, key Asian powers are now independently banding together in a bid to contain China‘s territorial and strategic ambitions. India and Japan -- two of China‘s former adversaries and Asia‘s second- and third-largest economic powers and defence spenders -- are deepening ties. In a thinly veiled rebuke of Beijing‘s contested territorial claims in East and South Asia, Tokyo and New Delhi have stated their opposition to any attempts to change Asia‘s territorial and strategic status quo by force, while also agreeing in January to strengthen bilateral maritime, onshore and aerial defence cooperation. India is also looking to rebuff Chinese encroachment in Southeast Asia: New Delhi has developed a strategic partnership with Hanoi as part of its ‗Look East Policy,‘ and is giving the Vietnamese credit for defence purchases, training for their submarine crews, and assistance to explore and exploit hydrocarbon reserves in the disputed South China Sea. With NarendraModi -- the favourite to be the next Indian prime minister -- accusing China of having an ‗expansionist mindset‘ during a campaign rally in Indian-administered territory claimed by Beijing, India is likely to continue to undercut Chinese territorial and strategic initiatives. Although Vietnam and the Philippines have long been vocal opponents of Chinese territorial claims and brinkmanship in the South China Sea, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has remained meek in the face of China‘s ‗big stick‘ diplomacy. The rationale for taking a collective stand against China is nevertheless increasingly compelling for ASEAN: Beijing has now also included part of Indonesia‘s Riau Islands Province in maps delineating Chinese territory and has started antagonising Kuala Lumpur with naval exercises around a disputed shoal within Malaysia‘s 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone.

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Manila‘s move over the weekend to bring its territorial dispute with China to the United Nations for arbitration will not receive vocal support from ASEAN. However, the need for a stronger and more unified response to China‘s provocative territorial claims can be expected to figure prominently in discussions among ASEAN defence ministers as they meet US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in Hawaii this week. Deng Xiaoping, the father of China‘s recent resurgence, was fond of claiming that the principal threat to international peace and security was US and Soviet aggression. Deng insisted that unlike these great powers, Beijing would never browbeat and bully other nations: China simply wanted to pursue its own ‗peaceful development.‘ President Xi would be wise to translate Deng‘s narrative into policy substance. Failure to do so will see China confront an expanding concert of hostile Asian nations. Dr Benjamin Herscovitch is a Beijing-based Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.

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Risky Games in the South China Sea By THE EDITORIAL BOARD APRIL 2, 2014 Undaunted by China‘s aggressive rhetoric and expansionist claims to nearly all of the South China Sea, the Philippines has filed a legal case against Beijing with an international arbitration tribunal in The Hague. This is an appropriate venue to resolve a major dispute peacefully and in accord with global norms. The strategy of the Philippines has implications for others with similar claims against China — Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan — and thus deserves support from the international community. The rivalry between China and the Philippines is bitter and potentially dangerous, with frequent face-offs at sea over the disputed islands and rocks. It is not hard to imagine incidents spiraling out of control. In the latest episode, a Philippine vessel on Saturday outmaneuvered the Chinese Coast Guard and resupplied a ship that has been stranded for 15 years on a tiny reef called the Second Thomas Shoal. The Philippines intentionally grounded the vessel in 1999 to stake claim to the reef, and it has since served as, effectively, a military outpost. The Chinese ships were trying to block a delivery of fresh food and troops from reaching it. The Second Thomas Shoal is at the heart of the legal brief filed with the Permanent Court of Arbitration. It argues that the Shoal, known as Ayungin in the Philippines and Ren‘ai Reef in China, is 105 nautical miles from the Philippines, well inside the 200 nautical miles of an exclusive economic zone that allows the Philippines to control and exploit the waters around the shoal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. A ruling is expected sometime next year. For its part, China claims about 80 percent of the South China Sea, a vital waterway for world trade. It has repeatedly asserted that it does not accept the Philippine decision to take the case to the tribunal and will not participate in the proceedings. It also summoned the Philippine ambassador in Beijing to lodge a strong complaint just in case the Philippines did not get the message. China is a signatory to the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea, though it has opted out of international jurisdiction over some territorial issues. Its proposed remedy in this case — bilateral talks — has been on offer for years and clearly has not led to a settlement. Given all the tension, it is time for a legal proceeding allowing both sides to present their best arguments and obtain a judgment. The United States has not taken sides on the claims but has argued for a peaceful resolution and backed the right of the Philippines to use the tribunal‘s dispute mechanism. Other countries should take a similar stand or risk sending China a message that it can keep trying to bully its rivals into submission.

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Crimea and South China Sea Diplomacy Russia‘s big move shows both the limits and importance of diplomacy in territorial disputes. By Sophie Boisseau du Rocher& Bruno Hellendorff April 01, 2014 On March 18, China and ASEAN gathered in Singapore to pursue consultations on a Code of Conduct (COC) for the South China Sea, alongside talks on the implementation of the Declaration of Conduct (DOC). The gathering came at a time of rising preoccupation over a perceived creeping assertiveness by China in pursuing its maritime claims. Just one week before, Manila and Beijing experienced another diplomatic row, after Chinese Coast Guard vessels barred the resupply of Philippine marines based in the Spratly Islands. In broader terms, several high-profile developments have hinted that China is becoming more inclined to consider the threat and use of force as its preferred vehicle for influence in the South China Sea. China‘s considerable maritime build-up has been accompanied by the merging of its maritime agencies into a unified Coast Guard unit, the publication of maps with a 10-dash line covering Chinese claims in the South China Sea, and even the announcement of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, covering the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. All have contributed to turning the South China Sea into ―Asia‘s cauldron,‖ as one renowned expert titled his last book. A widely circulated photograph picturing Chinese sailors forming the slogan ―The Chinese dream, the dream of a strong military‖ on the deck of the Liaoning did nothing to help mitigate nervousness over Chinese aims and strategy in the region. The timing of these China-ASEAN discussions coincided with rising tensions in Eastern Europe around the fate of Crimea. In recent days, neither international law nor European pressure have proved of much value in the face of Russian resolve. Illegal in many respects, the Crimean referendum was still deemed valid in Moscow, which subsequently annexed the region. The Ukrainian military bases in Crimea were rapidly overwhelmed by pro-Russian forces as the last vestiges of political control from Kiev were swept aside, making a return to status quo ante increasingly remote. Russia clearly has the upper hand in Crimea. It successfully promoted its interests through a combination of intimidation and crawling assertiveness while answering European and American criticisms by pointing to Western interventions in Kosovo and Libya. The larger consequences of this strategy for Euro-Russian relations and stability in Eastern Europe remain unclear. However, this demonstration of how, in certain situations, force prevails over diplomacy, a notion long fought by the European Union, has opened a new Pandora‘s box.

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Certainly, Russia‘s bid to bend international norms in its favor through the use of force, and Western reactions to it are being watched with great interest, and probably some trepidation, in Beijing and Southeast Asia. Whether the Crimea issue will have influence in Southeast Asia, in the context of competing territorial claims, is far from clear. However, the Crimean and South China Sea issues have several elements in common. One of the most prominent is the complexity of managing—let alone solving—territorial disputes, especially when dealing with an evolving power. Another is that both cases stress the necessity but limited efficacy of diplomacy. Confronted with a complex and contradictory China, Southeast Asian countries may derive a sense of urgency from developments in the Crimea. For ASEAN and its members, the crucial question may well be whether they can succeed in convincing China of the long-term benefits of diplomacy over force and fait accompli. It may well be ASEAN‘s last chance: Negotiations began 22 years ago, in 1992, and have yet to produce convincing results for either party. If the 2002 Declaration reaffirmed a commitment to international law and freedom of navigation, there has been obvious evidence of unilateralism by certain parties, be they the Filipino government, the Chinese military or even the Hainan authorities. The case may be pressed further in light of the Crimea events: should a Code of Conduct be effectively agreed, with—as China made clear—no deadline for its actual implementation, will it suffice to curtail national frustration from any party, limit tensions and therefore avoid escalation? Diplomacy is important. It is the channel through which the different stakeholders can showcase and explain their diverging perceptions and interests, communicate, negotiate, and ultimately create a path to de-escalation and stabilization for future common benefit. But it could also prove limited in that it is largely dependent on power configurations and functions under a series of conventions and norms that can either facilitate or constrain discussions. In the Crimean and South China Sea cases, diplomacy is largely, yet not exclusively, undertaken under the particular framework of one international institution (the EU or ASEAN) engaging one great power (Russia or China). Facilitating discussions is the fact that in both situations, stakeholders are connected through a series of strong economic, political and institutional interests. The bad news is that these networks of interests look rather fragile when history becomes a self-asserted, and emotional, argument. Moreover, internal divisions within both the EU and ASEAN have the consequence of blurring the common vision that their members may seek to promote, weakening their negotiating position and constraining the options available to their diplomats. In both cases, the basic worry for the EU and ASEAN alike is to come up with a compelling response to political and military resolve, with international law and negotiations offering little assistance. The Singapore round of consultations on a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea produced no notable progress. That is not much of a surprise to experts already of the opinion that the very process is merely cosmetic and deserving of little attention, arguing that China will not give way on what it considers its national and sovereign territory. Other authors have explained that Chinese diplomats are content with the DoC, and will not push for quick progress on a CoC as the latter would inevitably hurt

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the national interest. Such speculation and doubt over the scope and effectiveness of the negotiations did not alter ASEAN‘s official line: sanctions do not help; consultations are always better. Will the future prove that correct? It appears that ASEAN‘s bet is to prove that China sees an interest in these talks and would gain in following certain rules not just in terms of image and status but also in promoting its views and ―dream‖ through an ASEAN platform. Before the recent events in Crimea, ASEAN‘s diplomacy was considered adequate by most stakeholders—with the possible exception of the Philippines, which nonetheless ceaselessly appealed to the bloc for help. All claimant countries and their neighbors found an interest in pursuing dual-track negotiations with China, bilateral and multilateral, the latter stage mainly serving, via ASEAN, communication purposes. But now may be the time to consider adding more substance to the discussions, and more glue to the Southeast Asian claimants. The Crimea is far from the South China Sea, and the two contexts certainly differ in many respects. But Russia‘s bold move has shown that resorting to international law to contain a great power‘s resolve is not always effective. Even in Moscow, few would disagree, pointing to the invasion of Libya or that of Iraq as counterexamples. Whether the events of the Crimea provide lessons to Chinese and ASEAN diplomats is unknown, but they have made a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea an urgent diplomatic imperative. Success would showcase China‘s ―peaceful rise‖ as it would ASEAN‘s diplomatic capacity. The efforts of both partners to create stability and security would also be welcome news to a heavily challenged international community. Bruno Hellendorff is a Research Fellow and Dr. Sophie Boisseau du Rocher is an Associate Researcher at the Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security, Brussels.

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The Philippines' UNCLOS Claim and the PR Battle Against China Manila submitting its disputes with China to UNCLOS arbitration is part of a larger battle for international opinion. By Shannon Tiezzi April 01, 2014 As expected, Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert del Rosario announced Sunday that the Philippines has submitted a memorial seeking a ruling on China‘s ―nine dash line‖ from the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. The Philippines seeks to have China‘s claim to much of the South China Sea, including several features within the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone, declared invalid under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The case would be the first time international legal experts formally consider the validity of China‘s territorial claims in the South China Sea. According to Rosario, the memorial is nearly 4,000 pages in length, including Manila‘s analysis of applicable laws, the ―specific relief sought by the Philippines,‖ and documentary evidence and maps designed to back up Philippine claims. Rosario ended his statement by saying: With firm conviction, the ultimate purpose of the Memorial is our national interest. It is about defending what is legitimately ours. It is about securing our children‘s future. It is about guaranteeing freedom of navigation for all nations. It is about helping to preserve regional peace, security and stability. And finally, it is about seeking not just any kind of resolution but a just and durable solution grounded on International Law. While there have been many reports on China‘s PR battle against Japan, few have noticed that the Philippines is also attempting to defend its territorial dispute in the court of public opinion. The move to file a request for arbitration in UNCLOS is part of this gambit. Thus, Rosario‘s final statement on the arbitration, while it acknowledges the paramount importance of the Philippines‘ ―national interest,‖ also seeks to claim the moral high ground by painting the case as a milestone in regional security and international law. By filing such a case, Manila not only hopes to win a favorable ruling, but wants to paint itself as a positive force in the region. Philippine leaders knew that China would not participate in the arbitration process by submitting a counter-claim, making a Philippine victory much more likely. While such a ruling would do nothing to change the situation on the ground, it would be a PR victory for the Philippines, allowing Manila to claim its position is internationally sanctioned. The PR aspect of the arbitration claim is easily apparent from the Department of Foreign Affairs Website, which prominently features a link to a colorful newsletter on ―The West

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Philippine Sea Arbitration.‖ This document prominently features quotes from international experts affirming the symbolic and legal value of the arbitration—both showcasing previous PR gains and clearly hoping to sway more to the Philippine point of view. But the UNCLOS arbitration is only one part of the Philippines strategy. There have also been more pointed attempts to court international journalists. Earlier this year, President Benigno Aquino held a 90-minute interview with journalists in the Presidential Palace. During the interview, he compared China to World War II-era Germany, with the Philippines playing the part of Czechoslovakia. Accordingly, he argued against appeasing China by giving in to its territorial demands. ―At what point do you say, ‗Enough is enough‘? Well, the world has to say it — remember that the Sudetenland was given in an attempt to appease Hitler to prevent World War II,‖ Aquino said. The Philippines has made other outreaches to foreign journalists, including involving them directly in a confrontation over disputed territories. Reuters reported that international media members were invited aboard a Philippine ship transporting supplies to a military outpost on the disputed Second Thomas Shoal. After successfully avoiding the Chinese ships blockading the shoal, the Philippine captain told Reuters, ―If we didn‘t change direction, if we didn‘t change course, then we would have collided with them.‖ Journalists also noted that, during the voyage, aircraft from the U.S., the Philippines, and China all flew above the Philippine boat. In addition to providing a chance for the Philippine government to showcase its claims, the inclusion of journalists may also have prevented a stronger Chinese response to the Philippine supply run. China responded angrily to each of these gambits. Most recently, in Monday‘s press conference, Hong also decried the ―reporting trip‖ to Second Thomas Shoal as ―a deliberately schemed activity with the purpose of further hyping up the issue of the Ren‘ai Reef … serving its attempt to illegally snatch the Ren‘ai Reef which is China‘s territory.‖ Hong added, ―China will by no means allow the Philippine side to seize the Ren‘ai Reef [Second Thomas Shoal] in any form, nor will China allow it to build facilities on the Ren‘ai Reef in defiance of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). The Philippine side will have to take the consequences caused by its provocative actions.‖ On Sunday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei also issued a special statement on the Philippine request for arbitration. First, Hong reiterated China‘s position that ―China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands [Spratly Islands] and their adjacent waters.‖ ―No matter how the Philippine memorial is packaged,‖ Hong said, ―the direct cause of the dispute between China and the Philippines is the latter‘s illegal occupation of some of China‘s islands and reefs in the South China Sea.‖ Hong also repeated China‘s opposition to international arbitration over these issues, given China‘s preference for ―direct negotiations with countries concerned.‖ Hong argued that, by submitting the case for arbitration, the Philippines was in violation of previous agreements to solve issues bilaterally, including the 2002 ASEAN Declaration

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on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. ―China urges the Philippines to comprehensively and effectively implement the consensus repeatedly reaffirmed between the two sides and the DOC, and return to the right track of settling the disputes through bilateral negotiations,‖ Hong concluded. Despite China‘s opposition, the UNCLOS-based arbitration will move forward, and could have an impact on all other South China Sea disputes. For one thing, the Philippines is seeking clarification on whether partially-submerged features (such as the Scarborough Shoal) can be used as the basis for a full EEZ (200 nautical miles) or only a ―territorial sea‖ of 12 nautical miles. Such answers could have important legal ramifications for other claims in the South China Sea, besides the Philippines-China disputes. However, Rosario has said he does not expect a ruling on the case before the end of 2015—leaving plenty of time for the PR war to continue. **Shannon Tiezzi is an Associate Editor at The Diplomat. Her main focus is on China, and she writes on China’s foreign relations, domestic politics, and economy. Shannon previously served as a research associate at the U.S.-China Policy Foundation, where she hosted the weekly television show China Forum. She received her A.M. from Harvard University and her B.A. from The College of William and Mary. Shannon has also studied at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

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Philippines Takes China to Court: End of Diplomacy in the South China Sea? Posted: 03/31/2014 4:34 pm EDT Updated: 03/31/2014 4:59 pm EDT By Richard JavadHeydarian Academic, policy advisor, and author of "How Capitalism Failed the Arab World: The Economic Roots and Precarious Future of the Middle East Uprisings" "To file, or not to file" this was the crucial question, which Filipino policy-makers have been wrestling with for months, as Manila pondered challenging China's sweeping territorial claims in the South China Sea before a United Nations (UN) court at The Hague. On March 30, the Philippines was scheduled to file a memorandum -- or "memorial" in legal parlance -- to defend its case against China and formally commence an arbitration at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) over the disputed maritime features. This was by no means an easy choice. On one hand, filing the case could mean permanent estrangement with China, the total collapse of bilateral ties, and the increased probability of economic sanctions as well as military confrontation in the South China Sea. Even if the Philippines wins the case, there would be no existing "enforcement mechanism" to ensure China respects the outcome of the arbitration. In fact, China has unequivocally expressed its refusal to subject any issue concerning, among other things, "territorial delimitation" to international arbitration. Given the vagueness of China's territorial claims, and their quite unprecedented historical basis, the arbitration panel at the ITLOS would face considerable challenge at arriving at a decisive, clear-cut decision. At the same time, by pushing ahead with the arbitration, the Philippines could rally the international community behind its own cause, portraying China as a legal pariah. In spite of China's refusal to boycott the proceedings, the Philippines believes that the arbitration could still push through: Since China is party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Philippine government believes that Annex VII of UNCLOS accords ITLOS the jurisdiction to push ahead with the arbitration. Witnessing Russia's international isolation over its annexation of Crimea, the Philippines seems to calculate that China could face a similar outcome over its increased territorial assertiveness in the Western Pacific, especially if it loses the arbitration case at The Hague. Moreover, the Philippines hopes that its own legal maneuver against China will encourage other like-minded countries such as Vietnam, Japan, and India, which happen to share comparable territorial disputes with Beijing, to file similar cases against China.

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Preemptive vs. Deterrent Diplomacy In early-2013, the Philippines initiated court proceeding at ITLOS, filing Notification and Statement of Claim against Beijing's notorious 9-dashline doctrine, which bestows China with quasi-legal "inherent" and "indisputable" sovereignty over the bulk of contested features in the Western Pacific. The aim was to (indirectly) reinforce Manila's claim to a number of features within its 200-nautical-miles Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) by directly questioning the legality of China's historical claims in the South China Sea on the basis of international law, specifically the provisions of the UNCLOS. The Philippines' mid-2013 decision to invite greater American military presence on its soil has surely irritated China, which views growing strategic cooperation between the U.S. and its Asian allies as a thinly-veiled containment strategy against Beijing. The Philippines' decision to file a legal complaint against China, however, has arguably been the greatest source of bilateral tensions, severely undermining channels of communication between Manila and Beijing. No wonder, much of 2013 saw nothing but deterioration in bilateral ties, as China refused to dignify the Philippines' legal complaint at The Hague, condemned the Philippines' "internationalization" of a supposedly bilateral issue, and framed the whole maneuver as a great affront to its international image. For this reason, some questioned the political wisdom of the Philippines' decision to engage in a legal battle, since it encouraged Chinese hardliners to respond through more aggressive para-military patrols across the South China Sea. And an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the area, which would give Beijing quasi-legal basis to control the airspace above the contested features, could potentially follow this. But to prevent further bilateral crisis, and potential international backlash over the arbitration case, the Chinese leadership reportedly offered the Philippines certain "carrots" in exchange for Manila's decision to postpone -- not drop -- the filing of the memorial. Aware that it would be too embarrassing and politically untenable for the Aquino administration to drop its much-publicized legal challenge against China, Beijing reportedly only sought a temporary pause in the arbitration case in order to create enough diplomatic space to restart bilateral negotiations over the disputes territories. To sweeten the deal, China reportedly considered mutual disengagement from contested features such as the Second Thomas Shoal, provision of trade and investment deals to the Philippines, and even the postponement of the prospective implementation of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea. This was an enticing offer, which forced the Aquino administration to convene a special cabinet meeting in late-January. Eventually, however, the hardliners won the day, insisting that China could not be trusted, and that the pressure track is the only way to bring China to the negotiating table in good faith. On March 30, the Philippine filed a voluminous (4,000-page)

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'memorial' to the ITLOS, with Filipino officials emphatically declaring their (self-proclaimed) righteous fight against China. "With firm conviction, the ultimate purpose of the memorial is our national interest. It is about defending what is legitimately ours. It is about securing our children's future. It is about guaranteeing freedom of navigation for all nations," Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario exclaimed during a highly-anticipated press conference on March 30. "It is about helping to preserve regional peace, security, and stability...about seeking not just any kind of resolution but a just and durable solution grounded on international law." The Gloves are off It must be noted that the prospective finalization of a new security pact between the Philippines and the U.S., most likely in the coming months, has also encouraged the Aquino administration to adopt a more confrontational approach towards China. The Obama administration's increasingly vocal commitment to its Mutual Defense Treaty (1951) with the Philippines as well as its (indirect) expressions of support for the Philippines' territorial claims has strengthened the hands of those, who have called for a more hawkish approach to China. Sensing the inevitability of an arbitration case at The Hague, China has warned about the potential ramifications of the Philippines decision to legally challenge its territorial claims. And China has the capability to hurt the Philippines if push comes to shove. During the recent National People's Congress (NPC), the Chinese leadership announced a further acceleration (from 10.7% to 12.2%) in the country's defense spending in 2014, officially standing at $131.56 billion. Most analysts believe that in nominal terms alone, the real figure could be twice the official announcement. Leaving no doubt as to the country's commitment to push ahead with its territorial claims, and overwhelm its neighbors in an event of a conflict, Premier Li Keqiang vowed that the Chinese leadership will "resolutely uphold China's maritime rights and interests, and build China into a maritime power." Some analysts would argue that the Philippines' infrastructure is also vulnerable to a potential sabotage. For instance, the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) owns 40% of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP). In an event of conflict, China could very well sabotage the Philippines' already weak electricity infrastructure, undermining its tenuously booming economy. As the Philippines 3rd largest trading partner, China could also impose sanctions, similar to or more severe than the non-tariff barriers and travel restrictions it imposed on Manila amid the mid-2012 standoff over the Scarborough Shoal in the South China. All of these could severely undermine the Aquino administration legacy, which is largely based on the Philippines' improved economic performance.

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In recent weeks, the Chinese para-military forces have also placed Filipino troops stationed in the Second Thomas Shoal under effective siege. As a result, the Philippine government has been struggling to resupply its maritime forces in the contested feature, which lies dangerously close to the hydrocarbon-rich waters off the coast of southwestern Philippine island of Palawan. In effect, the Philippine leadership views China's maritime posturing as not only a threat to its territorial integrity, but also energy security and economic resources. A sober analysis reveals how the Philippines has engaged in a very dangerous gamble against China. Nonetheless, much will depend on how the Philippines will transform the momentum generated by its latest legal maneuver into a political springboard to pressure China into the negotiating table. To prevent a wholesale reprisal by Beijing, the Philippines will have to aggressively convince other Asian countries, notably Vietnam, to file a similar case against China, while ensuring maximum strategic and security guarantees from the U.S. in an event of a conflict in the South China Sea. After all, international relations is not a realm of law, but instead a battlefield shaped by "balance of power" politics -- and the wisdom of diplomats on the negotiating table.

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Countering China in the South China Sea PrashanthParameswaran March 18, 2014 PrashanthParameswaran is a PhD candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University and a Pacific Forum CSIS non-resident fellow now based in Washington, D.C. He has previously worked on Southeast Asia at several think tanks including the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). You can follow him on Twitter at @TheAsianist On March 18, officials from China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will meet in Singapore to discuss steps towards an elusive code of conduct in the contentious South China Sea dispute. If the past is any indicator, China will ensure that such diplomacy will produce little significant progress even as it continues to coercively change realities on the ground in its favor. While cooler heads hope diplomacy will prevail, hope is not a strategy. Southeast Asian officials and other external partners like the United States and Japan need to use the full range of instruments at their disposal to persuade Beijing about the urgent need for a diplomatic solution, dissuade it from undertaking further destabilizing moves, and prepare for a range of crises in the absence of Chinese cooperation. Since 2009, China has displayed a growing assertiveness towards ASEAN states in the South China Sea, using a combination of diplomatic, administrative and military instruments to impose unilateral fishing bans, harass vessels, and patrol contested waters. Despite the so-called ‗charm offensive‘ by China‘s new leadership in the region in 2013, Beijing‘s conduct in the South China Sea has remained largely unchanged, with a new fishing law promulgated in January, invasive patrols and encroachments into waters of other claimants, and foot-dragging at talks over a code of conduct it finally agreed to discussing last year. Meanwhile, the specter of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea also continues to loom large. Yet, as former CIA senior analyst Chris Johnson told a forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies earlier this year, unlike most other observers China‘s leaders continue to see no contradiction between seeking better relations with Southeast Asia and assertively defending their sovereignty claims at the expense of other ASEAN claimants. Given this, it is now up to ASEAN states and their partners to craft an integrated strategy in the diplomatic, legal and security realms geared towards both steering Beijing away from its assertiveness if possible, and preparing to counter it effectively should it continue or intensify. In the diplomatic domain, ASEAN states and other parties

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should continue to consistently emphasize the cardinal principle that all countries – including China – need to resolve their disputes by peaceful means in accordance with international law. The principal means to reach this objective is a legally binding code of conduct. In spite of Chinese stalling, ASEAN states should remain united in insisting on both its speedy conclusion and meaningful content, including key mechanisms like a crisis management hotline. While all ASEAN countries ought to be united in pursuit of a code of conduct, the four ASEAN states that have claims in the South China Sea – namely Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam – should also take additional steps together given their greater stake in the issue at hand. The main objective would be to thwart China‘s efforts to divide the ASEAN claimants (most clearly by isolating the Philippines) by banding together in spite of certain differences in their positions. Greater coordination looks more promising now than it did in the past, with the recent hardening of Malaysia‘s stance along with the birth of the ASEAN Claimants Working Group Meeting held in the Philippines last month. Additionally, external actors beyond just the United States, including the European Union and Australia, need to do their part by speaking out against Chinese transgressions to raise the cost of noncompliance. A rules-based approach to resolving the disputes ought to be a shared global interest, and a greater coalition explicitly calling for this will help increase the pressure on Beijing without it being framed as just a U.S.-China issue. Even if a code of conduct does come to pass, it will at best be a diplomatic tool to manage tensions in the South China Sea. The sustainable path to actually resolving them lies in the legal realm, with all parties codifying their claims in line with international law which could then open the door to shelving sovereignty disputes and initiating joint resource development. The burden here rests largely with China, whose deliberate ambiguity on the basis for its indefensible nine-dash-line claim submitted to the United Nations in 2009, which covers up to 90 percent of the entire South China Sea, is inconsistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) by any stretch of the imagination. However, Southeast Asian states and the international community have roles to play as well. ASEAN countries should continue challenging China‘s nine-dash line claim in legal circles to expose its egregiousness, as the Philippines is now doing via a UN arbitral tribunal in the Hague. To add weight to such initiatives in the Chinese mind, other ASEAN members and external actors should support them either through direct participation or strong public statements, which can be done carefully without explicitly taking sides on sovereignty questions. Finally, the four ASEAN claimant states should also continue to codify the specifics of their own claims in multilateral fora as well as domestic legislation. Greater clarity among ASEAN claimants could both reveal greater congruence in certain areas as well as further expose Beijing‘s deliberate ambiguity. But ASEAN countries and their external partners should not just continue to hope that their efforts will change China‘s ambivalence on the code of conduct or its blatant disregard for international law in the South China Sea. They also need to think critically about how to manage tensions if Beijing‘s assertiveness continues unabated or grows

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over time and spills over into other issue areas as well. While the specific decisions eventually made will depend on each individual country, in general ASEAN claimants and other willing Southeast Asian and external states should prioritize increasing coordination, cooperation and crisis management at the domestic, regional and international levels in three specific ways. First, ASEAN claimants need to redouble efforts to foster greater coordination between the various military and civilian government agencies considered maritime stakeholders. This is crucial not only to promote interagency cooperation in the complex domain of maritime security that touches several areas from fisheries to immigration, but to formulate an integrated approach to rival China‘s adroit strategy of using a variety of nonmilitary instruments to enforce its claims in a calibrated way, including coast-guard vessels. Efforts by the Philippines and Brunei to establish national coast-surveillance programs are a useful step, as are more collective endeavors like a seminar on interagency coordination held in October 2013 between Vietnam the United States. Greater integration at the national level should also be supplemented by more cooperation at the regional and global realms to at least mitigate the asymmetry in capabilities between China and individual ASEAN states. This is particularly necessary with respect to crisis-management mechanisms and scenario-planning. For instance, bilateral-security hotlines can be one useful instrument in managing crises if they are properly resourced, structured and utilized. While discussions have already begun at the regional level, they will likely take time to advance and this should not prevent countries from establishing security hotlines on a bilateral basis, as Malaysia and the Philippines are now reportedly considering. ASEAN claimant states should also intensify contingency planning related to the South China Sea both nationally and in concert with relevant partners. Broader initiatives are already underway with several countries, including further acquisitions and coast guard cooperation with Japan and increased maritime security cooperation with the United States. But additional focus should be placed on planning for specific crisis scenarios ranging from rogue fishermen who may provoke an unintended bilateral crisis all the way up to potential Chinese economic coercion or blockades. These plans ought to reflect the sophistication of China‘s strategy in the South China Sea in terms of the various instruments used and the different levels of military and non-military coercion employed. They should also incorporate current Chinese thinking. For example, one China expert recently told a conference at the Center for New American Security that China is working on a concept called ‗extended coercive diplomacy‘ focused on how to coerce an adversary that is aligned with a great power, with U.S. allies Japan and the Philippines being case studies. Critics will claim that elements of this overall strategy make little sense because it is too risky for weaker ASEAN states to antagonize a much more capable China. But the evidence suggests that is precisely what China is banking on – that the glaring asymmetry in capabilities, coupled with its rising regional influence, will make ASEAN states think twice before risking rupture in relations as long as Beijing‘s assertiveness is calibrated to both divide various claimants and avoid drawing in other external players.

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It is up to Southeast Asian states and other interested actors like the United States and Japan to now think critically about how to counter the full spectrum of Chinese assertiveness proportionately and to do what is necessary make clear what their red lines are. Because in getting Beijing to commit to a peaceful, lawful resolution on the South China Sea disputes, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, it is not enough that all parties do their best; but that they do what is required.

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South China Sea disputes: The gloves are off March 11, 2014 Southeast China Sea disputes have entered a dangerous stage, as China steps up its territorial claims. By: Richard JavadHeydarian Richard JavadHeydarian is a specialist on Asian geopolitical/economic affairs and author of "How Capitalism Failed the Arab World: The Economic Roots and Precarious Future of the Middle East Uprisings" As the United States and the European Union struggle to find a diplomatic resolution to the Ukrainian crisis, with Russia accused of de facto annexing Ukraine's south-eastern region of Crimea, many in Asia are increasingly worried about a similar flashpoint in the South China Sea. The West's initial prevarications on standing up to Russia - specifically on imposing punitive sanctions against Moscow's policy in Crimea - has set off alarm bells among some US allies in Asia, which are currently locked in a bitter territorial conflict with China . In the Philippines, for instance, many are wondering whether the West will come to the country's rescue if an armed conflict with China erupts in the South China Sea . No wonder, during a recent foreign affairs committee hearing in the Philippine Congress, I noticed many participants anxiously discussing the Western response to Russia's perceived aggression against Ukraine. Across Southeast Asia, there is palpable curiosity over the extent to which Washington and other Western powers are willing to come to the aid of Ukraine amid Moscow's push to consolidate its sphere of influence in the Black Sea. For sure, the Chinese leadership is also closely following the Ukrainian crisis in an attempt to anticipate possible responses to its own territorial manoeuvring in the Western Pacific, which have come under heavy criticism by Washington. The Chinese leadership is also closely following the Ukrainian crisis in an attempt to anticipate possible responses to its own territorial manoeuvring in the Western Pacific, which have come under heavy criticism by Washington. While Russia's resurgence, under President Vladimir Putin, has become a major source of concern among many European countries, the rapid emergence of China as an East Asian powerhouse, in turn, has rattled many Asian neighbours. Accustomed to an

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American-centric order in the Pacific theatre since the end of World War II, some Asian countries have welcomed a greater US strategic footprint in the region to constrain Beijing's perceived territorial expansionism. Thus, leaders in Tokyo, Manila, and Hanoi have largely celebrated the Obama administration's so-called "Pivot to Asia" (P2A) policy. Quite similar to Ukraine, Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam have found themselves squeezed between two superpowers, the US and China. With Beijing asserting its "historical" claims to a significant portion of the South China Sea - akin to Russia's expressed commitment to retain its influence in post-Soviet territories such as Crimea - Manila and Hanoi are staking their hopes in the US' wherewithal to push back against China. Unquiet waters While it is true that the South China Sea disputes have been a permanent feature of regional affairs for some decades, recent years have been particularly disconcerting. Since 2009, China has stepped up its para-military patrols in the area, with growing reports of Chinese surveillance vessels "harassing", among others, Filipino as well as Vietnamese ships and fishermen. In mid-2012 , the Philippines and China came dangerously close to an armed conflict over the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. Equipped with superior military hardware, and backed by intensive diplomatic pressure, China eventually managed to outmanoeuvre the Philippines by effectively gaining control of the disputed shoal. By mid-2013, China pushed the envelope even further , with Chinese para-military vessels allegedly aiming to overrun Philippine military fortifications in the Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, which is eerily close to the hydrocarbon-rich areas off the coast of the Philippine province of Palawan. The balance of forces on the ground has rapidly shifted in China's favour. Thanks to its relatively resilient economy, China has effortlessly accelerated its military spending, with a greater focus on its naval capabilities. The ultimate aim, many analysts claim, is to make China a pre-eminent naval power in Asia - eventually, challenging the US naval hegemony in the Pacific theatre. In response, Southeast Asian states have accelerated their efforts at establishing a legally-binding Code of Conduct (CoC) in the South China Sea, hoping to dissuade China from reinforcing its para-military fortifications and surveillance patrols across the contested areas. There have also been parallel efforts by the Philippines, Vietnam, and Singapore to increase American military presence in Southeast Asia to hedge against China's territorial assertiveness. But far from united on the issue, many members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been reluctant to openly criticise China over the South China Sea disputes. As the ASEAN's largest trading partner, and Asia's biggest economy, China has astutely leveraged its economic prowess vis-a-vis many Southeast Asian states.

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As a result, the ASEAN has failed to establish an effective and coherent policy on the South China Sea disputes. The negotiations over a CoC have largely stalled, forcing the Philippines and Vietnam to (a) seek greater strategic assistance from the US and Japan and (b) more directly confront China on the territorial disputes. The Philippines has tried to reinforce its claims in the South China Sea by going so far as renaming the contested maritime area as the West Philippine Sea. It has also sought to legally challenge China's territorial claims in the South China Sea by filing an arbitration case with the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). The Philippines hopes that other Asian countries, which are locked in similar disputes with China, will follow suit. Above all, Manila has been negotiating a new defense pact with Washington. The goal is to deter further Chinese para-military manoeuvres in the South China Sea by allowing the US to establish a semi-permanent military presence and lease advanced military hardware to the Philippines. China's diplomatic siege China has responded by effectively placing the Philippines under a diplomatic siege: In contrast to almost all East Asian countries, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III is yet to conduct a formal, bilateral dialogue with his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping. In addition to recent maritime regulations, which impose restrictions on the entry of foreign fishing vessels into Chinese-claimed maritime territories, there are growing reports that Beijing is also planning to impose an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea. The combined effect of these (existing and proposed) measures, according to critics, would be China's de facto control over a large portion of the South China Sea. Against such gloomy backdrop, Aquino, in a recent interview with the New York Times, went so far as risking permanent diplomatic estrangement with Beijing by likening China to Nazi Germany . Naturally, Aquino's statements infuriated China, which dismissed him as an " amateurish " politician that is incapable of negotiating a peaceful compromise. But with top American officials directly criticising China's territorial claims and promising to come to Manila's rescue in the event of conflict in the South China Sea, the Filipino leadership is relatively upbeat ahead of the US President Barack Obama's planned visit to Manila, which is expected to coincide with the signing of new bilateral strategic-military agreements. Nevertheless, given the growing concerns over the impact of America's dwindling military budget on its forward posturing in Asia, and Western prevarications on punishing Russia's actions in Ukraine in recent days, many Filipinos are increasingly worried about China's next move in the South China Sea. Diplomacy, meanwhile, seems to have taken the backseat.

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South China Sea Disputes Enter a Dangerous Phase: The U.S. Pivot Gathers Steam Posted: 02/24/2014 2:13 pm EST Updated: 02/24/2014 2:59 pm ES By: Richard JavadHeydarian Academic, policy advisor, and author of "How Capitalism Failed the Arab World: The Economic Roots and Precarious Future of the Middle East Uprisings" "At what point do you say: 'Enough is enough'?" Philippine President Benigno Aquino exclaimed in an exclusive interview with the New York Times. It was a forceful call for international support amid intensifying territorial disputes with China. Quite shockingly, he even compared China to Nazi Germany, cautioning the Western powers against appeasing Beijing over disputed maritime features in the Western Pacific. China was infuriated by the comments, dismissing him as an "amateurish" politician. In many ways, it seems that Aquino has abandoned his earlier efforts -- to no avail -- at reviving communications channels with the Chinese leadership to seek a diplomatic compromise in the South China Sea. But, does he have meaningful external support? During his recent trip to Asia, I asked British Foreign Secretary William Hague whether the European Union (EU) -- and his country, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council -- is willing to play an active role in resolving territorial disputes in the Western Pacific. After all, the EU has played a proactive role in resolving most pressing international security issues such as the Syrian civil war and the Iranian nuclear conundrum. And as the Asia-Pacific region emerges as the geopolitical pivot of history, where booming consumer markets increasingly serve as the engine of the world economy, the international community has a stake in ensuring stability and the unimpeded flow of trade and investment across the region. As expected, Hague was extremely cautious with reiterating Britain's commitment to democracy and stability in Asia, without necessarily irking the most important economy in the region, China. Other leading European countries such as Germany and France, which have developed massive investment and trade relations with China in recent decades, have displayed considerable sensitivity to Beijing's geopolitical interests. But given Britain's close ties to Washington and its (still) relatively modest economic stakes in China -- although bilateral trade hit a record high in 2013 -- many in Manila believe that it's far from unrealistic to seek strategic sympathy from European powers such as London. In fact, Hague emphasized his country's commitment to a rule-based, peaceful resolution of territorial disputes in the South China Sea, but fell short of taking a direct stance on the ownership of contested maritime features. Nonetheless, his endorsement of international law as a basis for ensuring regional peace and security could be interpreted as an implicit endorsement of the Philippines' legal challenge to China's

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notorious 9-dashline doctrine, which, many neighboring countries contend, contravenes the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Among Filipino policy-makers, who have nervously watched China's rising territorial assertiveness in recent years, there is a growing feeling that the tide is finally turning in their favor. And this may explain Aquino's decision to risk a permanent breakdown in Philippine-China bilateral relations by likening China to Nazi Germany, and demanding more support from Western powers lest a regional conflict erupts. The Philippines' emergence as a leading emerging market in Southeast Asia has generated additional confidence over its (presumed) importance to Western powers. Allies to the Rescue Although lacking even a minimum deterrence capability against China, which is expected to outspend the combined military expenditures of Europe's leading powers next year, the Philippines is relying on increased strategic commitment from two key actors: Tokyo and Washington. And to be fair, there are signs that the Aquino administration could benefit from such gamble. The Shinzo Abe administration, which enjoys considerable legislative support in the Japanese parliament, is pushing for the revision of Japan's pacifist constitution, paving the way for a full-blown military alliance between Manila and Tokyo. The U.S., meanwhile, is finally signaling its support for the Philippines in an event of war in the Western Pacific, with a new bilateral defense pact entering the final phase of negotiations. Three years into the U.S.' pivot to Asia, we may finally see a more concrete and decisive effort at "constraining" China by a burgeoning counter-alliance. With the latest Gallup Poll suggesting that China -- not Iran or North Korea -- is seen as America's No. 1 enemy, the Obama administration could count on greater public sympathy for increased U.S. military footprint in Asia. The Pivot Has Arrived In geopolitical terms, recent years have been particularly tough for the Philippines. Bilateral and regional negotiations over a diplomatic resolution of the South China Sea disputes have stalled, while China has stepped up its para-military patrols across the area. The Philippines lost the Scarborough Shoal to China in mid-2012, and came dangerously close to losing the Second Thomas Shoal the following year. Manila took the risky decision to challenge Beijing's maritime claims at The Hague without coordinating a similar move by other claimant states such as Vietnam and Japan. As a result, China was able to isolate the Philippines in various international fora, while leveraging its massive aid and investment pledges to woo other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Since 2012, China has introduced two amendments to its maritime law in the southern province of Hainan, which have

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reinforced Beijing's jurisdiction over disputed waters. And there are fears that China will impose a new Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea. There is not even a single Southeast Asian state that can militarily challenge such prospective measure. Throughout 2013, the Philippines and the U.S. also struggled to iron out a new military agreement, which could boost American rotational military presence in the South China Sea. Pushed against the wall, President Aquino painstakingly sought direct negotiations with the top Chinese leadership. Reportedly, the overtures where turned down, unless the Philippines dropped its legal challenge to China's territorial claims. This year, however, has seen a swift movement towards greater American presence in the region. Much of it was facilitated by the massive deployment of American troops during the Haiyan crisis in the Philippines. Japan also made the historical decision to deploy its largest ever post-war humanitarian contingent to the Philippines, with more than a thousand members of the Japanese Self Defense Forces (JSDF) vigorously assisting the victims of super typhoon in the Philippines. The New Geopolitical Landscape This was beyond just a soft power victory for Philippines' allies. Filipino officials (and their American counterparts) were quick to point out the necessity of greater American military presence in the country, if the Philippines were to effectively cope with humanitarian and security challenges. During the ASEAN-Japan Summit in late 2013, Tokyo also promised up to $20 billion in aid and investment pledges to the Southeast Asian countries. Both the U.S. and Japan presented themselves as the anchor of stability and prosperity in the region, pushing back against China's rising influence in Asia. Much to the delight of the Philippines, the U.S. upped the ante in the following months by vigorously criticizing China's quasi-legal and para-military maneuvers in the South China Sea. Then, in early February, the U.S. made the unprecedented decision to directly question China's claims in the South China Sea. Danny Russel, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, argued before the U.S. Congress that "any Chinese claim to maritime rights not based on claimed land features would be inconsistent with international law," and encouraged Beijing to display its respect for international law by "clarifying or adjusting its claim[s]" accordingly. Russel's statements marked a remarkable departure from Washington's careful refusal in the past to take any direct position on the disputes. Previously, the Obama administration tried to present itself as a neutral external party that was only concerned with freedom of navigation in international waters. This was followed by the mid-February visit by U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert, where he raised hops of direct American assistance to the Philippines in an event of conflict in the South China Sea by stating, "Of course we would help you. I don't know what that help would be, specifically. I mean we have an obligation because we have a treaty."

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Above all, the Philippines and the U.S. are expected to sign a new defense pact, to be cemented by Obama's planned visit to Manila in late-April. For the Philippines, an upgraded military alliance could potentially mean, among other things, a considerable increase in American rotational military deployments and (quite possibly) temporary access to sophisticated military hardware. The ultimate aim is to deter further Chinese incursions into what the Philippines believes is its rightful maritime territories under the provisions of UNCLOS. Overall, Aquino may have risked a permanent estrangement with the Chinese leadership over his fiery rhetoric. But it is hoping that rising international concerns over the South China Sea disputes will translate into greater external support against China. As a result, diplomacy has seemingly taken the backseat.

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The U.S. and China’s Nine-Dash Line: Ending the Ambiguity By: Jeffrey A. Bader February 6, 2014 Jeffrey A. Bader is Whitehead Senior Fellow in International Diplomacy at the Brookings Institution. He returned to Brookings after serving in the Obama administration as senior director for East Asian affairs on the National Security Council from January 2009 to April 2011. Prior to his appointment to the Obama administration, Bader was the first director of the John L. Thornton China Center and senior fellow of the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. He brings to Brookings profound expertise in U.S. foreign policy and Asian security after three decades of experience in the Department of State, National Security Council and office of the United States Trade Representative. His latest book, Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy, was published by Brookings Press in March 2012. For the first time, the United States government has come out publicly with an explicit statement that the so-called ―nine-dash line,‖ which the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan assert delineates their claims in the South China Sea, is contrary to international law. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Danny Russel, in testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on February 5, said, ―Under international law, maritime claims in the South China Sea must be derived from land features. Any use of the 'nine-dash line' by China to claim maritime rights not based on claimed land features would be inconsistent with international law. The international community would welcome China to clarify or adjust its nine-dash line claim to bring it in accordance with the international law of the sea." The South China Sea encompasses several hundred small islands, reefs, and atolls, almost all uninhabited and uninhabitable, within a 1.4 million square mile area. The PRC inherited from the former Kuomintang government of China the nine-dash line, which draws a line around all of these islands, asserts sovereignty over all of them, and makes ambiguous claims about rights to waters within the line. Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), negotiated in the 1970s and 1980s, countries can claim exclusive rights to the fish and mineral resources within Exclusive Economic Zones, which can extend 200 nautical miles from a continental shore line or around islands that can support habitation. There is no provision in the convention granting rights to waters, such as in the South China Sea, without regard to land-based sovereign rights. So it has long been implicit in the U.S. interpretation of UNCLOS that claims to the mineral and fish resources of the South China Sea, unless they are linked to specific inhabitable islands, are invalid. Assistant Secretary Russel‘s statement has made that position explicit. U.S. attention to the South China Sea has increased visibly under the Obama administration. The first manifestation of that attention was a highly publicized statement

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by Secretary of State Clinton at an international gathering in Hanoi in 2010, in which she laid out principles governing U.S. policy in the South China Sea: respect for freedom of navigation, peaceful resolution of disputes, freedom of commerce, negotiation of a Code of Conduct for dispute resolution and, most relevant here, the view that claims to water could only be based on legitimate land-based claims. Clinton‘s statement took a hitherto obscure, below the radar issue and made the South China Sea the subject of accelerated regional diplomacy, numerous analyses by commentators and national security specialists and in some cases sharpened rhetoric by the various claimants. It was welcomed by all of the Southeast Asian claimants (i.e., Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei), though resented by China. Secretary Clinton made the statement in response to growing concern among China‘s neighbors that China was advancing its claims through political and military means and in the absence of any diplomatic process to reduce tensions. In 1994-1995, there had been a similar period of heightened tensions when China built installations on Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, claimed by the Philippines. A deterioration in Chinese relations with Southeast Asian countries led the Chinese leadership, spearheaded by then State Councilor Qian Qichen, to negotiate a regional Declaration of Conduct and a pledge not to take actions that would change the status quo. Sporadic seizure of fishing vessels by one party or another continued, and countries, principally Vietnam, granted exploration rights to oil companies in disputed areas, but none of these episodes triggered war alarms. In the last several years, however, there has been a growing concern in the region, and in the U.S., that China had turned its back on diplomacy and was using military and legal means to advance its claims to all of the South China Sea. Statements to U.S. diplomats characterizing the South China Sea as an issue of prime importance to China involving sovereignty and on which it would not accept interference raised the ante. In 2012, China expelled Filipino fishermen from traditional fishing grounds around Scarborough Shoal, less than 125 miles from the main Philippine islands, and has used its coast guard to maintain control. In 2012, it established an administrative and military district covering portions of the claimed Paracel Islands. In establishing an Air Defense Identification Zone over portions of the East China Sea in late 2013, Chinese spokesmen indicated an intention at some point to establish a similar zone in the South China Sea, which inevitably would cover at least some areas claimed by others. The South China Sea is a complicated issue for the United States. We have no territorial claims there. We do not take sides on the respective sovereign claims of the parties, nor should we. It is highly unlikely that any country can establish effective means of projecting power from South China Sea islands that would threaten U.S. ships, military or otherwise, in the region. While there are believed to be considerable unexploited reserves of oil and gas within the South China Sea waters, they are not commercially viable for production on a large scale and are not expected to be for some time. But the U.S. does have important interests in the South China Sea. They are:

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• To ensure freedom of navigation, not as a favor from any country but as an international right in an area through which 50 percent of the world‘s oil tankers pass, that is a major thoroughfare of international commerce, and where U.S. military vessels deploy and operate consistent with international law. • To prevent use of force or coercion to resolve claims either to territory or to maritime rights. • To advocate for respect for international norms and law for resolving all such issues. • To ensure that all countries, including the U.S., have the right to exploit the mineral and fish resources outside of legitimate Exclusive Economic Zones. • To prevent a U.S. ally, the Philippines, from being bullied or subject to use of force. • To ensure that the rights of all countries, not merely large ones, are respected. There are tensions between differing elements of U.S. interests. The U.S. does not wish to see China gain control over the area through coercion. But at the same time the U.S. does not have an interest in making the South China Sea a venue of confrontation or conflict between the U.S. and China. Frontal challenges to Chinese claims, if not founded on international norms and consistent with U.S. principles, run the risk of inciting heightened Chinese nationalism and paranoia over U.S. intentions and producing more aggressive Chinese behavior in the region that would victimize the other claimants without an effective U.S. response. On the other hand, a passive U.S. posture would undercut the interests outlined above and would persuade the other claimants that the U.S. was abandoning both them and our principles, thereby making a mockery of the Obama administration‘s ―rebalancing‖ toward Asia and badly damaging regional receptivity to U.S. presence and influence. By explicitly rejecting the nine-dash line, Assistant Secretary Russel and the administration have drawn our own line in the right place. They have made clear that our objection is a principled one, based on international law, not a mere rejection of a claim simply because it is China‘s. So long as our approach to the South China Sea remains firmly grounded on principle and international law, the U.S. can accomplish our objectives, strengthen the position of other claimants with respect to their rights and avoid the appearance of seeking confrontation with China over a sovereignty issue. What else can and should the U.S. do? Several things: • The U.S. should ensure that its approach is not seen as unilateral. It is not, but sometimes other countries are publicly quiet but privately supportive. The U.S. government should make clear to the other claimants, and to other ASEAN countries like Singapore and Thailand, that we expect them to be public in their rejection of the nine-dash line under international law.

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• The U.S. should discuss with Taiwan whether it can clarify its position on the nine-dash line, to make clear that its claims are consistent with UNCLOS. • The U.S. should continue to make a high priority negotiation of a Code of Conduct between China and the ASEAN states, as we have done since Secretary Clinton announced that objective in Hanoi. Indeed, the decision by China and ASEAN to begin talks on a Code of Conduct was one of the beneficial outcomes of Secretary Clinton‘s statement. • The U.S. should urge the Chinese not to establish any new Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea. While a public position on this is necessary, private diplomacy is likely to be more effective in influencing Beijing. • The U.S. should discuss with all the claimants possible agreement on exploitation of mineral and fish resources without regard to sovereignty, including the use of joint ventures between companies. • The Senate should ratify the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. That would give the U.S. legal and moral standing to participate more actively and effectively in decisions on the future of the South China Sea. All former U.S. Secretaries of State support such a decision. So does the U.S. Navy and former Chiefs of Naval Operations and Pacific Commanders. So does the overwhelming majority of concerned U.S. companies. We should put our money where our mouth is.

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Binding Vietnam and India: Joint energy exploration in South China Sea 17 December 2013 P K Ghosh (Dr P K Ghosh is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi) Synopsis Vietnam's recent granting of seven oil blocks in the South China Sea for exploration by India is part of a plan to internationalise Hanoi's territorial dispute with China. Hanoi hopes to create more stakeholders who can withstand Chinese hegemonic ambitions in the area. Commentary The recent news that Vietnam has offered India seven oil blocks for exploration during the visit of the Vietnamese Communist Party general secretary Nguyen PhuTrong failed to create headlines even though it is pregnant with implications on Hanoi's relations with China and on its South China Sea policy. It is well known that the Indian Government has made heavy investments in energy exploration in the South China Sea. Awarded through the global bidding process, India earlier had three blocks in the Vietnamese region in which about US$360 million was invested through the state-run ONGC Videsh (OVL). Disputed and undisputed areas OVL has been prospecting for oil in Vietnam's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in Blocks 127 and 128 (PhuKhanh Bay) in territories under dispute. It withdrew from Block 127 which proved unviable and dry, while Block 128 was bogged down by layers of hard rock and unfavourable geological conditions which made it difficult to penetrate. Despite these issues, India decided not to withdraw from Block 128 due to complex geo-strategic reasons including a request from the Vietnamese to stay on for another two years. In the meantime Indian operations of extracting natural gas in Block 6.1 since 2003 in the region which is not under dispute continues from where it got two billion cubic metres (BCM) of gas in 2011-12 for its 45% participating interest.

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While the Chinese had not objected to Vietnam allotting the lucrative Block 6.1 to India in Nam Con Son Basin, it objected to India taking up exploration in blocks 127 and 128. Chinese objections have included demarches, pressure on companies not to sell equipment to India and the alleged buzzing of an Indian warship that had transited through the disputed portion of the South China Sea. Following talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and General Secretary Trong during the Vietnamese leader's recent high profile visit to India, eight agreements were signed. There was also anMoU between both countries in which Vietnam offered seven oil blocks in the South China Sea to India - including three on an exclusive basis - and joint prospecting in some Central Asian countries with which both Hanoi and New Delhi have good political ties. The blocks have been offered on a nomination basis whereby India's OVL would not have to go through a bidding round of offering the best production sharing contracts. Instead a direct proposal for production sharing would be negotiated under the petroleum laws of Vietnam. "I believe that peace, stability, maritime security and cooperation for mutual benefits in the East Sea represent the essential interest of countries within and outside the region. We highly appreciate India's constructive position on this issue," Trong told PTI in an interview. Vietnam refers to the South China Sea as the East Sea. Roping in Russia and Japan as well Recently Hanoi has also roped in Russia to invest in oil and gas blocks. Meanwhile OVL sources said the exploratory blocks given on nomination basis were not located in the disputed waters where Beijing and Hanoi are actively engaged in contesting overlapping sovereignty claims. Aside from India, Hanoi is also targeting Russia and Japan to counter pressure from China as their presence would serve as a deterrent. Hanoi's move could make China uneasy as Chinese foreign policy, especially towards the South China Sea and the East China Sea, has undergone a major shift in the last few years. This change in course has ensured that Deng Xiaoping's "24-Character strategy", which acted as a guideline for foreign and security policy, and the phase of "biding time", has evolved into a more forceful assertion of sovereign claims. Vietnamese game plan? The new Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping - which is keen to establish its authority in the national politics and thus shy away from being called "weak or too generous" -- has upped the ante and signaled an uncompromising stand by regarding the South China Sea as a matter of "core interests". It is not difficult to imagine that the Chinese will be uncomfortable with the current scenario. China is against any "outside power" being involved in the South China Sea,

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though its own forces are regularly operating in the Indian Ocean region. Vietnam on its part well knows that it makes strategic sense to internationalise the scenario and put into place as many international stakeholders as possible. The only countries that can probably withstand the pressures from and against China are being wooed by Vietnam. They in turn may like to prop up Vietnam as a bulwark against the increasingly hegemonistic attitude of the Chinese. The US, Russia and India are the countries that fit well into the Vietnamese game plan.

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The Sino-Philippine Maritime Row: International Arbitration and the South China Sea March 15, 2013 On January 22, 2013, the Philippines shook up decades of stagnation in discussions with China over their territorial disputes in the South China Sea – known as the West Philippine Sea in Manila – by initiating an international arbitration process under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) over recent Chinese actions. These disputes concern sovereignty over the Spratly Islands, Scarborough Shoal and the rich maritime resources around them. With this action, the government of Benigno ―Noynoy‖ Aquino III sought to ―operationalize [the President‘s] policy for a peaceful and rules based resolution of disputes … in accordance with international law.‖ In doing so, the Philippine authorities took China and the other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations by surprise and pushed back against what they see as heavy-handed Chinese behavior. Despite China‘s rejection of the process, international arbitration will continue. Though short-lived, seeing the Chinese scramble to respond to the Philippine submission must have been a welcome change in Manila after a year of disasters in which a single Philippine Navy frigate on a fisheries law enforcement patrol was outmaneuvered at Scarborough Reef and the Philippines lost control of the feature, lost access to the resources in its sheltered harbor and lost the ability to protect the reef‘s fragile ecosystem and rare species from Chinese poaching. China simply projected its superior maritime law enforcement fleet and the sheer number of its civilian fishing vessels to overwhelm the few Philippine vessels present at the reef. Meanwhile the People‘s Liberation Army Navy displayed its strength in nearby waters. After what appeared to be an agreement for both sides to withdraw and return to the status quo ante, the Philippines complied and the Chinese did not. In fact, after the Philippine ships departed, the Chinese placed a physical barrier across the reef‘s narrow entrance and posted a Chinese law enforcement vessel to prevent any Philippine attempts to return.This unhappy conclusion taught the Philippines two lessons about dispute resolution with China over South China Sea issues: first, the Chinese have superior power and will use it; and second, in the face of such power further negotiations over sovereignty and resource claims are fruitless unless power-

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based dynamics are replaced with a process in which the weak and the strong are equals. Accordingly, Manila chose to move its contest with China to the mandatory dispute resolution process of UNCLOS to which both China and the Philippines are parties. What Are the Dispute Resolution Provisions of UNCLOS? UNCLOS provides states with four different ways to settle disputes about its application or interpretation. Two are permanent international courts and two are arbitration procedures. Countries are free to choose their preferred venue when they accede to the Convention.The two courts involve sitting judges with a written, public track record and significant experience, while arbitral panels are formed on an ad hoc basis and so allow the parties a degree of control over who judges their case. If a state does not record its choice of procedure, the rules of UNCLOS deem it to have accepted arbitration. China submitted two formal statements on sovereignty and procedural issues to the United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, but never made a declaration concerning dispute resolution. Accordingly, in order to litigate the issues in contention with China, the only option for the Philippines was to initiate arbitration. Each party has the right to appoint one of the five members of the Arbitral Panel. The Philippines chose Judge RudigerWulfram, a respected German judge who has sat on the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) since 1996. The Chinese government had 30 days from January 22 to appoint an arbitrator – a right it refused – even though it was permitted to choose a Chinese national. The rules specify that since China refuses to participate, the President of ITLOS, currently Japanese Judge ShunjiYanai, a former ambassador to the United States, will make the choice on China‘s behalf. Assuming the Chinese continue to refuse to participate, the remaining three arbitrators – including the President of the Arbitral Panel – will also be appointed by Judge Yanai. This process presented China with several challenges. First, although the Chinese government has a strong preference for bilateral diplomatic negotiations to resolve disputes, its status as a party to UNCLOS and its continuing failure to reach a settlement with the Philippines has exposed it to the risk of litigation. Additionally, if the arbitration goes forward, Beijing may be at a disadvantage because several Chinese assertions about their South China Sea rights are not well supported in international law. China‘s leaders may also have concerns about avid nationalists who are sensitive to any perception that the government lost control of a high profile issue to a small Southeast Asian state and a Japanese judge. Nonetheless, now that the Chinese have rejected the process, the panel will proceed without them, providing a small victory for Manila and potentially swinging international public opinion toward the Philippines. What Did the Philippines Claim? As UNCLOS specifically allows countries to exclude sovereignty disputes, maritime border disputes and claims to historic title – and China is on record as doing so – the

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Philippines cannot litigate ownership of the Spratly Islands nor can the arbitrators draw a maritime boundary for the two parties. Even so, the Arbitral Panel may find that it has jurisdiction to decide some of the other issues that have most frustrated the government of the Philippines. In its official Notification and Statement of Claims, the Philippines made four distinct claims: China‘s nine-dashed line is invalid; China occupied mere rocks on Scarborough Reef rather than significant features; China‘s structures on submerged features are illegal; and Chinese harassment of Philippine nationals at sea is also illegal. China‘s Nine-Dashed Line is Invalid. First, the Philippines asked the Arbitral Panel to determine that China‘s nine-dashed line claim to the South China Sea‘s waters is contrary to UNCLOS and therefore invalid. This is really the heart of the dispute between China and other claimant states such as the Philippines. Manila asserts that only international law, as represented by UNCLOS, and not one state‘s version of history or other extraneous factors, can be the basis for legitimate maritime rights today. While the Chinese government has never openly stated its policy on the meaning of this line, China did officially submit a picture of it to the U.N. in 2009 in opposing a joint claim by Vietnam and Malaysia to continental shelf rights in these waters based on UNCLOS. While this case by the Philippines is the first legal challenge to China‘s expansive historical claims, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and possibly Indonesia all hold similar grievances against their neighbor to the north and could benefit from it. China claims that it is allowed to assert broader maritime rights in the South China Sea than UNCLOS authorizes because ―UNCLOS plus,‖ that is, UNCLOS plus other factors such as history, legitimizes its sovereign rights to the South China Sea. Indeed, China‘s domestic law claims that notwithstanding UNCLOS, China still has other ―historic rights‖ in the surrounding oceans.16 But, if China were to convincingly claim that the ninedashed line is based on some kind of ―historic title,‖ then presumably the Arbitral Panel does not have jurisdiction to hear this issue because China exercised its right to exclude the matter from consideration. However, China‘s claim of ―historical title‖ to such a vast expanse of waters may be viewed by the panel as so unreasonable in light of existing law that the panel may construe UNCLOS as preventing China from making the claim. Indeed, if China is allowed to make such a claim, could Spain and Portugal assert ownership of the world‘s oceans based on their historic pasts? The Arbitral Panel may choose to shed some light on the legal limits of historical title claims. China Occupied Mere Rocks. Second, the Philippines claims that China ―occupied certain small, uninhabitable coral projections that are barely above water at high tide, and which are ‗rocks‘ under … UNCLOS.‖ The heart of its claim is that ―none of the Spratly features occupied by China is capable of sustaining human habitation or economic life of its own.‖If the Arbitral Panel agrees, then even if China does have sovereignty over the tiny features, as rocks they are legally incapable of generating resource zones (exclusive economic zones or

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continental shelves). Thus, taken together, the first two Philippine claims assert that neither the nine-dashed line nor geography is a legitimate basis for China to assert jurisdiction over the waters beyond 12 nautical miles from these small rocks. Chinese Structures on Submerged Features are Illegal. The third Philippine claim is that China ―occupied and built structures on certain submerged [features] that do not qualify as islands under UNCLOS, but are parts of the Philippine continental shelf.‖ Some of the submerged features within the nine-dashed line are as close to the Philippines as 50 nautical miles and as far from China‘s Hainan Island as 550 nautical miles.This assertion claims China has no legal rights to the continental shelf far from its coastlines. Those rights belong to the Philippines since UNCLOS gives a coastal state continental shelf rights ―throughout the natural prolongation of its land territory.‖ The Notification specifically challenges Chinese-built structures in four places – Mischief Reef, McKennan (Kennan) Reef, Gaven Reef and Subi Reef – that are submerged at high tide. They lie between 130 and 230 nautical miles from the coastline of the Philippine Island of Palawan and are a much greater distance from the coast of China Accordingly, the Philippines claims the Chinese structures are an illegal intrusion on the Philippine continental shelf. One of the critical, but unstated, pieces to this portion of the claim is that in 2011 Chinese vessels actively interfered with attempts by Philippine companies to perform seismic research for hydrocarbons beneath Reed Bank. Reed Bank lies within China‘s nine-dashed line, but is just off the coast of the island of Palawan and is therefore geographically a part of the Philippine continental shelf. If the Philippines can convince the Arbitral Panel that China‘s nine-dashed line is invalid, that China has no other valid basis to claim continental shelf rights in the region and that Reed Bank is legally part of the Philippine continental shelf, then these Philippine companies will be legally free to pursue the development of lucrative hydrocarbon deposits without Chinese interference. Chinese Harassment is Illegal. Finally, the Notification asserts that the Chinese ―interfered with the exercise by the Philippines of its rights.‖ This portion of the claim refers primarily to Scarborough Reef, the vast majority of which is submerged, but on which there are a few rocks above water at high tide that technically could be claimed as the sovereign territory of China. However, even if China has sovereignty over these small rocks, they generate at most a small Chinese zone of 12 nautical miles, rather than encompassing the entirety of the much larger submerged reef. Thus, the Notification claims that China‘s seizure of the whole reef was unlawful, as is China‘s continued interference with the right of Philippine citizens to ―enjoy access to the living resources within this zone.‖ The Scarborough Reef incidents are only the latest in a string of assertions by Philippine fishermen that China used physical

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intimidation against them. In June 2011, for instance, Manila protested an incident in which Chinese vessels allegedly opened fire against Philippines fishermen in the disputed section of the South China Sea. The Philippine claim seeks to stop all such Chinese interference. What Comes Next? Despite China‘s recent rejection of the international arbitration process, the Sino-Philippine row is far from over. First, China still has an opportunity to change its position and litigate the issues, or at least to litigate whether the Arbitral Panel has jurisdiction over any of the Philippine claims. Although such a change may be unlikely, doing so would reassure China‘s increasingly anxious neighbors that it is committed to institutional rather than powerbased resolution of disputes. China‘s second option – and perhaps the most likely – is to continue to refrain from participating and to hope for a favourable outcome. If China loses the case, it could declare the process void and ignore its results. Failing to participate and especially ignoring an adverse verdict, however, would convince China‘s neighbors that China does not intend to play by international rules. In response, others in the region and beyond would have to seek ways to bolster a rules-based order that gives all claimants an equal weight against a larger China. Third, China may believe its best option is to try to isolate and coerce the Philippines into dropping the arbitration. This too may backfire by increasing international disapproval, which has already reached considerable levels. Additionally, it may be ineffective in the end, since the Philippines learned during the Scarborough Reef incident that it is less economically and politically exposed to Chinese pressure than some other regional states. Perhaps worse for China is that if it chooses the path of coercion, then Beijing itself will have proven the ―China threat theory‖ it so decries. Finally, given the risks and ramifications of each of these options, Beijing may decide to engage in quiet negotiations with Manila to withdraw the case. Doing so, however, would require the Chinese to give the Philippines something meaningful, such as renewed access to Scarborough Reef, assurances that Philippine oil and gas development can proceed without harassment and a pledge that negotiations on a final outcome will continue in good faith. However, such negotiations can only be successful if the Philippines acts as a discreet and reasonable negotiating partner. If Beijing chooses this fourth approach, and if Manila engages in quiet diplomacy, then there is some hope that a productive accommodation can be reached. In that event, international litigation will have served President Aquino‘s purpose to find ―a peaceful and rules-based resolution of disputes … in accordance with international law.‖

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A question of Chinese sovereignty BY MICHAEL RICHARDSON JAN 31, 2013 SINGAPORE – When China ratified the United Nations law of the sea treaty in 1996, it was hailed as an important step toward stability and peaceful settlement of disputes in East Asia‘s vast, valuable but conflict-riven offshore zone. So the recent move by the Philippines to turn to the U.N. for a ruling on whether China‘s sweeping claims to ownership and control over nearly all of the South China Sea in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia is in line with the 1982 treaty seemed like a perfectly law-abiding step. But China‘s Xinhua news agency said the Philippines‘ referring the issue to a U.N. tribunal for compulsory arbitration was ―Manila‘s latest attempt to show its hardline position toward China‖ on their territorial disputes in the South China Sea. When Beijing ratified the treaty establishing the legal framework for conduct in the world‘s oceans and seas, known by its full title as the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it registered some points about the application of the treaty, as member states are entitled to do. Two of the points are relevant to the launch by the Philippines of UNCLOS arbitration proceedings against China. The first is that in ratifying UNCLOS in 1996, China reaffirmed sovereignty over all its archipelagos and islands listed in Article 2 of a 1992 law adopted by the National People‘s Congress, China‘s legislature. This law on the territorial sea and the contiguous zone states that the land territory of China includes the mainland, its coastal islands, and some other groups of islands. Those enumerated in the last category are Taiwan (which China regards as a rebel province) and the nearby Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands in the East China Sea. The Senkakus are administered by Japan but bitterly contested by China. In the South China Sea, the islands belonging to China under the 1992 law are, from north to south, the Dongsha (Pratas) Islands, occupied by Taiwan; the Xisha (Paracel) Islands, occupied by China but claimed by Vietnam; the Zhongsha (Macclesfield Bank) Islands; and the Nansha (Spratly) Islands, over which China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia have conflicting claims.

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The second point registered with UNCLOS by China came 10 years later, in 2006, when Beijing gave notice, as it was entitled to do, that it did not accept any international court or arbitration in disputes over maritime boundaries, islands or military activities. China‘s position is that this is a question of Chinese sovereignty, not international law of the sea, and that the former, established for centuries by prior occupation and administration, must take precedence over the latter. In April last year, as China and the Philippines struggled for control of Scarborough Shoal anchorage and fishing grounds, which Manila says is within its Exclusive Economic Zone established by UNCLOS, a Chinese Embassy spokesman Zhang Hua acknowledged that the treaty allowed countries EEZs but said that they could not exercise sovereignty over areas within those waters that were owned by other countries, in this case China. Scarborough Shoal is some 870 kilometers from China‘s Hainan Island province, its closest uncontested territory in the South China Sea. The shoal is just 230 km from the main Philippine island of Luzon. Beijing ignores the fact that no other country recognizes its South China Sea claims, although Taiwan maintains a similar position in its East and South China Sea claims to those of Beijing. In 2009, China sent a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon saying that it had ―indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent waters, and enjoys sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters as well as the seabed and subsoil thereof.‖ Attached to the letter was a map showing the extent of China‘s claim in the South China Sea, marked by a nine-dash line stretching as far south as James Shoal, just 80 km from Bintulu, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, and about 1,800 km from the Chinese mainland. A Xinhua report in April 2012 described the shoal as ―the southernmost point of China‘s territory.‖ China‘s use of its nine-dash claim to support its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, and its references to ―historic rights‖ in waters inside this imprecisely defined line, have provoked controversy and given Southeast Asian claimants the opportunity to argue that China is not acting in conformity with UNCLOS and international law. In its Jan. 22 appeal to the U.N., the Philippines asserted that China‘s maritime claims in the South China Sea within its nine-dash line map were contrary to UNCLOS and invalid. It is also asked for a ruling that China bring its domestic law into conformity with its obligations under UNCLOS, and that Beijing desist from activities that violate Philippine rights in its maritime domain.

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Julian Ku, a law professor in the U.S., who follows the issue closely, described Manila‘s case as the most important ever to have been filed under the dispute resolution procedures of UNCLOS. ―I don‘t think that the Philippines has a hopeless case, but I do think they will face a huge challenge to get any arbitral tribunal to assert jurisdiction here, especially since one judge will be appointed by China,‖ he wrote. Ku added that if Manila managed to get past the jurisdictional hurdle, it would have ―a very good chance of prevailing since China‘s claim is hard to square with the rest of UNCLOS.‖ UNCLOS defines the rights and jurisdiction of China in maritime zones subject to its sovereignty, namely its internal waters and territorial sea, a belt stretching out nearly 19 km from its coast. The treaty also defines China‘s authority in maritime areas that are outside its sovereignty, including the EEZ, high seas, contiguous zone, continental shelf and the deep seabed — zones that can stretch 370 km or more from the coast. Yet in its 2009 letter to Ban, Beijing appeared to be claiming sovereign rights over this second category of maritime areas in the South China Sea, contrary to UNCLOS. Only predominantly island nations, such as the Philippines and Indonesia, are recognized by UNCLOS as archipelagic states. The waters linking their islands fall within their sovereignty, but even this is subject to certain defined limits. Is China planning to become a latter-day archipelagic state based on its offshore island claims, by far the most extensive of which are in the South China Sea? One thing is certain. China plans to reinforce its already substantial body of domestic law on its claimed maritime and offshore island rights. Xinhua reported on Dec. 28 that China was likely to enact its first law on the exploration, development and management of deep sea resources within five years, as part of its policy to ―resolutely safeguard maritime rights and build itself into a maritime power.‖ The official news agency said that international seabed areas refer to the ocean floor and subsoil below the high seas, or waters beyond the limits of any national jurisdiction. It added that such areas were believed to be rich in strategic resources, including minerals, natural gas hydrates and biological resources. Michael Richardson is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.

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China and Vietnam: Danger in the South China Sea January 10, 2013 By: John D. Ciorciari is an assistant professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, and author of The Limits of Alignment: Southeast Asia and the Great Powers since 1975 (Georgetown University Press, 2010). Jessica Chen Weiss is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University and author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (book manuscript under review). The Sino-Vietnamese dispute in the South China Sea has intensified since 2009, as thirst for offshore energy reserves increases. China and Vietnam have taken very different approaches to advance their respective claims, and each carries important dangers that must be managed carefully to avoid locking the parties—and perhaps the surrounding region—into a path toward conflict. The latest round in the dispute began several weeks ago, when Vietnam accused a Chinese fishing boat of ―seriously violating Vietnam‘s sovereignty‖ by cutting a seismic cable of a Petro Vietnam vessel exploring the seabed near the Gulf of Tonkin. The incident was a replay of a similar altercation in May 2011, prompting the expansion of Vietnamese maritime patrols and the latest outburst in a series of public protests. The anti-China rallies in Vietnam drew roughly 200 people and dissipated only after Vietnamese authorities detained 22 of the protesters. China maintains that the sovereignty of the South China Sea is ―undisputed‖ and opposes any unilateral energy exploration efforts by rival claimants. China has focused on deterring other states from exploration or other activities that would help establish footholds and solidify rival claims. China has typically conducted patrols with nonmilitary vessels belonging to civilian agencies, including maritime affairs and fisheries. Yet in perhaps an early indication that Xi Jinping does not intend to take a gentler approach than his predecessor, on January 1 new rules took effect authorizing the Hainan police to board and search boats in at least some disputed waters, most likely around the Paracel Islands. China is also boosting its naval power, most recently by contracting for four Russian attack submarines and transferring two destroyers and nine other naval vessels to its maritime surveillance fleet. China has also pursued a wedge strategy, trying to prevent its smaller rivals from ganging up on Beijing in multilateral talks or seeking protection from extra-regional powers. For example, the state-affiliated Chinese paper Global Times warned in July 2012 that Vietnam would ―feel pain‖ if it facilitated the U.S. return to the region, asserting that the United States would use its position to force political change in Hanoi.

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In December, the state-owned China Daily published an opinion piece arguing that throughout 2012, ―some Southeast Asian countries attempted to put bilateral disputes under multilateral frameworks,‖ and the United States and Japan ―took the opportunity to add fuel to the fire, trying to stir up the troubled waters.‖ Domestically, China has framed the South China Sea issue as part of a larger struggle against a tightening ring of U.S.-led containment—a narrative that taps into popular nationalism but also reflects genuine strategic concerns. Although Vietnam has also tried to strengthen its navy, its inability to match China‘s might has led it to seek foreign support. Vietnam has worked with the Philippines and other states to ―multilateralize‖ the issue in regional forums including ASEAN, APEC, and the East Asia Summit. Although some ASEAN officials have criticized Vietnam for provoking China, most interested parties have joined in Vietnam‘s call for a multilateral resolution, forcing China to play diplomatic defense. Vietnam has had success ―internationalizing‖ the dispute as well, taking advantage of the convergent interests of the United States and other major powers to enlist their help. U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta‘s visit to Cam Ranh Bay, naval visits to three Vietnamese ports, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s push for a multilateral code of conduct—all reinforced the U.S. tilt toward Vietnam in 2012. After the latest cable-cutting incident in December, an Indian admiral also announced that India is undertaking exercises to protect its interests in the South China Sea, including an agreement with Petro Vietnam enabling India‘s state oil and gas firm to explore disputed areas off Vietnam‘s southern coast. Internally, Vietnam has allowed numerous anti-China protests to occur since June 2011—a marked contrast to its swift repression of similar protests in 2007. The communist leadership remains wary of political protests but has been loath to crack down on anti-China demonstrations for fear of appearing ―anti-nationalistic.‖ Moreover, many of the protesters‘ placards feature English language slogans about international law, making them resonant with Vietnam‘s diplomatic effort to broadcast grievances and seek foreign support. Both states‘ strategies are risky. China‘s assertiveness may harden alliances, accelerate defense spending around the region, and reduce space for future compromises. Clumsy diplomatic moves—such as printing passports with the disputed territories on a map of China and pressuring Cambodia to do its bidding in recent ASEAN discussions on the South China Sea—only add to the backlash. As the contest intensifies, nationalist voices gain leverage in Beijing and limit China‘s ability to back down. Vietnam‘s toleration of anti-China protesters—many of whom have criticized the government for selling out to China—may have a similar effect. Moreover, Hanoi‘s balancing tactics irritate Beijing, fuel Chinese nationalism, and add to the PRC‘s sense of encirclement. China has ample military and economic means to punish Hanoi, and it is unclear that Vietnam‘s friends will stand by its side if push comes to shove.

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Escalation is not in either state‘s interest. Vietnam would risk a humiliating defeat, and China would only contribute to the containment regime it fears by waging war. The real danger lies in domestic politics that could compel both states to escalate when further incidents occur at sea. The more China and Vietnam indulge nationalism to boost their domestic appeal, draw attention, or signal resolve, the less room will remain for compromise. The United States also has a pivotal role, not by confronting China directly—which would prompt Chinese countermeasures and encourage reckless behavior by Vietnam—but in supporting freedom of navigation and peaceful dispute resolution. Agreement on sovereignty is highly unlikely in the near future, but incremental progress is possible. The goal of diplomacy now should be to create space for China, Vietnam, and other claimants to make progress toward a code of conduct and joint development of energy resources. Although these measures will not solve the South China Sea disputes, they will help make the problem more tractable, steering away from the territorial issues that inflame the greatest nationalist passions.

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China's Benign Foreign Policy Image at Odds with South China Sea Stance By John Daly | Sun, 19 February 2012 18:35 Beijing for years has relentlessly projected a benign image in its foreign policy, but as its maritime neighbors are discovering, China‘s pacifist representations do not extend to energy issues, most notably in the disputed South China Sea. Now, Chinese ―imperial‖ overreach may bring U.S. naval forces once again into the western Pacific, as Beijing‘s southeast Asian neighbors feel increasingly threatened by China‘s overarching territorial claims in the South China Sea. China currently contends sovereignty of the Spratly islands‘ 750 islands, islets, atolls, cays and outcroppings with the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, bolstering its claims with ancient Chinese maps, despite the 2002 "Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea," designed to ease tensions over the archipelago. At stake? Resource-rich waters surrounding the islands, teeming with fish and possibly massive hydrocarbon reserves. As regards the latter, the U.S. Geological Survey calculates that the South China Sea may contain roughly 28 billion barrels of oil, while the Chinese government calculates that the South China Sea region contains nearly 200 billion barrels of oil but no one knows for sure, especially as the Chinese Navy harasses and chases off foreign survey vessels. Citing historical precedence, China is not above even using data from its ―renegade‖ Taiwan province to assert its claims. A 16 February article in Hong Kong‘s Ta Kung Pao the PRC-owned daily newspaper commented, ―Soon after World War II, China's central government, the Kuomintang (KMT), dispatched a small fleet, composed of the warships presented to them due to America and Japan being at war, to the South China Sea. As a result, there were surveys taken of the surrounding islands, along with establishing emblems of China's sovereignty, as well as the defining of national boundaries in accordance with the field surveys done.‖ Despite Taiwan‘s and the KMT‘s ongoing ―renegade‖ status the article continues, ― In 1947, in support of China's advocacy, the Department of Territorial Administration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the KMT government published an atlas of the South China Sea. Since these South East Asian countries were still ‗western colonies,‘ their

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governments raised no objection to China's territorial claims… Since establishment of the People's Republic of China, the new central government inherited the territorial assertions of its predecessor…‖. So, the Chinese Communist Party is not above citing the government that it overthrew in 1949 to further China‘s territorial claims. Other maritime disputes? Besides the Spratlys, China occupies some of the south China Sea‘s Paracel Islands, which it seized in 1974 but are still claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, while, finding further common cause with its ―renegade‖ province, both China and Taiwan continue to reject Japan's claims to the uninhabited islands of Senkaku-shoto (Diaoyu Tai) and Japan's unilaterally declared equidistance line in the East China Sea. Adding fuel to the fire, China is also embroiled in a territorial dispute with Indonesia over the South China Sea‘s 272-island Natuna archipelago, 150 miles northwest of Borneo. In 1993 China presented the Indonesian government with a map of its "historic claims" on the Spratlys, which included not only nearly the entire South China Sea but a portion of Indonesia's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the Natuna islands as well. The Natuna islands are hardly worthless, as its offshiore natural gas reserves are among the largest in the world, estimated at 210 trillion cubic feet. Even more striking, China even has disagreements with North Korea over several islands in the Yalu and Tumen rivers, and it was only last year that China and the Russian Federation finally demarcated the once disputed islands in the Amur and Ussuri rivers, over which they fought a brief but vicious border war in 1969. But in the end, the Spratlys may not prove to be a great a bargain as Beijing apparently thinks. Quite aside from questions about the actual amounts of hydrocarbon reserves, a second factor is the potential cost for developing them. Given the relatively high ―lifting‖ costs involved, some analysts project that the price of a barrel of oil from South China Sea deepwater wells could be as much as four times that of a barrel produced from conventional reserves like those in the Middle East. But the end result of China‘s ‗big stock‖ policy may be to reinforce a recently announced policy of the Obama administration to shift its focus to Asia, as both the Philippines and Vietnam are inveigling the United States to intervene in their disputes with China. Both have attractive military assets to offer Washington – the Philippines, Clark airfield and Subic Bay, which the U.S. military used until 1992, while Vietnam has Cam Ranh Bay, the finest deepwater port in Southeast Asia, a prime staging post for the U.S. Navy until 1975. So, potential ―bottom line‖ for undisputed Chinese sovereignty over the South China Sea?

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Economically, an expensive development program that may produce far less than the Chinese government hopes. But the possible diplomatic fallout is worse - bad relations with fellow Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. And last but not least, aggrieved Southeast Asian nations are as a result of Chinese pressure avidly welcoming the return of U.S. military forces. All considered, not much of a bargain. For a nation lauded for its economic acumen, at present China is curiously tone-deaf to the concerns of its South China Seas neighbors. If the politicians in Beijing can overcome their nationalist xenophobia and negotiate creatively with their ASEAN partners for joint sovereignty and production-sharing agreements, then they might yet forestall one of their unsettling visions – a return of the Stars and Stripes to the waters of the southwestern Pacific, this time by request. By. John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com

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ANALYSIS/ South China Sea disputes: Harbinger of regional strategic shift? By YOICHI KATO / National Security Correspondent September 10, 2011 The territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China and the other littoral states, including Vietnam and the Philippines, are gaining more strategic significance for the entire Asia-Pacific region and beyond. Japan cannot discount this issue as an isolated phenomenon in the remote region because it reflects China's regional strategy, which is based on its growing economy and national confidence. The more fundamental challenge is how the regional countries, including Japan, should deal with the emerging strategic ambivalence, which is caused by both the growing economic interdependence with China and the continuing dependence on the regional security order guaranteed by the United States. The territorial disputes in the South China Sea seem to have reached certain equilibrium at the ASEAN-China Ministerial Meeting and the following ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in July in Bali, Indonesia. The 10 member states of ASEAN and China agreed upon new guidelines, which stipulate a path to the implementation of the long-standing Declaration of Conduct (DOC) for peaceful resolution of the disputes in the South China Sea. Japan's then foreign minister, Takeaki Matsumoto, who participated in this round of ASEAN-related meetings, welcomed the development. He stated in the Diet, "I regard it as a step forward." U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also praised it as "an important step," and at the same time urged ASEAN and China to move quickly to achieve the next step: the establishment of a legally binding code of conduct to prevent conflicts. Clinton added, "Every claimant must make their claim publicly and specifically known so that we know where there is any dispute." But the equilibrium seems to be fast collapsing. Less than two weeks after the conference in Bali, the People's Daily, the official newspaper of China's Communist Party, published a front-page commentary that accused the Philippines of violating China's territorial sovereignty by building a military shelter on one of the disputed Spratly Islands. The article ended with a harsh warning: "Those who make serious strategic misjudgments on this issue will pay the appropriate price." The Xinhua News Agency immediately reported an English summary of this story. It was clear that the party and the Chinese government intended to send this message to all the parties concerned. And, in fact, it created quite a stir in the region.

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The governments of Japan and the United States still regard this past round of ASEAN-related ministerial meetings as a success because they succeeded in including "maritime security" in the agenda for the upcoming East Asia Summit in November. With this decision, the South China Sea issue can be further discussed in a larger multilateral context at EAS in addition to ASEAN-related meetings. This will guarantee an opportunity for the non-claimant, user-states of the South China Sea, such as Japan and the United States, to keep engaged in the discussion. On a more sensitive front, it was also regarded as a success because there was a tacit agreement formed among the claimant states and the major user-states of the South China Sea to keep questioning the legal legitimacy of China's claim of so called "9-dotted line" or "9-dashed line" for the South China Sea. The discreet strategy seems to steer China into a new multilateral agreement, a code of conduct to solve the disputes in a peaceful manner by collectively applying pressure through continuously challenging the legitimacy of the "9-dotted line" claim. China uses this U-shaped, 9-dotted line along the coastal line and the island chains in the South China Sea as the basis for its claim of sovereignty. The encircled area extends to the almost entire South China Sea. According to the official document that Chinese government submitted to the United Nations in 2009 along with a map, Beijing claims to have "indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent waters." It is not clear, however, whether China claims the entire South China Sea inside of the 9-dotted line as its territorial waters or whether its claim of sovereignty extends only to the islands and the adjacent waters. On Aug. 24, about a month after the ARF conference, two patrol boats of the Chinese Fishery Administration entered Japan's territorial waters around one of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. It was the first time for Chinese government ships to violate Japan's territorial waters around the Senkakus since 2008, when two China Marine Surveillance (CMS) patrol boats entered and stayed in Japan's territorial waters for more than nine hours. This time, the duration of the violation was much shorter. But the Japanese government took the incident very seriously because even when a Chinese trawler collided into a Japan Coast Guard cutter last September near the Senkakus, all of the Chinese government vessels, including the Fishery Administration and CMS, stayed clear of Japan's territorial waters. In response to the formal protest from the Japanese government, a spokesperson of China's Foreign Ministry said: "The Diaoyu (Senkaku) island and its affiliated islands have been China's inherent territory since ancient times. Chinese Fishery Administration Vessels patrolled the waters to maintain normal orders of fishery production." This position was nothing new, but the intensified action by one of the maritime law enforcement agencies was. There is some speculation on the part of the Japanese government that China's intention might have been to check the firmness of the position of the Japanese government on its territorial claims after the ARF meeting, and

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especially when Japan was going through the power transition from the Kan administration to the next. The prevailing view within the Japanese government is that what is happening in the East China Sea is closely connected with the disputes in the South China Sea. Foreign Minister Matsumoto stated in the Diet, "Japan has a great interest in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea because they could have an impact on peace and security of the Asia-Pacific region, and they are also closely related to safeguarding the security of maritime traffic." The territorial disputes are not limited to the maritime domain. There are some signs of intensification in the Sino-Indian land border area as well. Among Indian scholars is a view that China is engaged in the redefinition of both its land and maritime borders in its pursuit of the great power status. And such a series of redefinition actions has been carried out at a cost of territorial integrity and security of China's neighbors. India pays close attention to the situation in the South China Sea because they see it as an indication for what might happen in its border disputes with China. The more fundamental challenge that the entire Indo-Pacific region faces is perhaps the newly emerging strategic ambivalence. Most of the countries in the region have China as their major trading partner, if not the largest, while they depend on the United States for the maintenance of the regional security order, including freedom of navigation. This dual dependency, however, makes it harder for the regional states to decide what course of action to take, if and when China challenges the U.S. primacy. This seems to be what is happening in the South China Sea now. Last year, Hugh White, former deputy secretary of the Australian Department of Defense, published a paper, titled "Power Shift--Australia's Future between Washington and Beijing." In it, he points out that the era of "uncontested American primacy" is over and that a peaceful new order in Asia to accommodate China's growing power can be built "if America is willing to allow China some political and strategic space." The very core of his argument is that the United States should refrain from competing primacy with China but instead share power with it. He also suggests that it is time to rethink the hedging strategy. This is one possible answer to deal with the dilemma of "dual dependency." What is emerging through the debate over the South China Sea issue is a recognition that the territorial disputes take on the nature of competition for influence between the United States and China and that the United Sates alone cannot dominate the region in spite of its enormous military capabilities. The majority view among the ASEAN states may not be as clear-cut and extreme as White's. But if in fact "the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States" further proceeds, as it is often mentioned as a cliche', this shift from "U.S. primacy" to a "Sino-U.S. power share" construct may gain more traction and relevance among the regional countries and the people. That would

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be great challenge for Japan, which builds its security strategy based on a premise that the US primacy is unshakable. What is happening in the South China Sea can be a harbinger of the potential shift of the strategic thinking among the regional states and eventually the regional strategic order itself.