US moves to confront China in the South China Sea are facing criticism from allied quarters - mainly over a lack of consistency and tact in the message
Stephen Harner contrasts the recent confrontational swing to the UK's more, shall we say, friendly approach:
Except that the Brits have calculated that "problems down the line"–if any–will be manageable, and are no reason a priori to insert essentially gratuitous conflict into the relationship.
The American national security establishment is incapable of this kind of calculus. And the self-serving obsession with chimerical "problems down the road" is roiling relations with China now, particularly in the South China Sea (SCS).
An authoritative commentator on SCS issues is Dr. Sam Bateman who retired from the Royal Australian Navy as a Commodore and is now a professional research fellow at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS). Bateman was awarded his PhD from the University of New South Wales in 2001 for a dissertation on "The Strategic and Political Aspects of the Law of the Sea in East Asian Seas."
Writing in The Strategist blog of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in May Bateman asks: "Does the US know what it's doing in the South China Seas?"
He continues: "The idea that the US may send military aircraft and ships to assert freedom of navigation around Chinese claimed islands in the South China Sea is seriously bad. It's bad because it would involve an unreasonably assertive interpretation of the international law of the sea, and because it shows such little regard for the impact of such action on regional stability."
My guess is that the Brits–who know something about naval affairs–would agree.
A better link to Bateman's article is here: http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/does-the-us-know-what-its-doing-in-the-south-china-sea/
Here is another Strategist article which argues that the real problem with those guileless and obvious Yanks is more the language (and lack of consistency), and not the methods:
It's been argued elsewhere that assertive US efforts won't solve the South China Sea challenge. That's right—all provocative language from the US will do is fuel domestic tensions in China that the CCP will be unable to ignore. This isn't to say that the US should halt its proposed freedom of navigation exercises. The US should by all means conduct the patrols, but should wind back the language and stick to highlighting the patrols as 'routine' and in-step with international maritime law. The US should also restrict their patrols to features that were indisputably only submerged bodies before China's massive land reclamation activities, such as the Mischief Reef, to avoid further escalating Chinese tensions around territorial sovereignty.
These steps would go a long way in taking some, but certainly not all, of the heat out of South China Sea tensions and avoid backing Beijing in to a situation that's in neither Beijing's nor Washington's interests.
The caution is repeated in Jeff Smith's new Diplomat article:
The U.S. may not have suffered for dithering in 2010 in the Yellow Sea, and FONOPS around China's artificial islands may well proceed in the coming days and weeks without incident. But the U.S. is playing an exceedingly dangerous game of chicken with an increasingly dangerous actor. This is not the China of 2010. This is a more capable, confident, nationalist, and dangerous China. The margin for error is shrinking and the lesson this administration (and those that succeed it) must draw from this episode is: the next time there is a challenge to Freedom of Navigation, it must be addressed quietly and – most important – immediately.
Disregarding Harner's slavish pro-PRC bias, the takeaway should be that US action should be firm, but based on the established rules of the game (ratifying UNCLOS might help, you think?), quiet, consistent, and should provide the opportunity China needs to preserve face outside and stability within their borders.
欲擒故纵, folks.
Finally, some nostalgia: http://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/02/27/gunboat-diplomacy-in-the-black-sea/a75cf0fa-16d5-43d0-83de-7dba89658656/
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