Competing territorial claims and arms buildup near vital trade routes recipe for regional conflict
Anti-Japan protesters hold sings that read ‘Japan Get Out,’ with other protesters outside Japanese Embassy in Beijing recently. Tensions in the region over territory are rising. Photo / AP
Increasingly, the world’s mightiest powers are finding themselves between rocks and a hard place in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean.
Here’s a closer look at some of the flashpoints of tension in the South China Sea.
One focus is on Sansha City, on the tiny Yongxing Island in the South China Sea’s Paracel group, recently attached by Beijing to Hainan Province and provided with a new administration and military garrison.
The Paracels and the Spratly archipelago are among the potential flashpoints flickering between the People’s Republic – which claims virtually all of the South China Sea – and Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines.
They are central to the emerging rivalry between China, the United States, Asian countries and other powers, including India and Russia, whose interests now extend from the South Pacific to the rim of Asia.
At stake are vast tracts of ocean embracing huge hydrocarbon reserves and fish stocks, and vital navigation rights over sea lanes used by more than one-third of the world’s shipping, and the supply of about 90 per cent of energy imports to China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.
The shift in global power to Asia-Pacific and the emergence of China and India as regional superpowers lie behind the new US “Asia pivot” policy that will strengthen America’s arm in the region, including a greater presence in Australia, the thaw in military relations with New Zealand, and the rotational basing of warships in Singapore.
Both New Zealand and Australia see vital interests in events to their west and north. New Zealand’s most recent defence white paper notes that up to 99 per cent of the nation’s merchandise exports travel by sea, much of it through volatile waters.
Australia, trying to balance its relationships with China and the US, refuses to take a position on competing territorial claims in the region . More than half its trade crosses the South China Sea, including 90 per cent of its iron ore and coal exports.
Canberra has accepted a US Marine task force on training rotations through the Northern Territory and greater US use of navy and air facilities, but has rejected an American proposal to build a carrier strike force base in the west.
Defence Minister Stephen Smith told the Australian Strategic Policy Institute the region was home to the world’s four biggest armies, its largest navies, and three superpowers: the US, China and India.
“The emergence of three great strategic powers in the region will see an adjustment in the balance of power across the region and around the globe,” Smith said.
Getting that adjustment wrong would have serious consequences.
“The South China Sea is the flashpoint in the Pacific where conflict is most likely to break out through miscalculation,” Lowy Institute executive director Michael Wesley said.
Australian National University Professor of Strategic Studies Hugh White says in a new book, The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power, that the US and China are sliding towards a dangerous rivalry, building their forces and adapting military plans specifically with the other in mind and seeking support from other Asian countries.
The Philippines have reacted strongly to China’s Sansha City move and its imposition of a new administration over the Spratly and Paracel Islands and the Macclesfield Bank. New helicopter gunships have been ordered, and other naval and air acquisitions are planned.
Vietnam, which fought China in a brief war in 1979 and stared down confrontation at sea since, faces powerful domestic pressure to resist Chinese claims and has passed a new law claiming sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel groups.
Hanoi is modernising its forces, especially the navy, with cruise missiles, Russian warships and submarines. Vietnam is also strengthening military ties with the US, Japan, India, Singapore and Russia, which is negotiating access to the big Cam Ranh Bay naval base.
For both China and the US, the region remains an overriding priority.
Wesley said in his paper that Chinese naval strategists saw their country’s coastline as hemmed in by a hostile chain of states – Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines – and set their overriding goal as establishing maritime dominance.
Influential elites in China viewed the South China Sea as “blue territory”, as much a part of China as Tibet or Taiwan and making any surrender of its claims unthinkable; its 1992 Territorial Law classified the South China Sea as internal waters.
This brings China directly into conflict with the US. Beijing demands that foreign naval vessels and aircraft seek permission to cross the sea, and that submarines surface.
China says it will respect the freedom of passage of ships and aircraft through the area provided they are en route to another destination and do not conduct military exercises or collect intelligence. Washington insists the sea lanes are in international waters and subject to freedom of navigation.
“For the US, what’s at stake in the South China Sea is the viability of its entire presence in the western Pacific,” Wesley said. And the region is at odds with itself over which side to take. Cambodia, Laos and Burma refuse demands to back Vietnam and the Philippines. Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are worried, but want to avoid confrontation with China.
Wesley said the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia were tightening their strategic relationships with the US, while Cambodia, Laos and Thailand deepened their links to China.
In his book White said peace and stability were possible, but the risk of rivalry and conflict was also real: “Which it will be depends more than anything else on choices that will be made over the next few years in Washington and Beijing.”
NamViet News 
Nam
August 24, 2012
U.S. Missile-Defense Move Seen Feeding China’s Fears
The U.S. decision to expand its missile-defense shield in the Asia-Pacific region, ostensibly to defend against North Korea, could feed Chinese fears about containment by the U.S. and encourage Beijing to accelerate its own missile program, analysts say.
The new effort, which includes the deployment of an early-warning radar system, known as X-Band, in Japan—and possibly another in Southeast Asia—reflects America’s deepening military and security engagement in the region after a decade focused on the Middle East and Afghanistan.
China’s official response has been relatively muted so far. Zhu Feng, a leading Chinese security expert at Beijing University, said the U.S. announcement is “more likely to speed up an arms race.”
A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the Pentagon faces a hard sell convincing China’s People’s Liberation Army that the missile-defense architecture isn’t designed to encircle them. “It sure looks like containment,” the official said.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the missile defenses aren’t directed at containing China.
At a news conference Friday, Japan’s defense minister Satoshi Morimoto confirmed that Tokyo and Washington “have had various discussions over missile defenses, including how to deploy the U.S.’s X-Band radar system.” He added the government needed “a little more time” before disclosing details.
The news of the U.S. plans, reported in The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, strikes a nerve in a region concerned about the growing assertiveness of China.
Many in Japan feel the nation should beef up its own defense capability and strengthen cooperation with the U.S. in the face of China’s military expansion and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. India is alarmed about China expanding its naval presence in the Indian Ocean. Vietnam, meanwhile, is building stronger ties with the U.S. Navy, while the Philippines, too, is reviving its security relationship with Washington amid a series of territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.
However, security analysts say the strategy risks further antagonizing Chinese leaders, who are already under pressure from vocal nationalists to defend the country’s strategic interests.
“China will make a meal of this politically. To them it underscores their propaganda points about the pivot to Asia revealing America’s Cold War mentality, that its purpose is to contain China,” said Carl Thayer, an Asian security expert at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.
China’s Ministry of National Defense hasn’t commented directly on the antimissile plans, but Thursday sounded a cautious note, saying, “China has always believed that antimissile issues should be handled with great discretion, from the perspective of protecting global strategic stability.” China’s Foreign Ministry separately echoed the sentiment.
China is developing sophisticated new missiles, including those potentially capable of striking U.S. aircraft carriers operating in the Asia-Pacific. Those efforts are in part aimed at denying regional access to the U.S., which could complicate Washington’s efforts to defend Taiwan in the event of a conflict.
Analysts say China may now be tempted to churn full speed ahead with this program in an effort to overwhelm an enhanced missile defense with firepower.
“Attempting to overcome this reality would risk entering the U.S. into a race that it could not afford to wage, let alone win,” wrote China security analysts Andrew Erickson and Gabe Collins in a commentary for The Wall Street Journal.
The senior U.S. official said that while the system could be overwhelmed by a large-scale Chinese attack, U.S. missile-interceptors guided by the X-Bands could repulse a more limited strike, protecting U.S. bases and ships. “You don’t need to be 100% effective in order to create a situation where the other guy has to change his calculus,” the U.S. official said.
Japan has mixed emotions about the nation’s defense and its long-standing security alliance with the U.S. Finding a home for the X-Band radar won’t be easy because of the growing grass-root opposition to the American military presence in Japan.
Japan already hosts an X-Band radar in the northern prefecture of Aomori. At the time it was installed in 2006, it faced concerns from local residents who feared presence of the radar would make them a target for potential enemy attacks. Others were opposed to the arrival of more U.S. personnel to man the facility.
The Pentagon says North Korea is the immediate threat driving decision-making on missile defense.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the missile-defense plans, which follow a provocative rocket test launch by Pyongyang in April. The rocket, which the North Koreans said would deploy a satellite into space, crashed minutes after takeoff.
Pyongyang previously launched long-range missiles in 2006 and 2009, both of which also crashed soon after takeoff. U.S. intelligence agencies have long held that North Korea could have a missile capable of reaching the U.S. as early as 2015 or 2016.
Some U.S. defense officials have said a third X-Band radar could be positioned in the Philippines, which would potentially help Washington and its allies more accurately track ballistic missiles launched from North Korea and part of China.
Raul Hernandez, assistant secretary at the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs, said the Philippines hasn’t been approached by the U.S. over basing an early-warning radar station there.
Some analysts warn that the U.S. plan may further destabilize a region that faces volatile territorial disputes, competition for resources and growing nationalism.
It may also force governments in the region to make uncomfortable choices. Sumathy Permal, a senior researcher at the Centre for Maritime Security and Diplomacy at the Maritime Institute of Malaysia, said that Malaysia values close ties with both the U.S. and China. “Malaysia may not want to upset either,” she wrote in an email.
Lora Saalman, a Beijing-based researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that the X-Band radar issue “cuts to the heart of China’s overall military modernization and role in Asia.”
However, she said a land-based X-Band radar is potentially somewhat less concerning to the Chinese than a sea-based one that could be more difficult for China to evade.
“So this land-based X-Band radar is not entirely a worst-case scenario for China,” said Ms. Saalman.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444082904577609054116070694.html
Nam
August 24, 2012
Rekindling old animosity in the edgy Asia-Pacific
Both China and Japan have stoked nationalism for domestic purposes and now risk being held hostage to the indignation of the street.
In a dispute over islands, both countries are using false histories and present ambitions to stoke a dangerous nationalism Old quarrels take new forms when the world’s power balance shifts. The Japanese and Chinese nationalists squaring up over disputed islands in the East China Sea are in the grip of geopolitical rivalries, jockeying for position on the new map that China’s rise has created. Their deeper animosity goes back into the misuse of their troubled, shared history.
When China’s climb out of the economic trough began in the 1990s, the US was the world’s biggest power, Japan the second biggest economy, and the Soviet empire recently deceased. Today, China is the world’s second largest economy, Japan has stagnated for two decades, and US power looks less impressive than it did. As China flexes its muscles, the US shift in focus to the Pacific has come not a minute too soon for some of Beijing’s nervous neighbours.
Asia’s maritime borders and ownership of the oil and gas beneath the East and South China seas, are disputed between Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, China and Japan but as China grows, so does its unilateral assertion of claims. Two years ago it announced the South China Sea was a “core interest”, in an unsuccessful attempt to stick a “keep out” sign on the dispute for the US to read. In July, Beijing elevated an island-based military garrison to city status, unilaterally giving it administrative responsibility over the entire South China Sea.
In the East China Sea, things have been equally tense. In April, Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo’s governor, provocatively announced a public fund to buy several of the islands from private Japanese citizens. His action embarrassed the government and inflamed Japanese sentiments, provoking a reaction from Chinese nationalists: on August 15, the anniversary of Japan’s 1945 surrender, a group of Chinese citizens landed and raised Chinese flags on the islands. They were swiftly deported to Hong Kong, precipitating the worst anti-Japanese demonstrations since 2004.
Imperial expansion
The animosity is much older. For centuries China saw Japan as a vassal state and loftily accepted tribute from a people they regarded as inferior. In the 19th century, when Japan cast off its feudal system and modernised, the shock to China was the greater because of its historic contempt. When, in 1894, Japan defeated China militarily, the humiliation was felt across the nation. China set out to learn from Japan’s transformation but was powerless to prevent Japan’s imperial expansion and brutal occupation. Even after Japan’s defeat in 1945, Japan’s economic success and close relationship with the US perpetuated Chinese resentment.
That Japan is the focus of popular rage in China today is less surprising, given this history, than the fact that until the late 1970s visiting Japanese were greeted in China with professions of friendship. It was only after the Chinese regime sent tanks to crush the Tiananmen democracy movement in 1989 that nationalist animosity became official policy.
In the version of history elaborated after 1989, malign foreigners are China’s enemy and the cause of the century of ‘national humiliation’ from the 1840s to the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. ‘National humiliation’ is now commemorated in scores of freshly built museums and taught to successive generations of school children.
Among China’s enemies, Japan occupies a special place as a brutal territorial aggressor. China complains constantly, and unfairly, that Japan has failed to apologise for its war crimes; the visits of successive Japanese leaders to the Yasukuni shrine, with its unrepentant imperialist message, infuriates China every year.
Both sides distort history. Japan’s notorious school textbooks are vague on war crimes; Chinese accounts of Japanese atrocities in films and school history books spare no gruesome detail. Japan as the source of inspiration and finance for a generation of Chinese political reformers, including Sun Yatsen, China’s democratic revolutionary leader, is all but forgotten.
Both the Chinese nationalists (the Kuomintang) and the Communist party claim to have defeated Japan in the war of resistance; the larger theatre of the Second World War, the role of the US and the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki take a back seat.
Both governments have stoked nationalism for domestic purposes. Now they risk being held hostage to the indignation of the street. As Asia’s geostrategic map shifts, such incidents, demonstrations and provocations will recur, stimulated by false histories and present ambitions. These are dangerous games and both governments should ensure that more sobre stories prevail. These maritime disputes are a test of Asia’s capacity to co-operate for mutual benefit. Failure means everybody loses.
http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/rekindling-old-animosity-in-the-edgy-asia-pacific-1.1065404
Nam
August 24, 2012
Former US Diplomat: The Next Battlefield Will Be The South China Sea
Tensions are rising again in Southeast Asia as competing claims over the resource rich South China Sea push closer to boiling point.
In the latest series of provocations, China launched “combat-ready” patrols, offered disputed ocean blocs for sale and set up a garrison and new administration on Sansha. Vietnam countered with continued military overflights of the contested Spratly Islands despite warnings from Chinese officials.
With Philippine President Aquino announcing a $1.8 billion upgrade in defense forces the inevitable regional arms build-up has begun.
One would hope that countries in the region would take concerted action. That hope would be misplaced.
While the region shudders at the thought of open conflict affecting a major artery of Asian trade, no collective action has been able to resolve the situation. ASEAN couldn’t even reach agreement on a routine joint public statement at the end of their annual gathering this year. Not that another non-binding piece of paper would have had any real influence. A 2002 Code of Conduct signed by ASEAN members and China to resolve the disputes peacefully continues to be ignored as countries vie for potentially lucrative natural resources.
An increasingly militarized land and sea grab continues despite calls for peaceful resolution. With the U.S. in full Asian tilt, the South China Sea dispute is shaping up to be the first major test of its Pacific re-engagement. What the U.S. Can or should do remains woefully undefined.
There is no longer any question that as the power vacuum expands, force, not the power of the pen defines boundaries. Beijing increasingly asserts its claims within a map of its own making while a troubling and influential undercurrent gathers momentum.
China now claims the entire South China Sea, brushing the shores of its neighbors and flying in the face of international norms. Call it the conventional “first-strike” option supported by influential Chinese think tanks and the popular state-controlled press—quick and decisive military engagement to convince Vietnam and the Philippines to back down. It worked in China’s favor during a 1974 stand-off over the Paracel Islands.
Enter the U.S., seen by many as a natural hedge against excessive Chinese influence. The State Department issued a lukewarm statement on the South China Sea urging all parties to find a peaceful solution to the impasse. Senator McCain called China’s moves “provocative.”
Beyond routine drills and port calls with the Philippines, Vietnam and India the U.S. has taken a decidedly cautious approach. Peaceful resolution of territorial claims and a unified Southeast Asian response, not a military confrontation with China, remains a core U.S. foreign policy objective. That may be increasingly difficult to achieve as China presses its claims, recently “escorting” an Indian naval flotilla from its port call with Vietnam and hailing it with “welcome to Chinese waters.”
In June Philippine President Aquino sought reassurance that U.S. defense obligations would kick-in should they be attacked. The U.S. refused to take sides in the territorial dispute, a long standing policy, but reaffirmed its commitment to the bilateral Mutual Defense Treaty. At a minimum this entails immediate consultations should hostilities break out. It does not, however mean automatic military action.
Even interest from the rest of Southeast Asia for greater U.S. engagement remains tentative. Vietnam continues joint exercises with China, keen to maintain balance with its main trading partner to the north. Non-claimant states including Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia and Laos have shown no interest in “taking sides”, though U.S. engagement is certainly welcome. For its part China has been quick to use trade retaliation including a sudden technical hold on Philippine fruit imports.
If history is any guide the unintended consequences of even a limited military skirmish may prove hard to control. The situation remains even more volatile with a leadership transition underway in Beijing as nationalistic and even jingoistic tendencies rise throughout the country. Appeasement also has its discontents. This is the fine line the U.S. must tread.
There are no signs that the cycle of provocation and push-back will end any time soon. It should be no surprise if boat ramming incidents between fishing vessels and cutters eventually turn more confrontational. Perhaps the greatest U.S. influence will be containing any escalation by its presence alone, helping to thwart the notion that China can launch a limited attack on its neighbors without consequences.
Despite China’s preference the U.S. can and will remain a Pacific power, guarantor of the common interest, strengthening cooperation among parties, and routinely testing free access to international waters.
Southeast Asia should not overestimate this involvement and under-prepare itself thinking that their fishing fleets or contested boundaries will fall under U.S. protection. All countries in the region need to develop their own capabilities while engaging in greater regional military cooperation. The U.S. should be seen as the military of last resort, not first. At the same time China should not underestimate U.S. resolve to maintain the peace.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-south-china-sea-sparks-arms-race-2012-8#ixzz24W37z5oH