By Richard Javad Heydarian
MANILA - The Philippines and Vietnam, confronted with an increasingly assertive China, are putting aside past rivalries and inching closer to becoming full-fledged brothers in arms in the South China Sea.
In a symbolic gesture of the budding alliance, Philippine and Vietnamese troops on Sunday played sports and drank beer together on the disputed Southwest Cay island (claimed by Hanoi, Manila and Beijing). More significantly, Hanoi seems increasingly likely to follow Manila's lead in internationalizing its disputes with
China through legal appeal to an international arbitration tribunal, a move China has strongly criticized and resisted.
On the sidelines of the recently concluded World Economic Forum on East Asia in Manila, Philippine President Benigno Aquino and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung vowed to forge a "strategic partnership", with a focus on enhanced maritime interoperability and defense cooperation.
Throughout the Vietnamese premier's three-day working visit to Manila in late May, the two leaders laid down the building blocks for a more robust bilateral relationship, just as the two Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members face a simultaneous spike in their territorial tiffs with China.
"We face common challenges as maritime nations and as brothers in ASEAN," Aquino said after meeting Dung in Manila, underscoring his country's growing interest in reaching out to like-minded countries in the region. "In defense and security, we discussed how we can enhance confidence-building, our defense capabilities and interoperability in addressing security challenges."
Dung, in a striking departure from Vietnam's traditionally low-key, diplomatic language towards China, said: "More than ever before, ASEAN and the international community need to continue raising a strong voice in protesting against [China's territorial assertiveness], securing a strict observance of the international law and peace, stability in the region and the world.
"In East Sea, China has undertaken many activities that violate the international law. [China's action] constitutes a serious threat to peace and maritime safety, security and freedom of navigation in the East Sea."
Vietnam is grappling with a deepening crisis over China's decision to dispatch HYSY981 - a US$1 billion state-of-the-art deep-water oil rig owned by China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) - into Hanoi's 200-nautical-miles exclusive economic zone (EEZ) near the Paracel Islands, which are controlled by China.
Despite recognizing China's superior naval capabilities, Vietnamese authorities have nonetheless sought to stand up to their powerful neighbor by dispatching their own maritime forces to the contested area, leading to a series of low-intensity clashes between Chinese and Vietnamese fishing and naval vessels.
From a domestic perspective, the Vietnamese government knows that it can't afford to look soft on such sensitive territorial issues but must also control rising anti-China sentiment to avoid diplomatic and economic repercussions. Recent anti-China protests in Vietnam related to the placement of the CNOOC drilling rig grew into extensive destruction of property owned foreign companies believed by protestors to be China-owned and the exodus of thousands of Chinese citizens to neighboring countries.
Death toll figures have varied, with some international media putting the figure over 20. Beijing responded by evacuating a number of its nationals by sea while social media were rife with rumors China was bolstering troops along the two countries' northern border, the site of a short-lived but bloody war in 1979. According to reports, Beijing has also stepped up its economic sanctions against Hanoi by barring state-owned Chinese companies from bidding fresh contracts in Vietnam. Authorities in Hanoi will be forced to brace for a potentially significant economic fallout given China's status as one of the top trading and investment partners of Vietnam.
Beijing maintains that commercial rather than strategic reasons underpinned the deployment of the oil rig, which is apparently building on prior energy exploratory studies conducted in the area. China has announced that it will keep the oil rig in the area until mid-August, a position that has provoked outrage in Hanoi.
Vietnam has since accused China of flagrantly violating agreed-upon bilateral and international agreements in the South China Sea, including a non-binding 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DoC) for the maritime area signed by China and ASEAN members.
On Monday, China responded by telling the United Nations that Vietnam was the aggressor in the month-long stand-off over the oil rig. In a position paper presented to UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, China detailed what it claimed was Vietnam's "illegal disruption" of the "routine" activities of an offshore drilling platform.
The paper claimed that as of June 7 Vietnamese vessels had rammed China ships precisely 1,416 times. While China presented its case to the global body, consistent with its resistance to multilateral mediation on issues it considers bilateral, it did not seek a UN resolution to the dispute.
Legal challenge
Vietnam has not yet responded to the paper's claims and assertions. Some in Hanoi believe China will leverage the claims to keep HYSY981, which was first deployed in May, in the contested area beyond August. The paper also stated that "these waters will never become Vietnam's EEZ and continental shelf no matter which principle is applied in the delimitation".
That hard rhetoric is driving Hanoi to rethink its earlier reluctance to take China before a third-party arbitration panel over its territorial claims. In this regard, the Philippines could serve as a role model. Last year, Manila filed an arbitration case against China before a United Nations special arbitral tribunal court in The Hague. Dung recently indicated he may do the same.
So far, China has flatly rejected the Philippines arbitration efforts, while analysts have noted the tribunal lacks an enforcement mechanism to make any decision truly binding. Beijing has until December 15 to decide on whether it will file a counter-argument in The Hague, something US diplomats have encourage Beijing to do.
The main challenge for Vietnam now is to locate appropriate arbitration bodies to file its long list of complaints against China, which date back to when the country was divided into separate northern and southern states; the Philippines has recently offered legal advice in this regard.
Against this uncertain legal backdrop, the Philippines and Vietnam are deepening their strategic ties, including through stronger coast guard and naval forces cooperation, intelligence-sharing in the realm of maritime security, diplomatic coordination within ASEAN and other international bodies, and sustained consultation in crafting legal responses to China's territorial maneuvering in the South China Sea.
The two countries' navies recently agreed to extend cooperation in disputed areas, while a Vietnamese guided missile cruiser is scheduled to visit Manila in the weeks ahead, according to a Reuters report.
The joint moves threaten to heighten tensions. Beijing recently confirmed allegations first made by Philippine authorities that China has been engaged in construction and reclamation activities on the Johnson South Reef, a contested feature that falls deep within the Philippines' EEZ in the Spratly chain of islands in the South China Sea. Filipino authorities also claim that China has been engaged in similar activities in the area, as Beijing allegedly plans for constructing an "artificial island" on the Fiery Cross Reef, which could serve as a military base for broader operations
across the South China Sea, namely the prospective imposition of an air defense identification zone.
Philippine authorities contend that these actions constitute clear violations of the 2002 DoC, which explicitly discourages claimant states from unilaterally altering the status quo.
"Whatever construction China carries out on the reef is a matter entirely within the scope of China's sovereignty," Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunyin said in response to protests by Philippine authorities. "I don't know what particular intentions the Philippines have in caring so much about this."
Yet the ongoing disputes have slowly but surely transformed into a genuinely internationalized issue, despite China's insistence that they are principally bilateral issues to be resolved among disputing parties with minimum, if any, third-party involvement.
A lengthening list of Pacific powers and others with interests in freedom of navigation and stable trade flows through the disputed waters are stepping up initiatives to counter China's and bolster the Philippines' and Vietnam's positions.
At a workshop held on May 28 in Singapore and organized by the leading Indian think-tank Center for Asia Strategic Studies, maritime specialists from across the Asia-Pacific region, with the notable exception of China and Vietnam, agreed upon the necessity to ensure the swift conclusion of a legally binding Code of Conduct to govern the behavior of claimant states in the South China Sea, the strict observance of the DoC by China and other parties, and the necessity for broader participation of other Pacific powers such as the United States, Japan, Australia, India, and South Korea in facilitating the resolution of a brewing conflict in the maritime area.
Shortly after, during the 13th staging of The Shangri-La Dialogue held on May 30-June , organized by the influential British International Institute for Strategic Studies, representatives from Japan and the US highlighted growing international concern over China's territorial assertiveness in the Western Pacific.
"Japan intends to play an even greater and more proactive role than it has until now in making peace in Asia and the world something more certain," declared the gathering's keynote speaker, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has pushed for an increase in Japanese defense spending, a relaxation of self-imposed restrictions on arms exports, and, above all, the concept of "collective self-defense", which could pave the way for a greater Japanese role in maintaining freedom of navigation across sea lines of communications such as the South China Sea.
"We take no position on competing territorial claims [in the South China Sea]," US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said, while at the same time reiterating Washington's growing alarm over China's territorial assertiveness in international waters. "But we firmly oppose any nation's use of intimidation, coercion or the threat of force to assert these claims."
Widening alliances
In a rejoinder, China's top representative at the meeting Lieutenant General Wang Guanzhong, deputy chief of staff of the Chinese military, lashed out at the American and Japanese representatives, describing Hagel's remarks as "excessive beyond ... imagination, [which were] suffused with hegemonism ... threats and intimidation."
Meanwhile, the emergence of a new nationalist government in India, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, could pave the way for a more pro-active Indian foreign policy in East Asia, which has become a major trading and investment partner of New Delhi.
Anticipating growing tensions in the South China Sea, Australia has deepened its naval interoperability with the US, with a growing focus on joint operations aimed at countering any threats to freedom of navigation in international waters. South Korea, in turn, has emerged as a leading defense partner of Manila, which is purchasing, among other things, 12 FA-50 fighter jets from South Korea.
Indonesia, the largest country in ASEAN, has also moved closer to the Philippines, with the two countries recently signing a new maritime agreement which effectively ends two decades of border disputes vis-a-vis their overlapping claims in the Mindanao and Celebes Seas.
During their high-profile meeting in Manila on May 23, Aquino and outgoing Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono vowed to pursue a deeper strategic partnership. Both leaders recognized that the region faces an unprecedented set of challenges to maritime security, which could, in turn, undermine historical gains in economic integration and conflict-prevention in Southeast Asia.
In recent months, Indonesia has openly rejected China's "nine-dash-line" map doctrine, which serves as the basis of Beijing's claim to over 90% of the 3.5 million square kilometer South China Sea. Echoing Manila and Hanoi, Jakarta has recently called for the resolution of the disputes in accordance with international law and relevant regional principles.
Indonesia has increasingly assumed the dual (and conflicting) role of simultaneously acting as a mediator between China and Southeast Asian claimant states as well as a de facto party to the ongoing disputes by arguing China's nine-dash-line map overlaps with Indonesia's Riau province, which crucially covers the hydrocarbon-rich Natuna chain of islands.
China's rising territorial assertiveness is inspiring a flexible, albeit tightening, network of strategic partners across the Asia-Pacific region aimed at countering Beijing's territorial ambitions. While the Philippines and Vietnam are primarily concerned with defending their own territorial claims in the South China Sea, Pacific powers such as the US, Japan, Australia, India, and South Korea are mainly concerned with broader freedom of navigation issues. But even as this loose network expands and strengthens, it's still not clear if China will respond to the challenge by rollbacking or intensifying its expansive claims.
Richard Javad Heydarian is a Manila-based foreign affairs analyst focusing on the South China Sea and international security issues. He is a lecturer at Ateneo De Manila University's Department of Political Science and the author of the upcoming book How Capitalism Failed the Arab World: The Economic Roots and the Precarious Future of the Middle East Uprisings. He can be reached at jrheydarian@gmail.com.
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