ACROSS the Indo-Pacific, rising economic dependence has enabled Beijing to revise the nature of international relations and a rules-based order underpinned by adherence to international treaty-based law. The rapidity of the associated shift in the balance of political and military power was also enabled by America’s neglect of the region following its war on terror and then the 2007-08 global financial crisis.
The collapsing regional order might start with the war on terror but contending Asian perspectives regarding China and the US have become increasingly polarised since the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Beijing’s early “Charm Offensive” has since been supplanted by more coercive actions and the most divisive issue, at least for East Asia, has been the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
Despite the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ engagement since 1992, China has most significantly breached the norms of the 2002 Asean Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and then it also breached the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) through activities like the creation and militarisation of large-scale artificial islands.
Regionally, China’s 2012 seizure of Scarborough Shoal from Manila was a “watershed event”. The Obama administration’s attempt to negotiate a withdrawal by Beijing and Manila from the Shoal failed. However, the ultimate pivot point was Beijing’s rapid construction of nearly 1,300 hectares of artificial islands from early 2013.
Despite the first reference to possible land reclamation by a Philippine news article on 31 July 2013, comprehensive imagery of the artificial islands was not publicly available until February 2015. By this time, the US and its allies had, intentionally or not, bypassed international pressure to prevent the island construction — e.g. a naval blockade — as the substance of the island construction was by then a fait accompli.
The Chinese government and its state-owned media claim that Beijing is a victim of unjustified containment policies by the US and its allies. They point to developments like the stationing of Marines in Darwin and then US Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea. However, there has been very little tangible “containment” of Beijing’s behaviour.
For some Asian nations, the failure of the international community to take decisive action to deter Beijing’s flagrant breaches of international law and the “rules-based order” was even more noteworthy than Beijing’s actual breach of UNCLOS.
Consequently, in March 2018 Vietnam abandoned its “Red Emperor” oil site when Beijing threatened to attack Vietnam’s Spratly outposts. Vietnam had initially postponed drilling there but, despite a US Navy carrier port visit a week earlier, Hanoi felt that it had to capitulate to Beijing’s demands. The possible loss of the South China Sea — “in all scenarios short of war” — for all relevant stakeholders has been reflected in public statements from past and present senior US and Australian military officers.
China has demonstrated a profound capacity to reinvent itself domestically and internationally and the achievements of the past few decades, for such a populous country, are unprecedented. So too is Beijing’s challenge to the regional order including US leadership, norms, and international law. Based on the current trajectory, Asia’s post-World War II order is on the verge of a terminal decline.
Aside from missing US leadership, the broader hesitance of the region to respond to regional threats is profoundly destabilising; this will not change unless a far more harmonised view emerges about the key threats confronting a stable rules-based order.
A sub-group of willing Asean states may need to negotiate the Code or key Asean claimants could alternatively forge a Code of Conduct with key non-Asean stakeholder countries and present it as a fait accompli to Beijing. Much more is needed including multinational FONOPs and coastguard patrols. The multinational coastguard patrols could police and protect resources in the “legally” undisputed areas of a willing state’s exclusive economic zone.
These activities can also apply across the Indo-Pacific. For this purpose, a strategic dialogue between supporters of the rules-based order is needed. Whether led by governments or by regional think tanks, such a dialogue could help coordinate multilateral activities and be a platform for more robust signalling to Beijing.
Further, a mutual defence pact will ultimately be needed to guarantee collective responses to military attempts to change the status quo in the East China Sea, Taiwan, the North Natuna Sea, and India’s border.
The South China Sea (and Crimean) precedent will further embolden revisionist states to undertake additional coercive actions when diplomacy fails. The region cannot expect the US to defend Asia on its own; should the rules-based states of the Indo-Pacific act together then that may also entice the US to more substantially and constructively reengage the region. A failure on either front will signal to Beijing that it will benefit from future coercive and/or military actions in other regional arenas.
The writer is director of the National Asian Studies Centre, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra.He has been associated with S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, National Technological University, Singapore since 2005 where, among other things, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship (2007-2008).