Ten years ago, when I was in the final stages of research for A book Regarding China's sense of its power through the ages, I traveled by plane to Palawan, a long island in the Philippines that few have heard of, located hundreds of miles south of Manila.
Ten years ago, when I was in the final stages of research for A book Regarding China's sense of its power through the ages, I traveled by plane to Palawan, a long island in the Philippines that few have heard of, located hundreds of miles south of Manila.
Not far to the west of the shores of this sleepy fishermen's paradise stood what then seemed like one of the most important legal boundaries in the world, Thomas Shoal II. There, the Philippine government decommissioned a badly rusted, decommissioned warship years ago as an unconventional means of asserting its territorial claims in the region. Arrival to the Philippine ship BRP Sierra MadreIt was severely restricted by Chinese Coast Guard vessels that patrolled the shallow waters as part of Beijing's efforts to prevent repair of the slowly disintegrating Manila ship and thus enforce its rival maritime claims.
Back then, it still looked like a legal dispute, despite a tense game of cat-and-mouse played out by paramilitary means, because the Philippines took the matter to an international maritime tribunal in The Hague for consideration. Control. I had expected that despite China's repeatedly stated pledge that it would not recognize any negative judgment, the higher interests of global image and soft power would eventually force Beijing to soften its stance, if for no other reason than to avoid appearing like an imposing international power. Bully. In defense of my naivety, even common sense suggested that China needed to find a way to save face through retreat or compromise. The number of disputed shoals was less than 200 people Nautical miles away from Palawan, while the closest undisputed territory to China, Hainan Island, is almost three times as far away.
The ten years that have passed since my visit do not seem sufficient to comprehend the many twists and turns that have occurred in the confrontation between these two countries. What is certain, however, is that this situation has grown significantly in complexity over this period, and with that, the danger has also increased.
Maritime disputes between China and its neighbors were the focus of high-level diplomatic discussions in Washington this week, as US President Joe Biden receives his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, for a state visit that will include an unusual trilateral meeting with China. President of the Philippines, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. Like the Philippines, Japan has been locked in a long-running dispute with China over a group of small islands, the Senkakus, which Tokyo considers to fall within its maritime territory and currently controls. To raise the stakes and complicate matters further, the Biden administration has gradually included Japan and the Philippines in its contingency plans to defend Taiwan in the event that Beijing makes any attempt to seize that island by force. China has long claimed Taiwan as an integral part of its territory.
I don't want to put too fine a point on things, but the fault lines in each of these conflicts are frightening and have enormous implications for both great power rivalry and for world peace in general. In each of these conflicts, it is much easier to imagine the ways in which opposing sides might stumble into a disastrous war, than to imagine a way to settle or even defuse the underlying conflicts.
Before moving forward, it is worth quickly summarizing some of the most important developments of the past busy decade. First, in 2016 in the Philippines had won A unanimous ruling on the Law of the Sea in The Hague invalidated China's claims to any historical rights to the seas of the Spratly Islands, which include Second Thomas Shoal. In fact, China is demanding much more than this. It just didn't happen unacceptable This ruling by The Hague, but it also continued to assert its exclusive rights over almost the entire South China Sea and moved forward with an ambitious campaign of Construction and armament Artificial islands in this vast, strategically important waterway in order to enforce its claims.
Shortly after my visit to Palawan, the Philippines elected Rodrigo Duterte as president. Despite the maritime court ruling in his country's favor, during most of his six years in office, Duterte distanced his country from the United States and moved closer to China, downplaying his country's maritime dispute with its giant and powerful neighbour. This appears to have been done against the backdrop of often unrealized expectations that China would invest heavily in the Philippines and thus help transform its economy.
The shift in Manila's foreign policy roughly coincided with the radical changes in US foreign policy under Donald Trump. Biden's predecessor emphasized long-term American alliances, not limited to NATO. Trump also downplayed US commitments in Asia, which cast doubt among allies there, primarily Japanon whether the United States would honor its treaty obligations to defend that country in the event of war with China.
In turn, this helped fuel efforts by the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to strengthen Japan's defense capabilities and begin to reduce restrictions contained in Japan's so-called Peace Constitution, which severely limits Japan's use of weapons in international conflicts. .
Returning to the recent present, Biden worked hard to revitalize the alliance systems in Washington. This did not only mean expanding NATO as a means of containing Russian expansion in Europe, but it also meant strengthening American alliance relations throughout maritime Asia, albeit in a less visible way in the eyes of Western public opinion. While Russia's challenge was to deal with an old and in many respects declining power, Washington's challenge with China was to constrain a richer, larger, more capable power that was still clearly gaining more power. That's what this week is Triple top It's all about the White House, and that's also what deepening US (Japanese) relations with Australia means. Remarkably, against this same general backdrop, Washington under Biden was able to help as well incentivize Relations between Tokyo and Seoul, which had been tense for a long time, improved. If its dreams come true, the United States would also want to draw both India and Vietnam into this growing containment network, but barring massive mistakes by China, each of these countries appears committed to hedging and is unlikely to adhere to a US-led containment policy. Alliance system in Asia
What is missing from this complex puzzle should worry everyone involved, meaning the entire planet, and can be summed up in a phrase: an exit ramp toward peaceful coexistence. No one knows how China, a regional giant convinced of its own rights in its neighbourhood, can be persuaded that it should not impose its claims in Taiwan by military force, or how, by the same token, it can be persuaded to make less efforts. Expansive claims in the East and South China Seas. The only thing I've ever heard suggested is a call for more force by those who want to constrain Beijing. However, China itself is getting stronger, which means that each of these situations is becoming steadily more dangerous.
The history of great power rivalries does not offer much promise, but something more creative will be needed here, and time is urgent. There are columns where I feel like I have things to point out that other people have missed, and in rare cases even clever or hopeful paths forward. This is not one of them. Finding a better interim settlement in this part of the world is extremely urgent, and no one seems to have a clue.
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