Getting Tough in the South China Sea
The policies of forbearance and neutrality could not survive if China continued its salami-slicing march across the region. China’s declaration of the East China Sea ADIZ, its continued siege of a tiny Filipino marine garrison on Ayungin Island in the Spratly chain (emotionally described in a long New York Times Magazine essay), and China’s January 2014 edict requiring fishermen in the South China Sea (including in waters far beyond China’s exclusive economic zone) to obtain fishing permits from China may have finally convinced Obama administration officials that the forbearance policy was a failure. Perhaps most worrying for Washington is the nationalistic reaction to these developments in Japan, which is a sign of declining confidence in the U.S. security guarantee and which threatens a loss of U.S. control over events in the region.
A rapid series of recent pronouncements by Obama administration officials may indicate that a new U.S. policy is now emerging. The stiffer tone first appeared on January 31, 2014, when Evan Medeiros, the senior director for Asian affairs on the U.S. National Security Council (NSC), rejected the legitimacy of China’s East China Sea ADIZ and warned that if China declared an ADIZ over the South China Sea, “that would result in changes in [U.S.] presence and military posture in the region.” In congressional testimony on February 5th, Daniel Russel, Kurt Campbell’s replacement as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, specifically and publicly rejected China’s use of its “nine-dash line” as a legitimate basis for China’s territorial claim in the South China Sea, the first time a senior U.S. official has explicitly done so. Also a first for a senior U.S. official wasRussel’s cataloging of China’s serial encroachments against Philippine and Vietnamese interests and territorial claims in recent years. On February 13, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, told an audience at the Philippine National Defense College that the United States would come to the aid of the Philippines in the case of a hypothetical conflict with China over disputed claims in the South China Sea. Finally, on a February 17th visit to Indonesia, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry similarly listed China’s recent provocations and called for the resolution of territorial claims based on existing international law, another rebuke to China’s nine-dash line claim in the South China Sea.
A tougher line against China may signal the end of restrained U.S. forbearance. Under the previous policy, the administration hoped that a welcoming and nonthreatening approach would induce China to accept the international system that has benefited China so greatly over the past three decades. Instead, China’s behavior since 2008 seems to have interpreted U.S. restraint as weakness, an impression further catalyzed in China by the 2008 financial crisis, the subsequent struggles of the U.S. economy, and the budget wars in Washington that have shrunk projected U.S. defense spending. Having not received the response from Beijing that they had hoped for, the White House seems to have concluded that it will need a tougher approach.
But if the U.S. draws red lines in the South China Sea, will it be able to back them up?
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COMMENTS
The problem is that such a policy puts the US in direct confrontation with China. It's unlikely that China will back down over long standing historical territorial disputes simply because of the intervention of a foreign power, and it's unlikely that China will view the US as anything other than an enemy if the US chooses to pick a side against China in all of its territorial disputes.