The South China Sea (34 page)

One by one, the other ministers spoke. Surapong Tovichakchaikul of Thailand was equivocal but spoke of the need to preserve ASEAN unity. Pham Binh Minh of Vietnam wanted support against ‘serious violations of sovereignty’ by China. Marty Natalegawa of Indonesia insisted that ASEAN should stand together, and mentioned the latest developments in the South China Sea, as did Anifah Aman of Malaysia. Prince Mohamed Bolkiah of Brunei said little but indicated that he could support the communiqué. He was followed by the ministers from Laos and Myanmar who said nothing against the text and then by K. Shanmugam of Singapore who noted that ‘recent developments were of special concern’.

Up until this point (according to the account that we have), every foreign minister had either spoken in favour of the text or said nothing against it. But then the Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong took the microphone, declared ‘there is no consensus’ and announced that paragraphs 14 to 17, and particularly 16, should be bracketed rather than adopted straightaway. The four drafting ministers were aghast and immediately asked to settle the matter then and there. But Hor maintained that ‘now or in the near future we can't expect to resolve these disputes. Not ASEAN’. The first suspicions began to rise – had Cambodia been bought? Was it prepared to fracture ASEAN in order to please Beijing?

Natalegawa of Indonesia then read out a compromise version of Paragraph 16 – which mentioned ‘the situation in the affected Shoal/disputed area, exclusive economic zones and continental shelves’ – but Hor insisted that there was no need to mention any specific incidents and went on a rambling diversion about whether it was possible to tell the difference between a shoal and an island or identify whom it belonged to. He finished by proposing to delete Paragraph 16 altogether. Del Rosario pointed out that the text said nothing about who owned the Shoal.

The argument then moved to whether the phrase ‘disputed area’ could be used instead. Natalegawa and Aman of Malaysia suggested the idea but Pham Binh Minh insisted that Vietnam's Exclusive Economic Zone could not be called a ‘disputed area’ and del Rosario said the same about Scarborough Shoal. Pham Binh Minh proposed a short break in the discussions – at which point our record of the event ceases. But the arguments over how precise the communiqué could be about the recent troubles in the Sea continued for four days, alongside all other scheduled bilateral and multilateral meetings.

At press briefings in Beijing and Phnom Penh on the following day, Tuesday, 10 July 2012, Chinese diplomats continued to warn that the meetings were not the ‘appropriate place to discuss the South China Sea issue’, noting that ‘the Chinese side appreciates the long-standing, firm support of Cambodia for China on issues that concern China's core interests’.
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Although journalists were kept cooped in the official media centre, safely away from the spectacle of ministers and officials racing up and down the echoing corridors, the first hints of trouble inside the Peace Palace started to reach the outside world. An emergency meeting of ministers on
the Wednesday morning was described as ‘sharp’ and ‘intense’. ASEAN's Secretary-General, Surin Pitsuwan of Thailand, decided to play Pollyanna, however, telling journalists the discussions were ‘going well’.

By Thursday, Surin was prepared to concede that there was a ‘hiccup’ in proceedings. Marty Natalegawa, meanwhile, was trying to cure the problem – while declaring the behaviour of some of his colleagues ‘utterly irresponsible’. He offered at least 18 different drafts of Paragraph 16 but to no avail. There was another emergency meeting. One Cambodian diplomat complained that his country was being ‘bullied’. Unnamed diplomats told journalists that Hor Namhong repeatedly took the drafts out of the room to consult with unseen advisors. There were suggestions that these texts were being shared with Chinese officials.
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Although this allegation was later criticised by Cambodian diplomats (for example in a letter to the
Phnom Penh Post
) it was never actually denied.
³³

It was now Hillary Clinton's turn to have a go. The American Secretary of State arrived in Phnom Penh with a beaming smile but a recognition that discussions were ‘intense’. She reminded everyone that it was US policy not to take sides in the Sea disputes – before taking sides in the disputes by criticising ‘confrontational behavior’ at the Scarborough Shoal, ‘worrisome instances of economic coercion’ and ‘national measures that create friction’.
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No-one doubted which country she was referring to. She called on ASEAN to ‘speak with one voice’. It sounded like an attempt to unite ASEAN behind the communiqué.

On Friday morning Surin Pitsuwan was still talking about a ‘hiccup’ in the Peace Palace. Shanmugam was about to get on his plane home to Singapore when he received a desperate call from Natalegawa calling him back: the Philippines and Vietnam had agreed a compromise wording. There was a final emergency meeting. During the discussions Hor cut off Surin's microphone mid-sentence.
³⁵
Despite further entreaties for compromise, Hor picked up his papers and stormed out of the room.
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It was no good. For the first time in its 45-year history a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers ended without an official communiqué. Natalegawa expressed his ‘deep, profound disappointment’. Surin upgraded his assessment of the situation to a ‘major hiccup’. Other participants were calling it a different kind of ‘up’. As the questions poured in on Friday, Cambodia's Foreign Minister offered the bizarre explanation that ‘the meeting of the
ASEAN foreign ministers is not a court, a place to give a verdict about the dispute’.
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No-one had asked the meeting to do such a thing.

Few were surprised that Cambodia had acted in sympathy with the Chinese position but most were taken aback by the brazen way it had done so and the fact that it been prepared to damage ASEAN so badly in the process. The Cambodian government didn't appear to care very much. After all, why should Cambodia act in the interests of ASEAN as a whole? The only thing that matters to Hun Sen is the future of Hun Sen. In blocking the statement he had simultaneously pleased Beijing and annoyed Hanoi – a double win. There was no down side. The Americans weren't going to break off relations. In fact they were going to redouble their efforts to keep him from sliding any further into the Chinese camp – a triple win.

But for others with a stronger interest in regional unity, Phnom Penh was a disaster. Only Marty Natalegawa had the initiative and the authority to try to repair the damage. Five days after the summit he sped from Jakarta to Manila, Hanoi, Phnom Penh, Bangkok and Singapore. His mission was hailed as a triumph, although its only achievement was to get ASEAN to reiterate the six points it had iterated many times before: support for the DOC, for the Guidelines, for having a Code of Conduct, for international law, self-restraint and the peaceful resolution of disputes. The words ‘Scarborough Shoal’ or ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’ were not mentioned. However, after the failure in Phnom Penh, the only thing that mattered was having a single piece of paper with all the foreign ministers’ names on it.

But the issue kept on rumbling, amplified by vituperative newspaper articles penned by undiplomatic diplomats. Albert del Rosario's senior assistant, Erlinda Basilio, fired the opening shot with a lengthy account of the summit in two Philippine newspapers. Cambodian diplomats sent emotive rebuttals to articles printed in the
Bangkok Post, The Nation
, the
Phnom Penh Post
, the
Cambodia Daily
, the
Japan Times
and the
Philippines Star
. In the latter, the Cambodian ambassador in Manila, Hos Sereythonh, accused the Philippines of ‘dirty politics’. Del Rosario's office summoned him to a meeting with a notice posted on the front gate of his embassy and the front page of a newspaper. Hos claimed he was too ill to attend and sent a deputy instead. Ten days later, in what the Cambodian embassy in Manila said was an attempt to repair relations, Hos was recalled to
Phnom Penh and replaced. After that things quietened down a bit. In December, Erlinda Basilio was appointed the Philippine ambassador to China – a sign that Manila would continue to take a tough stance. But to what end? At the time of writing, well after the showdown in Phnom Penh, the Code of Conduct is still no closer to being agreed and the Zone of Peace, Freedom, Friendship and Cooperation has been consigned to the filing cabinet.

* * * * * *

In 2011 the Asia team in the State Department were, in the words of Ernie Bower, ‘absolutely panicked that Beijing would read the impending withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan as additional weakness’.
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They looked for a way to describe the developments in a positive light. They initially settled on the phrase ‘the turn to Asia’ but Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, had a better idea. In November 2011, in the pages of
Foreign Policy
magazine, Hillary Clinton unveiled the rebranding of the end of the United States’ entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan. It wasn't a retreat; it wasn't even a ‘turn’. It was a ‘pivot’. Her article outlined six ‘key lines of action’ – four taken from Derek Mitchell's CSIS report of 2009 (reinvigorating alliances, cultivating relationships with emerging powers, developing relationships with regional multilateral bodies and working closely with Southeast Asian countries on economic issues) plus two more: the US would forge a broad-based military presence in Asia and advance democracy and human rights.

As a strategic marketing exercise the pivot was staggeringly successful. No-one could now claim the United States was ignoring Asia. The choice of word had the desired effect. The problem was that it became associated with just one of the six ‘lines of action’. The first practical result of the pivot came just days after Clinton's article when President Obama flew to Australia to announce an agreement for 2,500 US marines to be semi-permanently based in Darwin. Only afterwards did he fly on to Bali and become the first US president to attend the East Asia Summit. Even Derek Mitchell, who had just left the Pentagon, admits ‘the message wasn't initially rolled out so well’.
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The pivot became too closely associated with military deployments. ‘Pivot’ also sounded impermanent. If the
US could pivot towards Asia, perhaps it could pivot away again just as easily. Washington needed something that sounded longer-lasting. Within six months ‘pivot’ had become ‘rebalance’.

Most of the governments in Southeast Asia have welcomed the US ‘rebalance’. It allows them to balance their relationship with China and enjoy greater freedom of action. Some, like Cambodia, have deliberately played one power off against the other. Others, mainly the maritime states, have tried to use the rebalance to bolster their positions, particularly in the South China Sea. The disputes there have made it easier for the US to strengthen relations with the countries involved. Two agendas have developed symbiotically: the regional anxiety about China's growing assertiveness and the US's concerns about its global strategic role. Gradually the two sets of issues – the regional disputes over territory and the ‘global’ differences between the US and China – have become interlinked. It's what makes the South China Sea such a potentially dangerous place. In the words of Derek Mitchell, there's a risk of ‘the tail wagging the dog’.

‘It's not just about China’ is the mantra Mitchell and other American diplomats must chant every time they mention the ‘rebalance’. That's true – it's about reinvigorating ties with Japan, Korea, ASEAN and South Asia. But all those places form an arc around … China. Clinton's six lines of action form rhetorical arcs around China too. Each one is associated with a key phrase that reveals its underlying focus. When she wrote of engaging emerging powers, she asked them ‘to join us in shaping and participating in a rules-based regional and global order’. The ‘rules-based order’ is the international system that underwrites American global primacy through such traditions as the UN Security Council veto, the Bretton Woods institutions, the hegemony of the dollar, the principles of free trade and the doctrine of freedom of navigation. Future American security and prosperity will depend upon new global powers abiding by the norms of the existing international system. From a strategic perspective, American primacy depends, in particular, upon access to all the world's seas. In the words of the United States’ 2011 National Military Strategy, ‘assured access to the global commons and cyberspace constitutes a core aspect of U.S. national security … The global commons and globally connected domains constitute the connective tissue upon which all nations’ security and prosperity depend.’

The South China Sea is a crucial link in the ‘global commons’, connecting the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf and Europe. Right now, along with the East China Sea, it is the most contested piece of sea in the world and one of the main reasons for the current anxiety over China's intentions. As one former Pentagon policy-maker explained, ‘we're happy to have a lot of countries out there steaming around. What is not on is proprietary behaviour which, in a direct assertive way or in a subtle suffocating way, wants to crowd other players out.’
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When Americans talk about China working within the international system, they mean that, among other things, China must agree to keep the South China Sea open to the US Navy.

Great efforts are now being made to encourage China to desist from ‘proprietary behaviour’ and fully engage with the existing system – in other words, play the game on Western terms. From state visits to military discussions to phytosanitary working parties, Beijing is being ‘love-bombed’ by diplomats and strategists. As Kurt Campbell told an Australian audience in 2013, ‘What we are seeking is for China to integrate into the global community in such a way that there are shared norms, values and procedures that we work on to define together, that are in all of our best interests.’
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All this effort is being expended because those diplomats and strategists believe that the Beijing leadership is not convinced of the merits of the current international system and will seek to challenge its tenets in the decades to come.