Everybody’s rushing to the South China Sea
Activity is really ramping up in the South China Sea as western powers send their navies in a show of, a show of something, we don’t really know what.
We sought the help of Professor Rebecca Strating the Executive Director of LaTrobe Asia to try to understand what is going on and whether we are on an collision course with China.
France announced it would create a “South Pacific Coast Guard network” to combat “predatory” behavior. As the South China Sea is a traditional sphere of influence between the US and Australia, have the two countries communicated about it? What is Australia’s internal view and assessment on it? What kind of communication has Australia had with France and how will Australia support the project? Who are the representatives of support and opposition within the Australian government?
I think this is part of the tilt to the indo pacific, right? Everybody is scared of china.
But I think that there’s more probably a sense of why does all this activity matter? like some of it might be interpreted as a kind of public diplomacy effort, demonstrating, resolve, demonstrating commitments to Asian partners.
Some of its the new signalling are rather than it being, particularly a sign that the United States and its sort of partners in and beyond the region are unlikely to do anything more substantial to threaten China’s position in the south china sea.
As the South China Sea is a traditional sphere of influence between the US and Australia, have the two countries communicated about it.
Yes, yeah, they are talking. There is a for example, a trilateral between Australia, India, and France that had some track one and track one point. 5 dialogues earlier this year. And a lot of the discussion is targeted at maritime issues. I mean France, in some ways, is it’s not surprising its interest in the region, because if we think of France as a maritime power, it has exclusive economic zone interests across the pacific and the Indian oceans. France has the world’s second largest exclusive economic zone as a result of these kind of posts, territorial outpost that it has in across the Indo Pacific. So, if we think about it as a maritime state with access to huge swathes of maritime area and relationships with states in these regions, in the Southwestern Pacific. For example, then it’s not a surprising that France is invested. And in fact, from memory, France is the first European state to have an Indo Pacific policy or statement uh, which came out in 2018. I think that and there’s maritime security programs there’s something called the quad, not the Australia, India, Japan, US quad, but another quad in the pacific that France is a part of with uh, Australia and the US and I think New Zealand.The idea of France being involved, uh are engaged in maritime security issues in the region is less surprising if we think about France as a maritime power.
What is Australia’s internal view and assessment on it?
States like Australia increasingly, the term is, “like minded”, on issues to do with maritime security and preserving the maritime rules based order. There are states, particularly kind of western states that share Australia’s views on maritime rules and also share Australia’s views on how China is challenging those maritime rules in the south china sea. This is sort of shared, I guess, perception that Beijing’s actions in the south china sea, a threat to the United Nations convention on the law of the sea.
And so, part of the response to that challenge is ensuring that states band together and engage in activities that are designed to support the maritime order that is based on international law of the sea.
What’s changed that has caused a country like Australia to support this approach, China’s take on the South China Sea has been consistent for the past few years?
I think that the China’s a great well, perhaps not gradually, but certainly since 2012, China’s leadership has increasingly asserted its desire to become a maritime power. You’re right that there was the period of artificial island building that was primarily from 2014 to 2017. But this needs to be the States’ responses to what is going on in the South China Sea and the maritime domain or broadly need to be understood in the context of strategic competition and particularly the, explicit strategic competition between the United States and China that really sort of intensified under the Trump administration.
So, if you read the Indo Pacific documents that are produced by the United States government, department of defence, for example, South China Sea is often used as the key example of how China is challenging the rules based order. And the “rules based order” is a term or a concept that gets used a lot by states such as Australia and also Japan, for example, in it’s free and open Indo Pacific concept. There is a significant maritime dimension to that. So, you’ve got states like Australia and Japan that were real leaders in the use of the Indo Pacific concept. It wasn’t around sort of 2017 that the United States starts to use it much more frequently. And it’s official declaratory policy. And coming out of this sort of concept is the idea that the maritime domain is underpinned by a set of rules and principles around things like freedom of navigation, and that these are being fundamentally challenged by an increasingly assertive China.
So why is this happening now, what’s changed?
You’ve also got the ruling of the arbitration tribunal. That was 2016, the south china sea arbitral tribunal ruling, in the case, initiated by the Philippines. It’s taken. It’s taken 5 years or 4 or 5 years for states to start really advocating that ruling, because the Philippines didn’t under president Rodrigo Duturte. The Philippines didn’t really propagate the case that the ruling was making that invalidated the historic rights claim, the China was making within the nine-dash line.
And so, through this kind of context of increased strategic competition, increased concern about an assertive China that’s building up its maritime military capabilities and is even if it’s sort of slow down on the artificial island building, it’s still making increases on the ground through things like militarizing, those artificial islands or creating administrative zones or employing grey zone tactics are through the use of maritime militia or harassment of survey vessels, these tactics are still going on. And there’s also this, I guess, concern around opportunism in the south china sea using the pandemic as a way of being able to advance interests of goals in the South ChinaSsea, while at the same time, engaging with Southeast Asian states, with things like vaccine delivery, there’s but it’s, not as if China has stopped making ground on the South China Sea, there are still concerns that it’s a crucible for potential conflict.
That being the case, this co-ordinated campaign by these so called, “Democratic” countries has been very slow, we are talking about a four year lag?
Yeah, that’s right. I partly, partly the issue, I think, is that the Southeast Asian states, the claimant states in the South China Sea haven’t necessarily been wanting to use the arbitration tribunal ruling to defend their claims or to come out heavily against China
because these countries hedging, in a sense. So, for extra regional states to come in, there is a sort of, there are some slightly problematic optics to that given that states like the United States, Australia, the European countries that are now involved don’t actually have maritime or territorial claims in the South China Sea but, at the same time, this is very much, in my view, very much connected to the way in which South China Sea is emerging as the primary example of China’s rule breaking and that rule breaking is central to how other states view order, regional order in Asia, but also global order, how they interpret the changes in the distribution of power in the international system.
So, underpinning it all is a bit of anxiety around just how China, just how capable China might be of altering existing rules and what that might mean for their interests, particularly as states that share democratic, liberal, democratic values.
Recently the Japanese Ambassador to Australia said “we are in the same boat and urged Australia to join forces with Japan to address the Challenge of China. What do you think is the attitude of the Australian government on these remarks?
Yeah, Australia and Japan are an interesting case. I mean it wasn’t that long ago that Japan, even in the 80s, was seen as being a bit of a threat to Australian interest, or perhaps not a threat to Australian interests, but not its greatest friend in the region. So there is, I think, a real sense on both sides, Australia and Japan of deepening, wanting to deepen security cooperation and in fact, I would say that Australia’s Indo Pacific concept, is probably most closely aligned with Japan’s rather than the United States, Australia’s much less. I guess, doesn’t employ the same kind of strategic competition narrative as what the united states does in its policies but it seems to be much more closely aligned to japan and while Australia and Japan have some different security interests, I mean japan has its own maritime issues in the East China Sea with Beijing and also in the Kurals with Russia and Doctor Takashima with South Korea at the same time, there is a shared vision, I guess, of what the free and open sea or as Japan calls it, the Indo Pacific order should look like. I mean I think there’s real potential for Australia and Japan, too deepen economic and security ties, you know, particularly as the regional order becomes more contested and uncertain.
The Ambassador, Mr Yamagaki also said Australia and Japan were in the “final stages” of long-negotiated defence co-operation, with the two countries undergoing a stunning transformation and now enjoying a close strategic relationship. What consensus have been reached between Australia and Japan on defence cooperation negotiations and what differences do they have?
So, that reflects, I think, some shared concerns about the future of the security order in Asia.
But “amazing transformation” he said, what does that mean?
I I think that if you look at the sort of the history, the longer-term history of Australia, Japan relations, we haven’t always been on the same side. Sometimes there have been significant issues that have impeded our relations. Obviously, there’s been differences, in the first half of the 20th century, there was conflict and war, but even after that, there were concerns about rising Japan, the second half of the 20th century, but even more recently, there have been issues around whaling. For example, Australia took Japan to an international court on the issue of whaling and the other one was the submarine tendering issue, which was a really sensitive issue, I think, in the bilateral relationship. It’s not necessarily that Australia and Japan are naturally fit to be best friends or allies in Asia. This is something that I think both states are working towards.
It is interesting that we no longer hear much in Australia about the whaling issue?
Well the whaling one is actually quite interesting. I don’t think it’s resolved, but Japan withdrew from the international whaling commission, which means that it can now. It’s moved its whaling operation to its EEZ and away from the Southern Ocean. So, I’m not quite certain how that has changed the dynamic of that issue, um but. It’s certainly, I haven’t heard much about it recently.
More broadly though, there still are differences between Australia and Japan aren’t there?
Yeah, absolutely. There are differences among all of these states that often get badge as being like-minded. The extent to which they are like minded, I think, really comes down to their perceptions of what China is doing in the region.
One of the stories of the past 50 or so years has been the determination of the US and its allies to keep Japan and China apart?
Yes, that’s interesting.
What is the US telling Australia and vice versa about this relationship?
I think this is good for the United states. This is the United States has created the hub and spoke system through the San Francisco treaty network following world war two and this is an example of what they call networked architecture, where the spokes are now deepening their relationships. I think that there’s a potential for US allies to contribute to defending the rules based order as they see it in Asia by working more closely together and potentially this has a burden sharing element as well.
As announced in a joint statement made by the British and Japanese defence ministers Ben Wallace and Nobuo Kishi, the UK’s offshore patrol vessels HMS Spey and HMS Tamar will be permanently deployed to the region in August, supported by ships from Australia, Japan and Singapore. What is Australia’s opinion on this (military deterrence is not effective, what is the point of coming to the South China Sea) What communication has been made with the UK and what support will be provided?
Well, as I said before, I think this is a sign that the maritime domain is increasingly important for how a lot of states view security in the region and a lot of states are concerned about the potential for China to challenge existing maritime rules and so really this activity, all this flurry of activity, I think he’s really a part of a context or an environment of strategic competition, between the great powers and concern about China’s abilities to or willingness to undermine existing rules and power dynamics. So, I that’s really what I think is, underpinning all of this, a shared concern about China’s assertions and activities.
But is a coordinated campaign, are these states communicating with each other and operating in a co-ordinated way?
I think that it depends because there’s like a whole range of maritime activities that are going on. I the list of maritime, the joint exercises and activities that Australia engages with,
for example, it’s quite long. So, it depends on what it is that we’re talking about. Some a very coordinated look, for example, Australia, the quad now has the Malabar exercises which are including all four quad countries and so that is being coordinated through the quad which is, one mechanism for coordinating those sorts of activities. sI don’t think that that countries are all necessarily coordinating all of their maritime security activities with one or more states I think it depends on the type of activity that we talking about, but I have no doubt that China and maritime security issues are coming up more and more in high level diplomatic discussions between states.
Can you tell me specifically about those discussions. Let’s look the Bavaria, the German frigate, are they talking to the Australian navy?
I don’t have any Information on that. Sorry, I can’t, you’d have to ask the navy.
Ok, the overall aspiration of all of this activity, is it about a notion of deterrence?
Yeah, I think it’s signalling and it is deterrence. I think that there’s come a point now where states perhaps have recognized that the only way of defending the maritime rules is by asserting their right to transit. Maritime exercises are about things like interoperability and about coordination of navies and personnel, but it’s also, as I said before, there’s also a signalling component to this. There is a sense of this is where states are at . The navies are able to transit through, seaways, and they’re able to engage in these activities, because they’re lawful according to international law of the sea.
But the interesting one, the one that I’ll be keeping my eye out on is whether any of these states will start to engage in US style surface, freedom of navigation operations in contested areas, particularly in the South China Sea because while these countries assert their rights under international law and engage in maritime activities as a way of doing that and demonstrating their rights to freedom of navigation, there are certain things that states have not been prepared to do. For Australia, transiting within 12 nautical miles of the Chinese claimed feature is something that it has not been prepared to do, even if it sees that under the international law of the sea that it has the right to do that – engage, for example, in innocent passage. It has that right under international law as Australia sees it, China disagrees and wants prior authorization for that transit, but that is something that Australia sees as being within its right, and yet it’s not prepared to do.
So, the question then, is, how far will states go to actually defend their conception of the rules based order?
Another question is how far would they go to defend each other, let’s say the German frigate wanders inside the 12-mile boundary and draws hostile fire, would Australia rush to its defence?
Well, Australia has had the same concerns. I don’t really know whether Australia would rush to its defence. I think that the bigger question is probably whether the United States would. I don’t know whether you’ve read Malcolm Turnbull by memoir. The chapter on China probably gives the best account from a leader that I’ve seen of why Australia doesn’t engage in freedom of navigation operations and one of the really important points that Malcolm makes is that Australia couldn’t be certain that if something where to happen, that the United States would necessarily come to Australia’s aid, which is kind of revealing, because while there might be people out there who say yes we should be doing freedom of navigation operations, there are risks associated with that and these are risks that need to be weighed up very carefully by people who make these sorts of decisions. So I think that does weigh on the minds of policy makers about whether or not, when the chips are down, other states will have their backs.
Certainly, if one was following the events of the past few days in Afghanistan, you would have even more reason to doubt?
Well there’s another interesting set of issues around what Afghanistan will mean for US/Asia policy but I see that there’s a lot of frantic conversations being had on Twitter around that issue. That’s for sure.
The Indian Naval task force plans to conduct bilateral exercises with Australia and participate in the Malabar 2021 joint exercise. What is Australia’s true view of The Indian Navy and its capability assessment?
I think that the capabilities question is really important, because in the end, all states have limitations on their capabilities. And one of the concerns about Indians response to China’s activities in the South China Sea is that it’s too overly focused on the Indian Ocean. But why wouldn’t it be? I mean geography matters, right? And India sees its role in the region is really being a regional leader in the Indian Ocean rim area and that’s a strategic priority theatre in a maritime sense. so that’s not really surprising, but there are concerns about India’s capabilities. But more interesting is a couple of weeks ago her India sent patrols into the South China Sea or they announced that they’re sending patrols so I think that there’s a greater sense of maybe involvement in that area or a recognition that secondary theatres also matter. But in some of its, discourses around the South China Sea, India has been a little bit reluctant as well to really push against what China is doing. India has its own set of interests, and its own border disputes with China. So, I think there are existing concerns about capability and about the extent to which India might be willing to get involved in maritime theatres beyond the Indian Ocean.
Does Australia believe that India will affect its hegemony in the South China Sea and the Pacific?
I don’t think Australia would see it like that. I think that like with Japan, Australia has been really wanting to deepen security relations with India and that’s through bilateral, trilateral, and the quad and other regional forums that Australia and India are trying to deepen coordination and cooperation on maritime security issues because they’re both Indian Ocean states, they have an interest in the security of the sea lines in the Indian Ocean, a lot of states do, and also they have an interest in responding to or managing non-traditional security threats like piracy or, environmental challenges so there are these sorts of shared maritime interests that underpin or that are driving Australia/India security cooperation. So, I don’t necessarily think that Australian policy makers see India as a threat or a challenge to Australian maritime interests.
What communication has Australia had with the US on India’s participation in the South China Sea? Again, it looks like France, UK, Germany, India, Japan and Australia all ganging up on China to win favour or support with the US, is this a co-ordinated effort, if so who is co-ordinating it?
How am I gonna put this? There is an element of a shared concern about China’s activities in the region that is, I think, bringing these states closer together, particularly we see this in maritime security. The question is to what extent are these states willing to push back against China in the future? And to what extent are these states willing to operationally defend their conception of the rules based order. I mean, this is a question that I was put by Hugh White and what he’s written is we can talk about the rules based order, but to what extent is a state like Australia really going to got to, when it’s really under pressure, is it going to risk it’s vessels or its personnel in order to defend the maritime rules.
And I think that there’s a lot of this kind of surface activity that’s going on. And it’s really interesting to watch these states coming together in joint exercises and working on maritime security issues. But there’s a question, I think, about how far they will go together in order to defend their conception of the rules based order.
Of course, this argument that is driving the apparent consensus is flawed, some these countries, notably the US, are being very selective about their own use of the rules based order, it didn’t stop the invasion of Iraq.
Yes, well the United States and this is something that is often missed. The United States conducts freedom of navigation operations against Japan, against India, against South Korea, against states, in southeast Asia. It doesn’t, since 1994, at least. it hasn’t conducted any against Australia’s maritime claims, but it certainly has issues with some of them. The US doesn’t recognize some of Australia’s historic bay claims, for example, it doesn’t recognize Australia’s ambiguous, 2 million square kilometer exclusive economic zone claim off the coast of Australian Antarctic territory as another example. So, they don’t all necessarily get on when you get into the details but what they do agree on is the kind of unilateral and dangerous actions of China in the South China Sea is unacceptable and that’s something that’s holding these states together.
The question this raises though, is, is the objection of these states China’s action in the South China Sea or rather the fact that China’s nave is getting more capable and the country more powerful.
As I said, this the South China Sea needs to be understood in concern around growing strategic competition and China’s growing might, you can’t separate the South China Sea from that issue because there have been issues in the South China Sea for a long time. 1974, 1988, 1995, Scarborough Shoal, and while China have intensified and the artificial island building and the militarization and the growth of the Chinese navy, and it’s obvious, ambitions to become a maritime power are much more recent but the South China Sea is not something that’s just emerged in the last 5 years. So it definitely needs to be understood in terms of concerns around a changing order and an order that is based 1. on power and 2. on rules and norms and institutions.
There is a contrary view that says, China’s intentions should not be viewed as expansionary but rather their actions in the South China Sea are about protecting their trade routes?
This is a different set of issues. Because, and there are these debates. To what extent can China, for example, use the strategies and tactics that it has adopted in terms of the three-warfare strategy in the South China sea to, what extent can it use those in other maritime domains. It doesn’t really look like it’ll be able to make historic rights arguments in the Southern Ocean or the Indian Ocean, for example. Sorry. There’s a sense in which it’s a debate, I guess, to be had about whether the South China Sea is like a unique area that China seeks to control or to assert sovereignty over even if that’s contrary to international law, because of its strategic concerns, which relate, at least, in part two historical I guess I it’s historical awareness that the seas have been a weakness in China’s defense in the past. And so the partly defending continental China is about being able to control the seas as a buffer zone, which means that the South China Sea is a very unique, has a unique place in China’s strategic imagination, which is a bit different from the idea of wanting to control, or wanting to be able to command the world seas, which is partly what underpinned US power in post, World War Two era. So, there are others discussions going on?
Yes but in our world, in Australia, these discussions and debates go on only among the military and in private among academics, in term of the Australian polity there is no public discussion and no political disagreement among the politicians is there, we just blindly follow the US?
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s I would agree with that. I think that it’s risky. It would be risky for politicians in Australia and this has been demonstrated by Gladys Lew and Sam Dastayari although he had other issues going on, but when politicians come out and say, why is Australia getting involved in this? What are Australia’s interest in these seas that are so far away from us and we don’t have a territorial or maritime claim, what is in it for us? There does tend to be a sense of outrage or the accusation that it is a message that’s reflecting Chinese propaganda.
So, we don’t really have a discussion in Australia about what Australia’s interests are in the South China Sea and I think it’s a shame because while I see China’s activities and actions in the South China Sea as being really problematic to the United Nations Convention on the law of the sea, which Australia relies upon in generating its own extensive maritime claim that. Australia is the world’s third largest, it’s has the world’s third largest exclusive economic zone. So, while these actions are problematic to that order, there are, I think, serious conversations to be had about the extent to which Australia is willing to get involved in the South China Sea. The debates tend to exist primarily around whether or not Australia will engage in FONOPS, that seems to be the kind of red line, if you like.
How far do you think Australia would go to counter China’s influence in the South China Sea?
Well I think at the moment, Australia is really doing what I think it probably should be doing coordinating with other states, engaging in joint activities, engaging at the diplomatic level.
So, particularly with, for example, engaging diplomatically in southeast Asia states, on maritime security issues and attempting to partner with states in the region, and not just in around the South China Sea, but also what it does in the South Pacific with its patrol boat program. In a sense, playing a role in trying to enable other states to be able to defend their maritime entitlements. So that’s those. And it has the Indo pacific endeavour, which I think it was suspended last year due to the pandemic. It may be running again this year. I think it is, but this is a sort of a flotilla of vessels moving across Asia and the pacific to engage in joint activities, but to also try and build and consolidate relationships with other states and doing things, doing, you know, humanitarian activities and things like that.
So, there’s a lot more going on than just whether or not Australia is doing freedom of navigation operations, but that seems to be where the debate is stuck at the minute.
I wouldn’t be surprised if one day we do get a prime minister or a leader who actually, it wouldn’t necessarily surprise me if if one day there wasn’t a Australian government that decided to do us to do freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, I just don’t think it would necessarily be a good idea.
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