As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's visit to Japan, China, and New Zealand shows, President Barack Obama's "pivot to Asia" continues apace. But if U.S. policy toward this strategically important region is to be successful, it must take into account a paradox: China's neighbors seek greater U.S. economic, diplomatic and military involvement in the region as a counterbalance to China's growing power -- but at the same time, every country in the region also desires a close relationship with Beijing.
The difficulty of navigating this paradox is clearly evident in the handling of territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Southeast Asian nations periodically urge Washington to help them stand up to Chinese pressure to accept Beijing's expansive claims there -- but when Washington acts to prevent China from running roughshod over the region, its partners' concerns about U.S.-China tensions spike and they implore the United States to step back. It is this paradox that makes maintaining a consistent and principled U.S. policy on the South China Sea both challenging and essential.
The United States has a great deal at stake in the South China Sea. It is one of the world's primary trade arteries, with over half of the world's merchant fleet by tonnage sailing through those sea-lanes each year. The region also contains an abundance of fish -- an important source of revenue for the bordering countries' economies -- and potentially contains significant quantities of oil and gas resources strategically located near large energy-consuming countries.
Yet the South China Sea is a tangle of competing territorial demands. China, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei all assert overlapping claims over land features and adjacent waters in the sea, heightening diplomatic tensions and potentially laying the foundation for a future military conflict. And while no country is blameless in this standoff, China is clearly the most egregious aggressor. It is currently following a deliberate policy of bullying and intimidating its smaller neighbors into recognizing its sovereignty over large swathes of the sea -- and the United States must clearly communicate that such behavior is unacceptable.
The South China Sea has long been a military flashpoint. Skirmishes took place periodically on its waters from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. A decade of relative quiescence followed, but tensions have flared since 2007, with a marked increase in incidents and provocations. The main causes of growing tensions are rising interest in surveying and exploiting the South China Sea's oil and gas deposits, intensified competition for fish as stocks in close proximity to coastlines are depleted, and growing nationalistic pressures on governments to defend their territorial and maritime claims.
The most serious confrontation in decades took place this past spring over a triangular-shaped chain of reefs and rocks called Scarborough Shoal, located approximately 124 nautical miles from Zambales, the Philippines. In early April, a Philippines frigate, which had been deployed to observe a pending North Korean missile launch, was redirected to Scarborough Shoal to investigate the presence of eight Chinese fishing boats in the lagoon. Infuriated by what it viewed as a provocative and escalatory action, China dispatched two large maritime surveillance ships to the shoal, which positioned themselves between the Chinese fishing vessels and the Philippine warship. Over the ensuing weeks, Manila withdrew the frigate and replaced it with a coast guard cutter, while the Chinese increased their presence, at one point deploying approximately eighty surveillance ships, fishing boats, and utility craft in the lagoon. Manila's staunch refusal to withdraw was met with additional Chinese intimidation: Beijing began to quarantine tropical fruit imports from the Philippines and apply other forms of economic pressure. Quiet diplomacy produced a verbal agreement in early June that both sides would pull out their ships and end the standoff, but only Manila complied. After the Philippines withdrew, China roped off the mouth of the lagoon to prevent Filipino and other fishermen from entering, and stepped up patrols around the shoal.
It's clear that there is a cycle of escalation underway in the South China Sea that threatens to destabilize this critical region. However, it is important to note that China's claims, policies, ambitions, behavior, and capabilities are significantly different from those of other actors. Beijing resists engaging in multilateral discussions on the territorial and maritime disputes in the region, preferring bilateral mechanisms where it can apply leverage over smaller, weaker parties. It rejects a role for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in resolving the territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea.
Although Beijing has agreed to eventually enter into negotiations to reach a code of conduct for the South China Sea, Chinese officials have recently stated that discussions can only take place "when conditions are ripe" -- which, evidently, is not now. The United States views a code of conduct as a tool for conflict prevention and conflict resolution, and urges negotiations to begin immediately. Chinese officials, meanwhile, prefer the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, which has no dispute resolution mechanism and is not legally binding.