Conclusions

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Notes

This is a scenario advocated beyond China, including by Hugh White, who makes specific reference to the danger of escalatory conflict in the South China Sea. Hugh White, The China Choice (Collingwood: Black Inc., 2012).

Interview with Paul Keating, ABC, 23 Nov 2011. Transcript available at: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3374642.htm.

To some extent, the US ‘pivot’ has instituted this policy, rebalancing US forces away from China's immediate neighbourhood, even while maintaining a bolstered rhetorical and physical defence posture in the region more broadly.

James Holmes, ‘Rough Waters for Coalition Building’, in Cronin (ed.), Cooperation from Strength, p. 107.

This tributary system reached its zenith under the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), following considerable expansion in the wake of China's great maritime expeditions of the early 1400s.

For more on this argument, see, for example: James Dobbins, ‘War with China’.

The US has argued that this Mutual Defence Treaty does not apply to Scarborough Reef since the formal registration of Philippine claims here postdate the signing of this treaty. However, this is a somewhat technical argument. Were the Philippines to be the clear victims of Chinese aggression and the US fail to intervene in support of its ally in the region, regional perceptions of the advantages that come from a close alignment with the US would be severely damaged, with a consequent negative impact on the US's standing within the emerging regional order the likely result.

See: Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, chapter 4.

This was the label attached by Cronin and Kaplan to the US strategy of maintaining naval primacy within a broader framework of regional cooperation. Cronin and Kaplan, ‘Cooperation from Strength’, p. 5.

The US has, in the past, also used mil–mil relations to make broader political points. For example, they were the ones who shut down cooperation in the wake of the EP-3 incident in 2001.

This point is well made by Cronin and Kaplan as they dismiss any temptation to over-emphasise the influence of either a more authoritarian or a more democratic China on the South China Sea. Cronin and Kaplan, ‘Cooperation from Strength’, p. 15.

China is far from the only state which has explicitly rejected this option. Similarly, the US would likely reject such an option were it ever to ratify UNCLOS.

For more on this argument, see: Tonnesson, ‘China's Changing Role in the South China Sea’, Asia Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 3 & 4, Winter 2012, pp. 18–30.

China should be amenable to Taiwanese inclusion in that their overlapping claims effectively give China two seats at the table, rather than one (or none in the case of Taiwan).

This has similarities with the Philippine proposal for a Zone of Peace, Freedom, Friendship and Cooperation (ZoPFFC), as referenced in chapter 3.

This could only be countenanced in areas where claims overlapped in such a way that both claimants would have to compromise in allowing the other paramilitary on to their claimed territory. The JMSU collapsed as a confidencebuilding measure in part because of Philippine objections that its mandate only involved exploration in an area claimed by the Philippines, with no apparent reciprocal gesture made on the part of China or Vietnam.

Negotiations would have to be carefully managed to avoid a flurry of militarisation shortly before any such agreement.

The authors do accept, however, aside from questions over access by military vessels, an important distinction in emphasis on the question of EEZs. Under international law, EEZs are presented as international waters in which the adjacent country has particular rights. China's approach appears to suggest it views EEZs as the adjacent country's waters in which other countries have particular rights, premised on hostcountry agreement.