REMEMBER our boyhood days when a bully would place a chip on his shoulder and dare anyone to knock it off? If someone did, the bully had to fight the challenger or else lose face. By building artificial islands on sunken reefs in the Spratleys and claiming sovereignty over nearly all of the South China Sea, China placed a virtual chip on its shoulder, daring the other claimants to the area to knock it off. Vietnam tried and promptly got clobbered.
For its part, the Philippines has made a lot of noises, but knowing that we have a toothless military, our government has done the sensible thing: bring the case before the United Nations and put international pressure on China by warning the rest of the world that they are being bullied, as well.
While the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have claimed parts of the Spratleys for reasons of sovereignty and the area’s rich oil and natural gas resources, the industrialized countries, particularly America, have major economic, political and military reasons to ensure unhampered access to what has been characterized as the throat of the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans. From an economic perspective alone, $5.3 trillion of trade passes through the South China Sea each year, of which the US accounts for $1.2 trillion.
Last October 27, Uncle Sam finally knocked the chip off big bully China’s shoulder. It deliberately sailed the USS Lassen, a guided missile destroyer, within 12 nautical miles of China’s bogus exclusive economic zone.
Like any bully who has met his match, the Chinese have not gone beyond protesting and hurling muted threats. In response, the US has raised the ante by announcing that it plans to continue the patrols indefinitely. The White House, in an official statement, also declared, “The United States is going to fly and sail anywhere international law allows.”
While the US has maintained that it takes “no position” on competing territorial claims on the Spratleys, last February 2014 it explicitly rejected, for the first time, China’s nine-dash line that ostensibly supports its “historic” ownership of the disputed sea lanes. That rejection was, in fact, a declaration of Washington DC’s position.
Coincidentally adding to China’s humiliation, the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration decided last October 29 that it has jurisdiction over the South China Sea issue and will proceed to hear the case filed by the Philippines under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. China’s refusal to participate in the proceedings, said the Court, has no effect on its jurisdiction.
With America’s in-your-face challenge to China, the hawks are predicting an escalation that could erupt into armed conflict. On the other hand, pacifists and pragmatists have warned that the controversy isn’t worth triggering World War III.
Meanwhile, the Philippines has continued to equivocate. Although President Aquino and the Department of Foreign Affairs are unabashedly depending on the US to stop China’s incursions, there are those in the legislature who oppose the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) forged with the US in 2014, warning that it is a ploy to reestablish military bases on Philippine soil. American presence would, in fact, strengthen our country’s stance against China, but it could also make the Philippines a war theater once again, as in World War II.
Further muddling the situation are suspected fifth columnists, like Sen. Antonio Trillanes, whose “back channel negotiations” with the Chinese resulted in the Philippines being preempted and locked out of Scarborough Shoal.
Indeed, the South China Sea conflict is not easy to untangle. Analysts have gone no farther than to point out its serious implications and to suggest options, all of which are iffy. However, they all agree that, in spite of the brinkmanship, neither the US nor China is particularly eager to go to war. In fact, there are continuous contacts between both countries at the highest level and among their military leaders to ensure that no one makes a “miscalculation” that could spark a major armed conflict.
The question then is: how will China respond to America’s challenge to its bogus territorial claims? For all of its bluster, the Chinese government may just decide to play the patience game, the way it waited 156 years to recover Hong Kong from the British.
It will continue to protest against further US flybys and sail-bys, but China will likely avoid taking serious armed action. It is also expected to ignore any adverse UN verdict and to continue building up its military capabilities, as well as its salami slicing tactic in the Spratleys. And, like a condom, it will also keep reassuring its Asian neighbors of its peaceful intentions, while screwing them.
The US, on the other hand, will calibrate its moves, careful not to push China too far into a corner, even while it maintains its profitable partnership with the world’s second largest economy.
Meanwhile, Vietnam has signed an agreement with China to peacefully resolve maritime conflicts. Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have been careful not to upset China, a major economic partner. Their reaction to the incursion of the USS Lassen has been muted and vague.
In the face of this, analysts have predicted that a modus vivendi will eventually be agreed on between the US and China, a face-saving agreement that will allow the former, as well as other major trading nations, free access to the disputed area, by sea and by land, while China bides its time.
We might recall how the Korean War ended in a truce. The US and the United Nations, on one hand, and China and the Soviet Union, on the other hand, agreed on a compromise, partitioning the Korean peninsula between North Korea and South Korea at the 38th Parallel. The reason was because neither side was willing to risk an all-out war.
Where does that leave the Philippines and the other claimants? There is a Tagalog word for it. Bitin. Hanging.
The longer the stand-off lasts, the firmer will China’s foothold be in the Spratleys. The other claimants may, eventually, have to consider their own face-saving option in dealing with China. If that happens, the Philippines will have to deal with intense pressure to go along.
A paper entitled, “Armed Clash in the South China Sea – Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 14,” written by Bonnie S. Glaser, Senior Advisor for Asia, Center for Strategic and International Studies, cites a think tank’s proposal to “establish regional sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea among the six claimants, allowing them to collectively manage the islands, territorial seas, and airspace.”
Another option mentioned in Glaser’s paper “would emulate the resolution of the dispute over Svalbard, an island located between Norway and Greenland. The Treaty of Spitsbergen, signed in 1920, awarded primary sovereignty over Svarlbard to Norway but assigned resource-related rights to all signatories.”
But the thesis adds: “Applying this model to the South China Sea would likely entail giving sovereignty to China while permitting other countries to benefit from the resources.” And it concludes: “In the near term, at least, such a solution is unlikely to be accepted by the other claimants.”
However, if a modus vivendi is reached between the US and China, even these options may no longer be viable. In other words, unless the Philippines and the other claimants proactively seek a compromise that will at least allow them to benefit from the resources of the South China Sea, the end game in the US-China face-off over the Spratleys could leave the smaller countries empty-handed and perpetually hanging – or bitin – and in a state of unending tensions like North and South Korea. ([email protected])
