08.10.2015
While it has fallen off of the front pages in the West, a slow-motion crisis in the South China Sea sparked by Beijing’s determination to create a series of naval base and airstrip-capable islands in the middle of a disputed island chain has not abated. The Chinese may have taken a page from Vladimir Putin’s playbook; they have stealthily provoked a conflict in their neighborhood and prosecuted it at a pace just slow enough to bore Western observers into complacency. But as the summer wanes, that simmering conflict in the Pacific threatens once again to boil over.
On July 20, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) announced a series of snap naval drills would begin within two days off the coast of the Hainan Island, near the disputed Paracel Island chain in the South China Sea. During those exercises, no other vessel would be allowed into the zone that China declared would be its area of operations. The People’s Republic of China insisted that their annual exercises were purely defensive and routine, but Vietnam, which disputes China’s claim to the Parcels and the waters surrounding the islands, bitterly condemned the provocation. The defense ministry in Hanoi insisted that the PRC should conduct “military exercise that [do] not target any other country.” Within 24 hours of China’s decision to hold naval exercises, “a strange iron-clad Chinese ship” reportedly targeted and gave chase to two Vietnamese fishing vessels off the equally disputed Spratly Islands. The Chinese ship allegedly fired water cannons at one of the Vietnamese vessels and eventually collided with it. Two days later, another Vietnamese ship was rammed by what may have been the same Chinese boat.
The proximity of merchant and military naval assets in the South China Sea that yielded this increasingly familiar confrontation is one of the primary reasons why tensions near the shipping lanes that crisscross those waterways are so concerning.
Since mutual unease peaked in the late spring, friction in the Pacific between China and United States allies has been largely forgotten in the press. But last week, Secretary of State John Kerry provided the press with a reminder that the conflict in the region had not abated. After the United States determined that Beijing had unlawfully begun restricting navigation and overflight access near disputed areas of the Spratly archipelago, Kerry issued one of the sternest warnings yet to an increasingly irredentist PRC leadership. “Let me be clear,” he said, “the United States will not accept restrictions on freedom of navigation and overflight, or other lawful uses of the sea.”
“Freedom of navigation and overflight are among the essential pillars of international maritime law,” Kerry added. “Despite assurances that these freedoms would be respected, we have seen warnings issued and restrictions attempted in recent months.”
China did not immediately respond to the secretary’s stern warning, suggesting that the firmness of his warning surprised Chinese officials. But a PRC response did materialize on Monday. “Freedom of overflights and navigation doesn’t mean allowing foreign warships and military jets to violate other countries’ sovereignty and security, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement to Reuters on Monday,” Reuters revealed.
At the center of the renewed tensions are the rights of Philippine military aircraft to fly near or over the seven artificial islands in the Spratly chain that China now claims as its sovereign territory. The Philippines hopes to use the aircraft in order to monitor Chinese encroachment near other disputed islands in the Spratlys, like the Second Thomas Shoal, as well as to check PRC submarine activity. A report from late last week indicates that the Japanese are inclined to come to Manila’s aid.
“Japan wants to give planes to the Philippines that Manila could use for patrols in the South China Sea, sources said,” Reuters reported this week. “They said talks within the Japanese government were preliminary and would need to overcome legal hurdles. Japan had yet to formally propose the planes as an alternative to more sophisticated Lockheed Martin P3-C aircraft that Manila wants to track Chinese submarine activity, they added.”
The move, if confirmed, would significantly augment the Philippines’ modest air capabilities. What’s more, it would demonstrate Japan’s determination to keep China from disrupting the shipping lanes it currently utilizes, and to cement the alliance between these two American allies in the Pacific. It would also, however, increase the number of military assets in close proximity of one another in this dangerous part of the world.
One of the factors that might prevent a catastrophic escalation of tensions in the region is a high-profile visit to the United States that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s is expected to make in September. “I don’t think we’re in danger of a calculated move on China’s part, which they know will bring about some sort of conflict,” American Enterprise Institute research fellow Michael Mazza told Vice News. “What I worry about is a misperception on China’s part.”
Indeed. With Chinese vessels apparently given orders to harass and ram Vietnamese ships, Philippine aircraft conducting provocative flights near disputed reclaimed Chinese island military bases, and Washington laying the groundwork in the event that China declares a zone of protection in the Spratly Islands, misperceptions and miscalculations are a terrifyingly real prospect. Rarely in history have great powers provoked a war that they knew would be a long and protracted affair. The Chinese will only start a fight that they know will be either short or reasonably low-impact. John Kerry deserves credit for making clear that any conflict in the region will be a high-risk proposition for China, but Washington will need to remain vigilant for the foreseeable future if military conflict is to be prevented indefinitely.
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