A Multilateral Negotiation Agenda Will Only Complicate South China Sea Disputes

  2011/7/5 source：

Thanks to the strong self-restraint and Herculean diplomatic efforts of relevant countries over the past month, the possibility of an acute conflict in the South China Sea has been much lowered. However, the future of territorial disputes in the region seems to be increasingly complicated with ever growing US engagement—from Secretary Clinton’s speech at the ARF Foreign Minister’s meeting last July to the US’s ongoing joint military exercises with Southeast Asian countries notwithstanding the sensitive moment and, now, an emerging agenda to push forward multilateral negotiation “for a final solution.” Yet, does the US know for sure where such an agenda will go? And beyond that, is there sufficient rationale for the agenda in the first place?

Why the multilateral negotiation agenda?

On a June-20^th conference on South China Sea disputes held in Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Senator John McCain advocated that, despite the need for the US to maintain productive relations with China, it must seek to “facilitate multilateral negotiations” for a final resolution of disputes in the South China Sea while assisting ASEAN members to form a “United Front vis-à-vis China,” because the US not only enjoys great economic interests, but it also “has a national security interest in maintaining a favorable strategic balance in this vital region, and central to that is defending the universal freedom of navigation and open access to the seas.” His voice was echoed by the US Senate on June 27 in a unanimous resolution to “deplore the use of force” by China in the South China Sea, let alone the superfluous criticism against China in public media since the end of May.

Such strong sentiment arises largely from a sympathy for the “bullied small states” or, rather, on the stereotyped understanding that 1) China claims nearly the whole South China Sea irrespective of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the ASEAN-China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC); 2) China has been using a tactic of “split and rule” and trying to play states in disputes against each other; and 3) China tends to act “more belligerently”  because of its mounting demand for natural resources and its rapidly-increasing military capacities. Thus the US must stand up to China on behalf of those small states and take an active role in safeguarding peace and international justice.

However, it will be naïve to think that the multilateral negotiation agenda is based solely on immediate emotional appeals. As a matter of fact, similar appeals in the past have been used by many conservatives to justify and strengthen an established belief that the US must contain China’s rise on all fronts in order to maintain its own strategic superiority. China’s recent “assertive claims and actions” in the South China Sea, therefore, are but another vindication for why the US has to be more active in balancing China’s ever-growing strategic influence in the region.

Indeed, China should have done better in clarifying its claim and position in the South China Sea, yet to put all the blame on China for causing the current tension is at least sentimental if not misrepresentative. Leaving alone the fact that Vietnam has occupied far more islands and reefs (29 in total) than China in disputed areas over the past decades and that it is taking much faster steps in exploiting oil and natural gas regardless of the DOC, the hard-line stance some Southeast Asian states have turned to adopt—Vietnam’s new military draft decree on June 13 and the frequent military exercises conducted by Vietnam and the Philippines (sometimes jointly with the US) since the end of May, among others—is apparently encouraged by the US’s explicit or tacit diplomatic and even military support. Thus, arguments for a multilateral negotiation agenda are intrinsically weak for lack of a sober and impartial evaluation of the actual situation.

Risks of the Multilateral Negotiation Agenda

Whether out of ill-informed sentiments or established distrust of China, more and more political elites in the US tend to think that it is time for the US to bring China to the negotiation table with all related parties including the US itself, and that if China goes on resisting, the US should force it to do so with the help of all “like-minded states” in the region. As discussed above, such an agenda is not based purely on rational policy deliberations, and thus prone to high risks if turned into policy.

First, it will augment the tension among related parties and increase the possibility of acute conflicts in the disputed region. In fact, the South China Sea has remained calm at most time in the past decade because of the diplomatic self-restraint of all related parties and, more importantly, growing economic integration between China and ASEAN as well as within ASEAN itself. It is only when the US began to engage itself in South China Sea disputes—at first diplomatically, then by providing symbolic or concrete military assistance—that some Southeast Asian states developed an impulse to challenge the past calmness of the Sea on the belief that the US will stand behind them in any situation. If the US binds with these states in pushing China to a so-called “multilateral negotiation,” then the South China Sea may turn into a new arena for chicken game, and the possibility of resolving territorial disputes will be severely impaired.

Next, it may further divide ASEAN and alienate Southeast Asian states from the US. As Dana Dillon, an expert at the Heritage Foundation, correctly points out in Policy Review No. 167, ASEAN states are “far more vulnerable to Beijing’s economic and military pressures and thus reluctant to provoke Chinese retribution. Ideally, ASEAN would have the US Navy steam in force into the South China Sea to maintain the peace, while ASEAN then clucks disapprovingly from the sidelines and reassures the Chinese that it had nothing to do with it.” Even if such a multilateral negotiation agenda is welcomed by a few Southeast Asian states, the rest of ASEAN will undoubtedly hold back or even oppose it, resulting in a split ASEAN and greater divergence between the US and ASEAN as a whole.

Finally, it will seriously harm US-China relations and strike a fatal blow to their military exchanges that appeared to return on the positive track only recently. China will very sensibly doubt how it is possible for the US to behave as an impartial facilitator (or mediator) and as an ally of some states in disputes at the same time. As a result, a multilateral negotiation agenda will only deepen China’s suspicion of the US’s hidden intention to contain China and prompt Beijing to take a harder stance towards the US.

Mark Valencia, a researcher at the San Francisco-based Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, comments, “The US has not ratified the Convention (UNCLOS) and has little legitimacy in arguing it or its interpretation thereof.  The US would be widely seen as a ‘bully’ if it tried to force its interpretation on the world.” To avoid such an image, it would be wise for the US to refrain from pushing forward a multilateral negotiation agenda and act truly impartially and prudently in helping resolve the South China Sea disputes.