“Paramilitarizing” the SCS: A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come?

In this piece I misidentified Carlyle Thayer as "Carleton Thayer".  I regret the error. CH 8/18/14

Usually, my predictions don’t pan out so quickly.

On August 11, I looked at the implications of a statement by US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse in Vietnam that used a striking reinterpretation of the global stake in maritime EEZs or Exclusive Economic Zones to justify escalated US activity in the South China Sea.

The Senator’s gambit apparently drew on the US conclusion that efforts to deter PRC salami slicing in the SCS have failed and it is time for a more aggressive and, I might add, extremely novel doctrine to justify a more forward US posture:

Quote:

At yesterday’s press briefing, Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper asked Senator Sheldon Whitehouse for comments about the U.S.’s responses, considered by public opinion as rather strong, against China over the recent tension in the East Vietnam Sea.

Senator Whitehouse replied that exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of every country form a sustainable network of EEZs that have been established based on international conventions and laws, as well as on mutual understanding, which help avoid conflicts and maintain stability in EEZs.

Therefore, whenever a challenge appears and poses a threat to peace and stability in EEZs, then not only the U.S. but also the entire world community will take action against the threat, the senator said. [emphasis added]

Such a case has occurred and the U.S and other countries have responded against it, he added.


…
[Thanks] to the PRC’s aggressive adoption of non-military measures, from subsidizing and equipping its fishing fleet for South China Sea forays to plunking billion-dollar exploratory drilling rigs in contested EEZs … the idea now is that the best way for Vietnam and the Philippines to push back might be by interposing US naval muscle.

As potential harbingers, US surveillance aircraft overflew Chinese maritime patrol vessels during the resupply of marines on the beached Philippine hulk Sierra Madre at Second Thomas Shoal in April 2014 (amped up surveillance is considered to be an important weapon in “gray zone” crises, the term of art for confrontations that tiptoe to the brink of military conflict, but don’t quite cross).  In May, the USS Blue Ridge, the Seventh Fleet's flagship, ostentatiously sailed past the current PRC-Philippine hot spot, the Scarborough Shoal, and launched a helicopter to observe and photograph two PLAN warships in the vicinity.

Maybe in the future US naval vessels interpose themselves as Chinese maritime patrol vessels try to harass survey and drilling ships in disputed Philippine and Vietnamese EEZs; maybe the next time the HYSY 981 parks itself in contested waters, US ships interdict its resupply.

Plenty of options.

Endquote

Now Carlton Thayer, a doyen of Asian maritime disputes, has weighed in with his proposal for the “paramilitarization” of South China Sea frictions, “fleshing out”, as he puts it, a bare bones idea by retired US diplomat David Brown (I am assuming the David Brown in question is this gentleman at Johns Hopkins, who previously served in a variety of high-level diplomatic and academic Asia-related capacities).

Dr. Thayer, it can be said, is a friendly interlocutor to the Philippines and in particular to the aggressive anti-PRC strategy of its Foreign Minister, Alberto Del Rosario.  In 2012, when Del Rosario heatedly confronted Cambodia and other ASEAN nations disinclined to make an issue of the China’s outrages in the South China Sea in a closed ASEAN meeting, it was Dr. Thayer who was able to reveal confidential details to the world, including Del Rosario’s dramatic use of the Nazi analogy (“First they came for the… etc.”) to decry the passivity of ASEAN with respect to the plight of the Philippines over Chinese bullying at the Scarborough Shoal.

My personal feeling is that in 2014 the PRC hoped to use the HYSY 981 drilling rig gambit to trade Vietnam’s acknowledgment of Chinese sovereignty of the Paracels for PRC’s shift away from the nine-dash-line to an UNCLOS/EEZ linked formulation for bilateral settlement of maritime disputes.

Well, that didn’t happen.  Both Vietnam and the Philippines are leaning on the idea of some combination of ASEAN, regional, + US pushback to level the playing field with the PRC.  The PRC, for its part, seems be backpedaling on its hints of abandoning the nine-dash-line and it’s more likely that China will meet the expected repudiation of the nine-dash-line by the UNCLOS Arbitration Commission with resolute defiance…and ASEAN will probably let it slide, to the detriment, especially, of the Philippine government’s attempt to sideline the PRC and wrest energy riches from the seabed near the contested waters of Reed Bank.

Judging by Senator Whitehouse’ statement and Mr. Brown and Dr. Thayer’s proposals, it seems that hardliners in the US foreign policy apparatus, perhaps gazing longingly beyond President Obama and his sea of troubles to a more militant Hillary Clinton administration, feel there’s an app for this: “paramilitarization”.  

As Dr. Thayer describes it:

In present circumstances a formal track one trilateral arrangement should be negotiated and serve as a venue for working out a multilateral strategy to deter China. Such a strategy should embrace Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan and the United States and involve stepped up cooperation among their coast guards. Japan has already reached out to the Philippines and Vietnam.

The United States and Vietnam should expedite the agreement for cooperation between their Coast Guards. So far the training has taken place on land in the form of short courses. The U.S. Coast Guard should be deployed to Vietnamese waters for joint training and involve the exchange of observers on each other’s ships. Vietnam recently joined the Proliferation Security Initiative. This provides an opportunity for the United States to assist Vietnam further develop its capacity for maritime domain awareness.

…

In addition, U.S. Navy maritime surveillance aircraft based in the Philippines under the recent agreement on enhanced defense cooperation, could be deployed to Vietnam on a temporary basis. They could conduct joint maritime surveillance missions with their Vietnamese counterparts. U.S. military personnel could fly on Vietnamese reconnaissance planes as observers, and vice versa.

Regional security analysts expect China to mount aggressive naval displays in the South China Sea every year from May to August moving forward. This provides an opportunity for the United States and Japan to organize a series of continuing maritime exercises and surveillance flights with Vietnam and the Philippines just prior to the arrival of Chinese forces and throughout the period from April to August each year. The details of all operations should be completely transparent to all regional states including China.

An indirect strategy provides the means for the United States to give practical expression to its declaratory policy of opposing intimidation and coercion to settle territorial disputes. An indirect strategy does not require the United States to directly confront China. This strategy puts the onus on China to decide the risk of confronting mixed formations of naval vessels and aircraft involving the United States, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam.

These combined maritime and air forces would operate in international waters and airspace that transverse China’s nine-dash line. The objective would be to maintain a continuous naval and air presence to deter China from using intimidation and coercion against Vietnam and the Philippines. Deterrence could be promoted by interchanging the naval and aircrews in all exercises. The scope and intensity of these exercises could be altered in response to the level of tensions.

For those of you keeping score, PRC maritime surveillance vessels, charged with dealings outside the 12 nautical mile territorial waters, are currently not externally armed, in keeping with the PRC’s “non-militarized” strategy, a state of affairs I suspect the US finds alluring but at the same time, because it undercuts the narrative of the armed Chinese menace, somewhat frustrating.  US Coast Guard cutters carry a variety of cannon & other armament.

The “paramilitarization” proposal is, to me, wrong on many levels.  I address the rather shaky legal basis for third parties to insert themselves in bilateral EEZ disputes in my original post.

There is, of course, the additional problem that the United States originally hung its “pivot to Asia” on “the US interest in freedom of navigation in the South China Seas” and the “Whitehouse doctrine” could be uncharitably described as “impeding freedom of navigation by people we don’t like in the South China Seas to advance a US agenda”.  But sweeping aside these minor hypocrisies is a matter of “kiss my hand” ease for the experienced US diplomatic and media apparatus, and need not detain us.

The real proof of the pudding will come if and when a Chinese maritime surveillance vessel either a) collides with, b) rams, or c) is, while engaged in a) or b) shot to pieces by a US coast guard or naval vessel while attempting to execute its self-defined responsibilities inside China’s self-defined non-territorial waters that also happen to be around a flotilla-infested Philippine or Vietnam-sanctioned oil rig.

Then the President of the United States gets to decide if he or she wants a collapse of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and a full-bore economic/sanctions war, kick the PRC to the curb in order to double down on the Philippines and Vietnam as America’s most important relationships in Asia, and for that matter, explain to the US public it is a matter of pressing national interest for the USCG to play chicken of the sea with Chinese ships thousands of miles from home for the sake of a Philippine or Vietnamese hydrocarbon play.

That’s a prospect from which even a President Clinton, architect of the pivot to Asia and godmother of mischief in the South China Sea, might quail.

The comforting assumption behind ”paramilitarization” is an old chestnut: that it’s really low cost/low risk because the PRC is fully aware of US military superiority, and will inevitably back down if faced with the potential for a direct confrontation with the US military or “paramilitary” forces.

As Mr. Brown put it (for the record, his proposal, unlike Dr. Thayer’s, restricted itself to the employment of US and regional coast guard vessels*):

For public consumption, these exercises can focus on hands-on training in search and rescue, interdiction of smugglers or pirates, defending against foreign incursions into territorial waters, etc. The United States and Japan should urge Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore also to join in these exercises.

Elements of the flotilla should remain at sea from March through July, ready to stymie another Chinese deployment simply by getting in the way. Such a concerted show of paramilitary strength would demonstrate that the littoral nations and their friends will no longer tolerate China’s salami-slicing tactics. There is a downside risk of deliberate collisions and the use of water cannons, tactics employed by China against Vietnam this summer. However, the more likely scenario is that Chinese vessels will choose to avoid confrontation on equal or near-equal terms, in effect resetting Chinese tactical assumptions and opening the way for more rational and mutually respectful outcomes.

But this ain’t 1997 or even 2009.  Through the state media and, I would expect, in private discussions, the PRC has stated repeatedly and unambiguously that it does not allow the United States any legitimate role to define or enforce maritime policy in the South China Sea.  The HYSY 981 escapade was merely the word made flesh, the icing on the cake, the steel middle finger, so to speak.

In 2014, it will take a war for China to acknowledge US dominion over the South China Sea.  And that’s a war, in my opinion—and I suspect, in China’s opinion—the United States is not prepared to fight.

*It would seem rather counterintuitive to place the South China Sea in the US Coast Guard scope of responsibilities.  However, the Coast Guard goes where the Commander-in-Chief says it should go. My father enlisted in the Coast Guard in World War II with the expectation his command would be harassing U-boats off the Atlantic Coast and instead found himself seconded to the US invasion effort and landing troops in North Africa, Italy, and at Normandy on D-Day; so the USCG does sometimes wander rather far afield, most recently to the Persian Gulf to support the Iraq wars.

The Balloon Goes Up Over the South China Sea

There were signs of a major escalation in US activity in the South China Sea…but not during the ASEAN meeting.

Back on July 13, I wrote about US frustration with successful PRC efforts—symbolized by but not limited to the HYSY 981 drilling rig outrage--to defy the U.S. campaign to deter PRC assertiveness in the South China Sea:

Quote:

US South China Sea policy needs a reboot.  To quote the Financial Times:  “Our efforts to deter China [in the South China Sea] have clearly not worked,” said a senior US official.

In 2010, the US justified its attention to the remote reaches of the SCS on the grounds of “a national interest in freedom of navigation”…

[S]ince the PRC relies on freedom of navigation for commercial traffic to an existential degree (most of the traffic through the SCS is, after all, going to and from Chinese ports), there was an embarrassing dearth of Chinese offenses against freedom of navigation that compelled US action.

…

[Events] would seem to require that the definition of the US national interest in the South China Sea be redefined to enable more effective pushback, preferably pushback that carries the threat of the PRC’s least-desired outcome: confrontation with US military forces…

The Financial Times makes an interesting elision by stating “The Obama administration declared South China Sea a US “national interest” in 2010,” leaving out the rather important qualifier “in freedom of navigation”…

Today, if the US is simply declaring a national interest “in the South China Sea” full stop, that would imply, well pretty much whatever the US wants it to imply.  In practical terms, this means that the United States will have the luxury of acting unilaterally in its self-defined national interest, unconstrained by rigid considerations of international law (which the PRC, for the most part, carefully attempts to parse and the United States, by its failure to ratify the Law of the Sea convention, is on the back foot) or the position of ASEAN (which the PRC has, for the most part, been successful in splitting).

The US recently took another bite out of the SCS apple by calling for a construction ban in the South China Sea (the PRC has been dredging, expanding, and improving some of its island holdings in order to strengthen its sovereignty claims)…

…

Apparently the United States has decided that ASEAN needs an extra push to come up with the proper anti-PRC policies and, even though the US is not a member of ASEAN, it will be more pro-active in trying to shape its policies and counter the PRC’s attempts to divide and influence the forum.

Endquote

Fastforward to mid-July, and Secretary of State John Kerry floated the construction “freeze” proposal at the ASEAN meeting in Myanmar with the support of the Philippines.  

The scheme was DOA, Dead On Arrival, bracketed by unambiguous PRC rejection before, during, and after the meeting.  ASEAN declined to mention the freeze proposal in its communique, opting for endorsement of the code of conduct negotiations instead.

Another unfortunate takeaway from the ASEAN meeting was the unwelcome suspicion that the United States has compromised its “honest broker” status to the point that the real “honest broker” i.e. the independent-minded power that can and must be wooed by all parties with genuine concessions in order to hammer out unity and workable compromises is now Indonesia.

Nevertheless, in its background briefing, the United States delegation declared victory:

Clearly, we have succeeded in our mission, which is to try to seed the clouds of conversation…

This apparently was not enough for some journalists:

QUESTION: So coming back to what Matt was pressing on the freeze, I mean, that’s not going to be agreed this time.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: So I think that you want to --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: That was never the expectation.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Yeah. So the whole purpose was to shape the conversation, focus the conversation in the region on the behavior and the assertions that are occurring, and making sure that the pressure stays on those people making – those countries asserting their behavior. 

Some headlines spun it the US way:

VOA: US Presents ASEAN Meeting as Setback for China 

Bloomberg: China Thwarts US Bid to Reduce South China Sea Tensions 

However, for the most part, the PRC rebuff and the lack of a positive outcome were acknowledged.

The US subsequently made the portentous announcement it would “monitor” developments in the South China Sea, a message, I suppose that the U.S. claims the right to promote its South China Sea agenda independent of what ASEAN desires to do…or not do.

As for the PRC, it announced a “dual track” of bilateral talks + negotiations with ASEAN over a code of conduct; and reaffirmed its rejection the freeze—and with it the validity of the US role as the “responsible adult” in the South China Sea.

Xinhua weighed in with a cutting commentary “A Calm South China Sea Needs No Flame Stoker”, which reminded ASEAN that the previous pretext for US intervention hadn’t panned out: “The U.S. worry over maritime safety is unwarranted since the freedom of navigation has been fully guaranteed.”  

It concluded with a statement that, although Chicom propaganda, is distressingly close to the truth:

It is a painful reality that Uncle Sam has left too many places in chaos after it stepped in, as what people are witnessing now in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

The South China Sea should not be the next one.

Ouch.

The real fireworks, however, was provided by U.S. Senators John McCain and Sheldon Whitehouse during a visit to Vietnam.  

Vietnam, of course, is in play now.  Reformist elements in the Vietnamese elite are taking the nationalist tack of criticizing the leadership for excessive obeisance to the PRC and, more discretely, advocating a tilt toward the US, pluralism, and a more open economy.  Although the Vietnamese government eventually nixed a visit by the foreign minister to Washington to discuss closer coordination (presumably because the PRC withdrew the HYSY 981 rig), McCain and Whitehouse went to Vietnam to discuss a lifting of the US arms embargo and, presumably explore the alluring question of an eventual US return to Cam Ranh Bay.

During their visit, Vietnamese media reported on August 9 that Whitehouse made this rather remarkable statement:

At yesterday’s press briefing, Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper asked Senator Sheldon Whitehouse for comments about the U.S.’s responses, considered by public opinion as rather strong, against China over the recent tension in the East Vietnam Sea.

Senator Whitehouse replied that exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of every country form a sustainable network of EEZs that have been established based on international conventions and laws, as well as on mutual understanding, which help avoid conflicts and maintain stability in EEZs.

Therefore, whenever a challenge appears and poses a threat to peace and stability in EEZs, then not only the U.S. but also the entire world community will take action against the threat, the senator said. [emphasis added]

Such a case has occurred and the U.S and other countries have responded against it, he added.

I am not familiar with the precedent cited by the Senator.  

When the United States committed naval vessels to make sure the Straits of Hormuz remained open in 2011-2012, it was acting on a very limited brief: the right of the world community under customary international law to keep open for “transit passage” a vital strait inside twelve-mile territorial waters (not the EEZs) of Iran and Oman, for which no alternative existed. 

Iran, on the other hand, tried to argue that a promise to observe “transit passage “ rights was obligatory only to states that had ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which Iran and the United States both had not done.  The U.S., obviously, chose to ignore Iran’s lawfare objections, but the long-recognized need to ensure transit passage through critical straits also meant that the world gave Iran's position rather short shrift.

EEZs are a whole ‘nuther thing than territorial waters, it would seem, a 200 nautical mile zone beyond the twelve-mile limit recently defined by UNCLOS and reserved for economic exploitation by the state that can support a claim to it.

As far as I have been able to determine, disputes about EEZ activities have been addressed bilaterally by coast guard and maritime patrol vessels, particularly in the South China Sea, where the PRC, Vietnam, and Philippines harass each other’s fisherman and oil exploration vessels.  Third parties, let alone the “entire world community” have never been involved.

And I haven’t seen any initiatives toward militarizing these disputes (though Vietnam claimed that PLAN vessels were protecting the HYSY 981).

As recently as March 2014, judging by a Congressional Research Service report, the main U.S. concern was that PRC EEZ disputes remain non-military, to prevent the US getting sucked into a conflict by virtue of its treaty obligations to Japan and the Philippines:

China’s actions for asserting and defending its maritime territorial and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) claims in the East China (ECS) and South China Sea (SCS), particularly since late 2013, have heightened concerns among observers that ongoing disputes over these waters and some of the islands within them could lead to a crisis or conflict between China and a neighboring country such as Japan, the Philippines, or Vietnam, and that the United States could be drawn into such a crisis or conflict as a result of obligations the United States has under bilateral security treaties with Japan and the Philippines.

Apparently, that has changed, thanks to the PRC’s aggressive adoption of non-military measures, from subsidizing and equipping its fishing fleet for South China Sea forays to plunking billion-dollar exploratory drilling rigs in contested EEZs, and the idea now is that the best way for Vietnam and the Philippines to push back might be by interposing US naval muscle.

As potential harbingers, US surveillance aircraft overflew Chinese maritime patrol vessels during the resupply of marines on the beached Philippine hulk Sierra Madre at Second Thomas Shoal in April 2014 (amped up surveillance is considered to be an important weapon in “gray zone” crises, the term of art for confrontations that tiptoe to the brink of military conflict, but don’t quite cross).  In May, the USS Blue Ridge, the Seventh Fleet's flagship, ostentatiously sailed past the current PRC-Philippine hot spot, the Scarborough Shoal, and launched a helicopter to observe and photograph two PLAN warships in the vicinity.

Maybe in the future US naval vessels interpose themselves as Chinese maritime patrol vessels try to harass survey and drilling ships in disputed Philippine and Vietnamese EEZs; maybe the next time the HYSY 981 parks itself in contested waters, US ships interdict its resupply.  

Plenty of options.

And the injection of US military factors into EEZ disputes might be justified under Senator Whitehouse’s formulation that “challenges against the peace and stability of EEZs” are a threat that “the U.S. and the entire world community” will act against.

Declaring a national mission to interfere in third-party EEZ disputes bring us, inevitably, into murky legal waters.

The United States, of course, has not signed UNCLOS.  Instead, in 1983 the United States took the worldwide adoption of UNCLOS (by the PRC, among others) as an opportunity to invoke the UNCLOS 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone formulation as “customary international law” enabling a unilateral proclamation of a 200 nm EEZ by the United States.

The unilateral nature of the proclamation, and its legal separation from UNCLOS, was amusingly confirmed last year, when US House of Representatives Republicans embarked upon an initiative to name the US EEZ endowment, some 3.4 million square miles, as the “Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone” with the declaration that: 

“The authority for President Reagan to issue his executive order [establishing the EEZ] did not come from the United Nations or from the Law of the Sea Treaty. It came from the sovereignty of the United States government, a concept that somehow seems to escape some members of this Congress,” Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) said.

So, I assume, the ability to intervene in somebody else’s EEZ dispute can also be presented by the US as a matter of “international customary law”, a rather nebulous concept that renders moot the potentially constraining verbiage of the UNCLOS treaty.  

I also suspect the U.S. will see no difficulty in unilaterally declaring that US naval activities in the territorial waters of the Straits of Hormuz provide adequate precedent for the application of similar interpretations to an EEZ in the South China Sea.  If the Chinese want to disagree, I suppose they are welcome to take their arguments to whatever pro-American venue chews over these disputes, digests them for years, and eventually spits out non-binding decisions.

It is always possible that Senator Whitehouse was talking through his hat in Vietnam but, given the presence of Senator McCain (who with Secretary of State John Kerry shares a close interest in nurturing the U.S.-Vietnam relationship) and the simultaneous ASEAN confab in Myanmar, I consider his statement a metaphorical shot across the bow, as in (my words):

The PRC has chosen to slap aside Secretary Kerry’s freeze initiative.  Well…

If, as anticipated, the Arbitral Commission rules in favor of the Philippines and tosses out the Nine Dash Line, and the People’s Republic of China exercises its great power prerogative of ignoring the award and ignoring calls to submit its South China Sea EEZ claims to arbitration under the UNCLOS formula, then the United States will exercise its superpower prerogative of imposing its novel definition of customary international law inside EEZs on the SCS and start messing with China’s stuff.

I will add the observation that I expect the possible injection of US Navy in local EEZ disputes will probably featuring nonstop serial & parallel harassment of US naval vessels by agitated and indifferently skippered Chinese maritime patrol vessels, fishing vessels, and whatnot.  This is exactly the kind of “gray zone” headache that the US Navy would like to avoid; but I also think the Navy wants a 300-ship presence in the Pacific and realizes it isn’t going to get it by shirking ignominious and onerous police duty demanded by the White House.

As for the PRC, under the traditional understanding of its foreign policy it would realize that it is outgunned by the US and its best hope for advantage lay in sidestepping confrontation with the US, temporizing in its dealings with ASEAN, and trying to buy and bully its way to advantage in bilateral exchanges with its smaller neighbors.  Ordinarily, in other words, the PRC would quail at the prospect of facing the US Navy and dial down its behavior accordingly.

Unfortunately, these are not ordinary times.

The PRC did invite President Obama to share the fruits of the “new great power relationship” in a recent spate of editorials, but it seems unlikely that they expected the US to take them up on it.  More likely, it was a propaganda gambit like Kerry’s freeze, along the lines of “We tried to be nice, but…”

The PRC can reasonably entertain the expectation that, in January 2017, Hillary Clinton, architect of the pivot to Asia, will be president and will enter office seeing the need to reassert the US role in Asia through some aggressive moves against China, certainly in the South China Sea, maybe on the issues of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Japan to block Chinese vessels from the territorial waters of the Senkakus, maybe even in support for Taiwan independence and Hong Kong democracy.

Meanwhile, President Obama is slogging through a quagmire of crises in Ukraine and Iraq (and the election fiasco in Afghanistan) that has spread his resources to the point he can’t even spare a thought for the collapse of Libya; has induced serious alliance fatigue, especially in Europe, thanks to an all-in Ukraine policy whose motto is, literally, F*ck the EU, and the dismal campaign in Gaza; and, most importantly, has pushed Russia, normally an arms-length peer, into the arms of the PRC as a diplomatic, economic, and security ally.

In the next few weeks, China and the world may get a chance to see if Russia, not quite the sturdiest of America’s antagonists, intervenes in Ukraine and successfully defies the sanctions/subversion/soft and hard power pressure of the Western democratic alliance.

The combination of opportunity, a closing time window, and the prospect of worse to come is not a recipe for restraint by the PRC.

I’m not saying that the PLAN will come out blasting away at the Seventh Fleet; but I can imagine a worst case scenario of spate of ugly and destabilizing incidents, obstructions, collisions, protests, sanctions…and even, though it is difficult to imagine today, a demand, not a request, that the United States abandon its new ASEAN beachhead, and remove itself from EEZ disputes between the PRC and its neighbors.

On balance, I don’t think the United States is ready for its Suez moment—a humiliating climbdown, probably in the South China Sea, that signals the surrender of imperial pretensions.  I also think Xi Jinping is focused on securing his rule and advancing his domestic political and economic agenda and will decide not to add a major confrontation with the United States to his list of challenges.

However, a storm is brewing over the South China Sea.  And the United States and China will both have a hand in deciding where and when it will break.