“Asian Maritime Organizationfor Security and Cooperation” (AMOSC)—Initial Report on Conceptual Framework—

March 31, 2015
Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS)
㻌

PrefaceThe Symposium on Neww Maritimee Security ArchitectureAe in East Assia was heldd by theInstitutee for Intern
national Pollicy Studiess (IIPS) withh the suppo
ort of the YYomiuri Shimbun in
TokyooonJanuary3
30,2015withthepartticipationoof9foreignexpertsfroomSoutheaastAsiancountrieesandChin
na,Taiwan, theU.S.,a ndAustraliaa.Alongwiththepressenceofmoorethan80profeessionalaud
diencemem
mbers,theeexpertshadlivelydiscu
ussions. nmyopeninngremarks,,aspreside ntofIIPSIproposedthheideaofaan“AsianM
Maritime
In
OrganizzationforSSecurityanddCooperatiion(AMOSCC),”pointingoutthattthereisnoregional
organizaation with maritime domain awaareness whiich is most urgently reequired for tacklingthecurrrentsituatio
on. 

Theideaof theAMOSC
Cisverytim
mely,given thattheJapanͲChina summitmeeetingin
Novembber2014waasfolloweddbythereceentJapanͲC
ChinaHighͲlevelConsu ltationonm
maritimeaffairsoonJanuary222,andtheyear2015 istheyearofmaritimeecooperati onbetweennASEANandChina.
o establish
hing a multiilateral coo
operative
IIPS compiled this initiaal report onn the idea of
maritime seccurity issuees in the reggion, refleccting thesecurityy framework to better manage moutcomeofouronnͲgoingcurrrentresearcchincludinggconsultatio
onswitha numberofregional
thinkͲtaanks, intelleectuals, andd officials aand also inccorporating valuable ccomments received
fromtheparticipantsduringttheworksh opandsym
mposiumheeldonJanuaary29thand30thinTokyo.
I sincerelyhoopethatthhisreportw
willbeusefuulasabasissforfurthe rdiscussion
nsinthe
years too come to promote a multilateraal framewoork to safeg
guard peacee and ordeer in theregion. Further,IIP
PSwillcontinuetoconssultwithallpartnersintheregio nonthisprromisingideawhhichwehoppewillbringgaseachan geforregio
onalstabilityy.
                                                               KenSA
ATO
President,IIPS





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

TableofConte
ents
1.MajorObservvationsonnMaritim eSecurityyinEastA
Asia…………
…………………3
2.TheOSCEasaaCoopera
ativeSecurityModeelfortheEastAsia…
………………
…..4
3.AppplicabilityooftheOSC
CEmodel totheEastAsia……
………………
…………………
….8
4.BasiicConcepttontheA
AMOSC……
………………………………
………………
………………….8
5.Conclusion……
………………
…………………
………………
………………………………
………………
….11
AppenndixI:Sum
mmaryofttheSymposium….…
…….…………
………………
………………....12AppenndixII:ListtofPaperrContribu torsandttheirPape
ers………… …….………..14

Editor:M
MaritimeSSecurityStudyGroup,IIIPS
FutoshiMATSUMO
OTO,SeniorrResearchFFellow
MiyukiMATSUZAK
KI,SeniorRe
esearchFel lowJunichiFUKUDA,R
ResearchFellow



-2-

1.MajorObservationsonMaritimeSecurityinEastAsia
Inrecentyearswehaveobservedanumberofdangerousincidentsthatledtohighertensionsintheregionalmaritimearena.Salientcharacteristicsofthosetensionsandpolitical
realitiesinEastAsiacanbesummarizedasfollows:¾ InEastAsia,majordisputesintheregionarenotlandͲcentricbutmaritimeͲcentric.
¾ Thereisnoagreedsetofconcreteprinciplesformaritimeconductexceptcurrent
negotiationsontheCodeofConductbetweenASEANandChinaregardingtheSouth
ChinaSea. ¾ EvenacommonunderstandingontheruleoflawincludingUNCLOSisnotfully
shared.¾ MaritimedomainawarenessoftheASEANcountriesisinsufficientduetotheir
limitedcapabilities.
¾ EastAsialacksanyregularforumwherediplomats,coastguardofficials,andnavy
officerscangettogetheranddiscussmaritimeissues.
¾ Thereareinsufficientmaritimeconfidencebuildingmeasureswithamultilateral
frameworkinplace.
¾ TherearenomultilateralorganizationsregardingmaritimecapacityͲbuildinginthe
region.¾ Givenacleartrendintheregionforincreasingmilitaryspending,thereisnoconcrete
mechanismtoavoidasecuritydilemmainthefuture.     Inlightofthesedistinctfeaturesoftheregionalsecurityenvironment,itiscriticalto
think ahead to come up with policy suggestions for safeguarding maritime security in East
Asia.Inanendeavortoformulatepolicy,itisusefultocomparetherealitiesthatEastAsiais
facedwithtothoseofEurope.ThefollowingconceptualcomparisonmayhighlightwhatEast
Asialacksinthecurrentcontext. EuropeEastAsia

DisputesLandͲcentric

MaritimeͲcentricThreatperception

Concentric

Diversified

Formsof
Alliances

Multilateral suchasNATO

BilateralsuchasUShubͲandͲspokes
securityarrangements

Formsof
Cooperative
Security
Organizations

Permanentand
InstitutionͲbased
includingdailymeetings,secretariat,andeffectivecapabilities

ConsultationͲbasedbutwithoutany
permanentorsufficientlyeffective
institutions

Examples

NATO/PfP,OSCE,etc.

ARF,ADMM+,etc.
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EuropehasnurturedanumberofsecurityinstitutionsovertheyearsgoingthroughthecoldwarandpostͲcoldwarperiods.EuropeenjoysawebofinstitutionssuchasEU,NATO,
andOSCEwhileEastAsiaasawholehasdevelopedanumberofconsultationmechanisms
withoutconsolidatinganypermanentinstitutionexceptforASEAN.  Although a number of annual meetings such as ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Asian
Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+), and the East Asia Summit (EAS) have been
playingtheroleofconfidencebuildingmeasures,therehasbeenlimitedsuccessduetolackof any permanent secretariat. That contrasts with Europe, where NATO (Partnership for
Peace)andOSCEhavebeenservingascooperativesecuritymechanismsforallparticipatingcountries and both boast of independent and strong institutions with permanentsecretariats.   Thus it seems high time to give serious thought to launching a maritime security
institution in East Asia that could function independently and impartially as a cooperative
securitymechanism,bringinginallmaritimeplayersintheregionandbeyond. 

2.TheOSCEasaCooperativeSecurityModelfortheEastAsia    AmongEuropeansecurityinstitutions,theOSCEstandsasagoodsymbolofcooperative
security institutions. The maritime security study group of IIPS has visited the OSCE
secretariat in Vienna and also its field office in Kiev, Ukraine in September 2014 andinterviewed a number of officials working in the OSCE during the course of research. This
reportismadeonlessonslearnedfromtheOSCEexperiences.(1) HistoryoftheOSCE     In1954,atameetingofForeignMinistersofthefourGreatPowers(U.S.,U.K.,France,
andtheU.S.S.R.),theU.S.S.R.firstproposedholdingaconferenceonsecurityinEurope.TheU.S.anditsAlliesrejectedtheproposal,sinceitwasofferedasareplacementtoNATOand
didnotprovideforU.S.participation.However,intheimprovedpoliticalclimateofthelate
1960s,NATOcountriesbegantoconsiderexpandingthedétenteprocessinEurope.
AkeyNATOprerequisiteforholdingaconferenceonsecurityinEuropewasfulfilled
severalyearslater,in1971,withthesigningoftheQuadripartiteAgreementbetweenthe
U.S.,U.K.,France,andtheU.S.S.R.AfterpreliminaryconsultationsinWinter1972/73,the
firstConferenceonSecurityandCooperationinEurope(CSCE)wasconvenedinHelsinkiin
1973,withtheparticipationof35States.TheConferenceconcludedwiththeHelsinkiFinal
Actin1975.TheHelsinkiFinalActisapolitically,notlegally,bindingdocumentthatsetsout
principlesofconductinthreeareas:militaryͲpolitical,economicandenvironmental,and
humanrights.
From1975to1990,theCSCEfunctionedasaseriesofconferencesandmeetings
wherenewcommitmentswerenegotiatedandtheirimplementationperiodicallyreviewed.
InthepostͲcoldwarperiod,theCSCEdevelopedintotheOrganizationforSecurityand-4-

CooperaationinEurrope(OSCE))basedonttheParisCh
harteradopttedin1990andstrenggthened
itsinstittutionalcap
pacities.
TheParisChaarterestabllishedaperrmanentadministrativeeinfrastructture,which
includeddaSecretarriat,aConfllictPrevent ionCenter, andanOfficeforFree Elections.AAmajorarmscoontrolagreeement—theTreatyonCConventionalArmedFoorcesinEurrope(CFE)——was
alsoconncludedonthemarginsoftheParrisSummit.TheCharteremphasizeesthefollowing
pointsssuchasHummanRights,DemocracyyandtheRuuleofLaw,E
EconomicLiibertyand
Responssibility,FriendlyRelatio
onsamong ParticipatinngStates,Se
ecurity(armmscontroland
confidenceandbuildingmeassures),andU
Unity(EuropewholeandFree).
A
Aspartofthisinstitutionalizationpprocess,theenamewaschangedfrromtheCSC
CEtotheOSCEbyyadecisionnoftheBudapestSumm
mitofHeaddsofStateoorGovernm entinDeceember
1994.(2)OrgaanizationanndprinciplesoftheOSCCETheOSCEisccomposedoof57membberstatesand11partn
nersofcoopperationinccluding5
Asianmmembers.ThheorganizattionoftheO
OSCEisshoowninthechartbelow.. Organiization of OSCE㻌Foruum for Securrity

Su
ummit
Co
o-operation‫ۻ‬‫ۻ‬Heads of S
States, irregularrArms Control and CSBMs, once a week‫ ۻ‬directly reelatedtoo the CBMs functions

Ministe rial Council

Foreign Ministe
ers level, once a year

Chairman--in-Officeanndthe OSCE troika(former, incumb
bent, and nex
xt)

Permannent Counccil‫ۻ‬

Ambassadoria
al level, once a weekw

Sec
cretary Gen
neral

OSCE Parlliamentary AssemblyA
inn CopenhagenOS
SCE Court ofoConciliattion and Arb
bitrationOS
SCE Secretariat (in Vien
nna)

Office ofo the Secretaary General
Conflictt Prevention Center (CPC) ‫ۻ‬
Office ofo the Coordin
nator of OSC
CE Economic
and Env
vironmental A
Activities
Departm
ment of Humaan Resourcess
Departm
ment of Manaagement and Finance
Office ofo Internal Ovversight•••High CommissioCner onNattional Minorrities•••

Representativee on
Freedom of the MediaOSCE Field Missions‫ۻ‬MOfficce for DemoccraticInstitution
ns and Humman Rights

Cauca
asus: Yerevavan (Armenia)), Baku
(Azerbbaijan)•Centraal Asia: Uzb
bekistan, Astaana
(Kazakkhstan),Biishkek (Kyrgyyz), Tajikistann, Ashgabat(T
Turkmenistan)•
East Europe:
E
Ukraiine, Moldova•
South East Europee: Albania, Bo
osnia•

Personal Representattives of theChhairman-in-Offfice-5-Regardingtheprinciples,thesoͲcalled“Decalogue”oftheOSCEservesasfundamental
commonprinciples.TheDeclarationonPrinciplesGuidingRelationsbetweenParticipatingStatesinthefirstbasketoftheHelsinkiFinalActincludesthefollowingprinciples:
1. Sovereignequality,respectfortherightsinherentinsovereignty
2. Refrainingfromthethreatoruseofforce
3. Inviolabilityoffrontiers
4. TerritorialintegrityofStates
5. Peacefulsettlementofdisputes
6. NonͲinterventionininternalaffairs
7. Respectforhumanrightsandfundamentalfreedomofthought,conscience,religionorbelief
8. EqualrightsandselfͲdeterminationofpeoples
9. CoͲoperationamongStates
10. Fulfilmentingoodfaithofobligationsunderinternationallaw(3)ConfidenceBuildingMeasures     TheOSCEhasbeenprovidinganumberofvariousconfidencebuildingmeasurestothe
memberstatessuchasfollows:¾ RegularmeetingsatthePermanentCouncilinViennaandtheForumofSecurity
CoͲoperation
¾ Communicationnetworkamongparticipantsfortheexchangeofmilitaryinformation
(ComputerͲbased)
¾ MilitaryCBMssuchasexchangeofmilitaryinformation,regulationsonthespecific
militaryactivities,andcontacts/visiting/consultationsamongparticipantsbasedonViennadocumentof2011 ¾ OtherRiskͲreductionmeasures:MechanismforConsultationandCoͲoperationwith
RegardtoEmergencySituations(BerlinMechanism),StabilizingMeasuresfor
LocalizedCrisisSituations,etc. In particular, we should note the importance of the Vienna Document. It is a very
detaileddocumentformilitaryCBMsinOSCEsince1990.Itsupdatedversionwasadoptedin
2011.ThisdocumentcouldserveasagoodmodelforfutureCBMprototypesinEastAsia.Itis composed of 11 chapters that include Annual Exchange of Military Information, Defense
Planning,RiskReduction,PriorNotificationofCertainMilitaryActivities,andobservationof
CertainMilitaryActivities,ComplianceandVerification,andothermeasures.
ThefeatureoftheOSCE’sconfidencebuildingmeasurescanbesummarizedasfollows:¾ Agreedbasicprinciples¾ InclusivenessandImpartiality
¾ EstablishedframeworkofCBMs
¾ RegulardialoguebythePermanentCouncilandtheForumforSecurity
CoͲoperation
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¾ DailyactivitiesofSecretariatandMonitoringMissions¾ WellͲsupportedhumanresourcesandrudimentaryuseof“assets”suchasUAVstomonitorthesituation
¾ Mutualcomplementarityoffunctionswithotherorganizationsandalliances
TheOSCEhasneverreplacedtheroleofNATOevenaftertheColdWar.
(4)MonitoringActivitiesincaseofUkraineTheongoingconflictintheEasternUkraineinparticularshedslightontheimportance
of monitoring activities by the OSCE. The OSCE field office is playing a critical role in
conveyingthefactsonthegroundasanimpartialandindependentplayerintheconflict.       ItshouldbenotedthatallresolutionsattheOSCEregardingitsmissioninUkraineare
taken on a consensus basis that included both Ukraine and Russia as its members. For
instance, President Vladimir Putin of Russia also acknowledged the important role of theOSCEbysayingatthemeetingoftheValdaiInternationalDiscussiononOctober24,2014: “This is true of improving the workof the UN,whose central role is irreplaceable,as
well as the OSCE, which, over the course of 40 years, has proven to be a necessarymechanismforensuringsecurityandcooperationintheEuroͲAtlanticregion.Imustsaythateven now, in trying to resolve the crisis in southeast Ukraine, the OSCE is playing a very
positiverole.”
ItisalsoworthmentioningthattheOSCEfieldmissioninUkraineusedevenUAVsto
monitor the Eastern states in Ukraine. The following points could be of much use in
envisagingpossiblemaritimemonitoringactivitiesinEastAsia.
¾ “SpecialMonitoringMission(SMM)”fromMarch21,2014.Russiaalsoagreedonthisdecision.
¾ SMM’smaintasksaretoobserveandreportinanimpartialandobjectivewayonthesituationinUkraine,andtofacilitatedialogueamongallpartiestothecrisis.
¾ GatheringinformationthroughhumancontactswithactorsincludingproͲRussianseparatists. ¾ UtilizingseveralUAVs:SCHIEBEL’scamcopterSͲ100areusedformonitoringactivities. ¾ SettinguptwocheckͲpointsontheUkraineͲRussiaborderformonitoringRussianactivitiesnottosendillegalmaterialstotheeastregionRussiacoulduseittojustifytheirownactions.
¾ Consistingofsome250civilianunarmedmonitorsfrommorethan40participatingstatesandlocalstafffromUkraineasofSeptember2014.

Most recently, the leaders ofRussia, Ukraine, and Germany have agreed onconcrete
stepsfortheobserversfromtheOSCEtomonitorthesituationineasternUkraineafterthe
agreementonceasefireonFebruary17,2015.



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3.ApplicabilityoftheOSCEmodeltotheEastAsia     ItshouldbeunderstoodfirstthatgeopoliticalenvironmentsbetweenEuropeandEast
Asia are distinctively different and European institutions have their own reasons why they
have developed into the present forms. For this reason, any European model cannot be
applied directly to East Asia. It is more realistic and pragmatic to build our idea based on
realitiesandfactswehaveintheEastAsia.     Thefollowingkeypointsshouldbetakenintoconsiderationinthisregard:¾ BasicprinciplesoftheinternationalsocietysuchassovereignequalityandrefrainingfromthethreatoruseofforcearealsocriticalinEastAsiawhilevaluesͲrelated
principlessuchasrespectforhumanrightsordemocraticvaluesmaybeless
applicableiftheOSCEmodelisappliedonlytomaritimeissues.
¾ Inclusivenessandopennessareneededforanycooperativesecurityorganizationin
EastAsia.NostateorregionthathasstakesinglobalcommonssuchasEastChinaSea
andSouthChinaSeamustbeexcluded.Impartialityisalsocriticalforanyactivitiesbyacooperativesecurityorganization.
¾ Regularcontactsanddialoguesinamultilateralenvironmentshouldbemaintained
inEastAsiaincludinginthetimeofmaritimecrisis.
¾ MaritimeCBMsareurgentlyrequiredinEastAsiaincontrasttoalonghistoryofthelandͲcentricCBMsoftheOSCE.
¾ MaritimecapacitybuildingismuchneededinthecaseofASEANcountriescomparedtoactivitiesoftheOSCE.
¾ Independentsecretariatisthekey.Dailyactivitiesledbythesecretariatinareassuchasmonitoring,sharinginformation,confidenceͲbuilding,andcapacityͲbuildingshould
playacentralrole.
¾ Complementary relationship with the existing security cooperation and alliances
shouldberespectedjustastheOSCEhasnotreplacedanyroleormissionofother
organizations such as EU and NATO. Any other regional arrangements in East Asia
shouldbemutuallycomplementary.
¾ GradualprocessinlaunchinganideaonsolidinstitutionmaybemoreappropriateintheEastAsiancontextbutitshouldbehastenedgiventheurgencyofthematter.


4.BasicConceptontheAMOSC
It would be a useful exercise to envision a new maritime security institution in East
Asiathatwouldbeentrustedwithvariousmissionsincludingmaritimemonitoring,maritime
capacityͲbuilding,andconfidenceͲbuildingmeasures.Tentatively,wecallthisnewinstitution
“AsianMaritimeOrganizationforSecurityandCooperation”anditsacronymreads“AMOSC.”

TheAMOSCcanbecreated,buildingupon“acquisasiatique”accumulatedinavarietyofforasuchastheEastAsiaSummit,ASEANRegionalForum,ASEAN,etc.Discussionsonthe
AMOSCshouldbeopentoallstakeholderstoAsianmaritimesecurity.Itsprinciples,mission,
andstructurecanbesummarizedasfollows:
-8-(1) PrinciplesFirst,“AsianMaritimeCharterforPeaceandProsperity”shouldserveasprinciplesfor
solving maritime disputes. The charter should contain the following elements: peacefulsettlement of maritime disputes and refraining from the threat or use of force, respect ofInternationalLawincludingtheUNCLOS,safeguardingMaritimeCommons,andotherbasic
principlesacceptabletoallmembers. Theoutcomeofcurrentdiscussionssuchasoneaboutthecodeofconductbetween
ChinaandASEANshouldbeincorporatedintopossibleprinciplesoftheAMOSC.
For this “Asian Maritime Charter for Peace andProsperity”to be put into practice,a
maritime security organization in East Asia may be established as the “Asian Maritime
OrganizationforSecurityandCooperation(AMOSC).”
(2)MissionoftheAMOSCThemissionoftheAMOSCshouldcontainatleastthreeprincipalfunctions:¾ EnhancingMaritimeDomainAwareness 
TheAMOSCdispatchesitsmaritimemonitorsbypatrolboatswithcrewonloanfromitsmembers(orofitsown)totheareawhereadisputemayariseandreportstotheCouncil
ontherelevantsituationinanimpartialmanner.Italsogathersinformationonanypotential
maritimedisputeordangerintheregionandprovidesearlyͲwarningtothemembers.
¾ MaritimeCapacityBuilding
TheAMOSCprovidesfundingfortechnicalassistancetonurtureanddevelopcoast
guardsinthemembers.Itcouldalsocoordinateanynecessaryjointexerciseinvolvingcoast
guardsandnaviesofthemembers.TheAMOSCmayfunctionasaregionalclearinghousefor
neededtrainingandcapacitiesformembers.
¾ MaritimeConfidenceͲBuildingMeasures
TheAMOSCprovidesthememberswithforawherediplomats,coastguardofficials,
andnavyofficersofthemembersmayexchangeviewsregularly.Italsointendstonurture
respectandunderstandingontheruleoflawincludingtheUNCLOS.Themembersmayalso
agreeonexchangeofinformationonmilitaryornonͲmilitarymovementsuchasmajor
maritimeexercisesinEastAsia.Ifconditionsaremet,informationonmajormaritimemilitary
exercisescouldbeexchangedthroughtheAMOSC.
(2) OrganizationoftheAMOSC     TheorganizationoftheAMOSCshouldbecomposedofapermanentcouncilmadeup
of representatives of the members, and a permanent secretariat together with necessary
implementingtoolssuchasmonitoringboatswithcrews.     Thefollowingpointsmayhighlightsomecriticalelementsincreatinganindependent
organizationsuchastheAMOSC:
-9-¾ TThepermannentcounciiloftheAM
MOSCwillmeetregularly. ¾ A
Apermanentsecretariiatwillbeeestablishediinacapitalofitsmembbers.Itconducts
necessarymmeasuresbaasedondeccisionsofthhecouncilinncludingtim
melydispatcchof
monitoringboatstoadisputedarrea,varioussCBMs,anddmaritimeccapacitybuilding.
¾ SStaffofthesecretariattinitiallycannbeseconddedfromthherespectivvenavies,cooast
gguards,anddforeignmiinistriesoftthemembeers.Retiredofficialsanddofficersofthe
memberscanbehireddonacontr actbasis.
¾ Fundingandnecessaryypatrolboaatswillbecontributedbythemem
mbers.Stafffwillbe
ccontributeddinitiallybyythemembbers.Astheinstitutiongrowsand matures,itcanpurchaseitspatrolboaatsandnurttureitscrew
watalaterstage.
¾ MembershiipintheAM
MOSCshoul dbeopenttoanystakeeholderwhoowishesto
ccontributettoenhancinngAsianmaaritimesecu
urity.Presennceofmem
mbersthatccan
ccontributeffinanciallyoor/andtechhnicallytothhecauseoff theAMOSCCiscriticalfor
ccapacitybuuilding.Andthemembeerswhohavvestakesinglobalcom
mmonssuchhastheEastChinaSSeaandSou
uthChinaSeeaarealsorequestedttojoin.
¾ TTheASEANcentralitysshouldbereespectedintheprocesssleadingtootheestablishment
ooftheAMO
OSC.Inthisrregard,the AMOSCcannbeestabliishedasan “expandeddASEANPlus”organ
nizationunddertheumbbrellaoftheeEastAsiaSSummit(EASS).
¾ SStreamlininngofASEAN
Nrelatedmeeetingsandorganizatio
onsshould beconsiderredto
minimizeunnecessaryduplicationnoffunctionswiththe AMOSC.
¾ TTheAMOSC
Cfunctionsindependenntlybutincclosecoopeerationwithhexistinginternationalandregio
onalorganizzationsandarchitecturressuchas ARF,ASEAN
N,andootherregionalsecurityyarrangemeents. 






















Ide
ea on posssible organization ofo the AMO
OSC㻌
Summ
mit

He
eads of Statees, irregularr

MinisteriaMl Council

Foreignn Ministers l evel, once a year

AMOSC
Court ofC
Conciliation
andd Arbitratiion((If needed)Peermanent Council

Ambas
ssadorial levvel, once a weekw

Chairmman-in-Offiice
the AM
MOSC troikkaSecretaary GeneraalAMO
OSC Secrettariat
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AMOSC Maaritime Mission

Offfice of the Se
ecretary GeeneralCon
nflict Prevenntion Cente r (CPC)
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Offfice of Maritiime Capacitty Building
Offfice of Maritiime Econom
mic andEnv
vironmental Activities
Dep
partment of Manageme nt and Finance㻌- 10 -

5.Conclusion
AninstitutionalapproachsuchastheAMOSCshouldbegivenseriousconsideration,as
currentlythereisnobreakͲthroughinsightforanymaritimedisputeinEastAsia. TheAMOSCmaynotprovideafinalsolutiontothecurrentmaritimedisputesinthe
region,asOSCEcannotsolvetheUkrainiancrisiseither.However,AMOSCcouldprovideabasisforamorecredible,impartial,andlastinginstitutionalmechanismtoproperlymanagedisputesandcrisesinEastAsia.

Patientyetsteadyeffortsforcreatinganewmaritimesecurityinstitutionarekeyto
lastingpeaceintheregion.Thefollowingpointsforinstanceremainopenforfurtherelaborationanddiscussions:¾ HowtodrawaroadmapfortherealizationoftheAMOSC?
¾ WhatprinciplecouldbeincorporatedintotheAMOSC
¾ DoestheAMOSCassumearolefornonͲtraditionalsecurityinthemaritime
domaintoo?
¾ WhatarethecriteriaformembershipintheAMOSC?  WhetherornotnonͲstatestakeholderssuchasshippingenterprisesshouldbeincludedascontributingmembers?
¾ WouldtheASEANmemberstatesperceivetheideaoftheAMOSCasamatterof
seriousdiscussion?
¾ HowdoesASEANstreamlinetheexistingvariousforaandinstitutionsin
establishingtheAMOSC? ¾ HowcouldtheAMOSCtapintothepotentialoftheexistingmaritimeinstitutionssuchastheInformationFusionCenterandRECAAPinSingapore?  Coulditalso
establishusefullinkswiththeexistingmaritimetrainingcentersuchastheone
establishedbyMalaysiaMaritimeEnforcementAgencyforregionalcooperation?
¾ HowwouldothercountriesotherthanASEANperceivetheideaoftheAMOSC?
¾ WhatkindofcapacitybuildingcouldU.S.,JapanandAustraliaoffertothosecountriesinneedofmaritimecapacitybuilding? ¾ Whatkindofnewtoolscanbeutilizedtoenhancemaritimedomainawareness?
Forinstance,couldUAVsandothermeansbeusedbytheAMOSC? 
IIPSintendstoconsultfurtherwithregionalplayersincludingbothofficialand
nonͲofficialexpertsonthisideaoftheAMOSCtoconcretizetheconcepttobeadoptedasa
realisticbasisforregionͲwideofficialconsiderationinthenearfuture.

[end]
- 11 -

(AppendixI)


SummaryoftheSymposiumonNewMaritimeSecurityArchitectureinEastAsiaheldbytheInstituteforInternationalPolicyStudies(IIPS)inTokyoonJanuary30,2015
Inhisopeningremarks,Mr.KenSATO,PresidentofIIPS,proposedtheideaofan“AsianMaritimeOrganizationforSecurityandCooperation(AMOSC),”pointingoutthatthereisno
regionalorganizationwithmaritimedomainawarenesswhichismosturgentlyrequiredfor
tacklingthecurrentsituation.HestressedthattheideaoftheAMOSCwouldbeaverytimely
proposal,giventhattheJapanͲChinasummitmeetinginNovember2014wasfollowedbythe
recentJapanͲChinaHighͲlevelConsultationonmaritimeaffairsonJanuary22,andthatthisyearwouldbetheyearofmaritimecooperationbetweenASEANandChina.     In the first session, Dr. Shinichi KITAOKA, Executive Director of Research at IIPS and
PresidentofInternationalUniversityofJapan,servedasmoderatorforthesessionentitled
“Current Status and Views on Maritime Security Issues and Disputes in the East China SeaandSouthChinaSea.”TheexpertsfromthePhilippines,Vietnam,China,Taiwan,andJapan
respectivelyexpressedtheirviews.     Mr.RoiloGolez,formerSenatorfromthePhilippines,emphasizedthenegativeimpact
ofChina’scurrentreclamationactivitiesintheSouthChinaSeaislandsontheregionaland
globalbalanceofpower.      Dr. Zhu Feng from Nanjin University, China stressed the importance of avoiding a
securitydilemmaintheregionbypointingoutthatbothregionalstatesaswellasChinaare
becomingmoreassertiveonmaritimeissues.      Dr.JohnChuanͲtiongLIMfromAcademiaSinica,Taiwanemphasizedtherewouldbeno
finalsolutiontomaritimedisputesintheSouthChinaSeawithoutTaiwan’sparticipation,so
Taiwanmustberecognizedasaclaimantstate.     VADM Yoji KODA, former JMSDF Officer, Japan, referred to China’s reclamation of
Woody Island, Johnson South Reef, and Scarborough Shoal which would create a strategic
triangleinthecenteroftheSouthChinaSea,thusleadingtofundamentalchangesregardingtheregionalstrategiclandscape.     As a conclusion, Dr. KITAOKA wrapped up the discussions by emphasizing theimportanceofsolvingmaritimedisputes throughcalmdiscussionsandconsultationsbasedoninternationallawinamultilateralenvironment.      After the coffee break, Mr. Futoshi MATSUMOTO, Senior Research Fellow at IIPS,
providedadetailedexplanationontheideaof“AMOSC”basedontheOSCEmodel.      Hespecifiedthecentralmissionsofthe“AMOSC”asthreefold:(1)EnhancingMaritimeDomain Awareness, (2) Maritime Capacity Building, and (3) Maritime ConfidenceͲBuildingMeasures. The purpose of “AMOSC” is to prevent and better manage current maritime
disputesinanorderlymanner,thuscontributingtobuildingandsustainingpeaceandorder
onamidͲandlongͲtermbasis.- 12 -

Inn the secoond sessionn, Mr. Ichiiro FUJISAK
KI, Vice Prresident off IIPS and former
Ambasssador to the U.S., servved as modderator of discussionsdwith the ttheme of thhe “Way
Forwardd and Recoommended Policies reggarding Maaritime Dispputes in Eaast Asia including a
New Reegional Maaritime Arch
hitecture.” The expertts from Ind
donesia, Si ngapore, Malaysia,
M
Australia,andtheU
U.S.expresssedtheircoommentsanndopinions.
D
Dr. Shafiah F.
F MUHIBAT
T from CSISS, Indonesiaa and Ms. Jane
J
CHAN  Git Yin froom RSIS,
Singapooresharedssomequestionsonthe“AMOSC”pproposal.Th
heycommeentedbysayyingthatit mightt be better first to streamline th e existing ASEAN
A
arch
hitecture onn maritime securityrather tthan creatinng a new one,
oand neeed to bettter combinee the AMO
OSC and thee ASEAN
centralityconcept.Inadditionn,theynoteedthatSouttheastAsiannsmightheesitatetoacceptthedtoadoptaanyEuropeaancentricmmodel.
ideaiftheyaretoldD
Dr.Balakrish
hnanR.K.SSUPPAIAH,ffromMalayyaUniversity,Malaysiaproposed theideatostart amoreinfformalframeworkand developit intoamoreeformalonneincremen
ntally.Tothatendd,hepropo
osedthemoodelofPacifficEconomicCooperationCouncil (PECC).
D
Dr.JohnLEE,fromSydn
neyUniverssity,Australiadescribedthethreeeconditionssforthesuccessoftheproposal:(1)ittmustrefleectthepow
werdistributtionofthe system,(2))itmust
ostrategic reeality, and (3) the cosst of nonͲccompliance must be high.
hHe
recognizze the geo
emphassizedtheimmportanceoofaninclusivveframewo
orkinthisreegion.     Laastly, Dr. Paatrick CRON
NIN from thhe Center fo
or a New American
A
Seecurity (CNAAS), U.S.
stressedd the neceessity for China to resspect the rule of law
w in the mmaritime areena and
commendedtheimmportance ofadoptingganinclusivveframewoorksuchastheAMOSCinthisregion.n closing, IIIPS announ
nced that itt would com
mpile the report
ron tthe desirable “New     In
Maritimme Security Architectuure” based on our “A
AMOSC” pro
oposal, furrther reflecting thecomments and opinions exprressed by t he experts at the sym
mposium byy the end ofo March2015.  WWiththeupcomingrep
port,IIPSis determineddtocontinuetodisse minatetheideaon
maritimme security architecturre includingg the AMOSSC to officials and thee public in regional
countrieesandbeyo
ondwithavviewtoprom
motingafraameworktoosafeguardpeaceandorderin
theregiion.


- 13 -

(AppendixII)
ListofPaperContributorsfortheSymposiumon
“NewAsianMaritimeArchitectureinEastAsia”

Ms.JaneChanGitYin,ResearchFellow,CoordinatorofMaritimeSecurityProgramme, 
S.RajatnamSchoolofInternationalStudies(RSIS),Singapore
Dr.PatrickCronin,SeniorAdvisorandSeniorDirectoroftheAsiaͲPacificSecurityProgram
attheCenterforaNewAmericanSecurity(CNAS),U.S.

Mr. Roilo Golez, CoͲConvenor, West Philippine Sea Coalition, Former Member of thePhilippineCongress,andFormerPhilippineNationalSecurityAdviser,ThePhilippines
Dr.JohnLee,SeniorFellow,HudsonInstitute,AdjunctAssociateProfessor,theStrategicand
DefenceStudiesCentre,AustralianNationalUniversity,Australia
Dr.JohnChuanͲtiongLim,AssociateResearchFellow,InstituteofModernHistory,Academia
Sinica,TaiwanDr. Shafiah F. Muhibat, Senior Researcher, Centre for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS),Indonesia
Dr.BalakrishnanRKSuppaiah,DepartmentofInternationalandStrategicStudies,
FacultyofArtsandSocialSciences,UniversityofMalaya,Malaysia.
Dr.TranVietThai,DeputyDirectorͲGeneral,InstituteforForeignPolicyandStrategicStudies,
DiplomaticAcademyofVietnam,Vietnam
Dr.ZhuFeng,ExecutiveDirectorofChinaCenterforCollaborativeStudiesoftheSouthChina
SeaProfessorofInternationalRelations,NanjingUniversity,ChinaStrategicMapcontributedby
VADM Yoji Koda (Ret.), Former Commander in Chief of the Self Defense Fleet, Japan
MaritimeSelfDefenseForce,Japan






- 14 -

Maritime Southeast Asia and Regimes
Jane Chan Git Yin
Research Fellow, Coordinator of Maritime Security Programme,
S. Rajatnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore

1. Regional Waters
The water of Southeast Asia is both a resource and a conduit fuelling thedevelopment of its littoral states and regions further away. It is of particular importance tothe growing economies of East Asia. The is host to some of the worlds’s vital and busiest
chokepoints; Malacca and Singapore straits, the Sunda and Lombok straits, and of course theSouth China Sea. These chokepoints link all the major sea lines of communication responsiblefor 90 per cent of world trade, and two thirds of the worlds’ energy demand1.

Raw materials

and vital commodities that fuel the rise of emerging economies, in particular China and India2,
and then the manufactured goods from the likes of China, India and some Southeast Asia
countries to the rest of the world are carried along these sealanes.
The South China Sea is one of the largest seas in the world if the size of a sea ismeasured by its area within defined physical boundaries3.

It is a semi-enclosed sea within

the definition of such a sea in Article 122 of Part IX of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of
the Sea (UNCLOS), because it consists “entirely or primarily of the territorial seas andexclusive economic zones of two or more coastal States”4.
Article 123 of UNCLOS goes on to place a strong obligation on the coastal states
adjacent to a semi-enclosed sea to cooperate in resource management, protection of themarine environment and marine scientific research. While these are mentioned as specificareas for cooperation, the opening sentence of Article 123 provides a more general obligation
to cooperate that “States bordering an enclosed or semi-enclosed sea should cooperate witheach other in the exercise of their rights and in the performance of their duties under thisConvention”.
The countries bordering the South China Sea comprise China, Vietnam, Malaysia,
Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines, while Thailand and Cambodia are often
regarded as also having an important stake in the development of effective regimes for
managing the sea and the various activities conducted at sea. The shipping routes throughAs asserted by the International Chamber of Shipping,www.ics-shipping.org/shipping-facts/shipping-facts; Amit Pandya, Rupert Herbert-Burns andJunko Kobayashi, Maritime Commerce and Security: The Indian Ocean, Stimson Centre, 2012, pp.
8-13.
2 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Review of Maritime
Transport 2012, http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/rmt2012_en.pdf.
3 Alastair Couper, ed., The Times Atlas and Encyclopedia of the Sea (London: Guild Publishing,1989), 26.
4 UNCLOS Article 122.
1

- 15 -

the South China Sea have great strategic and economic significance to major non-littoral
countries, particularly Japan and the United States, as well as to the bordering countries
themselves.
The South China Sea holds an enormous depository of both living and non-living
resources, including oil and gas, and most importantly, fish and other seafood. Technologicaladvancement allows marine scientific research to be done in parts of the oceans previously notreached by man, it has enabled fishing vessels to sail further, oil and gas rigs to drill deeper,
yet these technologies are not always accessible to all, especially not to the developing
countries that can ill afford them.

The ability to explore and exploit maritime resources,

competition for them led by increasing global demand, and the ability to ensure safety andsecurity in transporting the same resources could be causes for conflict, and at the same time,a source for common and collective actions.

2. Maritime Security Concerns
The problems with sovereignty over the various island groups and other features in
the South China Sea are well-known 5 .

Largely as a consequence of these sovereignty

disputes, current arrangements for providing good order at sea in the South China Sea fall
well short of what is desirable despite the strategic, economic and political importance of thesea and the need for cooperation6. There are few maritime boundaries and key international
regimes for providing maritime safety and security are not well supported by borderingcountries. For example, only China,

Singapore and Vietnam are parties to the 1979

Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) Convention, which encourages cooperation
between Parties and SAR organisations with regard to search and rescue operations at sea.
This means that, while SAR exercises may be carried out in the area, most of the littoral
countries of the South China Sea have no formal obligation to cooperate in the event of an
SAR emergency in the area.
Non-traditional maritime security challenges of concern includes piracy and sea
robbery; maritime terrorism; illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing; trafficking
and smuggling of arms, people and drugs; and natural disasters. Energy security, foodsecurity and the spread of infectious disease are all major issues with significant maritime
dimensions7.
Piracy and armed robbery at sea have been persistent problems in Southeast Asianwaters. Although the number of attacks in Southeast Asian waters did increase in 2014 inabsolute terms, the level of severity of these attacks was lower, being mainly petty theft. Most
attacks in Southeast Asia targeted vessels at anchor, in port or entering/leaving harbour.
Sam Bateman and Ralf Emmers, eds, Security and International Politics in the South China
Sea: Towards a Cooperative Management Regime (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008).

5

Sam Bateman, “Good Order at Sea in the South China Sea”, Chapter 2 in Wu Shicun and Zou
Keyuan (eds.), Maritime Security in the South China Sea: Regional Implications and International
Cooperation, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 15-34.
7 Bateman, Chan & Graham, ASEAN and the Indian Ocean: The Key Maritime Link, p 11.
6- 16 -

These attacks are usually of a minor nature and are best countered by more effective policing
by port authorities, including active patrolling of ports and anchorages.
The vulnerability of the maritime sector to terrorist attacks is also a concern. The
risks include targets at sea, and the use of the sea to support attacks on land. The attacks on
the French tanker MV Limburg and the American destroyer USS Cole occurred in the Indian
Ocean. The Mumbai attacks in 2008 demonstrated the vulnerabilities of a porous Indian coast.
Key chokepoints such as the Malacca and Singapore straits, Bab el-Mandeb, the Suez Canaland the Strait of Hormuz are all considered vulnerable targets, and a successful attack on anyof these key maritime routes will have a devastating effect on global shipping with its impact
felt worldwide.
The sea is the preferred transportation medium for the movement of goods in large
volumes, but the complex nature of the shipping industry and the volume of trade moved canbe exploited to conduct illegal activity, including the trafficking of both goods and people.
8

Many global fish stocks are assessed as being under major stress due to over-fishing,and IUU fishing is predicted to increase as coastal states seek to impose more stringent
conservation regulations to management their fish stocks9.

Depletion of fish stocks by IUU

fishing and degradation of coastal habitats due to climate change and marine pollution in the
Indian Ocean also affect the livelihood of coastal populations that traditionally rely on fishing.
Losing that main source of income has tempted some into other illegal endeavours, such as
piracy and sea robbery in regional waters.

3. Regional Cooperation
The security of shipping and seaborne trade across the key sea lines ofcommunication is a strong common interest for most regional countries, as well as
extra-regional stakeholders, particularly Japan, China and the United States. Particularattention is focused on the security and safety of shipping and cooperation between
stakeholder navies is required to ensure the security of regional sea lines of communication.
Regional cooperation is fundamental to the maintenance of good order at sea and the securityof these sea lanes in Southeast Asia. But in order to achieve this, more is required more thanjust the efforts of the littoral states or relying solely on the capacity of member states withinestablished institutions10.

Pau Khan Khup Hangzo, ‘Non-traditional Security Challenges in the Indian Ocean Region’, inBateman, Chan & Graham, ASEAN and the Indian Ocean: The Key Maritime Link, pp. 28-31.;
and Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, ‘Responding to Transnational Organised Crimein Southeast Asia: Case Study of Human Trafficking and Drug Trafficking’, NTS Alert July 2010,
Issue 2, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore.
9 Lee Cordner, ‘Maritime Security in the Indian Ocean Region: Compelling and convergent
agendas’, Australian Journal of Maritime and Ocean Affairs, vol 2, no 1, 2010, pp. 16- 27.
10 Phil Johnson, ‘Security of Maritime Trade: A Cooperative and Coordinated Approach for the
Indo-Pacific Region’, Australian Journal of Maritime & Ocean Affairs, vol 4, no1, pp. 1-10.
8- 17 -

Non-traditional maritime security threats are of common concern. However, acommon threat perception or prioritisation of issues is lacking, which impede further
cooperation between regional countries and extra regional stakeholders. Measures to deal
with these threats offer a good rationale for engaging regional partners, so that not only willsuch cooperation and collaboration help mitigate the impact of threats, but also engender
trust and confidence.
The need to ensure safety and security of shipping and the need to promote better
regional stability are requirements that could provide the basis for maritime cooperation
regional waters11.
As Geoffrey Till puts it, ‘The maintenance of good order at sea requires an improved
level of awareness, effective policy and integrated governance’12.

To operate in such a vastand complex region alongside partners and individual states, it is important to begin with acomprehensive ‘common operating picture’ of the maritime domain so that all can operatesafely and efficiently. Good examples include arrangements for sharing maritime
data/information, which are an important contribution to maritime security, both to meetcurrent operational needs for maritime domain awareness and as a building block for wider
maritime security cooperation. Knowing what is going on at sea is a pre-requisite for doing
anything constructive about it13.

Regional navies and maritime enforcement agencies knowthat acquiring a comprehensive picture of the maritime domain, requires more than precise
intelligence and ‘state of the art’ information technological tools.
Many regional countries have limited capacity to mitigate, much less eradicate,maritime threats. While it is commonsense that only when the regional states come together
as one, can existing limited capacity be harnessed to deliver functional and practical solutions
to mitigate regional maritime security challenges, it is their implementation that ischallenging. Questions include whether regional maritime cooperation needs be premised
upon existing regional security architectures and whether a collective identity is aprerequisite. Can established common interests alone bring regions and sub-regions that are
so diverse together14?

4. Multilateral Institutions
From an Asian perspective, economic and strategic connectivity is most tangible inthe maritime domain, reflecting the nature of Asia’s maritime geography and the sea’s
enduring quality as a manoeuvre space. Any disruption, real or threatened, will be a cause for
D Rumley, S Chaturvedi, M Taib (eds) The security of sea lanes of communication in the Indian
Ocean Region, Maritime Institute of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, 2007.
12 Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, (2nd edn), Routledge, 2009, pp.
11306-307.
13 Geoffrey Till, “The Use of Seapower in the 21st Century: Implications for Maritime Security
and Safety”, in Joshua Ho (ed), Realising Safe and Secure Seas for all: International Maritime
Security Conference 2009, Singapore, 2009, pp. 45-55.
14 Fredrik Soderbaum, ‘Theories of Regionalism’, in Mark Beeson and Richard Stubbs, Routledge
Handbook of Asian Regionalism, Routledge, 2012, pp. 19-- 18 -

concern. Hence, an observable plethora of multilateral institutions and regimes wasestablished at both the Track I and II levels, with the hope of encouraging regional countries
to address different and sometime overlapping matters of regional security concern.
At the Track I level ASEAN, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation, the ASEAN Deference Ministers Meeting (ADMM) and ADMM Plus are mostprominent. There are also three separate forums under the umbrella of ASEAN that address
maritime security issues, namely, the Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum (EAMF); the ARF
Inter-Sessional Meeting (ISM) on Maritime Security; and the Maritime Security Expert
Working Group (MSEWG) established by the ADMM Plus.
First mooted at the 15th Meeting of the ARF in Singapore in 2008, the ISM on
Maritime Security provides an annual platform for discussion of maritime security issues,
including increasing cooperation and capacity-building, as well as specific concerns, such as
piracy and armed robbery against ships and the smuggling of goods and persons. The ARF
has endorsed a Work Plan for maritime security put forward by the ISM highlighting threepriority areas: (1) Information/ intelligence exchange and sharing of best practices, including
naval operations, (2) Confidence Building Measures based on international and regional legal
frameworks and arrangements and cooperation, (3) Capacity Building of maritime law
enforcement agencies in the region.
Launched in 2010, the AMF was envisioned to be non-security centric15.

It has twotiers, with an Expanded version - EAMF, that includes all members of the EAS 16 .

A

particular role of the AMF and EAMF may be to have oversight of sectoral bodies under
ASEAN or the EAS concerned with issues, such as the marine environment, eco-tourism andfisheries.
The ADMM was inaugurated in 2006 and four years later, ASEAN leaders launched
the ADMM-Plus. This was a demonstration of the importance that ASEAN attaches to theopen and inclusive regionalism it has long espoused17.

The ADMM-Plus shares the same

membership as the EAS, but is a separate arrangement with a mandate primarily in
confidence-building and capacity-building18. China and the United States appear to haverealised that the ADMM-Plus offers potential for building closer ties19.
The Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific and the Network of ASEAN
Termsak Chalermpalanupap, Director of Political and Security Directorate, ASEAN Secretariat,
Jakarta. “ASEAN and Maritime Security: An Update”. Paper presented at Centre forInternational Law Workshop on International Maritime Crimes: Legal Issues and Prospects for
Cooperation in ASEAN, Singapore, 17-18 January, 2011, 3.
16 Membership of the EAS and the EAMF comprises the ten ASEAN countries, Australia, China,
India, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, the United States and Russia.
17 See Seng Tan, ‘’Talking Their Walk’? The Evolution of Defence Regionalism in Southeast Asia’,
Asian Security 8/ 3 (2012) p. 241.
18 See Seng Tan, ‘Future of ADMM-Plus: Asia’s Growing Defence Engagements’ RSIS
Commentaries 158/2013, 26 August 2013.
19 Termsak Chalermpalanupap, ‘ASEAN Defence Diplomacy and the ADMM-Plus’, ISEAS
Perspective, No. 49/2013, 26 August 2013, 2.
15- 19 -

Defence Institutes are perhaps the most active at the Track II level. The ‘plus’ processes areworth mentioning as they reflect the region’s acknowledgement of the need to positively
engagement external powers and stakeholders to the region.
While not a security community, ASEAN and its various institutions haveestablished more than ten maritime security-related initiatives to promote regional
cooperation. Whilst overlaps exist, it is important that each initiative remains relevant,functional and manageable; to meet current operational needs for maritime domainawareness and as a building block for wider maritime security cooperation.

5. Final Thoughts
Well-intended initiatives towards ensuring good order at sea would include the needto establish a new and more effective collective regime to address regional problems,particularly in the maritime domain. However, one must consider whether these efforts could
and would complement existing initiatives, especially those that involved extra-regionalcountries. How will these regimes link to other regional institutions with overlapping
members, such as those in the wider Asia-Pacific region?
In want of a regional consensus on maritime threats and priorities, maritime
concerns and interests that are common to all littoral states could be the basis for a morecohesive region. Piece meal naval and maritime cooperation could be an enabler for this,creating the opportunity to build trust and confidence20.

A collective consensus to send more

warships into regional waters is probably not what everyone has in mind, and definitely not
ideal solution to regional security concerns. Buildings on the foundation of existing regimes,
consensus amongst the littoral and extra regional stakeholders is required to re-establish abaseline to improve the unity of efforts. This starts with the establishment of a shared andcommon picture of the maritime domain. A working group on information sharing might
create a willingness to share information through established means and processes. Issues ofinteroperability will take longer to resolve, and realistically not before the requisite level oftrust and confidence is achieved. Port visits, bilateral and multilateral exercises, personnel
exchanges are a good set of activities that will help promote this.
How well they can focus on collectively meeting these challenges without being
embroiled in existing political and strategic rivalry will affect regional stability and security.
Therein lies the challenge: to balance the need to engage with all stakeholders, yet not be
trapped in their political and strategic rivalries.

Geoffrey Till, ‘Security concerns in the Indian Ocean: Making Waves?’, The RUSI Journal, vol142, no 3, 1997, pp. 16-80; and PV Rao, ‘Indian Ocean maritime Security Cooperation’, Journal of
the Indian Ocean Region, vol 6, no 1, 2010, pp. 129-137.

20- 20 -

Shoring Up Asia’s Maritime Order
Patrick M. Cronin, Ph.D
Senior Advisor and Senior Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Programat the Center for a New American Security (CNAS)

Asia’s maritime order is becoming more turbulent.

Over the past several years

China’s determination to build comprehensive maritime power is challenging the post-WorldWar II order undergirded in large part by the United States in general and the U.S. Navy inparticular.

This competition between a rising revisionist China and a relatively declining

status quo United States will play out over the coming decades.

In the meantime, however,China’s neighbors are on the frontlines of preserving the rules of the road and maintaining
good order at sea.

Frontline states such as Japan in Northeast Asia and the Philippines andVietnam in Southeast Asia are simultaneously seeking to bolster their own defenses whilemobilizing wider public support, especially among major seafaring nations, to dampen
coercion, deter force, and advance cooperative security.

1. The Problem of Maritime Coercion
In the absence of strong support for a rules-based approach to regional order andsecurity maintenance, incremental changes to the present order will become the new norm for
maritime Asia.

Resisting marginal acts of intimidation is extremely difficult when states

must consider their larger interests at risk.

Bearing in mind the desire to avert open conflictand expand major trade with China, this report focuses on the potential ends, ways, andmeans of cost-imposition policies and strategies to curb tailored coercion in the East andSouth China Seas and beyond. Tailored coercion refers here to the spectrum of assertive
policies and actions designed to augment territorial and resource control.

These measures

vary and are often practiced in combination, including forceful diplomacy, targeted economic
and trade carrots and sticks, propaganda and psychological warfare, domestic andinternational legal measures, and military, paramilitary, law enforcement, and even civilian
maritime and air maneuvers and reinforcement to advance unilateral changes to the statusquo over disputed waters, islands, and airspace.

China is not the only actor resorting tocoercive means, but its decision to contest long-dormant disputed maritime areas andotherwise seek to reassert influence over its periphery appears to be the main driver ofmaritime tensions.

No country invests as much time and treasure in expanding its footprintin the East and South China Seas as does China.
Basic international norms--such as the peaceful resolution of disputes and theobservance of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)—are
gradually yielding to heightened competition and glaring if gradual unilateral actions.

A

pariah state like North Korea has often resorted to brinkmanship and rule-breaking toprotect its regime and extract concessions from regional actors.

But until about seven years

ago, China had opted for a general policy of shelving disputes and advancing development.
China thrived with this policy.

Today China appears to its neighbors to be more risk-tolerant- 21 -

than risk-averse.

President Xi Jinping appears to desire to avoid a major militaryconfrontation as suggested above, but when it comes to growing Chinese claims on its
periphery he is decidedly more bold with respect to pressuring other countries to make way
for China. It is a boldness matched by President Xi’s unprecedented internal crackdown on
corruption, his call for the realization of the “China Dream,” and other initiatives designed topreserve the Chinese Communist Party and reassert China as the major regional actor in
Asia.
Nonetheless, it is important to keep the maritime competition in perspective.

After

all, even after some seven years of growing maritime friction, leaders in virtually all capitals
remain focused on economic development and domestic issues.
ways to grapple with grey-zone challenges is so significant.

This why finding effective

China is counting on others

continuing to place a higher priority on stability than on confrontation, as it presses forward
on its claims.

China takes two steps forward with respect to expanding its influence andcontrol, and occasionally one diplomatic step back when reputational costs and tensions
appear to threaten Beijing’s objectives.

China also seeks to craft a sphere of influence byreaching a “new type of great power relationship” with the United States.

U.S. allies fearthat Washington may succumb to China’s entreaties to overlook coercive diplomacy on its
periphery. Like bad weather, local pressure appears less menacing from a distance.

Yet theUnited States, in turn, must be concerned that allies and partners would like a blank checkfor security, even while they become increasingly reliant on China for economics.

China willseek to maximize these differing perspectives to keep expanding its regional power.
Growing anxiety about sovereignty and assured access to the global sea, air, cyber,and space commons, is precipitating a low-level but palpable strategic competition.

In theEast China Sea, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is determined to preserve Japan’s
standing as a major power, including through a more “proactive contribution to peace,” andthe United States is committed to Japan’s defense.

These issues may well ascend into newlevels of competition as Japan enacts new legislation regarding collective self-defense rights
and the U.S.-Japan alliance unveils new Defense Guidelines.

Defense Guidelines thatfurther integrate the U.S. Armed Forces and the Japan Self-Defense Forces may also be theharbinger of Prime Minister Abe’s renewed push to rewrite its pacifist Constitution.

China

will seize on each of these moves, whether enacted or not, to justify its military modernization
and assertive periphery diplomacy.
In the South China Sea, where China’s creeping acts of sovereignty face fewer hardhurdles, claimants are pursuing a range of military and diplomatic steps to protect theirinterests.

The Philippines and Vietnam are in direct confrontation with China, but

Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei are also progressively concentrating on maritime security
issues as a result of rising tensions.

Moreover, Southeast Asian countries are collaboratingwith external powers, including Australia, India, Japan, the United States and others, toupgrade their defensive capabilities.

Unfettered territorial nationalism will almost surely

destabilize a region so utterly connected by sea and air lanes of communication.
Asian maritime tensions have ebbed and flowed throughout past decades, with both- 22 -

the use of deadly force apparent in China’s seizure of the Paracels from Vietnam in 1974,
during the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war, and the 1988 naval clash with Vietnam overJohnson South Reef in the Spratly Islands.

China used a mixture of deception and coercion

in the period around 1995, when it said it was building up fishing facilities on Mischief Reef
that might be shared with others; those temporary fishing shelters turned to permanent andexclusive Chinese military fortifications.

The growing intrusions into the waters around

Japanese-administered islands in the East China Sea and the seizure of Scarborough Shoal in2012 have both been acts of assertiveness, but even these acts fit into a recent pattern of
behavior that might be considered less lethal than the aforementioned Chinese use of force inthe 1970s and 1980s.

In this limited sense, China appears to be slightly more sensitive toreputational costs of appearing too aggressive, which has in turn compelled it to exercise
gradual control over its near seas in more subterranean ways.

Despite considerable

international attention and some positive if limited steps to reverse this competition in thepast several months, attempts to change the status quo through tailored coercion andassertive diplomacy that fall short of war seem likely to endure in regional interactions in theyears ahead.

While policy efforts to alleviate tensions must include engagement to cooperateover norms and binding rules, a comprehensive approach should include ways to counter
coercive on bad behavior.
Cost-imposition strategies have a particular niche within a larger category ofcompetitive strategies. They focus on raising the costs of a target actor in order to change his
policy, usually for a specific or limited objective in peacetime and in situations short of war.
Given the importance of responding grey-zone challenges, including a range of low-level,
carefully calibrated and mostly non-military moves encompassing the various ideas implied
by rubrics such as “tailored coercion,” “salami slicing,” “cabbage strategies,” and “talk andtake,” we have been less concerned with confining our recommendations to a theoreticalcategory used by strategists than identifying potentially effective ways for U.S., allied andpartner policymakers to respond to what appears to be an immediate and protracted part of
the regional security environment.

In other words, this report also concerns itself with ways

not only to impose costs, but also to deny and offset the gains sought by unilateral changes tothe status quo, and to do so, hopefully, without jeopardizing the overriding and shared goal ofpeacefully integrating a rising China.

A combination of cost-imposition, denial, and offset

policies, coupled with effective engagement and cooperation, would appear to offer the bestmeans of blocking maritime coercion before it upends the regional order.
These conclusions emerge from a series of papers and workshops organized by theCenter for a New American Security, often in tandem with other leading institutions andscholars, but for which the authors take full responsibility.

It is far more fashionable in

China-watching circles to worry about the classic theoretical problem known as the security
dilemma.

We acknowledge the reality that distrust and competition can feed an

action-reaction dynamic that could, left to its own devices, spin out of control and create aself-fulfilling prophesy of war.

However, we call to task those who think this is the only

dynamic at work or that leaders lack the ability to regulate their moves, turning up and down
coercion and pressure when it suits their interests to do so.

Put differently, if China wereembarked on a one-way campaign to dominate its near seas, regardless of the reputational- 23 -

costs and hedging strategies of its neighbors, then a purely accommodating approach would
guarantee Beijing’s success.
our power.

A realistic engagement strategy must recognize the limits of

The United States, Japan and other regional actors can only create anenvironment conducive to peace; they cannot make China’s choices for it.

That is why

engagement alone is not enough; there must also be tools for countering coercion.

A durable,

steady, flexible array of policy tools designed to both engage and curb China’s appetite for
influence will require keeping one’s eye on the long-term goal when undertaking short-term
steps to stem unilateral changes to the status quo through coercion.

In short, we need adiplomatic, economic, informational, and security response to regional maritime order.

2. Countering Maritime Coercion
Diplomatically, we need to work on improved peacetime engagement in several ways.
It is important for major regional actors to become more actively engaged in critical
discussions affecting security and rules of the road.

For an American, that means

persevering with the rebalance to Asia, a gradual, long-term effort to step up comprehensive
engagement in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. But it also means bringing other significant
actors into support norms and laws.

This is why it is useful for Japan to be more active inworking with Southeast Asia nations as well as Australia and India.

Korea, too, has animportant constructive role to play in asserting its middle-power influence on the regional
order.

The United States should be encouraging the creation of what I have referred to as an

intra-Asian power web, a set of bilateral and trilateral security arrangements short of alliancebut beyond mere diplomatic talks.
A key facet of diplomacy should be direct and enhanced engagement with China.
China is critical to our national and regional prosperity, and we do not want China’s rise
undermine a system from which so many are benefitting.

Given that our aim is to integrate

not contain a rising China, it is imperative that the United States, Japan and other regional
actors improve communications, seek to avert miscalculation, establish common standards for
operational safety, and where possible reduce mistrust.
focus on effective results and not simply process.

Such engagement with China should

Because military-to-military relations

between the United States and China are easily put on hold by often quite separate politicalevents, we should try to further institutionalize this facet of Sino-American (andSino-Japanese) relations.

That is, professional contacts on a regular basis should carry on

despite other tensions that may exist.

But the metric for their success ought to be tangible

progress on important, not trivial issues, such as how to avoid midair collisions, accidents atsea, and dealing with illegal fishing, to cite just three recurring concerns.
Another way to counter maritime coercion is to step up diplomatic and legal efforts inthe face of clear violations of existing rules and norms.

Thus, the United States, Japan andothers should be swift to mobilize regional and international opinion when there are changes
to the status quo through coercion or force.

China’s ongoing building of artificial islands

within its so-called nine-dashed line claim on the South China Sea is a case in point.

At thesame time, we should be just as attentive when it comes to mobilizing support around
exemplary behavior that supports a rules-based community.
- 24 -

Supporting the Philippine

arbitration case before the International Tribunal for International Law (ITLOS) is an
excellent test case for supporting positive behavior that we wish to encourage throughout theregion.
China’s reclamation efforts in the South China Sea are becoming widely known
because of the sharing of overhead imagery.

This fact points to the need to counter coercion

through the build up of regional maritime domain awareness and information sharing.

The

United States and Japan can help to build a robust network for maritime situationalawareness.

This can be used as a regional public good to help with everything fromhumanitarian assistance and disaster response, to dealing with illegal fishing and trafficking,and responses to unilateral attempts to change the status quo. Transparency can help put abrake on coercive action by raising the reputational cost of any actor whose actions run again
regional norms, including those within the Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties to theSouth China Sea agreed to by China and the members of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nation (ASEAN) in 2002.
This highlights the fact that ASEAN has been unable to conclude a binding code of
conduct in the South China Sea because China prefers bilateral approaches that give it moreleverage over neighboring states.

In addition, ASEAN is easily divided on maritime issues,

not least because of the diverse geography and history of its members.

Hence, one idea is not

to wait on unanimity but instead to push forward with a maritime coalition of the willing withrespect to diplomacy.

These like-minded countries could coalesced and announce their own

binding code of conduct, build greater situational awareness in the maritime domain, andfoster greater cooperation on the full range of issues emanating from the maritime domain.
This coalition could extend beyond ASEAN’s four claimant states in the South China Sea(Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei).
Indonesia.

Indeed a leading role might be played byIndonesian President Joko Widodo has spoken of a maritime fulcrum to help thatcountry recognize just how vital the sea is for the welfare and safety of its citizens.

Japan,

the United States, Australia and India could and should be part of that maritime grouping.
This maritime group would need greater security assistance and support fordevelopment, including the shoring up of coast guard and law enforcement capacity.

The

United States and Japan both need to adapt their security and development assistance tosupport efforts that reinforce the regional order and the rule of law.
These chiefly diplomatic and legal steps can help to stabilize maritime order in Asia.
They can reassure the region that the United States fully intends to preserve rules so that all
can benefit from assured access to the global commons.

Such stability would at once help tobring about greater long-term confidence at a time when the United States and Japan are on
the cusp of completing the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

3. Implications for a Maritime OCSE for the Asia-Pacific
All of these steps are consistent with the innovative idea of building a new maritime
security architecture in East Asia and the Pacific.
- 25 -

This is a noble goal.

But it raises at leastfive major challenges.
First, it should be understoodd that regional security will not be guaranteed by aforum mostly interested in multilateral dialogue.

The Organization for Security andCooperation in Europe (OSCE) has hardly prevented a resurgence of Cold War-like behavior
with Russia in Europe. This is not to say that the OSCE is without its uses.

But we need tokeep enhancing our national and alliance capabilities at the same time we attempt to build
region-wide order and trust.

There is inevitable tension between these two directions,

between hedging and engaging, yet they are inextricably linked.
Second, the United States and Japan and other major states need to be proactive
about supporting innovative approaches to order.

Japan is underappreciated for its

remarkable post-war contributions to regional and international order.
Third, a multilateral regime can only work if all major powers are taking part.
Thus, while I support working with like-minded states, we should not stop seeking to findways to bring China into this enhanced search for regional maritime order.

China must be

encouraged and occasionally prodded into accept that it must also get along with all of its
neighbors, not just one at a time or on China’s terms alone. We want and need China as partof the regional and global order.

We even have to accommodate a rising China.

But we do

not have to, nor should we, excuse bad behavior.
Fourth, a maritime OSCE for the Asia-Pacific would have to be based on the realities
that there is no substitute for building on existing ASEAN-centered institutions such as theASEAN Regional Forum, the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting Plus, and the East Asia
Summit. Indeed, we should build on the East Asia Summit process in particular to buttressthe most inclusive and top-level regional forum where it is possible to help steer regional
security issues into a helpful direction.
Fifth and finally, we also need to recognize that some aspects of security may not becooperative.

Every nation has a slightly different, or even markedly different, security

dilemma. Thus, individual nations will be more reassured by strong bilateral commitments
or practical mini-lateral cooperation, than by region-wide diplomatic gatherings.

Over time,

regional institutions that are effective and fair may reduce the need for such fragmented
security arrangements.

We should share a long-term vision for seeking to build order andmaintain security through an inclusive, rules-based order based on international law.

- 26 -

Why fight over some small rocks
in the middle of the ocean?
Roilo Golez
Co-Convenor, West Philippine Sea Coalition
Former Member of the Philippine Congress, andFormer Philippine National Security Adviser
One of the most challenging aspects in the South China Sea issue is to address theskepticism of some government policy makers such as members of Congress, and even thoseat the highest levels of the executive branch, those in the opinion making business like media,
and of course businessmen, who ask the question: “Why fight over small rocks in the middle ofthe ocean?”
I believe that all of us here in this Workshop and Symposium are convinced thatthose “small rocks” in the ocean are crucial in the regional and global balance of power.
A big challenge is to address our own domestic audience and the world audience, toconvince skeptical folks that the small rocks within the South China Sea will affect our
regional and global security in a very decisive way.
Allow me therefore to present my position on these “small rocks.” I have long voiced
out this position since the mid-90s when I first took this up as a Member of the Philippine
Congress when China seized Mischief Reef, a feature well within our Exclusive Economic
Zone. My position has become more relevant in the light of the ongoing massive reclamation
projects of China in the South China Sea which accelerated last year.
I am saddened, nay, shocked, when some ask the question, “Why fight over small
rocks in the middle of the ocean?” when referring to the West Philippine Sea situation now
approaching boiling point. To some, Mischief Reef, Scarborough Shoal, Pag-Asa, and now,
Ayungin Shoal, are small rocks not worth fighting over.
I don’t know if such comments are driven by naiveté’ about geopolitics and warfare orjust dictated by their plain desire to preserve the status quo because the status quo for themmeans:
1.

Peace at all cost in the face of a rising China or

2.

An ideologically based intestinal interlock with China or

3.

Fear, not wanting to antagonize the dragon for fear of being devoured.
In warfare and geopolitics, the potential force of a territory is not necessarily

proportionate to the size of that territory. It is the location that determines how muchpotential and, in the end, kinetic force can be brought to bear from that territory.
In other words, how well one can project power, gain access to a bigger objective or,conversely, prevent access or deny access using that piece of territory, however small.
We should learn from history. Note how the Pacific War was won using tiny atolls,
rocks, islets, with names like Truk, Tulagi, Saipan, Kwajalein Atoll, Tarawa Atoll, etc., dotting
the vast Pacific Ocean as shown by this map:

- 27 -

The West Pacific area in 1941-1944
Now we are looking at a smaller part of the West Pacific: The South China Sea.The
South China Sea today is considered by all strategic think tanks as the convergence point of
the world’s three most powerful economic powers: The United States, China and Japan.

Addto that India, Australia, South Korea and Indonesia. Then the minor powers that are now
joining the arms race: Vietnam and the Philippines. In the periphery, her intentions unclear,is Russia. It is without doubt the convergence point of the greatest powers, in absolute andrelative terms, in the history of mankind.
Note the strategic location of the Philippines in the South China Sea theatre. The
Philippines is athwart the eastern periphery of the South China Sea.
Philippine territory is strategic in peace and in conflict.

- 28 -

As such, every speck ofChina is fanning the flame of conflict with its nine-dash line, which only China
respects and the rest dismisses as irrational and without legal and historical basis. And thePhilippines has assumed center stage with China’s brazen grab, using raw, naked power, ofMischief Reef in 1995 and Scarborough Shoal in 2012. And now they are positioning to grab
Ayungin Shoal as well. These territorial claims defy Common Sense, as shown by thefollowing map, those “rocks” being way within the Philippine EEZ and so distant from the
Chinese mainland.

Those who dismiss Scarborough Shoal as just small rocks in the middle of the ocean
do not or refuse to appreciate the Shoal’s strategic importance. It is only around 120 nautical
miles from the shores of Zambales and so close to the country’s vital economic and military
installations: Subic, Clark, Metro Manila, primary airports and sea ports, power plants,
Calabarzon and our Army, Navy and Air Force bases.

Scarborough is not small.

Including the huge lagoon inside, it has an area of 150

square kilometers, almost the size of Quezon City With little engineering works, its channel
can be widened and deepened to make the lagoon accessible to navy ships. The lagoon’s depth
is sufficient for China’s destroyers.

A country with advanced construction capability andfinancial muscle can transform this into a naval base. One can easily visualize how manyships can be anchored in a lagoon almost the size of Quezon City.
Converted into a naval installation, Scarborough Shoal can be used to project power
and monitor strategic and tactical communications of the Philippine government, the military- 29 -

bases, including the assets of our treaty ally, the US, once the rotational bases accessagreement is made operational.
Missiles can be installed in Scarborough Shoal that can reach in just a few minutes
targets in Central Luzon, Metro Manila and Southern Tagalog.
Under the control of China and once militarized, Scarborough Shoal could betransformed into an unsinkable aircraft carrier permanently parked in our front yard, wellwithin our EEZ.
If anyone doubts the convertibility of Scarborough Shoal for military purposes,
consider this: More than 60 years ago, the US Navy converted a similar atoll around 1,200
miles from the Philippines into a staging area for the invasion of the Philippines. This was the
Uilthi Atoll, with features similar to Scarborough, only around four times bigger.
Here’s Ulithi Atoll:

Just some small rocks in the middle of the ocean, but transformed to house part ofAdmiral Halsey’s huge Third Fleet that was the vanguard in the invasion of Japan-occupied
Philippines in 1944.
This was how Ulithi looked on the eve of the Battle of Leyte Gulf:(Note: the carriers and battleships and cruisers and destroyers anchored among those “small
rocks.”)- 30 -

ULITHIBAJO DE MASINLOC

In a small way, the same is true in considering the strategic potential of Ayungin andMischief Reef and what I predict is a power play to have more Chinese military installationsin the area to project power and as a counterfoil against future enhanced bases in the
Palawan area for use by the AFP and our treaty ally, and as China's staging area to grab theoil-rich Recto Bank with its reputed 5 billion barrels of oil and 55 tcf of natural gas.

Why fight over small rocks?

Now we know.

- 31 -

Now, the January 6, 2015 article "Maginot Line in the South China Sea" in the
NextBigFUTURE blog, states:"A mature network of military facilities in the Spratlys, including an expanded Fiery
Cross presence, would effectively extend China’s ability to project power by over 800
kilometers (500 miles), particularly through Chinese Coast Guard patrols in contested areasand potentially even air operations. Similar to its relative economic supremacy, China’s
relative advantages in military size, modernization, and professionalism suggest that it is the
only South China Sea claimant that is potentially capable of establishing de facto air and sea
denial over tiny islet networks in a maritime setting as vast as the Spratly archipelago.""Infrastructure improvements are enhancing China’s ability to sustain its naval andmaritime law enforcement presence in the South China Sea. This is particularly the case at
Fiery Cross Reef, where a five-square mile project has been under construction intermittently
since 1988. According to IHS Jane’s, Chinese facilities there serve as ‘‘base’’ for conducting
land reclamation projects elsewhere in the Spratly Islands and host communications
equipment, a greenhouse, a wharf, a helipad, and coastal artillery. Andrew S. Erickson,
associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and Austin M. Strange, PhD student at
Harvard University, suggest Fiery Cross Reef could eventually sustain a PLA Navy commandand control center twice the size of Diego Garcia, a U.S. naval base in the Indian Ocean.
China also appears to be constructing an airstrip at Johnson South Reef.
"China in 2014 made significant progress on various land reclamation projects on
Johnson South Reef, Johnson North Reef, Cuateron Reef, Gaven Reef, and Fiery Cross Reef,
all of which are Chinese-controlled outposts in the disputed Spratly Islands. In addition todredging sand to make islands where there previously were none, China appears to be
expanding and upgrading military and civilian infrastructure—including radars, satellite
communication equipment, antiaircraft and naval guns, helipads, and docks—on some of theislands."- 32 -

"China is building an island at least 3,000 meter long on Fiery Cross Reef that could
be the site for its first airstrip in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
"Satellite imagery of the island taken on 8 August and 14 November shows that in
the past three months Chinese dredgers have created a land mass that is almost the entire
length of the reef.
"Fiery Cross Reef lies to the west of the main Spratly island archipelago and waspreviously under water; the only habitable area was a concrete platform built and maintainedby China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).
"The new island is more than 3,000 m long and between 200 and 300 meter wide:
large enough to construct a runway and apron. The dredgers are also creating a harbour tothe east of the reef that would appear to be large enough to receive tankers and major surface
combatants.
"The land reclamation at Fiery Cross is the fourth such project undertaken by China
in the Spratly Islands in the last 12-18 months and by far the largest in scope. China has built
new islands at Johnson South Reef, Cuateron Reef, and Gaven Reefs, but none are large
enough to house an airstrip in their current form."- 33 -

Principles for building effective maritime institutions in East Asia
John Lee, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow, Hudson InstituteAdjunct Associate Professor, the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre,
Australian National University.

1. Introduction
There is no shortage of pre-existing maritime architecture ranging from Associationof Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) led regimes to those initiated by regional great powers
such as China. Although the region is often criticised for having too many regimes or
institutions, the appetite for such architecture stems largely from the fact that there are bothelements of promising cooperation and worrisome competition in East Asia. The role of sucharchitecture is to encourage cooperation, whilst restraining or at least regulating competition.
In this sense, there is broad and reasonable agreement that building better existing and new
institutions is required if East Asia is to remain as stable and prosperous this century as it
was during the second half of the previous century.
In light of the important role that institutions and architecture will play in East Asia,
especially when it comes to maritime security and cooperation in East Asia, this paper offerssome guidelines and principles designed to ensure more effective institutional building in theregion. While some of the suggestions will be critical of the ineffective nature of someattempts at institutional building, the paper is not designed to denigrate the role ofinstitutions or advocate for an abandonment of the institutional approach. Instead, the paper
is designed to help ensure that institutions more effectively play the role of enhancing peaceand security into the future.
2. Multilateralism versus bilateralism in dispute resolution
There are differences in the region as to whether maritime disputes, especially in the
East and South China Seas, ought to be negotiated bilaterally or multilaterally. China, inparticular, has consistently insisted that its various disputes be discussed and negotiatedbilaterally, while Southeast claimants in the South China Sea prefer a multilateral approach.
The paper begins by offering a number of reasons why maritime disputes ought to be treatedas a multilateral issue, especially when it comes to the need to build effective architecture to
manage such disputes.
First, maritime geography is an unalterable reality of East Asia. All countries in theregion depend heavily on maritime trade for economic growth and development. More broadly,
maritime commerce has underpinned the rise of Asia over the past six decades and willcontinue to do so. Such trade traverses waters in or near disputed land features and related
maritime boundaries and territories. In this sense, every trading country has an inherent
interest in a fair and negotiated outcome.
- 34 -

This has the consequence that even if disputants agreed to proceed on a bilateralbasis, other countries would certainly not watch ongoing negotiations impassively. Many
countries would take a proactive diplomatic and strategic stance in case bilateral negotiations
proceeded in a way that was seen to be detrimental to their core interests.
For example, non-claimant countries in the South China Sea such as the UnitedStates, Japan, Australia and Singapore have in inherent interest in the outcome ofnegotiations in disputes between China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia. If it
appeared that China was likely to gain control over large areas in the South China Sea inaccordance with some version of Beijing’s more extensive claim, these countries would
respond strategically and militarily in such a way as to ensure that China is ‘contained’ or‘restrained’ from threatening or impeding their collective maritime interests. If such strategic
and military jostling and positioning took place, we are more likely to suffer a moredestabilising environment than we are currently experiencing now.
Moreover, how a pair of claimants resolve one particular dispute may well affectexpectations and viewpoints as to how other disputes between other countries are likely to be
discussed and resolved. For example, the legal principles put forward by China in discussing
the dispute over the Paracel Islands in any future discussion with Vietnam will be of immenseinterest to the Philippines in discussing the latter’s dispute with China over ScarboroughShoal. In order to rely on legal principles, interpretations and processes that are consistentand broadly accepted by all countries, it is more conducive to overall stability that the
disputes be discussed and negotiated multilaterally.
This has the added implication that disputants in the South China Sea have an
inherent interest in how disputes in the East China Sea are managed and resolved – and viceversa. In terms of maritime architecture relevant to resolving disputes in East Asia, it isartificial to completely divorce how things are managed in the East China Sea to the South
China Sea – since the legal principles and processes applicable, and the conduct of parties in
disputed areas ought to apply to both regions.
Second, there is high interest in maritime architecture not just for the sake of it but
because the region is interested in maritime architecture that can help stabilise and resolve
outstanding disputes. This means that there has to be broad acceptance and buy-in from all
major countries as to how the maritime order is to work and be discussed in East Asia. If
discussion of maritime architecture and dispute resolution processes – rules of the road, howdisputes are managed etc., - is restricted to just two countries, there is unlikely to be
sufficient buy-in from other countries.
Third, the reality of processes and agreements between countries is that they are
enforced through a combination of good faith and good will – but also via pressure placed on
countries by other countries to honour processes and agreements. Such pressure can be
diplomatic, political, strategic or even coercive. Countries tend to follow agreed processes andagreements because carrots exist to make it attractive to do so and sticks exist to make it- 35 -

costly not to do so. And carrots and sticks are provided by not just disputants themselves but
also other countries with an interest in the region. Once again, it makes less sense thatdecisions and processes requiring multilateral support and enforcement are conductedbilaterally.
3. The purpose of institutions in East Asia
The high interest in enhancing existing institutions or building new institutions isbased on the hope that such entities can regulate three basic things: actual behaviour,
resolution and settlement processes, and enforcement.
When it comes to actual behaviour, actions by non-governmental entities in addition
to state entities should be regulated and explicitly considered the responsibility of the statefrom which those non-governmental entities come from. For example, there are increasing
complaints by claimants in the South China Sea about Chinese para-military and non-state
entities engaged in coercive or disruptive behaviour in disputes maritime areas. Although it isa welcome development that disputes have not been extensively ‘militarised’ through the useof People Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels, ongoing harassment by non-PLAN vessels isof little reassurance or comfort to governments in Manila or Hanoi. Official explanations thatsuch actions are being initiated by ‘rogue’ PLA officers, provincial officials or else private
citizens is an insufficient defence since such actions – rogue or otherwise – may lead toconsequences that will be adverse for regional peace and stability.
Indeed, the reasoning that non-military vessels are not the responsibility of the statefrom which they come from are not plausible. If such reasoning was accepted, theembarrassing and debilitating inference would be that the particular government would haveto admit that they are not in control of entities emanating from their sovereign territories andjurisdictions – or have no desire of controlling them.
When it comes to resolution and settlement processes, one also need to clarify claims(what a particular country is claiming and on what basis) in a manner that can be establishedaccording to accepted principles and processes of international law – particularly the United
Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In particular, claims based on ‘history’that sit outside international law ought to be collectively frowned upon. If there is no clarity ofclaims according to legal principles and processes, then one can draw one implication and also
one inference. The former is that there is no possibility of resolving disagreements; the latteris indication of a lack of desire by that country to genuinely want to resolve disputes.
If something is not capable of being considered by international law, then every
argument in principle is equally valid or invalid meaning that no lasting or enduring
maritime order is likely to be possible without the threat or actual use of force. In an
environment where material power and preparedness to use it become the ultimate and only
factors for resolution, the prospect that East Asia will descend into a spiral of competition
leading to major conflict (between claimants and involving non-claimants with allianceobligations and strategic interests in the outcome) become far more probable.
- 36 -

When it comes to enforcement of agreed principles and processes, the overwhelming
preference is that enforcement be based primarily on non-military measures agreed upon by
all countries. When it comes to non-military measures to increase pressure on claimant
countries, there is effectiveness and diplomatic comfort in numbers. For this reason, disputes
and the institutions used to manage and resolve them need to be multilateral rather thanbilateral. This is also a further reason why behaviour and policies in the East and South
China Seas ought to attract region wide interest and action in order to maximise the numbersof states involved.
4. Multilateral architecture – who should lead?
Almost all the countries in East Asia, including great powers the United States,
Japan and China pay at least lip service (if not more) to the notion that ASEAN should
primarily lead institutional building in the region.
It is clear that ASEAN is a convenient organisation for the great powers to perform
such a task. For one reason, ASEAN is not collectively large or powerful enough to override
the preferences and interests of the great powers even if its ten members were to behave in amore coordinated strategic and political fashion. This means that ASEAN is large enough to
be significant but not powerful enough to be a threat or a competitor.
Furthermore, ASEAN’s lack of material clout means that it cannot impose an agenda
on the great powers. At best, ASEAN is able to facilitate discussion of an agenda and perhaps
pursue a particular emphasis. But it cannot change great power strategy or behaviour by
itself.
Additionally, ASEAN is valuable and useful to big powers because it can confer anelement of legitimacy to institutions and actions. In particular, the occasionally criticised‘ASEAN way’ of consensus building and norm building has played some role in regulatingcompetition and defining the shape of cooperation even if the ‘ASEAN’ way has not managed
to actually solve major disputes between great powers, or even disputes between ASEAN
members and great powers. In particular, ASEAN has had considerable recent success inpersuading China that engaging with its processes and norms offered Beijing an opportunity
to demonstrate that its rise would be a peaceful and non-threatening one – an opportunity
Beijing seized gratefully from the late-1990s onwards.
Even so, the future of ASEAN centrality and the ‘ASEAN way’ is unclear. It is now
obvious that China’s attitude to ASEAN has changed. Once seeing ASEAN as a vehicle toadvance its diplomatic interests, Beijing now seeks to neutralize ASEAN in order to advanceits strategic and territorial interests more assertively. Nowhere is this more evident thanChina’s go-slow on a binding Code of Conduct that would prohibit the use of force in settling
maritime disputes. While China has ensured that progress is virtually non-existent, Chinesestate and ostensibly non-state entities continue to coercively consolidate China’s de facto
control and administration of contested regions through ‘changing facts on the ground’.
- 37 -

Although other claimants such as Vietnam and the Philippines have also engaged in suchtactics, China’s far greater capacity to do so makes its approach qualitatively different to thatof the smaller claimants.
In response, non-ASEAN powers such as the U.S., Japan and Australia continue to
pay increasingly superficial homage to the ASEAN process, all the while knowing that
ASEAN’s insistence on consensus decision-making too easily leads to paralysis as China
simple needs to convince or coerce one ASEAN member to dissent from any declaration or
action that would be against China’s interest. In other words, China seems glad about
ASEAN’s paralysis as such paralysis actually serves Beijing’s interest.
The equation is different for America and countries such as Japan. Although all
maritime capitals seek a greater American and allied presence in the region to maintainpeace and security, the exercise of authority and power still needs the cover of legitimacy thatmultilateral organizations such as ASEAN can offer. It is for this reason that Washington andTokyo continue to support ASEAN centrality in regional institution building.
This then is still ASEAN’s strength. It has the power to acquiescence but also to
criticize. This is not immaterial. If it were, Beijing would not have bothered to strong arm
Cambodia into blocking a communiqué that would have raised concerns about tensions in theSouth China Sea at the foreign ministers meeting in Phnom Penh in July 2012.
5. Making ASEAN centrality work
In raising the diplomatic costs of non-compliance, ASEAN also has the power to
exclude when it comes to the largely symbolic agreements that it seeks to underwrite. Besides
ensuring that a binding Code of Conduct will remain stalled, Beijing will continue to exploit
ASEAN’s self-demands for unanimity by convincing at least one member to veto any measurethat would be detrimental to Beijing’s interests.
To overcome these obstacles, ASEAN could consider two measures. First, there isnothing to stop ASEAN from signing a declaratory Code or some such that would prohibit theuse of force in settling any disputes with other nations in the region such as the U.S. andJapan. All countries including China would be warmly invited to sign up to the new
declaration. If any country such as China refuses to do so, Beijing may well be isolated andsuffer some diplomatic cost as a result. The Code – backed fully by ASEAN – becomes formal
declaratory policy for signatories when they sign and do not need the signatures for all
players in East Asia to come into play. For those who are reluctant to sign, the onus can beplaced on them to argue the case why they would not wish to or why they disagree with theprinciples. As the experience with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement shows, one must
sometimes first exclude China in regimes that include other regional great powers before
Beijing is willing to consider sitting at the negotiating table. The opt-in Code therefore
provides a diplomatic device with which countries can use to reaffirm certain rules and norms,
and criticise deviant behaviour by any country.
- 38 -

Second, and for ASEAN to play such roles, it would have to abandoning its cherishedconvention of decision-making by consensus or unanimity, and perhaps allow decision-making
through agreement by a quorum of seven or eight member states. Such a change is notprohibited by the ASEAN Charter but would initially be resisted by many members. But thealternative is paralysis, irrelevance, and continued Chinese manipulation of the organization– placing into doubt the future of ASEAN centrality. Since ASEAN is a critical vehicle forsmaller Southeast Asian powers to enhance their relevance and standing vis-à-vis great
powers, the loss of ASEAN centrality would be a significant blow to individual Southeast
Asian states and to their collective interest and standing. Moreover, a loss of ASEAN
centrality will do nothing for the five member states in terms of managing and resolving theircontested claims in the South China Sea.
In the absence of an organising entity like ASEAN, the region’s great powers would
have to agree on another setting and process for institutional building. Given the reality ofdeepening strategic competition between China on the one hand, and the United States andJapan on the other, institutional building will be even more difficult to achieve.
6. Conclusion
The debate about which entity ought to lead institutional building to enhancemaritime security and stability, whether existing or new institutions are the way to go, andwhat the institution should look like will persist.
No matter which position one takes on these questions, any relevant and effective
organisation has to reflect realities in international politics, of which the distribution of power
and influence is all important. In this light, any organisation without eventual buy-in fromthe great powers – the United States, Japan and China – will be less relevant and effective.
Moreover, one must be mindful that geo-politics and geo-strategy can never besuperseded or replaced. This means that any organisation must be understood within theframework of cooperation but also competition between regional powers. Institutions cannot
ignore or avoid the realities of geo-political and geo-strategic competition. But they can modify
and regulate competition between regional powers. This means that institutional building
must proceed on the basis that regional powers will see any organisation – new or existing –as another avenue to pursue their objectives; and some objectives will not favour cooperation
but will be pursued at the expense of the interests of other powers.
Finally, and given the above conditions, one needs to be cognizant of the behaviour ofstates and governments. In this context, and to regulate or even change behaviour, the role ofproverbial carrots and sticks is paramount. Countries have to gain rewards for behaving
according to an organisation’s norms and rules, and suffer losses or sanction (whether they be
diplomatic or reputational) for not behaving according to these norms or rules.
This means that in order to use institutions effectively, member countries need to beprepared to use political capitol and suffer occasionally tense relations with other powers- 39 -

(including great powers) in praising or condemning the behaviour of other states within theorganisation according to that institution’s rules, norms and expectations. If member states
are not prepared to do that, then any regime is at best a talk shop. At worse, that regime
becomes a potential obstacle to creating a region that is stable and governed according to anagreed set of rules and norms.
Finally, all of this is not meant to denigrate the importance of institutions andinstitutional-building. On the contrary, these principles are designed to enhance the role ofinstitutions in promoting stability and peace in what could still be a fraught ‘Asian Century’.

- 40 -

Taiwan’s Stance and Role at the Territorial Disputes
over the East and South China SeasJohn Chuan-tiong Lim, Ph.D
Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica

1. Taiwan’s stance on the territorial disputes over the East and South China Seas
(1) ROC Taiwan’s Geographic Location
In terms of their geographic setting, the East China Sea and the South China Sea areboth “semi-closed sea”. The East China Sea covers a total area of around 482,000 square miles,
bordered by the South China Sea and Taiwan at the South. In addition, the South China Sea,
with an area of more than one million square nautical miles, is bounded by Taiwan Strait on
the north. The littoral states, in a clockwise order, are Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia,
Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the PRC.
In other words, Taiwan is located between the East China Sea and the South China
Sea, thus rendering its geographic location very important from the perspective of geopolitics
not only for maintaining peace in the East and South China Seas, but also for the security of
the whole East Asian region.
(2) Taiwan is one of the claimant states in the East and South China Seas
In the East China Sea area, as all of you may know, there has been a sovereignty
dispute over Diaoyutai Islands/islets or the so-called Senkaku Island between Japan,
Mainland China and Taiwan for decades. Furthermore, Taiwan is also one of the six claimant
states; including Mainland China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei in theSouth China Sea area. Moreover, Taiwan has been holding Taiping Island, the biggest island
in Spratly Islands, with effective management for decades since the end of WWII, as well.
In short, Taiwan is objectively but deeply involved in the territorial controversy inEast Asia, and should actively participate in the dialogues for seeking solutions over the
territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas.
2. Taiwan’s fundamental policy towards the disputes over the East and South Seas
(1) President Ma’s East China Sea Peace Initiative, 2012
In considering the goals of fostering regional peace and stability, economic prosperity
and sustainable development of the marine environment, as well as finding a path tocoexistence and mutual prosperity, President Ma declared the East China Sea Peace

Initiative on August 5, 2012 and called on all parties concerned to:
A. Refrain from taking any antagonistic actions;
B. Shelve controversies and not abandon dialogue;

C. Observe the international law and resolve disputes through peaceful means;- 41 -

D. Seek consensus on the code of conduct in the East China Sea; andE. Establish a mechanism for cooperation in exploring and developing resources in the
East China Sea.
What I want to emphasize here is that the East China Sea Peace Initiative is not
only applicable to the East China Sea, but also to the South China Sea.
(2) The meaning of “peace” and “shelving disputes, and working on joint development”
Nothing is more important than “peace” and the territorial controversies in the East andSouth China Seas are surely no easy matter. The countries surrounding the region pay too
much attention to the issue of sovereignty over the islands/islets, expanding their maritime
areas, as well as their exploration of resources. They seem to forget the very notion that
nothing will be secured if peace is not maintained.
The other keywords of the Initiative are “shelving disputes, and working on joint
development”.

The East China Sea Peace Initiative would be meaningful in the current situation since“promoting joint development” might be a better way to ease off the disputes.

On the other

hand, it is also important to see how Taiwan could and might play its role within which it is in

a leverage position. The enactment of the Taiwan-Japan Fisheries Agreement is a good
example of the Initiative.
In addition, under the controversial situation of the continental shelf over the East China
Sea in 1970, Japan, Korea and ROC (Taiwan) had reached a historical agreement declaring to“shelve disputes of continental shelf, and work on joint petroleum exploration”. Thissignificant historical event tells us that “promoting joint development” is possible, not only inthe past, but also for now and the future!
(3) Taiwan-Japan Fisheries Agreement, a successful practiceRegarding the “joint development”, it actually could include living resources andnon-living resources such as hydrocarbons.
Among the living resources, fishery is considered the most important and attractivein the East and South China Seas. It is generally a known fact that the living resources in thearea, especially those highly migratory species, such as tuna and other shared stocks, migratefrom one EEZ to another. Each country might already have its own assessment of its living
resources in its EEZ, assuming that the definition and delineation of each EEZ is clear. The
problem is that many of the EEZ boundaries are hardly well defined or mutually agreed uponby the relevant parties, not to mention the much more difficult issue about the sovereignty of
the islands/islets. Likewise, there are various conflicting claims to islands that complicate anddefer the determination of EEZ boundaries.
On April 10, 2013, the Taiwan-Japan Fisheries Agreement was signed. It is asignificantly noteworthy example of the “shelving disputes, and working on joint development”- 42 -

which are the keywords of East China Sea Peace Initiative. It sidesteps the issue ofsovereignty and focuses exclusively on a common interest shared by the two concerned parties.
Upon setting a wider “Agreement Application Zone”, fishermen from both sides could conduct
fishing operations without the fear of disturbance from the other party.
The fishery issue might be considered minor compared to other strategic issues of
security importance. However, I reckon that the United States is positive towards theconclusion of the Agreement. Furthermore, the Taiwan-Japan Fisheries Agreement alsosignifies a marked development of amiable relations between Japan and Taiwan.
I do believe that such a practical and successful fisheries agreement could also bereached amongst other relevant countries in the South China Sea area. I also expect theconcept could be extended to co-operation in other fields such as petroleum exploration andeven security maintenance in both the East and the South China Seas.
3. Taiwan’s security views and its relations with Mainland China and the US(1) Taiwan will not co-operate with Mainland China on the territorial disputes
Some countries still doubt and ask whether Taiwan will co-operate with theMainland on the territorial disputes over the East China Sea and the South China Sea. Again,
I would like to clarify here that ROC (Taiwan) will not co-operate with the Mainland on the
territorial sovereignty issues over either the East China Sea or the South China Sea. At thisstage, as I am aware of, talks on such territorial issues have never been held before.
It is because, in my personal opinion, the most serious threat to Taiwan’s security
comes from Mainland China.
force.

Beijing would not likely give up annexing Taiwan by military

Furthermore, more than 1,000 missiles located in Eastern China are still being

leveled at Taiwan.
Obviously, the relations of the Cross Strait have improved since the inauguration of
President Ma’s administration in 2008. However, agreements have not been reached on theissue of the political status of the Cross Strait as yet.
(2) Taiwan supports US’s proposal of peace settlements for the disputes in the South China
Sea.
Undoubtedly, the United States is the most important supporter and friend of
Taiwan’s security in the past decades, and it has also been playing a significant role in the
security of Asia Pacific region since the end of WWII. Hence, it is understandable that Taiwan
would welcome the United States' strategies of “returning to Asia Pacific” and fostering“rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific” region.
On July 11, 2014, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Michael Fuchs, called
on claimants in the South China Sea to freeze construction, land reclamation, establishmentof new outposts and other alterations to the status quo of disputed islands and reefs, and tocreate a milieu for negotiations on the "code of conduct of the South China Sea". Taiwan- 43 -

welcomes the “Freeze” proposal, but it needs all the other claimants, in particular, Mainland
China to work together.
4. The importance of Taiwan's participation in the dialogue on the South China Sea(1) Without Taiwan, the issue over the South China Sea will not be solved successfully andcompletely
Taiping Island, the biggest island of Spratly Islands, has been held and managed by
Taiwan since the end of WWII. We understand that China, Vietnam, the Philippines,
Malaysia and Brunei, are trying to find solutions for the disputes. The problem remains that
Taiwan has never taken any part in such dialogues since the disputes arose.
realize the reality that Taiwan is one of the claimant states.

We have toHence, all the issues would not

be solved successfully and completely without Taiwan’s involvement, which thus means that
we need to rethink the legitimacy of them more carefully.
(2) Taiwan is always a peacemaker, not a troublemaker
Taiwan has been playing an important role of a peacemaker in the East and South
China Seas.

I would say Taiwan, despite being one of the claimant states, demonstrates thedetermination of peace enactment through President Ma’s East China Sea Peace Initiative,
2012. Still we all know that the challenges are always there since these complex and intricate
disputes actually correspond with the territorial sovereignty issues simultaneously.

5. Conclusion: Taiwan supports building up a mechanism for the maritime security
architecture in East Asia
The territorial controversy in East Asia is threatening the peace in Asia.
are increasing, but they are not inevitable.

Conflicts

At this stage, I reckon that the lack of aneffective mechanism to maintain peace could be the main challenge ahead.

Since an effective

mechanism will be paramount and essential for all parties, I appreciate that IIPS holds thismeaningful workshop.

At the meantime, I think it would be mutually beneficial if Japan

could play a more important role on new maritime security architecture in East Asia in thenear future.
As a Taiwanese representative attending this conference, I feel also grateful to IIPS
for inviting me. I think Taiwan would be actively looking forward to joining in the project for
the New Maritime Security Architecture in East Asia in order to achieve more productive
contributions.

- 44 -

Searching for a Comprehensive Maritime Cooperation in East Asia
Shafiah F. Muhibat, Ph.D
Senior Researcher, Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Indonesia

The fundamental challenge for all East Asian countries is to ensure that peace andprosperity would continue to be the defining feature of the region. Indeed, East Asia should
remain peaceful and stable, even as military modernisation occurs against a backdrop ofoccasional tensions arising from maritime and territorial disputes.
The maritime domain of East Asia is central to the maintenance of peace andprosperity in the region. East Asia is home to important sea-lanes and straits. Some of theworld’s busiest ports are located in the area, or rely on maritime traffic through the region’s
sea areas. Many other vessels, including fishing boats and passenger vessels pass throughand overwhelm the regional waters. In addition to the strategic location, the seas of East Asia
are also rich in gas, oil and mineral resources. Both onshore and offshore energy installations
operate in the region, making it home to a large number of mining sites and oil and gas fields.
These companies depend on offshore platforms and/or terminals along the coast from which
the extracted goods are shipped to numerous international destinations.
In this regard, peace and stability in the seas of East Asia means the safeguard ofinternational maritime waterways that serve as the lifeline of global trade and the highways
for military and non-military vessels. The importance of the seas in East Asia has acquired amuch greater degree of attention, and thus strategic significance, due to the changing natureof power relations in the region, especially among the major powers. There have been
concerns that this strategic transformation would transform it into a theatre for major powers
competition and rivalry defined more by the pursuit of national strategic interests.
1. Current Issues(1) Territorial Disputes
Maritime disputes date back to the colonial period, yet still prove to be a challenging
task and have led to a number of territorial disputes. The region boasts numerous
overlapping maritime boundary disputes, a product of the geographical makeup of East Asia,with numerous semi-enclosed seas, disputed claims to sovereignty over rocks and islands, andthe widespread ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea(UNCLOS).
Maritime disputes in the region could spiral out of control and threaten the stabilityof the region.

These cases and the building of tension in the South China Sea and the East

China Sea make a clear message about how sensitive pending maritime boundaries could be.
The disputes are generally more political rather than military; nonetheless, the ongoinginability to settle some disputes creates concern in the longer run.
- 45 -

Territorial disputes becomes more significant when seen in the context of how
overlapping maritime boundary claims direct regional military spending. There is a growing
asymmetry of naval power in East Asia to the advantage of China 1 .

The nations ofSoutheast Asia are building up their militaries, buying submarines and jet fighters at arecord pace and edging closer strategically to the United States as a hedge against China’s
rise and its claims to all of the South China Sea. Weapons acquisitions in the region almost
doubled from 2005 to 2009 compared with the five preceding years2.

Overall, Asia’s defence

spending continues to grow and could account for 32% of global military spending by 2016, orUS $480 billion, up from 24% in 2007 unlike North America, the biggest spender in 2007 with
39% of the world arms market would account for 29% or $435 billion3.

Further, Asian

military spending will be led by China (from US $120 billion in 2007 to $255 billion by 2016)
and India (about US $100 billion for procurement in the next five years)4.
(2) Non-traditional Security Threats
Non-traditional security (NTS) issues are now considered core national security
issues. The threat of trans-national problems has increasingly become more lethal andpressing in recent years. Issues such as terrorism and criminal acts at sea such as armed
robbery to ships, illegal fishing, drug trafficking, human trafficking and piracy have all posedserious threats to regional stability. Most of these threats pass through the seas of East Asia.
The need to respond to the growing salience of non-traditional security in the region has
become a matter of urgency to regional states.
NTS presents challenges to the development of regional security architecture. Thereremains a genuine regional interest in deepening multilateral and bilateral security
cooperation, which has resulted in the strengthening of security cooperation on NTS issues
despite the absence of formal security architecture.
(3) Competition for Resources
The claims to maritime space are in most cases driven by the material importance ofrent from the ocean in countries’ national development goals, including oil, gas, minerals andfisheries exploitation. Maritime space is seen as a source of revenue for most countries. The
broad and underexplored areas of overlapping claims in South China Sea and East China Sea
therefore represent prospective areas to seek such resources. Indeed, these areas are
considered energy-rich, and thought to host substantial reserves of seabed energy resources.
Competition for access in a situation of declining fish stocks has been one reason forsome of the recent clashes in the area. Diminishing fisheries around coastal areas and longrange commercial fishing have pushed the fishing frontier farther into the disputed waters of
the South China Sea. As a result, fishing has now become a politically sensitive nationalSee, for example, Ralf Emmers, “The Changing Power Distribution in the South China Sea:
Implications for Conflict Management and Avoidance,” Political Science, Vol.62, No.2, (2011)
pp.118-131.
2 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2009: Armaments,
Disarmament and International Security, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
1- 46 -

security issue for claimant countries. The rich fishing grounds of the East and South China
Seas are also critical to many countries’ food security. The South China Sea alone accounts for
one-tenth of the world’s global fisheries catch, and play host to a multi-billion fishingcompany5. With wild fish stocks in decline while the demand keeps rising, fish has become astrategic commodity to be protected.
2. Existing Frameworks for Maritime Cooperation
Regional security approaches refer to the orientations and predispositions of member
states towards the means of achieving regional security. A region’s approach to security isoften reflected in how member states structure their relations among other states within andoutside the grouping in pursuing the goal of regional security. Security cooperation implies
relying for an essential objective, national survival, on the resources, intentions and activitiesof other states, which is hard to reconcile with the notion of security being guaranteed
exclusively by self-help6.

In addition, security cooperation entails some loss of freedom ofaction, some constraint on one’s ability to accumulate as much military power as resources
permit, some sacrifice in options7.
The feature of the evolving Asian system is oriented not around security affairs or
major power relations; rather, it evolves around an increasingly thick web of economic,
technological, cultural, social, educational and other ties being forged among Asians8.

When

put into the context of maritime affairs in East Asia, the snowball of the feature is the current
system of marine management and resource exploitation in the region that is based mainly ofnational interests. Hence, concerns of state sovereignty and territorial claims are much more
highly regarded compared to efforts to cooperate. Asian countries are generally not
sufficiently aware of the seriousness of the need for a stronger cooperative action in the
management of maritime security in the region. Basically, there is no strong constituency inthe region for ocean management, and that when countries in Asia think maritime, they think
first and foremost about boundary disputes; not the protection of environment ormanagement of resources9.
A large number of scholarly works have turned to constructivism to explain
regionalism in East Asia, particularly the development and role of Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Southeast Asia. Since the mid-1990, the study of or regional
security and regionalism in Southeast Asia, plus the debate over the “ASEAN Way” or the

Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, “Fish the Real Hazard in South China Seas,” Asia Times Online, 25 July
2013.
6 Harald Müller, “Security Cooperation,” in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse-Kappen, and Beth A.
Simmons, eds., Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage, 2002), p. 370.
7 Ibid.
8 David L. Shambaugh, “Asia in Transition: The Evolving Regional Order,” Current History, Vol.
105, Issue. 690, (2006) pp. 153-159.
9 Mark J. Valencia, “Multilateral Management of Northeast Asian Seas: Problems and Prognosis,”in Hance D. Smith ed., The Oceans: Key Issues in Marine Affairs (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic,
2004), p. 255.
5

- 47 -

“ASEAN” Model, have stimulated various scholarly works with a constructivist nuance10.
The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) was the highlight of the ASEAN-centred security
cooperation in the 1990s and early 2000. Security cooperation in the region has been
influenced by two sets of approaches: bilateral alliances on the one hand, and cooperative
security on the other. Post-Cold War multilateral security cooperation in the region thus
seemed to prefer an extension of the ASEAN model, which espouse strict adherence to statesovereignty. Such preference brought about the establishment of the ARF in 1994, which until
the present day can be seen as the only “official” multilateral security forum of its kindserving the Asia Pacific region.
Realising the importance of closer security cooperation, ASEAN has sought toestablish an ASEAN Security Community (later renamed as ASEAN Political and Security
Community). In October 2003, the heads of state of Southeast Asian Nations declared anothermilestone in ASEAN history, the Declaration of ASEAN Concord II. This endeavor
emphasises the importance of forming an action plan to achieve ASEAN’s dynamic, resilientand cohesive regional association and signals ASEAN’s move towards building an ASEAN
community which is based on three pillars, namely political and security cooperation,
economic cooperation, and socio-cultural cooperation which are closely intertwined in order toensure durable peace, stability and shared prosperity in the region. This document also
introduces the idea of comprehensive security in the sense of having broader definition of
security, namely political, economic, social and cultural aspects. However, the most important
thing to note is that, although embedded with so many optimist promises of a security
community, the whole effort was built upon the basis of the traditional ASEAN Way of
non-interference, sovereignty and consensus, which have been the most important principles
in the ASEAN official documents for the last four decades.
At present, the number of ASEAN-centred multilateral forums has multiplied.
Maritime cooperation has been promoted through ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM), where
ASEAN foreign ministers discuss visions and broad directions of ASEAN on maritime issues.
The ASEAN Transport Ministers Meeting (ATM), ASEAN Ministers Meeting on Combating
Transnational Crimes (AMMTC), ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM and ADMM+),thematic forums promoting maritime cooperation in respective areas. AMMTC focusesmaritime cooperation in the forms of information sharing, tactical exercise and harmonizedpolicies to suppress transnational crimes, while ATM focuses on promoting dialogues andcooperation to facilitate maritime transport by various measures, such as the integration ofmaritime transport sectors, provision of assistance and training to seafarers, enhancement ofsafety and freedom of navigation through cooperation on marine transport management andsecurity, search and rescue operations, and environmental protection. And finally, the East
Asia Summit the most representative high-level forum in Indo-Pacific Asia, involving theleaders of the 10 ASEAN countries, plus China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, New
10 See, among others, Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia:
ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order (New York and London: Routledge, 2000); See Seng
Tan, The Role of Knowledge Communities in Constructing Asia-Pacific Security: How Thought andTalk Make War and Peace (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007).
- 48 -

Zealand, Russia and the United States. The EAS is rightly mandated to consider region-wide
strategic issues.
In terms of areas of cooperation, the most advanced activities are those that include
functional cooperation in very specific areas to address very specific issues were promoted inmany fields from fisheries, environmental protection, marine scientific research totransnational crimes, search and rescues. Certain areas in non-traditional security are
considered relatively easy to reach the agreement for cooperation, as they do not threaten any
sovereignty issues, as opposed to traditional security challenges. In relation to this, mostsuccessful forms of maritime cooperation among states in East Asia in the past two decades
were mostly rooted from economic development. Economic and trade expansion in the region
raised the need for expansion into the sea in order to maintain connectivity and acquireresources.
3. Prospects for A Comprehensive Maritime Cooperation
Robert Axelrod once asked: Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in aworld of egoists without central authority11?

In his book “The Evolution of Cooperation”

Axelrod argued that the evolution of cooperation requires that individuals have a sufficiently
large chance to meet again so that they have a stake in their future interaction12.
interaction is important for the stability of cooperation13.

Long-term

The development cannot takeplace if it is tried only by scattered individuals who have no chance to interact with each other.
One specific implication is that if an actor is unlikely to be around much longer because of anapparent weakness, then there is less stability for cooperation. Moreover, it is easier tomaintain the norms of reciprocity in a stable small neighborhood14.

Even though there arepossibilities of defection by some actors, cooperation can still emerge, as long as they haveeven a small proportion of their interactions with each other15.
Countries in the region are faced with the task and challenge of ensuring good orderat sea and prioritizing the use of peaceful means and international law to manage and resolve
maritime disputes. The national capacity to promote a stable and safe maritime domain iscompulsory.

The littoral states have the added responsibilities to ensure their maritime

domains under the effective control are protected from various threats. Before any kind ofregional cooperation could take place, such commitment from the countries involved is aprerequisite. Moreover, cooperation should be established not only with the goal to resolve
territorial disputes per se – albeit it is a big goal. Rather, it should also intended to manage
the repercussions of the disputes.
There is no denying that we urgently need maritime security governance in theregion. And indeed, all countries in the region are expected to contribute ideas to resolve theRobert M. Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984), p. 3.
Ibid, p.20.
13 Ibid p.60.
11
12
14
15

Ibid.
Ibid, pp.61-69.

- 49 -

existing maritime security problems. The more ideas and alternatives are thrown on the table,
the better. Since the past few years, various initiatives have been presented by the partnercountries of ASEAN about ways to form a new maritime security architecture. We should all
welcome all these endeavors, while at the same time continuing the exercise to formulate an
acceptable framework.
Ideally, any region-wide security framework should adhere to ASEAN’s centralprinciple of inclusivity. Therefore, joint measures to strengthen cooperation should avoid
coalition building against particular countries. It must also provide stable and regularplatforms for dialogue and cooperation; and have mechanisms for a peaceful resolution of
disputes and tensions.
The major achievement of ASEAN to date in terms of maritime security andcooperation has been to forge a common understanding among its members on various issues
and aspects of maritime security16.

Indeed, maritime security issues, in particular the South

China Sea, are likely to continue to be a major topic of discussion at the various ASEAN
summits in the coming years. Specifically on the South China Sea, the conclusion of the Codeof Conduct is crucial.
Nonetheless, there is still great obstacle in finding the right format for suchexchanges of views. It seems that none of the endeavors that have been made thus far has
proven fruitful. Indeed, the current maritime cooperation in East Asia are confined to only
dialogues and information-sharing, which are all the while important, but are still far fromthe establishment of a cooperative institution.
I would like to suggest that the East Asia Summit (EAS) has the potential to be theright forum for the next real talks on South China Sea. As mentioned above, EAS is rightly
mandated to consider region-wide strategic issues. So far, EAS promotes maritime
cooperation in suppressing sea piracy, conducting search and rescue, protecting marine
environment, maritime security, maritime connectivity, freedom of navigation and otherareas17.
When EAS was established by ASEAN in 2005, the ASEAN members were keen tofurther institutionalise great power relations within a multilateral cooperative structure.
This was expected to secure the commitment of the great powers to the promotion of regional
peace and security. Instead of adding more groupings in the region, EAS was justified as aprocess of streamlining the ASEAN+ meetings18.
We have to admit that, unfortunately, this framework is stopped short of making
Nguyen Hung Son, “ASEAN-Japan Strategic Partnership in Southeast Asia: Maritime Security
and Cooperation,” in Rizal Sukma and Yoshihide Soeya, eds., Beyond 2015: ASEAN-Japan
Strategic Partnership for Democracy, Peace, and Prosperity in Southeast Asia (Tokyo: JCIE, 2013).
17 Chairman Statement of the 7th East Asia Summit (2012).
18 Ralf Emmers, Joseph Chinyong Liow, and See Seng Tan, “The East Asia Summit and theRegional Security Architecture,” Maryland Series in Contemporary Asian Studies No. 3 (2010).
16- 50 -

tangible outcomes. One notable example is how the South China Sea dispute was missing the
Chair’s statement of the 2014 summit. Therefore, there needs to be a new design for the EAS
in order to revamp the framework. This includes finding the mechanisms, the language, andthe platform to reduce the tension, and building concrete, practical measures.
Cooperation builds confidence and mutual understanding, which in turn helps toprevent incidents spiraling out of control because of miscalculations or misunderstandings on
the ground. Nonetheless, EAS should be viewed not only as a confidence building enterprise,
but also a potential venue for substantive cooperation19.

In this regard, EAS will need totranscend to a regional mechanism armed with a thematic and problem-oriented agenda.
Countries in the region must continue to build on these concrete, practical measures forde-escalating tensions, as we work towards long-term solutions for peaceful dispute
resolution.

19

Ibid.

- 51 -

China’s Strategy and Expansionism into the South China Sea:
The Possibility for Regional Maritime Security Architecture
K S Balakrishnan, Ph.D1
Department of International and Strategic Studies,
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya, Malaysia.

1. Introduction
Malaysia is the Chair of ASEAN in 2015. The expectations are high indeed on Kuala
Lumpur to deliver something. Even the US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian andPacific Affairs, Daniel Russel

visiting Kuala Lumpur on 23-25 January 2015 had expressedinterest and hope in seeing Malaysia being able to conclude the long-delayed maritime Codeof Conduct (CoC) in the South China Sea. This clearly indicates that the US too is looking at
ASEAN for being able to do something about the South China Sea’ especially in toning down
China’s rise as a military power. The US is clearly on the decline as a Pacific power. Its
rebalancing or pivot is not working in deterring China to adhere to best practice in themaritime zone which once was dominated by the US Pacific Fleet during the Cold War. A
significant power shift is taking place. Major Powers like the US, Australia, India, Japan and
ASEAN are caught in a strategic scenario of not having the best solution in the maritime zoneof the South China Sea and the East China Sea. China has its own strategy which the others
have no answer.
ASEAN too is caught by surprise with the intensity of China’s military and coast
guard activities in the South China Sea since 2012. The expansion was taking place in 1974,
1988, 1995 and finally 2012 at the Scarborough Shoal and surveillance in 2013-2014 up to
James Shoal, an area that is very far from mainland China. Land reclamation and military
fortification of China have been rapidly growing. The Senkaku (Diayotai) dispute too had sent
Japan-China relations to the worse in the last two years. Japan too is looking at ASEAN. A
clear strategy to deal with China is not emerging. The US pivot is not effective at the moment.
This paper will look at the strategic dilemma facing ASEAN and others in the maritime zone
caused by China’s military rise and expansionism in the South China Sea in recent years. It
will also discuss on ASEAN’s limitations in establishing a Regional Maritime Security
Architecture. Finally, it will touch very briefly on a few Strategic Options on maritime
security cooperation or possible architecture in this regard.
2. Strategic Dilemma in Dealing with China: ASEAN’s Dilemma for a Strategy.
Examining China’s strategy and expansionism into the South China Sea, andevaluating ASEAN’s approach to managing such a gigantic threat to its maritime security is
critical and timely. Given the kind of brinkmanship game which has been all the way one
1 This paper is the author’s own opinion, not of the governments or agencies associated withauthor.

- 52 -

sided in recent years, especially so with the expansion of China’s naval capability, it isunlikely the trend of the PRC threat in the South China Sea can be reversed. This seems to be
similar in the case of the China’s dispute over the overlapping maritime zones in the East
China Sea with Japan and South Korea. Pessimism is slowly creeping in, when comes todealing with China’s military and foreign policy assertiveness. China-Japan relations too
have not been normalized after the Japanese government initiative to officially take overSenkaku.
The worsening of relationship with Vietnam and the Philippines too became
conspicuous between 2012 and 2015.

Malaysia’s maritime zone is also not that calm where

the monitoring of the PRC’s vessel movement is vital. Only Malaysia’s top leadership has
some good things to say about China given the kind of billion dollar long term economic
projects and investment activities already been growing psoitively. Visa waiver for China
tourist is upcoming since the Thai and Indonesian counterpart had done so. Cambodia, Laosand Myanmar too are states that can succumb to China’s economic diplomacy. This has been
the case for South Asia where all key states surrounding India are now a part of the PRC’s“string of pearls” lake because of the economic rise of China and checkbook diplomacy. With
the end of the Cold War, it appears, only China is the most successful great power which
combines effectively both its economic power with growing military strength. The PRC’s
military activities abroad are also growing in Africa and eventually into Latin America. This
challenges more the US preeminence as a global power. Unilateralism is already being dealt
with a blow.
ASEAN’s regional security approaches and architectures are now baffled when comesto solutions to this growing challenge of both foreign policy and the military assertiveness ofChina. The ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN-China Dialogue, ASEAN Defence Ministerial
Meeting (ADMM Plus), ASEAN Maritime Forum, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and theEast Asian Summit (EAS) have all no answers to the problem. The United States pivot andrebalancing too is not working to contain China. Washington officially acknowledges the fact
the all her treaties with the Asian states does not cover on sovereignty dispute in theoverlapping disputed waters. This gives the PRC an additional impetus. Nothing can the US
do about China’s military muscle in maritime zone in East Asia. The Americans have gonebankrupt on ideas of strategy and have no choice but to invite PLAN (Peoples’ Liberation
Navy) to participate in CBM activities. This is an act of 21st century face saving dilemma
faced by the US.
The only thing the PRC gives ASEAN is an opportunity for dialogue and diplomacy,
where nothing move beyond that. Behind closed doors, ASEAN thinkers have lost for greater
ideas, except to think about how to keep believing in the so called ASEAN way and also
continuously engage the US, Japan, Australia and if possible even India. The situation on the
ground has worsened since the end of the Cold War. Within the last two decades, China has
had a clear strategy of expansion in strategic points of maritime sea lanes and SLOCs, withadditional occupation of islets, aggression, construction, military fortification, landing
facilities, “anti-access and area denial” strategy applied on other claimants in the maritime
waters.
- 53 -

Its assertive foreign and defence policy after the Beijing Olympic in 2008 is obvious.
The Communist Party has discussed sufficiently on the kind of policy to be adopted in East
Asia on how to deal with its neigbours and to challenge the sole Superpower. After a massive
success and victory in hosting the Olympic, which gave the administration in Beijing a kind of
pride which was never before, both the intelligentsia and officials in China agreed that
assertiveness is the way forward to overturn the period of so called ‘humiliation’ in China’s
history at one time caused by the rise of the Western world. It is so obvious that China isrewriting history with more vigilance and a carefully chosen craft. The ‘winning without
doing battle’ as the way of the Sun Tze’s Art of War is in action. Anti-Access and Area Denial(A2/AD) will be vital in China’s maritime strategy. If its economy continue to grow, anotheraircraft carrier will be in the pipeline. The submarine force and other surface combatants are
already doing its part in checking all the players in the maritime zone. The air force is more
ready for extended duties to cover the maritime zone with a sizeable number of aircraft to
implement ADIZ.
China’s active use of the media to publicize her recent activities in the maritime zone
is conspicuous. Besides that, the dangling of the economic assistance as carrot can be also
very tempting in recent years. It was so obvious in which a joint communique was not issued
at the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Phnom Penh in 2012 when the Scarborough Shoal issue
was at the height of the problem between the Philippines and China. It indicated that China’s
promise of billion dollar investments in Cambodia had influenced the Chair from issuingstatement which was deemed offensive, by the Hun Sen regime. A similar trend may emerge
as China continues to lure ASEAN in its ‘maritime silk route’ idea that can be tempting.
Already some in ASEAN have mellowed on criticizing the PRC in the South China Sea. This
will make the US rebalancing or pivot toothless. The US-China Strategic Dialogue is anotherplatform which only weakens the US. The US too is caught in a game of pacifying China byinviting PLAN (Peoples’ Liberation Navy) for maritime exercise. Gone are the days when the
PRC can be challenged or checked. China is also good at dividing ASEAN on certain issues,
especially on the South China Sea, by stating it prefers a bilateral approach. China sometime
prefers ASEAN not united on the maritime disputes and put more pressure. The dilemma foran effective strategy to contain China is not working at the moment. ASEAN is lost for an idea
and still keeping hope that the ‘ASEAN way’ diplomacy would work.
3. China’s Strategy in the South China Sea: A Continuous Expansionism and Show of Force
It is indeed crucial to explain and expose the PRC’s defence, military and foreign policy
strategy in sustaining its interest and expansion for decades now in the South China Sea. The
challenge for the ASEAN states comes from all front. The following could elaborate on China’slong term strategy and explain the tactics.
(1) Publication of maps and printed documents and the new international passport which
includes the vast maritime zone.
Researchers, scholars, policy officials and media have often discussed about the ninedash-line map which is being used by China and appears in the international media. There is- 54 -

a concern over the distribution of maps including the nine dash-line among diplomats. The
use of such map is confusing because it conveys the message the entire South China Sea is aninternal lake. In fact, there is a view in China that the map was an eleven dash-line map
which was published in 1947. Some argues, from dot-line, the map has become dash-line.
What irks many is that the PRC has published such map in its new international passport
which publicized that entire South China Sea as its new sovereign territory. Besides that, the
PRC’s Information Office of the State Council had also published pamphlet stating Diaoyu
Dao (Senkaku) as its inherent territory.
ASEAN has not challenged this in the United Nations. The Philippines is only
ASEAN country which brought a case on China at UN ITLOS challenging Beijing to clarify its
international maritime boundaries after China took over the Scarborough shoal by 2012
effectively and started fortifying its position. However that is rejected by China. It rejects
arbitration as a method of resolving the conflict in the South China Sea. ASEAN did use thenumerous meetings with China to question and protest on such issue because of the fear thatagreements with China in many other gatherings or forum will be stalled, especially on
economic matters and regionalism. China is a member in ARF, APEC, EAS and ADMM Plusand several other platforms where ASEAN relies on China’s diplomatic and foreign policy
support favoring the developing states.
(2) Invasion, Effective Administration and Military Installations to Boost Legality andSovereignty, 1974-2014.
Since the 1974 seizure of the Paracels group of islands from Vietnam, the PRC’s
aggression in the South China Sea was carefully planned. At a time when the USSR was
weak in Cam Ranh Bay and Danang, Chinese ship attacked Vietnam’s occupation of theJohnson Reef in 1988. The massive killing of the Vietnamese and sinking of its ships at thattime were not challenged by Vietnam or the USSR. Since then, China strengthened its
position at that atoll. Today, Johnson Reef is fortified by a massive land reclamation workwith concrete installations and possibly an air strip is currently under construction as
publicized widely in the international media. The tussle with the Philippines over the
Scarborough Shoal in 2012 also eventually led to a full control of China over the area
including on fishing rules and the chasing of the Filipino fisherman. Concrete blocks werealso thrown into this area as markers. In 1995, it was widely publicized that China wasalready in the Philippines doorstep by occupying and constructing octagonal structures andthe stationing of gun boats. The structure has grown much bigger now with a constructionbuilding. It has become the PRC’s important military naval base to control and supervise thePhilippines’ activities in the Kalayaan (Spratlys) group. The Mischeef own by China now, wasreported to have a helicopter pad, gun turrets, sophisticated communications and electronicequipment. Mischeef Reef is 1600km away from the mainland PRC. Military and non-military
measures to block other claimants from fortifying their position is also underway. In 2014,
China has attempted to block supply ships from giving support to the Philippines own atoll.
Effective administration is further enhanced by the construction of hotel and schoolin the Paracels. This is to improve its legal standing on effective administration in line with
UNCLOS given the past cases of territorial maritime disputes referred at the International- 55 -

Court of Justice stressed on effective administration as pertinent. China has announced to
the world it has established an administrative capital for the South China Sea. These areoften explain as Sasha City and Nasha City administration. In addition, the capability ofocean surveillance and administrative staff capabilities have gone up to 10,000 personnel. All
together it is argued that the PRC has some 17 agencies work closely in monitoring themaritime affairs. Measures are being taken on coordination of the various maritime agencies.
Rule and regulations to fishery are publicized in the media. Similarly, it has been blocking
any potential oil exploratory works of the other disputants. In 2014, it stationed an oil rig in
Vietnam’s water where it resulted in diplomatic row. Chinese ships have spotted in thePhilippines’ oil exploration areas. Relationship with Vietnam and the Philippines is low
because of the massive challenged posed by China.
The PRC’s coastguard ship’s surveillance activities and naval exercise into the
Malaysian waters is also a problem as pointed out in the media. But the Royal Malaysian
Navy has officially denied any such intrusion as published in the media. This isunderstandable as Malaysia prefer to be more precise when it issues statement. Malaysia still
believes in ASEAN diplomacy with a hope of sustaining a strong bilateral relations that canhelp better to pacify China. So far, China has been reciprocating the goodwill of Malaysia.
Peace between the two continues to exist because of the relationship is being nurtured by theleadership and bilateral relations keeps growing from strength to strength. Thailand,
Indonesia and Singapore too in recent years working on improving bilateral ties with China
for long term economic reasons. China is also popularly known for dangling the economic
carrots by via speeches of President Xi Jinping specifying on themes of establishing a‘maritime silk route’ in South China Sea zone. Almost a similar strategy to that of ‘string of
pearls’ in South Asia for future access and long term control of Southeast Asia so that the US
presence will be controlled effectively.
(3) Show of Force, Enhanced Surveillance and Power Projection into the South China Sea andEast China Sea and the introduction of Aerial Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ).
PLAN’s activities of show of force in recent years has increased. Not only the
numbers of visits and intrusion by the ship from the coast guard, fishery authority and survey
vessels have been spotted more often by the ASEAN littoral states, number of fishing boats
intrusion into the EEZ of ASEAN countries are a common phenomenon.
The military dimension of the show of force is also heavily publicized by the Chinese
and international media. For example, since the Scarborough Shoal tussle in 2012 with thePhilippines, its aircraft carrier, Liaoning has successfully completed its training expedition in
the South China Sea between December 2013 and January, 2014, escorted by both the surface
and sub-surface combatants, clearly indicating there is more to come. China also publicized
its massive nuclear submarine capabilities which can challenge the US and other great power.
Regular patrol of the South China Sea and the East China Sea is now a normal part of its
military strategy focusing on Anti-Access and Area Denial.

Prior to the Liaoning’s training

expedition, another flotilla of ship visited up to James Shoal 80km of the Sarawak, Malaysia’s
coast. China has been known for dropping steel or concrete markers in submerged reefs or
outcrop in the South China Sea. This has been done for years.
- 56 -PLAN’s military threat andpatrolling will be on increase. The Chinese coast guard ships have become a regular feature in
the ASEAN’s EEZ waters. Since 2011, military or naval visits to ASEAN ports have increase
to display China’s state of art vessels. Military fortifications have grown because of thestrengthening of the naval base in Woody islands and the Paracels.
China’s overall military power is constantly expanding given its double digit defence
budget between the 1990s till 2014. All elements such as the air power, space, cyber, naval,
and army have grown significantly. This has created a scenario in which other great powers
can’t check the PRC’s military strength in South China Sea. The US-Japan and thePhilippines-US Defence Treaty could not cover too ward off China military presence andfortifications in the South China Sea. Since November, 2013, China announced and area for
Aerial Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ). This has forced most civilian and commercial
airlines to submit to China’s rule. Even the American and western airline are obeying therules. There is a concern now that this type of rule can come into effect in the South China
Sea zone in future. Even though the US, Japan and South Korea’s military aircraft tested
China’s patience by sending jet fighters, the PRC’s air force is now moving freely in the ADIZ
to show that they also mean business.
4. Weaknesses in the ASEAN Way and the Existing Regional Security Architecture.
With the end of the Cold War, the concern over that regional conflict could flare-up
prompted ASEAN to take a look at maritime security conflict and the possibilities for security
cooperation. ASEAN started to officially discuss on the security challenges in the South China
Sea in 1992 at the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) in Manila. It issued a joint
communique at that time with the hope of sending a strong message to China and others to
adopt a peaceful approach in the South China Sea. Vietnam was not a member in 1992 as it
joined ASEAN only in 1995. Laos and Myanmar joined as member in 1997 and Cambodia in
1999.

Prior to that, Indonesia played a role in encouraging participants to the Bandung

Workshop on South China Sea in 1991. There was a hope that the Bandung workshop will
result in a series of ASEAN Informal Meeting on the South China Sea. But it did not take off.
Indonesia too was frustrated with China after witnessing expansionism with the 1995
Mischeef Reef occupation. There was a meeting held in China after the 1995 incident, which
also failed as China only hosted a meeting to clarify her own position of sovereignty as
indisputable and did not give an inch in the negotiation to ASEAN.
For example, many in ASEAN, including the Indonesian officials who wanted to bean honest broker were also frustrated with China’s attitude to extend unilaterally her
maritime zone in the South China Sea, which also affected Indonesia’s Natuna island. By
1996, Jakarta too realized it was vital to strengthen its military presence and exercise at the
Natuna waters in the South China Sea. The Suharto regime signed an official defence
cooperation with Australia during this period. This was a surprise given Jakarta’s
non-alignment (NAM) status. Malaysia and Singapore too have their own Five Power Defence
Arrangement (FPDA) with Australia, New Zealand and United Kingdom which wasestablished since 1970. In fact, Japan has shown interest in the FPDA (in 2014), which has its
own military exercise, training and dialogue process.
- 57 -

The dialogue on the South China Sea did not progress as expected till 2002. ASEAN
did put in efforts to discuss on the potential security challenge, published joint communiqueson the security concerns, and succeeded in signing the Declaration on the Conduct of theParties in the South China Sea (DOC) in 2002. But the DOC of the year 2002, did not stop theparties involved in fortifying their position in the Spratlys. All disputants have upgradedtheir position with activities and claims.
Generally, ASEAN is lost for a coherent approach. It has been successful to cooperate
between the ASEAN states in the maritime zone but could not get China on the board the way
the claimants expected. ASEAN has no clear strategy in dealing China’s military rise,
expansionism and assertiveness in the South China Sea, except to move from DoC tonegotiate a CoC. China too is good at keeping ASEAN divided on this issue. However, further
efforts to pursue the Code of Conduct (CoC) for the South China Sea has failed. The only
option they have secured thus far from China is the willingness to discuss or dialogue on the
Code of Code. But China has explained that not to expect much to happen in the near future.
This will affect Malaysia’s role as Chair of ASEAN. Already, Cambodia, Brunei and Myanmar
had failed in securing the CoC isgning ceremony.
Looking at the actual reality on China’s demand and strategy, the CoC will not
become an agreed document due to PRC’s reasons of history, geography, geopolitics andstrategy. If at all that the CoC on the South China Sea could materialize in the coming years,
it will be a watered down ‘face saving’ document that can please some ASEAN members
without any legal bite. China is not a player that will move an inch on sovereignty over theSouth China Sea. It prefers, a strategy of keeping every other claimant’s possession
disputable so that it has an upper hand into their maritime EEZ zones. This is an obvious
strategy, while China does everything possible to constantly upgrade her presence, occupation,
surveillance and sustain a consistent pressure so that other claimants will not fortify further
on their position.
While the above strategy is maintained, the PRC will ensure the claimants aretreated differently so that a united front will not take shape within ASEAN in challenging
China. However dialogue process are encouraged to buy more time, explain its position and toensure more gains are made from the ASEAN regionalism that can be reaped on the economic
front. China often stated openly that it prefers a bilateral solutions so that it can have an
advantage in keeping ASEAN divided and weak on issues of overlapping claims. The use ofcarrot and stick is selective, and applied selectively depending on the type of relationship the
PRC has with the respective ASEAN states.
ASEAN too has its own inherent weaknesses. Individual ASEAN states adopt a
different degree of diplomacy and approach in dealing with the China. Malaysia, for example,
is always in the forefront in luring the PRC since historically it had to face the communist
threat from China, which supported the Communist Party of Malaya. In 1974, Prime Minister
Abdul Razak was the first in ASEAN started the official relationship with Peking. This waslater enhanced by Prime Minster Dr Mahathir with the end of the Cold War. Razak’s son- 58 -

Datuk Seri Najib is now the strongest leader in ASEAN in luring China economically andcelebrating on the bilateral relations each time, to an extent China leaders openly state that
Malaysia-China relations is a special relationship. This is a win-win diplomacy for Malaysia.
However, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have differing policy andapproaches to a certain degree. One can be loud and the other can be silent. One look towards
the US and international law and the other is careful in not trusting the Americans fully inthis type of regional problem. One condemns the PRC and the other praise and capitalize on
China. One is ready to severe relations whereas the other is thinking long term. These
dynamics and dilemma will continue.
It appears that ASEAN too has its own dilemma in creating a Security Architecture
on South China Sea. It has broadened so much on security where the ARF (ASEAN Regional
Forum), ADMM Plus (ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting) set up, ASEAN Forum on
Maritime Affairs and the East Asia Summit have not specifically focused on the South China
Sea. The old way of confidence and security building measures are encouraged but have little
effect on the Spratlys, Paracels and the Scarborough Shoal disputes. So far ASEAN is hopingthat the ASEAN-China dialogue on the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea will be asolution. While this may bring some minor results for sustaining temporary peace, it isunlikely to stop China’s expansionism in the South China Sea.
5. Strategic Options for Regional Maritime Architecture and Their Limits.
The suggestion in Tokyo in IIPS meeting on Asian Maritime Organisation for
Regional Security in January 2015 is indeed positive. But it must be geared towards anagreeable path either through the ARF process or EAS mechanism. This can help to make
ASEAN to become more efficient so that it can move forward while waiting for a Code of
Conduct (CoC) to be fully initiated and agreed. It is also important to understand that thechallenge for China is not just the ASEAN claimants. The other players like the US and its
alliance system in the region can also affect the PRC’s military and non-military power
projection in the maritime zone. Some has highlighted to start a separate discussion on areasof possible cooperation in the South China Sea via an informal dialogue. This is not taking off
because of the conflicting positions, activities on the ground and growing tension in themaritime zones. There are efforts underway to alter the status quo.
Multilateralism, international law and joint development are important options if
the ARF and East Asia platform can be used effectively. It is important to remind China that
it is a signatory of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) with ASEAN. China is also into
the ACFTA (ASEAN-China Free Trade Zone). ASEAN and other major powers can enhancethese two forum to inculcate confidence and security building measures (CSBM) and toconstantly remind on China to reduce military and non-military coast guard activities, which
are increasingly provocative. It is important to remind China on the use of International Law
and go towards arbitration and joint development. China’s strategy to come up with the idea
of maritime silk route for economic cooperation must be used to inform China that her
expansionist activities are not the right approach in securing a long term cooperation.
Multilateral diplomacy must befully utilized by all players including ASEAN in enticing- 59 -

China.
Multilateral diplomacy at the military level must also engage the military via the
ADMM Plus activities on numerous cooperation initiative. It is important to reduce tension
via security cooperation on HDAR (Human and Disaster Relief Cooperation) and Search andRescue operation type of cooperation, which was witnessed from the MH370 incident. Thiscan help interaction and friendship between navies and other enforcement agencies ofregional countries.
A Code of Conduct on the maritime zone must be agreed and signed to avoid regular
encroachment and shootings in the disputed waters. A New Military Pact in the maritime
waters involving the US, Japan, Australia, India and ASEAN specific to maritime
surveillance and exercise and possible response must be design to curb China. Since the US
rebalancing or pivot is not working well, it is timely to sign a new military pact against China.
This will definitely upset China and Russia. But there is no other option stronger than thismilitary pact to send the message to China. But ASEAN has its limits because it will not want
to be parties to any military pact as it prefers not to be seen as a military alliance.
In the past, a few others have contributed to the idea of joint development, but it has
not gone well with China because of her nine dash-line that is too vast and legally notrespected. Some even spoke about the Antartica model and making the South China Sea acommon heritage for cooperation. But this has not been looked at by conflicting states as
possibilities. A strategy of rule base game must be inculcated in the South China Sea. China
must be reminded to play by the rules of the UNCLOS, ICJ, ITLOS and etc and not toconstantly use its power projection strength to deny the smaller players in their EEZ rights
by using a self-created old map and constantly sending ships of all type to enforce or dosurveillance.
6. Conclusion
The demand for oil and the possibilities of vast energy resources have made the issueof the dispute in the South China Sea difficult for China to listen to ASEAN, or others whencomes to signing a Code of Conduct. Fishery resource is another strategic resource. The
location is also militarily so vital for China’s power projection against the US and its allies.
China is already very active in reclaimation and fortifications of the reef and islands occupied
thus far. ASEAN too see it in this manner when comes to its own national interest. The
maritime issues in the South China Sea is actually larger than just sovereignty dispute. It isalso about the clash of national interest of the various claimants. For the PRC, its history,geography, geopolitics and strategy are all intertwined. It does not want another humiliationin the contemporary era. So long as the waters are calmer, prosperity is assured for long term.
Otherwise, another Cold War is obviously in the pipeline. ASEAN is only ‘an association ofnation states’ with their own national interest along with some regional themes. The ADMM
and ADMM plus are only for CBMs and can’t stop states from using their own strategy.
ASEAN is not unified as the EU (European Union) and therefore, not much can be expected ofit immediately. Time will tell more. Ultimately, this is a global issue. It requires a greater- 60 -

pressure for creating a regional security architecture in the South China Sea. ASEAN
diplomacy has its limits. The decline of the US is also giving impetus to China to standstronger to fulfil the power vacuum. A new Asian Maritime Security Architecture must be
structured before it is too late for smaller countries to have much say on the issue. Peace in
East Asia and the Pacific is very much hinge on a New Regional Maritime Security
Architecture. Being exclusive too has its own pitfall. Somewhere, the balance must be
structured for all parties. Constant attempts to maritime security architecture can eventuallybring a breakthrough. China too is fully aware that it needs friends to survive than,surrounded by more opposing states.

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Bulletin, Vol. 10, No.2, 2003.

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Malaysia’s Policy,” Journal of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations, Vol.4, No. 1, June, 2002.

Balakrishnan, K S., “Security Challenges Confronting Malaysia’s Western Frontiers”, Paper
Presented in Security Threats In The Indian Ocean , 3rdGroup International Conference,

Annual Indian Ocean Research

IORG-MIMA, Kuala Lumpur.

Balakrishnan, K S., “Trend Analysis on Piracy in Southeast Asia,” Asian Defence &Diplomacy, January 2005.

Balakrishnan, K S., “Maritime Security Challenges in the Age of Maritime Terrorism, Asian

Defence & Diplomacy, May 2005.

Balakrishnan, K S., “Maritime Security in Southeast Asia: Malaysia’s Concerns” in Jatswan

and K S Balakrishnan (eds.), The Seas Divide: Geopolitics and Maritime Issues in Southeast

Asia, Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences: UM, 2008, pp. 35-46.

Balakrishnan, K S., “China’s Rising Defence Expenditure and Military Build-up: Substantial
Reasons or Exagerration,” in Emile Yeoh and Joanne (eds.), China in the World:

Contemporary Issues and Perspectives, Kuala Lumpur: Institute of China Studies, UM, 2008,
pp. 17-28.
Balakrishan, K S., “Malaysia’s Defence Policy, Military Modernisation and National Security,”in Abdul Razak Baginda (ed.), Malaysia’s Defence and Security since 1957, Kuala Lumpur:
Malaysian Strategic Research Centre, 2009, pp. 115-141.
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Maritime Cooperation, CSCAP, ANU, Canberra,1996- 61 -

Bateman, Sam,& Bates, Stephen (eds.), The

Pacific , Canberra: CSCAP, 1996

Seas Unite: Maritime Cooperation In the Asia

Buszynski, Leszek., “Naval Rivialry in the Asia Pacific and India Ocean,” Maritime Instituteof Malaysia, MIMA Bulletin, Vol. 17 (3), 2010.

Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, Regional Security Outlook, 2015.
Hayton, Bill., The South China Sea: the Struggle for Power, London: Yale University Press,
2014.
Ji Gouxing, “US RMSI Contravenes UN Convention on law of Sea”, Pacnet, Pacific Forum
CSIS, 8 July 2004.
Jatswan and Balakrishnan K S., (eds.) The Seas Divide: Geopolitics and Maritime Issues inSoutheast Asia, Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences: UM, 2008.

Mack, Andrew (ed.), A Peaceful Ocean?: Maritime Security In the Asia Pacific In the Post Cold

war Era, Allen Unwin: St Leonards, 1993

Maritime Institute of Malaysia, MIMA Bulletin, Vol. 16 (3), 2009.
Maritime Institute of Malaysia, MIMA Bulletin, Vol. 17 (3), 2010.
Prescott, Victor, “Maritime Claims in Southeast Asia” MIMA Bulletin, Vol. 2, No.1, 1995.
RSIS Quarterly Report, Southeast Asia Maritime Security Review, 2008.
Rumley, Dennis (et al.), The Security of Sea Lanes of Communications in the Indian Ocean

Region, Kuala Lumpur: MIMA, 2007.

Sutarji Kasmin(Rtd. Vice

Admiral, RMN), Konflik Maritim Malaysia, Dewan Masyarakat,

Ogos, 1996.
Valencia, Mark J., Malaysia and the Law of the Sea, ISIS Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur, 1991.
Valencia, Mark J., China and the South China Sea Dispute, ADELPHI Paper No. 298,
London: IISS, 1995.

- 62 -

The Situation on South China Sea in 2014:
A view from Vietnam1
Tran Viet Thai, Ph.D
Deputy Director-General, Institute for Foreign Policy and Strategic Studies,
Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, Vietnam

1. Attributes of the situation on South China Sea in 2014
The situation on the ground in South China Sea in 2014 once gain intensified with
events escalating tensions to the highest level within the past 20 years. The situation can beviewed from three vantage points: (i) the status quo on South China Sea continued to bealtered; (ii) new measures in the legal front continued to arise; (iii) and thereby, spurring new
developments on the political-diplomatic front.
(1) On the ground, the HD-981 oil rig crisis escalated tensions between Vietnam andChina over South China Sea to the highest level since 1988 when China used force to occupy
the John South reef and some other reefs, almost triggering a military confrontation between
the two countries. This was the first time that China unilaterally and brazenly deployed amodern deep-water oil rig into Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in disregard ofinternational law, especially UNCLOS 1982. At the same time, China sent a large contingency,
at times reaching 130 vessels of various types, including modern military ships and aircrafts,
and showed signs of a large-scale military exercise with the joint participation of numerous
armed forces. On the other hand, China also mobilized its military ground forces combinedwith tension-inducing maneuvers on land, banned tourism and trade activities, etc.,
fomenting a situation of crisis in the bilateral relation that has not been seen since the 1979
Vietnam – China border war.
In the Spratlys, China urgently carried out its artificial reclamation work on a large
scale, increasing the total reclaimed area by eleven-fold. There have been signs indicatingthat China would install a 3,000 meter-long air-strip, enough for medium-sized military
aircrafts to take off and land. China’s continued tactic of “isolating” the Second Thomas Shoal(occupied by the Philippines), forcing the latter to, for the second time, have to airlift supplies
to garrisoned troops on the shoal, is a new escalating step in China’s “salami-slicing” tactic in
South China Sea.
Taiwan also made efforts to consolidate Itu Aba (or Taiping) island, constructed new
bridges and ports, reinforced runways and installed heavy artilleries on the island. In 2014,
military activities in South China Sea have been carried out on a larger scale and more
upfront in challenging international law. When the Liaoning aircraft carrier held military
drills in South China Sea, China issued a ban for all ships within the vicinity and came close
The view point in this paper is belonging to the author, and does not necessarily reflect theofficial position of the government of Vietnam.

1- 63 -

to clashing with the USS Cowpens, which was operating in the nearby water. The number of
exercises with live ammunitions from China and Taiwan has increased significantly. Oil andgas exploration and exploitation works in South China Sea’s deep-water zones took place withhigher frequency and much deeper into the south.
In 2014, China enacted various policies and regulations aiming at realizing its
sovereignty claims in South China Sea. One typical example is that in early 2014, China’s
Hainan province issued a fishing law in South China Sea, allowing the Chinese authority tostop and check any fishing ships they can catch with the Chinese media explaining that thelaw will be applied in an area of 2 million square kilometers in South China Sea. China
continued to “threaten” to establish an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in South China
Sea, which may cause concerns around the region. According to some sources, China may
have already put in place an ADIZ in South China Sea but has yet to come forth publicly to
avoid international criticism. In the Paracels, China kept building government office building,schools, organizing tours between Hainan and Paracels and reinforcing the plane strip on the
Woody Island.
In 2014, regional cooperation activities became unprecedented in size in South China
Sea, especially coordinated efforts to search for Malaysia’s MH370 and Indonesia’s AirAsia
passenger aircrafts. Air and naval forces from many countries in the region such as Vietnam,
Malaysia, China, Singapore, the U.S., Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Russia, etc.,
coordinated with one another to engage in search and rescue in a fairly effective fashion.
(2) On the political-diplomatic front, South China Sea was and continued to be a
prominent issue. At the beginning of the year, ASEAN foreign ministers’ closed meeting“broke off” the rule by issuing a press release expressing concerns over the situation on South
China Sea after Hainan enacted its fishing law. In May 2014, on the sidelines of ASEAN
summit, ASEAN’s foreign ministers released a separate statement on South China Sea,
expressing deep concerns over the HD-981 oil rig incident. This was the first time that all ten
ASEAN members issued a separate statement on South China Sea (in 1995, six ASEAN
members released a statement after the Mischief Reef incident); and was the first time that
ASEAN presented a unified and strong position concerning the Paracels, reflecting animportant progress in the Association’s common thinking and position with regard to theissue of South China Sea. South China Sea was also a dominant topic in regional forums withwide-ranging participation such as the EAS, ARF, ADMM+, APEC, Boao forum, ASEM, theFrancophonie Summit, etc. In 2014, numerous suggestions and initiatives aimed atincreasing cooperation on South China Sea issue were made, such as the Philippines’
three-step initiative, the U.S.’s “freeze” proposal, implementing Article V of the DOC and ahost of cooperative initiatives from China such as the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” andthe “dual track approach” regarding the South China Sea issue.
It is important to note that China and ASEAN agreed to speeding up COC talks andconducting “early harvest” measures, but still yet produced any tangible outcomes so far.
Moreover, the meeting mechanism for the four ASEAN countries with claims in South China
Sea (ASEAN-4) continued to be working effectively. Three meetings were held at ministerial- 64 -

level and efforts were made to further consolidate the mechanism at the SOM-ASEAN level.
Indonesia emerged as a new factor in South China Sea after declaring the “maritime pivot”
doctrine with Indonesia at the center, attaching the maritime security issue to an area thatstretches from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
(3) On the legal front, the end of 2014 witnessed many new and interestingdevelopments, especially regarding the Philippines’ lawsuit. Vietnam released a statement
affirming that the court has jurisdiction over the case. Nearly at the same time, China
declared that it would not participate in the arbitration case but did not ignore the court andinternational public opinion. The country still participated in de facto “hearings” through aposition paper rejecting the court’s jurisdiction. Various circles in China continued tomaintain China’s “legal rights” to reclaim rocks and low tide entities in the Spratlys andshowed their intention of claiming waters surrounding the artificial island after completion.
China expressed its view that international law cannot judge the nine-dash line because
China has yet to make clear what the nine-dash line claim is. Meanwhile, the U.S. publishedthe “Limits in the Seas” report in early December 2014, in which it clearly pointed out thatthe nine-dash line lacked legal foundations and was inconsistent, marking it be the first timethat a foreign government objected to the nine dash line in a detailed manner with convincing
legal scrutiny. From another viewpoint, Indonesia and the Philippines completed demarcation
works for overlapping waters claimed on the basis of UNCLOS 1982. This is a very goodreferring point for any future solutions among claimants in South China Sea.
At the various forums of the United Nations, on the HD-981 incident, both Vietnam
and China issued position papers. What could be visibly seen is that with these declarations(along with internationally published articles by Chinese diplomats), it is China who officiallyinternationalize the issue of South China Sea and China seems to have accepted theinternationalization of disputes in South China Sea at all levels, from regional tointernational levels.
2.

Policy assessments of concerned parties on South China Sea in 2014
(1) China: In 2014, with regards to South China Sea, China’s policy was “firm inchanging the ground status quo, soft but resolute in diplomacy, employing manymega-initiatives to progress towards the establishment of a new order at sea”.
+ On the ground, China increased its military, paramilitary and civilian presence,
widened the range of activities, was prepared to implement new tactics on a larger scale andhigher level of complexity, undaunted by “confrontation” with the U.S., raised the frequency of
direct “challenges” to the U.S.2, tested India in the Indian Ocean3.

China was more confident

and willing to internationally cooperate, for the first time joining the RIMPAC exercises
hosted by the U.S. and participated in joint drills with Russia in the Black Sea; collaborated
with the U.S. in science projects (the Joides Exploration ship). Notably, China reached an
The incidents of the P8 aircraft and the Cowpens are clear examples.
For the first time, China docked a strategic nuclear submarine at Sri Lanka’s Colombo port andbringing the HD-981 to the Indian Ocean.

23- 65 -

agreement with the U.S. regarding “military-to-military confidence-building mechanisms” on
the sidelines of APEC, including the building of rules to avert confrontation at sea.
+ On the diplomatic front, via bilateral and multilateral channels, on the one hand,
China continued to display a staunch position, more proactive in using multilateral forums,
official and unofficial, to safeguard its position and distort public opinion. China no longer“avoided” South China Sea issue and proactively mentioned it at Boao forum in Hainan
province; was prepared to “verbally clash” in ASEAN and APEC-based forums; proactively
took part in “information wars” by organizing various track 1.5 and track 2 fora to discuss
issues related to maritime security and South China Sea. On the other hand, China
proactively put forth numerous maritime cooperation initiatives, most notably the “21stCentury Maritime Silk Road”, considered 2015 to be the year for maritime cooperation
between ASEAN and China, established the Silk Road Fund worth 40 billion USD.
(2) The U.S.: In 2014, the U.S. largely looked to “maintain presence on the ground,increase diplomatic and legal pressure” vis-à-vis China.
+ On the ground, the U.S.’s policy has the following striking characteristics: (1) The
U.S. maintained its presence but sought to minimize direct confrontations with China. In one
aspect, the two countries regularly engaged in military diplomacy, including high-levelexchanges. The two sides reached a short-term agreement to set up a code of conduct tominimize military collisions in the air and sea domains; (2) The U.S. still closely monitored
Chinese activities on the ground via naval and air, especially in hot spots such as military
exercise areas and during the oil rig incident, reclamation sites in the Spratlys and the Reed
Bank; (3) step up assistance to some countries to increase their defense capacity – especiallyin raising their maritime domain awareness and maritime defense capability. (4) Moremanifest regarding the responsibility to protect allies4.
+ On the political and diplomatic front, the U.S. exhibited a firmer posture and had
many, hitherto, strongest reaction regarding South China Sea5.

The U.S. has persuaded theG7 to issue a Declaration on South China Sea. Both chambers of U.S. Congress ratified its
own resolutions on South China Sea. The State Department’s report on the nine-dash line
was the U.S.’s most public, straightforward and direct objection to the line’s legality.
+ In 2014, the U.S. laid special emphasis on using legal reasoning to exert pressure
on China on South China Sea. All of the U.S.’s statements, actions and posture encouraged
concerning parties to consider the legal dimensions in South China Sea disputes, especiallythe nine-dash line’s validity, and welcomed the use of legal means in settling disputes6.
The US reaffirmed its commitment to safeguard Japan in accordance with the mutual defense
treaty and to help protect the Philippines as enshrined in the 1951 mutual defense treaty between
the US and the Philippines.
5 Evan Meideros denounced the ADIZ in an interview with Kyodo News, Daniel Russel’s
testimony before the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific – House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Particularly, during the HD981 incident, officials at the highest levels made public their views on
South China Sea.
6 Daniel Russel: “maritime claims must derive from land features”; “Disputes must be resolved
4- 66 -

(3) ASEAN countries: During Myanmar and Thailand’s terms as ASEAN Chair andcoordinator for ASEAN-China relations, respectively, ASEAN reached new and higher
consensus on South China Sea, with some areas unprecedented in ASEAN, both in principle
and concrete documents, in terms of the Association as a single entity and the views ofmajority of member countries. However, in dealing with specific issues, in situations ofcompetition and cooperation with China, new unpredictable factors surfaced, especially
Brunei and, to some extent, Laos and Cambodia.
For the first time, ASEAN as one single body and with all ten members issued aseparate statement on South China Sea (in May 2014); had a statement related to the
Paracels issue; held a Foreign Minister meeting that did not officially give a press release,which partially addressed the public’s criticism that ASEAN was too dependent on official
working agendas and could not respond in the absence of a meeting. 2014 was the first timethat the mechanism of ASEAN-4 Foreign Ministers meeting was kept effectively. At
Thailand’s urging, ASEAN reached its internal consensus on the draft COC major
components to propose to China. This was a new step towards reestablishing ASEAN’s sharedand detailed position after completing the June 2012 joint draft, especially after the
Association’s “collapse” in July 2012 during Cambodia’s chairmanship. This was also a more
improved document compared to the June 2012 draft in terms of position and legitimacy as it
was formulated based on an agreement by China and ASEAN at the SOM level.
As individual country, a number of ASEAN countries signaled policy adjustments
concerning South China Sea. Notably, the Philippines continued to vehemently denounce
Chinese actions in South China Sea but also presented a softer diplomatic stance by attaching
more attention to ASEAN, vividly shown in their three-point initiative in ASEAN and being
more flexible before and after APEC. Militarily, the country signed a new defense pact with
the U.S., which allows the latter to use its military bases in the Philippines’s territory andreceived surveillance vessels from Japan and South Korea, announced a two billion USD
defense budget until the year 2015.
Malaysia proceeded with its “quiet diplomacy,” a policy heavily influenced by the factthat 2014 was the 60th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral relations with China as
well as the MH370 incident and the country’s role as 2015 ASEAN Chair. At the same time,
based on the legitimate claims by China and other countries in accordance with international law
and norms”; Michael Fuchs: “International law, not power or an ambiguous sense of historicalentitlement, should be the basis for making and enforcing maritime claims in the [South China
Sea]”. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki: “The oil rig incident has highlighted the need for
claimants to clarify their claims in accordance with international law to reach a sharedunderstanding on appropriate behavior and activities in disputed areas.” White House
spokesperson Patrick Ventrell in a press briefing on May 22: “The United States supports the useof diplomatic and other peaceful means to manage and resolve disagreements, including the use ofarbitration or other international legal mechanisms.” When China circulated a vertical map withthe ten-dash line, U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg said that “any use of thenine-dash line now becoming ten-dash-line based on historical argument that China is invoking toclaim maritime rights is not based on land-based feature and will be inconsistent with theinternational laws.”- 67 -

Malaysia continued to set up naval bases in Bintulu and kept consultation and working
closely with concerned parties and ASEAN in general.
Indonesia continued to convey the hope of serving as intermediary for reconciliation
in South China Sea, but, due to the election, was not able to meaningfully play the role.
Meanwhile, a different view regarding South China Sea surfaced within military anddiplomatic circles. President J. Widodo laid special emphasis on maritime issues in his
election campaign and, after assuming the presidency, proposed the “maritime pivot” doctrine,
which aspires for Indonesia to become a maritime power. Notably, Indonesia’s new president’s
decision to sink foreign ships that infringe into the country’s waters further showed a greater
sense of decisiveness when it came to safeguarding sovereignty. Militarily, Indonesia is also
expected to increase defense spending to 20 billion USD by 2019, which would account for atleast 1.5% of GDP instead of the present rate of under 1%.
Although Thailand faced domestic political problems, it still managed to play anactive and proactive role on South China Sea issue, but only primarily owing to the individual
undertakings of Mr. Sihasak. Myanmar completed well its duties as ASEAN Chair, helping tomaintain the Association’s principles and sided well with ASEAN despite internal andexternal pressures.
Notably, Brunei was more cautious and hesitant in 2014 in the common endeavors ofclaimants and ASEAN. Laos and Cambodia stuck to minimal positions, but “gave in” almost
completely in the face of China’s economic charm offensives.
(iv) Taiwan continued to proactively take advantage of South China Sea issue toincrease its diplomatic standing in the region and the world through measures on the groundand diplomatic initiatives. On the ground, Taiwan stepped up the construction of bridges andports, reinforced runways, installed heavy artillery, deployed unmanned aircrafts to monitor
the Itu Aba island, held drills with live ammunition and considered the possibility of putting
missiles on Itu Aba. Taiwan also engaged in civilian activities, including bringing sixty
students from six universities to the island. Diplomatically, Ma Ying-jeou continued to push
forth initiatives in South China Sea, including bilateral cooperation in fishery work; called fornegotiations to resolve the issue of overlapping ADIZ and establish a COC. Moreover, Taiwan
also suggested the use of Itu Aba island for shared disaster relief and rescue operations inSouth China Sea. As Taiwan knew that the world paid special attention to its role inexplaining the nine-dash line, Ma Ying-jeou talked about the line to attract public attention
but in fact, made no further clarifications about it.
In sum, it can be assessed that the situation on the ground in South China Sea in2014 worsened fairly rapidly with long-term strategic implications. Meanwhile, South China
Sea issue’s political-diplomatic-legal landscape is considered quite favorable towards Vietnam.
However, these political-diplomatic-legal “advantages” are quite fragile, short-term and has
yet to substantially affect the situation on the ground. Regarding the general regional
conjuncture, while South China Sea continues to attract public attention, the sense of “crisis”
and “urgency” seems to have deflated (especially after China removed the HD981 oil rig). At- 68 -

the same time, China’s sea or island-related economic and trade cooperation initiatives will
create new and graver challenges for Vietnam.
3. Causative factors- In the global domain, 2014 witnessed great and deep changes in great power
relations; the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea further delineated the East-West divide that had
been gradually blurred in the post-Cold War period. Generally speaking, tension between
Russia and the West placed greater burdens upon the U.S. and affected the country’s“rebalancing strategy” to the Asia-Pacific region, and, at the same time, elevated China’s
position in the international arena. This conjuncture made China more confident andemboldened in the implementation of the country’s “dream” of redrawing the regional orderthrough mega-ideas and initiatives with special focus on economics, finance and trade, andconcurrently, and in furthering encroachments on the ground in South China Sea. It can besaid that on the ground, the military balance is slowly tilting towards China. This trend isvery difficult to reverse and is the primary reason why China has been more confident andemboldened on the ground. The trend will continue to be the major catalyst for increased
cooperation by the major external powers, with one another and with ASEAN, for a better
security and stability in the region.
- In the regional domain, ASEAN made certain steps forward and showed a higher
degree of consensus, partially owing to Myanmar’s principled maneuvers, Thailand’s
responsible implementation of its duties as coordinating member, and the ASEAN countries.
Furthermore, external factors also made important contributions, for instance, the U.S. andJapan’s increased lobbying in ASEAN, which helped trigger shifts in ASEAN.
- In the domestic domain, the most notable and consequential factor was China’s
internal situation. Xi Jinping’s rapid concentration of power, holding high the slogans of“Chinese dream” and “national rejuvenation”, were the most important factors shaping
China’s increased firmness in territorial sovereignty disputes as well as encouragements andfacilitating measures for the navy, law enforcement authorities and fishermen to expand
sea-based activities. This, in the past times, has been the primary reason for China’s
extensive maritime activities and the absence of “forces” and voices of “restraint.”
Domestic politics in the Philippines also heavily impacted President Aquino’s policies.
After the Scarborough incident in 2012, Aquino was strongly criticized and thus, had to adopt
a policy of counter-measures and confrontation vis-à-vis China.
The presidential election in Indonesia prompted a number of circles in the country to
be “tougher” in maritime issues, affecting the attitudes of other circles with regards to South
China Sea issue.
Meanwhile, the political situation in Malaysia continued to progress in a complex
manner in the aftermath of the 2013 elections, making Prime Minister Nazib even morecautious when he comes to relations with China.
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4. Some forecasts for 2015
In 2015, the international, regional and domestic situations in many countries are
expected to undergo new changes, directly and indirectly, affecting the situation on South
China Sea. The most noteworthy aspects are as follows:

In the international domain: The trend of “conciliation” and de-escalation of tensions
in U.S.-China relations may continue throughout the election year due to increasing
interdependence, although pressure from the Republican-controlled House and Senate may
be on the rise. This trend will cause the U.S.’s reactions to China’s actions on South China Sea,
both on the diplomatic table and on the ground, to stay within a limit and to be moderated by
the Administration so as to not reverse the trend. However, the nuances in U.S.-China
relations will bear new unpredictable factors in the election year with the introduction of a
new Defense Secretary and an increased need for cooperation in combating terrorism andradical organizations such as IS. For China, the fall in oil price may temporarily ease oil’spressure but will not exert a substantial impact on its strategic objectives and methods in themaritime domain currently being implemented.

In the regional domain: The fact that China continues to step up its maritime power
strategy, implementing the maritime silk road initiative, beginning to disburse the Silk Road
fund worth 40 billion USD and carrying out the constituent parts of the “China-ASEAN Yearof Maritime Cooperation” in 2015 will strongly impact the regional political-diplomatic
environment. The Philippines’ lawsuit may witness major developments in 2015 and will be aforeseeable turning point. Indonesia’s bringing to substance and regionalization of the“maritime pivot” doctrine will affect Indonesia’s role and position in ASEAN in South China
Sea issue. If Indonesia puts forth visions and principles that are in concert with ASEAN’s
common position (UNCLOS, connectivity, etc.), it is highly likely that the country will serve asa positive factor in the promotion of ASEAN solidarity with regards to South China Sea issue.
The next pair of Malaysia – Singapore (ASEAN Chair – coordinator in China-ASEAN
relations) may create “some surprise” in 2015 because the two are representatives of claimantand non-claimant countries respectively, but also have great interests in South China Sea andin relations with China. Malaysia will infuse ASEAN into its principle of “quiet diplomacy.” It
may use the existing level of confidence with China to create breakthroughs, given that itskillfully handles the situation and is able to take advantage of the trust and cooperation
between ASEAN countries.

In the domestic domain, aside from the U.S. election, it is essential to continue tocarefully monitor domestic elements in China, Xi Jinping’s ability to control internal
conditions, especially in the dormant period after APEC and before the Boao forum and
ASEAN Summits. Internal factors in the Philippines (Aquino’s policy adjustments the latter
half of his term) and the Indonesian President and Thailand’s new government’s emerging
foreign policy will all bear significant impacts on ASEAN in 2015.
In closing, for China, the “charm offensive” trend of 2014 will continue to stress the- 70 -

“charm” aspect on the political-diplomatic front through the intensification of mega-initiatives,
and the “offensive” aspect on the ground through the continued increase in capacity anddetermination to expand the scope of activity by “intervening factors” such as the navy, oilrigs, fishermen, all the while in the absence large major events that can serve as restraint
over these forces. On the legal front, 2015 is expected to be a suspenseful year with the court’s
ruling on the Philippines’ lawsuit nearing. COC consultation work will carry on throughout
the year and may see some progress during Malaysia’s term; nevertheless major
breakthroughs are unlikely.

- 71 -

The South China Sea and Maritime Security Efforts in Asia-Pacific:
A Revisit
Zhu Feng, Ph.D.
Executive Director of China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea
Professor of International Relations, Nanjing University

The South China Sea contains one of the world’s busiest international sea lanes andis home to a handful of the world’s largest shipping ports. The fact that the South China Sea
connects the Pacific and Indian Oceans further adds to the strategic weight in the calculus of
big powers. Exactly for this matter, when the end of the Cold War brought about afundamental restructuring of the global geopolitical environment in the 1990s, the South
China Sea emerged to become a flashpoint of potential conflict in the Asia-Pacific region.
Situation in the South China Sea was relatively tranquil during the first decade of the newmillennium, following the successful conclusion of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties
in the South China Sea in 2002 as a result of several years of strenuous negotiation between
China and the ASEAN. This trajectory of the South China Sea suddenly began to shift gear in
2009, after the Obama administration declared the high-profile “rebalance towards Asia”.
Tensions began to boil up again, are increasingly taking a more direct tit-for-tat way. This
contentious region seems to be sliding into a dangerous trap of great power rivalry, a situation
every involved party is worried about but either unwilling or unable to forestall.
This paper aims to give an appraisal of the latest development in the SCS since 2013,
which is unfolded in three parts. It starts with a brief overview of the intimate policy
interactions between the United States and its Asia allies in response to growing tensions in
the region. The second part of this paper looks at the enhancing partnership between U.S.
alliance system and Vietnam and the Russia-India-Vietnam triangle that is quickly
developing over the course of the past few years. The third section focuses on China’s policy indealing with the geopolitical flux in South China Sea region.
1. Consolidation of the U.S.-led alliance system in the South China Sea region
The South China Sea region is witnessing an increasing consolidation of the
US-alliance system and the strengthening of cooperation between the claimants andextra-regional non-claimants. In the period of 2013-2014, the U.S. continued its efforts toenhance the capability of its Asian ally—the Philippines in defending its position. In response
to Chinese naval patrols in the vicinity of the Second Thomas Shoal, a feature occupied by thePhilippines in 1999 during the DOC negotiation between China and ASEAN, the U.S. sent
P-3C Orion aircraft to flying reconnaissance over the shoal to assist Manila’s maritime
domain awareness1. The U.S. also promised to provide the Philippines with $40 million tostrengthen maritime security and considered to locate U.S. troops on a rotational basis, just
“DFA: Spy Planes to Gather Evidence vs China," Rappler, August 1, 2013,
http://www.rappler.com/nation/35327-dfa-spy-planes-evidence-China.

1- 72 -

as it has done in Australia—another U.S. ally2.
In the meantime, the U.S. started to publicly endorse the Philippines’ approach indealing with China. In the beginning of 2014, Daniel Russel, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State
for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, for the first time testified in congressional hearings that
the U.S. government would “fully support the right of claimants to exercise rights they may
have to avail themselves of peaceful dispute settlement mechanisms,” and directly mentioned
the Philippines’ case as an example3.

These remarks demonstrated the increasing resolve of

the U.S. to back up its allies U.S. position in the South China Sea. On August 9, 2014, the U.S.
state secretary John Kerry put forth a proposal of freezing provocative acts in the South
China Sea during the ASEAN Regional Forum. The Philippines echoed the freeze proposal,
signaling a coordinated position between Washington and Manila. This proposal was rejectedby Le Luong Minh, secretary-general of ASEAN on the basis that there was already amechanism in place to curtail sensitive action such as land reclamation and building on
disputed islands4.
The American and Philippine leaders have also become more vocal in directly
confronting China. In the February 5 Congressional hearing, Daniel Russel directly
challenged the legitimacy of China’s “nine-dash line” claim, saying “maritime claims in theSouth China Sea must be derived from land features. Any use of the “nine dash line” by China
to claim maritime rights not based on claimed land features would be inconsistent withinternational law. The international community would welcome China to clarify or adjust its
nine-dash line claim to bring it in accordance with the international law of the sea5.” In aninterview with the New York Times on February 4, a day before Russel’s testimony, Philippine
president Benigno Aquino derided China by likening Beijing to Berlin on the eve of World War
II6. On May 7, Philippine authorities arrested 11 Chinese fishermen near Half Moon Shoalin the Spratlys. Despite demands from Beijing for their release, Manila charged 9 of the 11.
The other two were released as juveniles7.
Similar pattern is identified in the defense relationship between U.S. and Japan,
another US long-term ally. Washington and Tokyo made the decision in October of last year torevise their alliance’s mutual defense guidelines. The last time the two countries revised theguidelines was in 1997. In December 2013, The Abe government in Tokyo adopted its first
Opening Statement of Representative Steve Chabot, House hearing on “Maritime Sovereignty inthe East and South China Seas,” January 14, 2014.
3 Testimony of Daniel Russel, Assistant Secretary of State Bureau of East Asian and PacificAffairs, U.S. Department of State Before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommitteeon Asia and the Pacific Wednesday, February 5, 2014.
4 Paul Mooney and Lesley Wroughton, “U.S. Call for South China Sea 'Freeze' Gets Cool Response
from China,” Reuters, August 9, 2014,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/09/us-asean-southchinasea-idUSKBN0G904O20140809.
5 Ibid.
6 Keith Bradsher, “Philippine Leader Sounds Alarm on China,” New York Times, February 4, 2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/world/asia/philippine-leader-urges-international-help-in-resisting-chinas-sea-claims.html?_r=0.
7 Gregory B. Poling, “Recent Trends in the South China Sea and U.S. Policy,” CSIS Publication,
July 2014.
2- 73 -

“National Security Strategy” aimed at eliminating restrictions of its pacifist constitution,paving the way for the revision of US-Japan mutual defence treaty. Last month, Washington
and Tokyo officially started the process of updating their defense cooperation guidelines “inresponse to new threats extant in the world”, hinting that the revision was aimed atcountering China and situation in areas beyond the immediate region of Japan8.

An interim

five-page planning document was released by US and Japan, which specifically called for thetwo countries to pursue “a more expansive partnership” through “enhanced capabilities andgreater shared responsibilities9.” The two sides expected to finalize all revisions and publish
the new guidelines by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, following the step of American to build up Philippines’ security capacity,
Japan also increased its military assistance to the Philippines. Tokyo is set to provide 10
patrol ships to Manila, and on Oct. 2 it joined for the first time in the U.S-Philippine
PHIBLEX amphibious landing exercise that simulated seizing an island under attack byenemy forces10.

Japan's participation in the PHIBLEX is viewed “a first step in deciding thefuture role for the SDF following a Cabinet decision in July to reinterpret the Constitution toallow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense11.”
2. Tightening U.S alliance system-Vietnam ties and rising Russia-India-Vietnam triangle
The consolidation of bilateral and trilateral bonds within the US alliance system
expounded above is accompanied by concerted efforts taken by the US alliance system tobuilding a more intimate partnership with Vietnam. Over the course of 2013-2014, U.S. andJapan complemented each other in providing military assistance to Vietnam. In early 2013,
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered $500 million loans to Vietnam. In September of2013, Japan’s Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera visited Vietnam. Onodera and his
Vietnamese counterpart, General Phung Quang Thanh agreed to expand cooperation in
maritime training, modernization of maritime enforcement agencies and militarytechnology12.

In December 2013, the U.S. State Secretary Kerry pledged $18 million in

maritime assistance to Vietnam. In March 2014, Shinzo Abe and Vietnamese President
Truong Tan Sang declared to elevate their relationship to an Extensive Strategic Partnership.
Echoing the tone set forth by Daniel Russel a month earlier, Abe and Dung reaffirmed “theimportance of ensuring peace, stability and development in the region, especially theguarantee of maritime and aviation peace, freedom, security and safety based oninternational law as well as the 1982 UNCLOS.” In particular, Abe expressed Japan’s
willingness to assist Vietnam in enhancing its capacity in maritime law enforcement. In June
2014, the Japanese landing ship Kunisaki docked at Tien Sa port, Da Nang as part of a U.S.
8 Jim Garamone, “Officials Discuss Report on U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines,” DoD News, Oct. 8,
2014, http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=123362
9 See Ankit Panda, “US, Japan Overhaul Mutual Defense Guidelines,” The Diplomat, October 9,
2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/us-japan-overhaul-mutual-defense-guidelines/
10 ͆SDF Observes Island Defense Exercise in Philippines, Aimed at Countering China,” Asahi
Shimbun, October 3, 2014, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201410030061.
11

Ibid.

Carl Thayer, “Vietnam's Extensive Strategic Partnership with Japan,” The Diplomat, October
14, 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/vietnams-extensive-strategic-partnership-with-japan/

12- 74 -

Navy-supported Pacific Partnership. On August 1, Japan announced that it would provide
Vietnam with six vessels to boost its security capacity, scheduled to be delivered by the end of
this year13. A month later, the US announced that it would partially lift its decades-old
embargo on providing lethal military support to Vietnam as part of its effort to help improve
the latter’s maritime apparatus14.
Bilateral relationship between the Philippines and Vietnam also greatly enhanced,
in spite of their conflicting maritime claims. During the meeting of the Philippines-Vietnam
Joint Commission for Bilateral Cooperation on August 1, 2014, Foreign Secretary del Rosario
and Foreign Minister Minh pledged to work closely together to convince the rest of ASEAN topush China harder on a timely conclusion of a COC. The two government officials met again
in Manila on August 25-27, where their discussions also focused on joint security concerns in
the South China Sea15.
Concurrently, Russia and India have been quickly deepening their involvement in
the South China Sea, in particular through the enhancement of Russia-India-Vietnam
triangle. The three countries are closely cooperating in the defense sector. India’s efforts tobuild close ties with Vietnam are largely motivated by its Look East policy16.

And Russia is amajor arms supplier to Vietnam. Vietnam purchased a package of 6 Kilo-class submarine in2009. These submarines are due for delivery in November of this year. In 2013, India agreed
to provide training to over 500 Vietnamese sailors to help Vietnam make better use of thesubmarines and submarine-launched anti-ship missiles newly acquired from Russia17.

In

August this year, Vietnam purchased from Russia 12 Su-30MK2 fighters, an aircraft known
for long-range maritime strike, while India is set to provide training for Vietnamese Su-30
pilots. Last year, Vietnam also requested India to supply BrahMos supersonic anti-ship
missiles manufactured by a Russian-India joint venture18. In the meantime, Moscow andHanoi have been developing a joint missile analogous to Russia's Kh-35 Uran19.

Martin Petty, “Japan Offers Vessels to Vietnam to Boost Its Sea Strength,” Reuters, August 1,
2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/01/us-vietnam-japan-idUSKBN0G13EA20140801.
14 Antik Panda, “United States Lifts Vietnam Arms Embargo (With a Catch),” The Diplomat,
October 3, 2014,
http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/united-states-lifts-vietnam-arms-embargo-with-a-catch/
15 Gregory B. Poling, “Recent Trends in the South China Sea and U.S. Policy,” CSIS Publication,
http://csis.org/publication/recent-trends-south-china-sea-and-us-policy.
16 Harsh V. Pant, “India and Vietnam Add a Punch to Their Ties,” Japan Times, November 29,
2013,
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/11/29/commentary/world-commentary/india-and-vietna
m-add-a-punch-to-their-ties/#.VFYuZTSUcje.
17 Carl Thayer, “How India-Vietnam Strategic Ties Are Mutually Beneficial,” The Diplomat,
December 3, 2013,
http://thediplomat.com/2013/12/how-india-vietnam-strategic-ties-are-mutually-beneficial/
18 Ankit Panda, “India-Vietnam Supersonic Missile Talks in 'Advanced Stage',” The Diplomat,
September 15, 2014,
http://thediplomat.com/2014/09/india-vietnam-hypersonic-missile-talks-in-advanced-stage/
19 Alexander Korablinov, “Vietnam Looking to Purchase BrahMos Cruise Missiles,” Russia &India Report, December 3, 2013,
http://in.rbth.com/economics/2013/12/03/vietnam_looking_to_purchase_brahmos_cruise_missiles_
31321.html
13- 75 -

India’s involvement in the South China Sea is not limited to defense cooperation with
Vietnam outlined above. Indian energy companies have been working closely with Vietnam inhydrocarbon exploration in the South China Sea. More recently, India demonstrates anincreased willing to exert greater impact in shaping the South China Sea dynamics. At theend of September, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his inaugural state visit to
the U.S. issued a Joint Statement with US President Obama which, for the first time,
specifically mentioned the situation in the South China Sea, expressing their concern about“rising tensions over maritime territorial disputes” in the region20.
Altogether, the entanglement of Vietnam, Russia, India and the U.S. alliance system
including U.S., Japan and Philippines in the South China Sea tensions and the strengtheningof bilateral and multilateral ties among these countries are casting a very complicated lighton the future trajectory of the South China Sea region.
3. China’s policy towards the South China Sea
China’s handling of the South China Sea could be unpacked into two set of policy
initiatives. Falling in the first set are law enforcement measures, which are often used as, notonly by China but also other claimants. These law enforcement measures have been used as ameans to assert China’s sovereign claims or block opposing parties’ efforts to fortify theirclaims. In the summer of 2013, China began to patrol Second Thomas Shoal, a feature also
claimed by the Philippines. The shoal stations a Philippine navy ship BRP Sierra Madre since1999 with a handful of Filipino marines to enforce the Philippines’ claim to the reef21.

In

March 2014, Chinese coast guard vessels blocked two Filipino civilian vessels fromresupplying marines located on the Second Thomas Shoal. China perceived the Philippines
activities as building structures on the Second Thomas Shoal in a bid to consolidate its claimsof sovereignty over the disputed reef22.

In January 26, one amphibious landing craft and twodestroyers patrolled near the disputed James Shoal. Chinese personnel on the ships also helda ceremony at the shoal swearing to defend China’s sovereignty. China has also tried todefend Scarborough Shoal. In 2013-2014, Chinese surveillance vessels have blocked several
attempts by the Philippines’ to use fishing vessels to approach the Scarborough Shoal23.
On May 2, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) placed a
deep-water drilling rig in waters south of the Paracel Islands disputed by Vietnam. Vietnam
dispatched over 20 coast guard and fisheries surveillance ships to harass the oil rig andprevent its operations. On the Chinese side, over 80 Chinese ships were deployed to surroundthe rig, using water cannons to prevent Vietnamese ships from getting close to the oil rig.
China’s action triggered deadly anti-Chinese demonstrations in Vietnam. The drilling rig was
U.S.-India Joint Statement, the White House, September 30, 2014,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/30/us-india-joint-statement.
21 Darshana M. Baruah, “Second Thomas Shoal: The New Battleground,” The Diplomat, April
30, 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/second-thomas-shoal-the-new-battleground/
22 Zachary Keck, “Second Thomas Shoal Tensions Intensify,” The Diplomat, March 13, 2014,
http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/second-thomas-shoal-tensions-intensify/
23 Gregory B. Poling, “Recent Trends in the South China Sea and U.S. Policy,” CSIS Publication,
http://csis.org/publication/recent-trends-south-china-sea-and-us-policy.
20- 76 -

withdrawn on July 16 after two months of operation.
Location of the Chinese enterprise’s operation24:

While the law enforcement activities mentioned above are designed purposefully as a
response to the policy actions outlined in previous sections, there are also other law
enforcement measures devised for dual-use, in the sense that these policies not only are tools
to assert sovereignty but demonstrate a considerable level of continuity in China’s effort toaddress increasing environmental challenges. Take for instance the new regulation
promulgated by Hainan province to implement new fisheries law. In December 2013, Hainan
province promulgated new regulations to implement 2004 national fisheries law, which tookeffect on January 1, 2014. New regulations requested that all vessels seek permission from
Chinese authorities before fishing or surveying in waters under Hainan’s jurisdiction. While
this policy was used to bolster China’s administration over the claimed waters, it was alsopart of a series of adjustments attempted by the Chinese government to tackle the issue offisheries depletion in the South China Sea waters.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, China’s fishery policy in the South China Sea wasdesigned for economic purpose, to encourage exploitation of fisheries resources. The overall
aim of the 1986 Fisheries Law was to promote the development of fishing capacities. It did notprovide powerful enough penalties to tackle the problems of unsustainable use of fisheries
resources and non-compliance. This resulted in the failure to deter illegal and unregulated
fishing 25 .

As the conservation of fisheries resources and marine ecosystems became agrowing concern for fisheries management, Chinese authorities began to address theseissues26, resulting in a series of legislation including the Amendment to Fisheries Law which
passed on 31 Oct 2000 and entered into force in 200427.

In the meantime, the Chinese

Source: Foreign Ministry of P. R. China, “981 Oil Rig: Vietnam’s Provocation and China’s
Stance,” Annex 1, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_chn/zyxw_602251/W020140608602937493159.jpg
25 Zheng Liu, “How to Establish and Improve the Fisheries Legal System in China,” Chinese
Fisheries Economics, 4 (1999), p.19, in Chinese.
26 Xue Guifang, International Fisheries Law and China's Practice, (Qingdao: China Ocean
University Press, 2008), p.104.
27 For the text of 2000 amended law, see Gazette of the Standing Committee of the National
People's Congress of the People's Republic of China, 6 (2000), pp.608-615, in Chinese.
24- 77 -

government began to implement fishing ban, starting in 1998, in the area to the north of 12°N
in the South China Sea (including the Gulf of Tonkin) from noon 1 June to noon 1 August28.
Based on experience accumulated in the first ten years of implementing the fishing ban(1999-2008), the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) observed that climate change had moved up
the maturing period of many fisheries from the summer to late spring, and revised the fishingban policy in February 200929.
from 1 June to 16 May30.
fishingboats 31 ,The new policy moved up the starting date of the fishing ban

The new policy also extended the fishing ban to include foreignout of concern that the effect of protecting fishery resources would be

discounted if not applied to increasing foreign fishing activities in the same period32.
China’s response to the U.S. military reconnaissance activities in the South China
Sea belongs to the second policy category. Over the past year, Chinese policy makers became
more straightforward in confronting reconnaissance activities conducted by the U.S.. On
December 5, 2013, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) intercepted a US Navy guided
missile cruiser USS Cowpens which was forced to make an “all stop” order in the water33.

At

that time, the USS Cowpens, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, was closely
monitoring the activities of China’s aircraft carrier Liaoning and the carrier group in theSouth China Sea. A PLAN ship made radio contact with the Cowpens, requesting it to leave
the area. After Cowpens declined to change course, a PLAN Amphibious Dock Ship thatsuddenly crossed its bow at a distance of less than 500 meters and stopped in the water. The
USS Cowpens was forced to take evasive action to avoid a collision34.

Similar confrontations

also occurred in the airspace. It is reported that since March 2014, U.S. and Chinese aircraft
have had several close encounters35.

A more recent case took place in August. On August 19,

the U.S. navy P-3 anti-submarine plane and P-8 aircraft conducted a reconnaissance flightwithin 220 kilometers (137 miles) of Hainan Island. Chinese fighter jet J-11 and a US Navysurveillance aircraft P-8 made a close encounter36.
28

Nevertheless, there has also been some

The Ministry of Agriculture of China, Circular on the Enforcement of the Summer Moratorium

in the South China Sea, 1999.

Zhuang Wu, “The Tenth Anniversary of Fishing Ban: a Review and Reflection,” China Fisheries,
8 (2008), in Chinese.
30 ͆Fishing Ban of the South China Sea Region Extends to 77 Days in 2009,” Xinhua News, 22
April 2009, accessed 2 January, 2014,
http://www.gx.xinhuanet.com/dtzx/2009-04/22/content_16329712.htm.
31 Michael D. Swaine and M. Taylor Fravel, “China’s Assertive Behavior—Part Two: The Maritime
Periphery,” China Leadership Monitor 35 (2011): 5.
32 Bin Che and Tao Xiong, “Impact of the South China Sea Dispute on Fisheries andCountermeasures,” Research of Agricultural Modernization 30, no. 4 (2009): 416, in Chinese.
33 Barbara Starr, “U.S., Chinese Warships Come Dangerously Close,” December 13, 2013, CNN,
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/13/politics/us-china-confrontation/
34 Carl Thayer, “USS Cowpens Incident Reveals Strategic Mistrust Between U.S. and China,” The
Diplomat, December 17, 2013,
http://thediplomat.com/2013/12/uss-cowpens-incident-reveals-strategic-mistrust-between-u-s-andchina/
35 ͆China Urges U.S. to Halt Close Air Surveillance After Encounter,” Bloomberg News, August 24,
2014,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-24/china-urges-u-s-to-halt-close-air-surveillance-after-encounter.html
36 Chen Weihua, “US surveillance near Chinese coast a growing concern,” China Daily USA,
August 25, 2014, http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2014-08/25/content_18480883.htm
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positive achievement in managing such risky encounters. On April 22-23, the Western PacificNaval Symposium (WPNS) was hosted in Qingdao China. It was the first time that China had
hosted WPNS forum. A significant achievement from this symposium was the creation of a
new naval code of conduct, called CUES—the Code of Unplanned Encounters at Sea—whichaims to avoid dangerous situations among navies in the Pacific Rim. On October 29, during
the Dialogue on Sino-Japanese Airspace Crisis Management in the East China Sea (Track II),
the applicability of CUES in regulating dangerous encounters in the airspace was hotly
discussed37.
As regards the COC negotiation, in 2013, Brunei assumed the ASEAN chair andVietnamese diplomat Le Luong Minh became the new ASEAN secretary general. Both areclaimant nations of the SCS and pledged to place priority on kick-starting discussions with
China on a COC38.

However, this progress was overshadowed by the Philippines’ decision toinitiate an international arbitration process in the beginning of the 2013, which caught China
and other ASEAN countries by surprise. China publicly refused to take part in the arbitration
process. Concern was expressed by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in August 2013 during
his visit to Vietnam. Wang Yi attributed the earlier failure of developing a COC to"disturbances from certain parties" (presumably the Philippines)39, while calling for parties to"make efforts that are conducive to the process so as to create the necessary conditions andatmosphere [for negotiation]40".

37 ͆Disclosing the Dialogue on Sino-Japanese Airspace Crisis Management (Track II),” October 30,

2014, http://military.people.com.cn/n/2014/1030/c1011-25939718.html.
Carlyle A. Thayer, “New Commitment to a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea?” The
National Bureau of Asian Research Commentary, 9 October, 2013, accessed 6 March, 2014,
http://nbr.org/research/activity.aspx?id=360#.Uxk0E84z3KQ.
39 Richard Javad Heydarian, “Dual Track Trouble in the South China Sea,” Asia Times, August 13,
2013, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/SEA-01-200813.html
40 Wang Yi raised four points. The third point called on relevant countries to eliminate
interferences and create the necessary conditions and atmosphere, not going the opposite way,
which presumably was referring to the Philippines’ recent action to invoke dispute settlement
procedures of the LOSC. The four points are as follows:
1) Reasonable expectations. Some countries are talking about "quick fix," like reachingconsensus on COC within one day. It is an attitude neither realistic nor serious. COC involves
multilateral interests from different parties, and its formulation is a process of sophisticated andcomplex coordination.
2) Consensus through negotiations. We should refer to the experience of reaching DOC to move
forward COC, to seek consensus as broadly as possible and to keep the comfort of all parties inmind. Wills of individual countries or of a few countries should not be imposed on other countries,
as an old Chinese saying, nothing forcibly done is going to be agreeable.
3) Elimination of interference. China and ASEAN countries tried several times to holddiscussions on COC before, but got stuck due to interference. All parties concerned should do more
to help move forward the process of COC, and create the necessary conditions and atmosphere, notgoing the opposite way.
4) Step-by-step approach. The formulation of COC is stipulated in DOC. COC is not to replace
DOC, much less to ignore DOC and go its own way. The top priority now is to continue to
implement DOC, especially promoting maritime cooperation. In this process, we should formulate
the road map for COC through consultations, and push it forward in a step-by-step approach.
See “Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Process of ‘Code of Conduct in the South China Sea,’” Ministryof Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 5 August, 2013, available on MFA website at
http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/zxxx/t1064869.shtml, last accessed on 6 March, 2014.
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During the Asian Regional Forum held in early August this year, Foreign Minister
Wang Yi rejected the “freeze” proposal put forth by the American participants while proposing
instead a “dual-track” approach to ministers of ASEAN countries. Wang expounded that the"dual-track" approach consists of two elements. Consultations and negotiations by countries
directly concerned are the most effective and viable way to resolve disputes, which also
conform to international law and common practices and constitute one of the most important
provisions in the Declaration on the Code of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).
Meanwhile, China and ASEAN countries need to work together to uphold peace and stability
in the whole South China Sea region41.
4. Conclusion
Over the course of 2013-2014, the U.S. alliance system is fully geared to assert amore influential role in shaping the trajectory of the South China Sea dispute. In themeantime, China’s South China Sea policy is also viewed by many as embarking on a more
assertive track.

The new leadership in China seems to have become more willing to use law

enforcement activities to strengthen China’s sovereign claims and more direct in responding
to policy actions of other countries. Tensions between China and the U.S. alliance system areincreasingly dragging the whole region into the trap of great power rivalry to the benefit of noparty. The entanglement of India and Russia further dims the prospect of a peacefulresolution of the dispute.

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͆China Supports 'Dual-Track' Approach to Resolve Dispute,” Xinhua News, August 10, 2014,
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-08/10/content_18280181.htm
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Strategic Triangle in the South China Sea

VADM Yoji Koda (Ret.),Former Commander in Chief of the Self Defense Fleet, Japan Maritime Self Defense ForceThis strategic map showing “The Strategic Triangle in the South China Sea” was presented by
VADM Yoji Koda during the Symposium

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The choice is ours