From “Assuring Freedom of Navigation” to “Drill, Baby, Drill” in the SCS

As I predicted a while back, the United States has quietly ditched its old, underperforming pretext for confrontation in the South China Sea and is sidestepping into a new justification.

I do not care deeply about America’s stake in the South China Sea.

So I have little interest in slogging through recent US & PRC contributions to the controversy du jour: the viability or lack thereof of the notorious nine dash line or 9DL under international law.

The only people who should give a sh*t about the South China Sea are the Chinese.  Much of the PRC’s trade and Middle East energy pass through the SCS; and the determined US rapprochement with Myanmar (and anti-Chinese activism by the PRC's domestic Myanmar opponents) has threatened one of the PRC’s important energy security countermoves: the Rakhine to Kunming oil and gas pipeline originating beyond the western end of the Malacca Straits.

But the PRC’s conflicts with its SCS neighbors—and the ridiculous burden of the nine-dash line—are China’s key areas of strategic & diplomatic vulnerability.  The United States has been working assiduously to exploit the PRC’s difficulties and foreclose the logical trajectory for conflict resolution since 2010, when Hillary Clinton declared the United States had a strategic interest in freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, a sea I might point out, which is of overwhelming strategic importance to only one major power, the PRC.

Instead of allowing the conflicts to resolve themselves through bilateral discussions, with the PRC basically sticking it to Vietnam and the Philippines and confirming its dominant strategic posture in the South China Sea, the United States worked overtly to internationalize them through ASEAN and has discretely encouraged the Philippines and Vietnam to defy the PRC and thereby keep the conflicts alive.

Case in point, the apparent sabotage of PRC-Philippine bilateral negotiations over the Scarborough Shoal in 2012 by Kurt Campbell and Alberto Del Rosario.

The commentariat apparently swallowed Kurt Campbell’s ridiculous line about the Scarborough Shoal encounter which, stripped of the persiflage, boils down to this:

First, the PRC abandoned its desperately defended insistence on bilateral negotiations with the Philippines (and its other SCS interlocutors, for that matter), to settle the affair in a completely Filipino-free environment with one of its most detested adversaries, the Pappy of the Pivot, Kurt Campbell, in a Virginia motel room;

Second, the PRC decided virtually instantaneously to renege on the revolutionary initiative they had just negotiated with Campbell.

As a couple carefree hours of googling the English-language Philippine press reveals, this story is BS.   

President Aquino was deep in backchannel talks directly with Beijing. 

Del Rosario blew up the bilateral initiative and bewildered everybody with jibberjabber accusing the Chinese of reneging on a US-brokered deal that probably existed only in the fertile imagination of Kurt Campbell. 

Perhaps it gives the commentariat brainhurt to consider the possibility that Kurt Campbell is yanking its chain and the US might conceivably be guilty of counterproductive and destabilizing behavior in Asia in order to create a strategic opportunity.

I could understand that, I guess.  Life and work are easier when you treat Kurt Campbell as a font of insider expertise, instead of calculating dispenser of dodgy and self-serving narratives.  The path to fame and fortune in Asia pundit-land is not, I guess, paved with skepticism concerning Kurt Campbell and US talking points. 

The SCS is now officially, a thing, something for the military-industrial-think tank complex to batten on.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies has institutionalized its handwringing over the SCS in a new initiative, the “AsiaMaritime Transparency Initiative”: 

Competing territorial claims, incidents between neighboring countries, and increasing militarization, however, raise the possibility that an isolated event at sea could become a geopolitical catastrophe. This is all occurring against a backdrop of relative opaqueness. Geography makes it difficult to monitor events as they occur, and there is no public, reliable authority for information on maritime developments.

The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative seeks to change this. AMTI was conceived of and designed by CSIS. It is an interactive, regularly-updated source for information, analysis, and policy exchange on maritime security issues in Asia. AMTI aims to promote transparency in the Indo-Pacific to dissuade assertive behavior and conflict and generate opportunities for cooperation and confidence building.

…

There may be circumstances when AMTI cannot confidently de-conflict contradictory but credible accounts of the same event. In such cases, we will be guided by our advisory board as to whether to post the event showing multiple, plausible accounts, or await further information.

…

AMTI is made possible by Asia Program internal funding as well as a start-up grant from the Brzezinski Institute on Geostrategy. CSIS is in the process of soliciting funding for the initiative from governments in Asia, as well as corporate and foundation support.

I see a platform to document, broadcast and legitimize anti-PRC talking points in anticipation of SCS clashes in line with the close-surveillance “naming and shaming” tactics previously proposed to put a crimp in PRC’s seaborne mischief.  Prove me wrong, I beg you.

In my piece from earlier this year, reproduced below, I argue that Campbell’s motive in 2014 was to retroactively frame the PRC as the great betrayer of peace and security in the SCS, in order to deal with the fact that the PRC had neutralized the “threat to freedom of navigation” gambit—and in fact in mid 2014 turned it on its head and made an apparent spectacle of US doctrinal impotence by freely navigating the HYSY 981 oil rig through the South China Sea—and provide a narrative basis for justifying an overt US slide toward a new, hopefully more effective but also overtly anti-PRC position.

I think we’ve seen that with the release of the US paper.  By declaring its opinion that the nine-dash line doesn’t conform to the international law of the sea (I will not excessively belabor the fact that the US itself has not ratified UNCLOS), the US government is not only “taking sides”; it is taking the position that the PRC is improperly denying US interests their fair access to the oily goodness of the South China Sea.  Or as Jeffrey Bader put it, US interests include:

To ensure that all countries, including the U.S., have the right to exploit the mineral and fish resources outside of legitimate Exclusive Economic Zones.

This is a touch disingenuous, perhaps.  Since Vietnam is not abandoning its claim to the PRC-occupied Spratlys—and claims a corresponding EEZ all the way up to the Philippine EEZ—there might not be any UNCLOS-certified mutually-agreed free-and-clear seabed for the US to sashay into.

But by abandoning the non-flying “threat to freedom of navigation” canard in favor of the “Hey, we got a right to drill in the SCS, dammit!” repudiation of the 9DL, the United States can finally claim some real skin in the game, if not in international waters, then maybe in a consortium exploiting stuff within an EEZ.

Perhaps the next shoe to drop or splash (assuming the arbitral committee comes up with a suitable repudiation of the nine-dash line) might be for an international flotilla including US ships to shield an internationally-financed (with US investment, natch) Phillipines-sanctioned survey ship or drilling rig off the Recto Bank from Chinese harassment in a mirror-image to the crowd of PRC ships that surrounded the HYSY 981 in its foray in contested waters off the Spratlys.  If that works, maybe Vietnam might get into the energy incident act as well.  Maybe India and Japan will be emboldened to make good on their promises and pitch in, too.  Maybe.

If there’s a collision, I expect the AMTI website to get very busy, in this case replicating the parade of Japanese videos released on the occasion of PRC-Japan Senkaku encounters.

Trouble is, I think the PRC is not going to back down.  Its lengthy riposte to the Philippine arbitration case is an indicator that it has the determination to defy/ignore an unfavorable ruling.

I think the PRC will act on the assumption its existential interest in the SCS will trump the US determination to embarrass and inconvenience the PRC in its own backyard.  And we will get caught in an escalatory spiral which, despite the financial and psychic benefits it dispenses to the armed services, defense contractors, and pundits, will be expensive, destabilizing, and ultimately counterproductive to US interests and prestige.

In other words, ten years from now we might not be celebrating the time we stopped Chinese aggression, ah, excuse me, assertiveness at Fiery Cross Reef and assured the security of our Philippine coconut milk supplies 4evah, and instead might ask ruefully, “Since when did we think it was a good idea to twist the PRC’s nuts repeatedly on the SCS?”

We’ve made our watery geostrategic bed in the South China Sea.  Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn out to be our grave.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Debunking America's Scarborough Shoal Dolchstoss Meme

... or “Goodbye Honest Broker” 

Whoever is rolling out the new US maritime strategy for East Asia apparently regards the Financial Times as his or her chosen instrument.  The FT, for its part, appears to believe that it completes its journalistic mission by reporting the US position, and sees no need to examine the US claims in detail, a shortcoming I intend to remedy in this piece.

In recent days two backgrounded FT articles have expressed US frustration with Chinese salami-slicing and cabbage wrapping in the South China Sea.  From the first piece, Pentagon plans new tactics to deter China in South China Sea:

In recent months, the US has come to two broad conclusions about its approach to the South China Sea. The first is that its efforts at deterrence are having only limited impact. Despite considerable US attention and rhetoric since 2010, China has slowly continued to shift the status quo in ways that are rattling both many of its neighbours and the US.

The second is that US military strategy in the region has to some extent been asking the wrong question. For several years, some of the Pentagon’s best minds have been focused on how the US would win a protracted war with China and have come up with a new concept – known as AirSea Battle – to ensure continued access of US aircraft and ships to contested areas during a conflict.

However, the reality is that Washington is facing a very different military challenge, a creeping assertion of control by the Chinese that often involves civilian rather than naval vessels – the sort of grey area that would not normally warrant any response from the US.

The solution doesn’t appear particularly impressive on the surface: basically naming and shaming through increased and closer US surveillance.  

More important, perhaps, is the thrust of the second article: an effort to paint the PRC as the guys who cheated at the game, rather than outplayed the United States.  That is important because the United States has taken another step in shedding its threadbare “honest broker” costume, and is adopting a more overtly confrontational posture in backing the PRC’s overmatched local adversaries and imposing the US strategic and tactical agenda on the region.

And that, it appears, requires getting rewrite on the phone for some creative history.

Del Rosario Eagerly Throws Gasoline on ADIZ Fire...

...But Should Be Worried About the Iron Law of Unintended Consequences

A commenter took issue with this piece in its original form.  I thought his comments about the tone were well-taken, and I've revised the text accordingly.  As an admonition to myself, the chinahand Twitter feed will be updated to "Less heat more light".  Also, he got me to thinking about the ADIZ friction we can expect over the South China Sea and I'm lifting my reply from the comments and placing it here. CH 12/7/13

First of all, I want to apologize for use of the word "stupid". It was inaccurate and inflammatory. I will revise the post accordingly.

Come to think of it, I consider Del Rosario's characterization of the ADIZ as well as the Coast Guard regs inaccurate and inflammatory, and very much part of his strategy to heighten the confrontation between the Philippines and the PRC. I don't see him playing good cop/bad cop with President Aquino; I believe he sees polarization as a mechanism to attract stronger, more overt US and Japanese backing for the Philippines. And, since I don't see the US and Japan providing firm military backing for the Philippines in its dispute with the PRC, I don't see a viable endgame for Del Rosario's strategy--unless he sees benefits for the Philippines in being lined up against the PRC in an economic cold war.

As for the ADIZ, it is as its name indicates an "Identification Zone". It has nothing to do with claiming "domestic air space". The Philippines would be well within its rights (and justified for air defense concerns) to declare its own ADIZ in the South China Sea, overlapping with the Chinese one if need be. I think it would have been good if everybody filed flight plans with everybody else for their aircraft, military and civilian.

Trouble is, the United States and Japan have already defied the Chinese ADIZ on military flights. So the PRC can easily point to the East China Sea precedent if they decide to fly military planes into Philippine and South Vietnam ADIZs without filing flight plans. In other words, the PRC, as a peer power, will always try to achieve parity with whatever measures the United States and, especially, Japan introduce into the regional security equation. When we push on China, remember that China will push back in the same way.

Moral is, I guess, be careful what you wish for.

Original text below

An article in Asia Times Online quoted Philippine Foreign Minister Albert Del Rosario as saying:

"There's this threat that China will control the air space [in the South China Sea] ... It transforms an entire air zone into China's domestic air space," Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert Del Rosario said in response to China's ADIZ announcement. "That is an infringement and compromises the safety of civil aviation ... it also compromises the national security of affected states." 

A couple observations:

1)  This is unmitigated horseshit flapdoodle.
2)  Nobody called him on it.

Remember that Rosario's office also went off half cocked about the PRC Hainan coast guard regulations a year ago:

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said over the weekend that China's reported plan to interdict ships that enter what it considers its territory in the South China Sea is a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Because of these reports, coming mostly from the media, the DFA said it would like China "to immediately clarify its reported plans to interdict ships that enter what it considers its territory in the South China Sea".

...

"[It is also] a direct threat to the entire international community, as it violates not only the maritime domain of coastal states established under Unclos, but also impedes the fundamental freedom of navigation and lawful commerce."

The DFA said this planned action by China is illegal and will validate the continuous and repeated pronouncements by the Philippines that China's claim of indisputable sovereignty over virtually the entire South China Sea is not only an excessive claim but a threat to all countries. 

Anybody remember that?  Anybody remember that the Chinese coast guard regs had nothing to do with freedom of navigation, lawful commerce, or sovereignty over the South China Sea?  Anybody?  Anybody?  Bueller?  Bueller?

The ADIZ hysterics remind me of the Hainan coast guard regs nothingburger controversy, both for the Del Rosario's inflammatory blathering inaccurate characterization and the clueless strutting somewhat superficial approach of the some Western news outlets in reporting the situation.

As I wrote in my piece for Asia Times:

Reuters for some reason continued to beat the Hainan coast guard regulations dead horse with an analysis posted on December 9 that begins: 

Imagine if the U.S. state of Hawaii passed a law allowing harbor police to board and seize foreign boats operating up to 1,000 km (600 miles) from Honolulu.

That, in effect, is what happened in China about a week ago. 

It’s not what happened in China a week ago, either actually or "in effect", as I think can be concluded by reading my ATOl piece.  Even if ATOl is not on Reuters’ radar, Dr. Fravel of MIT (and his commentary at The Diplomat, which is quoted and footnoted below) should be.  ..

And it is a dismal fail as a piece of snark.   The jurisdiction of the state of Hawaii extends 1380 miles from Honolulu to the outermost Northwestern Hawaiian Island, the Kure Atoll. 

For the mathematically challenged Reuters scribe, that’s more than twice as far as 600 miles that supposedly symbolizes the irresponsible overreach of the Hainan provincial government.

We live in interesting times, at least as far as the PRC is concerned.  Entire articles are spun out of threat perceptions, assumptions, inferences, assertions, and indignation.

The stirring call to arms is  the "threat" that "raised concerns".  There is "alarm". 

Facts don't matter.  To quote the song, It's feelings...nothing more than feelings..."

That, by the way, is why my current twitter handle is "Facts are stupid things". 

Facts might be confirmed or rebutted by the focus of scrutiny and concern.  But feelings are a subjective matter for the observer.


The only suitable recourse is "confidence-building"; and in some situations that oppressive sense of threat in the Western bosom is never relieved, no matter what the anxiety-provoking other does.

People with long memories (only me I guess) remember the run-up to the Iraq War, when everything that Saddam Hussein did or didn't do in his efforts to forestall the invasion were insufficient to allay the dreaded concerns.  Until recently, the same tactic was used to declare that Iran was unable to allay the concerns of the international community about its nuclear program.  Now the U.S. is reassured...but Israel isn't.  What's a mullah to do?

The media variation is to blame the victim, i.e. blame the PRC for its disinterest or clumsiness in getting its message across to "allay the concerns" and "build confidence".


The whole concern/confidence-building dynamic is fundamentally flawed.  Make that "logically unsound".  Maybe "intellectually dishonest".

And I think it's deployed when the "concerned party" is unwilling to say what is genuinely on its mind.

For China, the ultimate confidence-building gesture for the West would be "Could the Chinese Communist Party please collapse under a wave of popular democratic unrest, the Chinese economy undergo a painful free market restructuring, and the PLA footprint get shrunk by a combination of budget reductions, mission modification, demoralization, and conciliation by a new pro-Western liberal democratic government?"

Don't be afraid.  Ask for it!

And if you can't get it, start wondering if you're asking for the wrong thing.

We're probably headed in the opposite direction.  Instead of less anxiety/confidence rhetoric, we'll get more of it.

From the same article:

Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are drafting a joint statement to express concern over any "threat" to international civilian aviation. The draft statement, which reaffirms the common positions of Southeast Asian nations and Japan on "maritime security" and "freedom of navigation" in international waters, will be presented at the upcoming Japan-ASEAN summit in Tokyo. 

I don't mind government officials playing the "feelings" card.  It's a negotiating ploy, a way to deflect demands or decline offers that don't pass muster.  (Having said that, I really don't know what endgame Del Rosario has in mind, now that he's taken another step to up the confrontation with the PRC.  I get a feeling the rest of ASEAN doesn't really know, either.)

I really do wonder why the media plays along.   Maybe anxiety genuinely overcomes analytics.  Maybe resentment over the PRC's churlish treatment of Western journalists means that the Chinese position is doomed to short shrift until conditions improve.  Maybe overall loyalty to Western values elicits support for empty Western rhetoric.  Probably, it's realized that the PRC is doing a careful and responsible job of slicing the diplomatic and security salami, but we don't like them and don't want to give them the credit.

That's my feeling, anyway.