Angry Planet - Will there be war in the South China Sea?

Episode Date: May 20, 2016

If you’re looking for a place on the globe likely to spark a world war, you could do worse than the South China Sea. The United States, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan all have claims there. China is building artificial islands and the U.S. Navy is patrolling close by. There have been confrontations at sea and in the air. This week on War College, we’re looking at this global sore spot and asking just how heated is the situation likely to get.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' News. If you think about it, if the United States is unable to help the Philippines to basically fulfill our obligations to the Philippines under our 1951 mutual defense treaty, China will have discreet. credited that to alliance, perhaps even broken the alliance and leave the Philippines, basically, with very little option other than to bandwagon with China.

If you're looking for a spot on the globe likely to spark a world war, you could do worse than the South China Sea. The United States, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan all have competing claims there. China is building artificial islands and the U.S. Navy is patrolling close by. There have been confrontations at sea and in the air. This week on War College, we're looking at this global sore spot and asking just how heated the situation is likely to get.

You're listening to War College, a weekly discussion of a world in conflict focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Here's your host, Jason Fields. Hello and welcome to War College. I'm Jason Fields with Reuters. And I'm Matthew Galt with Warwick. boring. James Holmes is a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and also the co-author of Red Star Over the Pacific, which was an Atlantic monthly Best Book of 2010. He's an expert on

the South China Sea and what the United States and China are doing there. So let me just say, thanks very much for joining us, James. Oh, thanks for having me. It's been a delight. So it's a right for you all over the last few months. And it's glad to make the personal contact. Well, so can we just start off with a real basic point, which is why is the South China to see such a flashpoint? It is quite a flashpoint simply because so many things are at play there as far as freedom of navigation, as far as various interests in resource extraction for fish and natural gas, all of these kinds of things. That's growing powers like China really need to tap. And in this case, all of that stuff, all those sort of tangible interests, I think they merge

with China's view of what China should be and what China should own as far as territory. I would say that we're actually looking at an intersection between all the those tangible economic interests and essentially a really old question about what the sea is. If you go all the way back to the 17th century, Europe, the Brits and the Portuguese in particular argued about whether you can't own the sea. We thought this question was basically settled by negotiated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which states that the sea primarily is a common, something that belongs to everyone and no one. But China seems to have the older view that you can't actually be sovereign over the sea

and rule as much as you would in your own land territory. Just a very quick aside, but the United States has not signed on to that treaty. Does that have any impact on how we view these things? I think it does have an impact. I tend to take a little bit less. I don't worry about it the way some people do. When you go to foreign conferences, there's always somebody who will raise the old gotcha line about why aren't you inside the lifelines of the UN convention and the tribunal that adjudicates the challenges like the Philippines has brought. But I do think it matters in a couple of ways.

First of all, we don't have access to the UN Tribunal, the Elkloos Tribunal that's adjudicated in the Philippines-China dispute, and that may adjudicate other disputes in the future. And secondly, it just means that the optics are bad. It's kind of like the United States remaining aloof from the Versailles Treaty, and particularly from the League of Nations almost a century ago. It's, you know, perhaps it makes very little practical difference, but it just doesn't look good. And I think, politically speaking, it doesn't do as many favors as we try to enforce the law

to see much as we have over the last. 70 years or thereabouts. James, who are the other interested parties in the region and what's at stake here? The other interested parties in the region are pretty much anybody who fronts on the South China Sea and has an exclusive economic zone and a territorial sea, which are apportioned to them by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. For example, if you look at the map of the South China Sea on which China has inscribed the famous nine dash line enclosing most of that body of the water, the waters within the nine dash line are very much within the exclusive economic zone. of Vietnam to a certain extent even of Indonesia, which has started to buttheads with China

in the southern reaches of the South China Sea. So those are the local powers that have the quite clearly Vietnam, Malaysia, all of the Southeast Asian nations that front on the sea have a very direct interest. And some of them also claim the Spratly's and parasols, and that's what generates a lot of press. The bigger point is that any seafaring state, any trading state that trades by sea has a stake in the South China Sea, simply because if China is, you know, China, able to redefine this as a body of water governed by Chinese domestic law, rather than by

international law. China will set the rules by which the sea lanes are used in the South China Sea. To me, that would set an awful precedent for similar bodies of water elsewhere in Eurasia and around the world, say the Black Sea. What if Russia tried to do the same thing in the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Sea of Akats, or what have you. So the local powers have a stake, and so does everybody else. And I think the everybody else tends to get lost in the discussion. there's a worry that China will impose, say, trade rules and tariffs and they'll charge people to use these portions of the seeds? It's that kind of thing? You know, I don't think so, Matthew. I mean, yes, you hear this from time to time. I've never seen any indication that the Chinese

are thinking about charging tolls or anything like that to passage through the region. And indeed, I think they're sincere when they say they have no desire to impede freedom of navigation so long as freedom of navigation is to find very strictly as the ability to go from point A to point B to pass through the region and do nothing else. This is one reason in my own writings and presentations, I make a big deal about the difference between freedom of navigation and freedom of the sea. If the seas outside of the territorial sea, which is no more than 12 nautical miles offshore, are indeed a commons.

That means that coastal states may not restrict anything other than economic uses of the sea and the sea bed. And the Chinese are always trying to get us, as you know, to stop doing military activities in the South China Sea, such as overflight, surveillance flights, flight operations from aircraft carriers, underwater surveys, all of these kind of things that are explicitly acknowledged and endorse in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea are things that China would like to prescribe. I think it would be a serious mistake to let them set the terms right now because it could be a problem over the long haul. This would actually potentially put U.S. allies at risk?

I mean, is that some of the thinking because the U.S. is allied with the things? Philippines and with Japan. And if China's able to restrict military activity in that region, that puts those countries at risk? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think there were two big points in your question, both of which are very valid. And one of them would be that, yes, if you think about it, if the United States is unable to help the Philippines to basically fulfill our obligations to the Philippines under our 1951 mutual defense treaty, China will have discredited that alliance, perhaps even broken the alliance and leave the Philippines. Philippines, basically, with very little option other than to bandwagon with China.

So that's sort of the political and the alliance point. As far as the practical military point, if the United States and its allies do not operate, you have to operate in a region that where you might fight. If we were to let China prescribe military activities in the South China Sea, we would lose familiarity with that operating theater. China would remain familiar with the ground, and thus they would build up a fairly significant military advantage over U.S. forces, over allied forces, should we get in fight. And I think the Chinese are quite aware of that. And actually, they're pretty forthright about all these things when we talk to them.

And to also expand the domain there, in case there's any question, there have been a lot of building of artificial islands. Is that, I mean, that's part of the strategy? Yeah. I mean, I think the islands actually serve a multitude of purposes. But you hinted it, too, of them. First of all, if you look at the map of the South China Sea with the nine dash line inscribed on it. And then if you look at the islands that they were improving, putting airfields and the like on missile batteries and that sort of thing. They are building up the ability to project power throughout the 9-dash-line zone from those islands on a 24-7-365 basis. And that's something that they have not had operating from Hainan Island, from the mainland, and so on and so forth. They're very rapidly building up the ability to project force out into the vast majority of the region is derived by the 9-dash line.

One reason you hear a lot about Starborough-Schol and that that that, might be the next target for improvement. If you look to the northeast on that map, that is one of the zones that is not currently under missile range or under aircraft range. And I think that would be one of the drivers that would get them to do that, even apart from the ruling that may come down from the UN Tribunal. He's in the Philippines favor. So yeah, I mean, that's, so that's the military point. The bigger political point is about sovereignty. It's international relations 101. Sovereignty is about a monopoly of force, a near monopoly of force, within certain lines inscribed on the map that we call borders. That's the other aspect is that China is building

up a serious military contingent in those waters. And it's starting to look like they have a, they could aspire to a monopoly of force and thus make what they call indisputable sovereignty within these waters a reality over time if they're not checked at this point. All right, James, what kind of stuff are they putting on these islands? Because we say manmade islands, I think, or constructed islands, rather. I think of, I have like a treasure island kind of fantasy about them like a tropical lush thing, but that's not accurate. There's buildings there, and are there weapons there as well? Yeah, they're starting to be.

Yes, I mean, the airfields are capable of hosting just about anything. The PLA, the People's Liberation Army Air Force can fly. I mean, there are not permanently stationed for deployed aircraft yet. Earlier on this spring, they have stationed H-2-9 surface-to-air missiles there, and I think this is just a precursor to the things that we will see down the road. Again, that's trying to create that ability to exert sovereignty, within the waters in the skies that they claim. At this point, for example, the USS Stennis carrier battle group has just operated in the region.

No longer can we operate in the region without fear of some sort of interference from the PLA. And I think putting that kind of doubt into U.S. commander's minds is a big part of what the Chinese are after. So let me ask just the most basic question, what can the U.S. do about it at this point? I mean, with short of any kind of military confrontation, it sounds like what China's doing, doesn't quite get to the level of where we would start firing at each other, right? Yeah, and I think that China has banged on it. And it's actually one of the things that I rather admire about them is that they're able to do this sort of stuff without actually going across the proverbial red line

that we hear so much about and triggering an outright shooting war. I've gotten into a dispute with a number of my friends about this, but I frankly don't think we're going to do anything about the islands that China already holds and already has improved. I think we're just basically going to have to live with that much as we, for many years, have lived with the Iranian threat to the Strait of Hormuz and another narrow seas around the world. I think what we can do is try to help our allies hold what they already have. For example, one of the reefs that the Philippines has occupied for many years,

they've marooned an old American amph on it in order to stake their claim and keep the Chinese from coming and seizing it. It's possible that the United States could go out, perhaps put U.S. Marines out there alongside their Philippine comrades, and thus show that the United States has skin in the game. The other thing, from an American standpoint, I think the big thing we have to do is keep the Chinese from amending international law by making these things into things that look like islands and thus changing their legal status so that they're entitled to a territorial sea and to an exclusive economic zone around those facilities.

I think our overall point has to be that if it was a submerged rock yesterday, the fact that you've piled dirt on an airfield on top of it doesn't change this legal status, does not entitle Beijing to ownership of the surrounding waters and skies. That I think from the U.S. standpoint has got to be job number one. So they have some really interesting rules about what makes an actual island in island. I only know this because there was a really interesting Reuters TV clip. So, for example, you have to have fresh water on the island? I mean, you know, it has to be inhabitable in some way.

Is that right? Yeah, the UN Conventional Law is on the law to see the full Texas out there online. It's actually a very well-written accord in my view. And so it's something I would encourage you. If you look at the section on the regime of islands, it's pretty clear about that. To be a full of island, what's the only one in the South China Sea that I know of is the one that's occupied by Taiwan, ironically. But it basically has to be above water at high tide. So it's always exposed.

And it has to be able to sustain economic activity on its own, which, as you pointed out, means it has a source of fresh water by which people could actually live there rather than import fresh water from the Chinese mainland or wherever. So I think that's a, it sounds totally pedantic, but I think we have to insist on these distinctions or else China can essentially amend the, amend international law without going through negotiations or anything like that and put teeth into it using military implements stationed on those non-island islands that they've constructed there. You actually made the case in an article that you have wrote for Reuters that the U.S. has to keep sending ships, Navy ships, into the region around these islands in order to set,

is it essentially set a precedent? Yeah, the way I think about it is as a dialogue. China is making a challenge. I mean, it's basically saying, here's how we see things. These are territories that have belonged to China since time immemorial. And thus, if we can put, basically make a new normal, create, put military implements and get everybody else to more or less acquiesce. then, I mean, over time, that will ossify into international law. Much as the Monroe Doctrine did a century ago, never became international law,

but it was explicitly accepted by the European powers, oddly enough, by the Treaty of Versailles. So I think the Chinese are counting on a similar dynamic playing out there. But the United States, and the case that I've made is that the United States need to reply to that by putting military implements in order to show that we do not accept that, and that China may not do that without pushback from the United States. others. This is one reason that it would be truly important to get more flags out there, not just American flags, but also European flags would be very helpful, Japanese, Australia, India, whoever has a stake in the nature of the international system as it currently stands.

It's a real process of challenge and reply. China's latest reply to our reply, of course, was denying the Stennis Battle Group access to Hong Kong for a port visit. So it's very much a back and forth between the two sides. People may not actually know. that even in tense times, navies are often given access to ports that, like, I mean, you can bring your ships into Hong Kong or there's a whole protocol around it. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, that's certainly true. I came of age as a naval officer in the late Cold War, and what things were starting to warm up between ourselves and the Soviet Union. And yes, it was really quite dramatic to see us start having sort of normal Navy-to-Navy relations.

I operated in the Baltic Sea with the USS Iowa Battleship Battle Group in 1989, and we received what I believe was the first salute from a Soviet warship in those days. But yes, Navy's down on that functional sort of deck plates level, oftentimes we'll work together pretty well, despite what's going on between our governments. Similarly, it's not unusual for us to have a PLA Navy delegation here in Newport to meet with us and to talk candidly with each other. We never agree on anything. We have the discussions, and obviously the politics is there.

But sort of on a Navy-to-Navy relationship, we actually get along reasonably well, which is one reason you'll see our Navy making a big deal out of things like the Code for Unpredicted encounters at sea, basically a code of conduct when our ships encounter their ships or aircraft out at sea. We agree to talk and not to do dangerous things. This is something that we reach with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and it started to take shape between ourselves and China today. So, yeah, there's a weird duality in our relations with China's Navy and with China's and government. Well, James, it sounds like things are very congenial right now, but I'm wondering what the worst-case

scenario is here. And I'm not thinking necessarily of America and China necessarily, but we are just beginning to sell arms to Vietnam. The Bush administration sold arms to Taiwan and they want more from us. You know, what might happen here? Is it possible that a skirmish could break out over this territory? Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's certainly a possibility. It's one of those things is kind of strange because I have a hard time envisioning. Maybe you guys have a better idea, have a hard time imagining what exactly would be the trigger that would cause such a skirmish, whether it could be one of our lesser allies, perhaps the Philippines decide they've had enough or Vietnam. Vietnam is a very capable military power. It's actually given China a very bad time

during their border conflicts in the past. Vietnam has fielded, or it's in the process of fielding, a very impressive half dozen keel class submarines built by Russia. Vietnam is a pretty serious power. It is possible that, for example, if China were to put the oil rig out in the Vietnamese exclusive economic zone the way it did a couple of years ago, it's possible that Hanoi could decide enough, but enough is enough. I would think it wouldn't start off as a direct U.S. on China thing, but that we might get drawn into something via our entanglements with the regional powers. Not uncommon at all in history for little powers to get big powers into trouble going all the way back to the outbreak of the Pelopid-Easian War 2,500 years ago. So is there any country in the region that we have a direct treaty obligation to? I assume Japan, but I didn't know about anybody else. We've had a treaty with the Philippine Island since 1951, about the same time as when the original

incarnation of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty came into force. That was renewed in 1960s. These are not new engagements at all. Beyond that, of course, we keep things whether ambiguous with Taiwan, which is probably a separate topic to talk about. We do not have formal obligations until you get around to that western rim of the South China Sea, where, of course, Singapore is a major non-NATO ally, and we also have good ties with Malaysia as well. But Singapore is a serious ally, hosts American ships as well as ships from other nations,

and it's been a good ally that punches above its weight. Is it a similar situation to what we have in NATO? In other words, an attack on one is an attack on all? Or is there a different obligation? These are pretty serious treaties, and actually I would say the, U.S.-Japan security treaty is getting more serious now that Japan has modified its understanding of that treaty so that it lets Japan play a more equal role in that. I think Japan showing that it's a more equal ally to the United States is going to be something

that's going to allow the United States to justify joining in with Japan and the Sikako Islands or what have you, something because they now look like a good ally that will help carry its share of the load. So, yeah, these are pretty serious engagements. I think it's worth noting for those who don't study treaty law. that's even the Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty that binds NATO together, even that is not sort of an automatic go-to-war type provision. It does obligate us to view an attack on one as an attack on us all,

but it doesn't prescribe any specific actions. It just says we will act when an attack occurs. That's interesting. Okay, I had no idea about that. I don't think any government ever ties its hands in advance of something like that. In the various provisions of the U.N. charter, you're not going to get sort of an automatic agreement to march off to war. if something bad happens.

You hear so much that it's just simply that China is a growing power and that they're looking to sort of flex their muscles, take a more active stance in the world. Is that what you see as well? Or is there something else going on below the surface? Yeah, I mean, what do Chinese want? I guess that's sort of a simple way to rephrase what you just said. The Chinese want a lot.

I mean, it's not uncommon for big powers to try to do And in fact, I think you could almost make a rule that big powers do try to reorder the system around them in keeping with their purposes and their power and their stature. We talk about Chinese economic interests and that is really compelling. That's what's driving China into places like Africa, Nigeria, places like that where they have maintained a growing presence in order to get hold of raw materials that China needs in order to keep the economic growth that they've enjoyed for the last 30 years or thereabouts going. So quite clearly there's sort of the tangible interest aspect of as well. Nothing unusual or even particularly worrisome about that. As far as what Chinese want beyond the interest aspect, I think they want a lot in terms of sort of non-rational motives.

That sounds like I'm sort of condescending to them. We're all driven by things that are not strictly ration, various passions and so forth. One passion China has is to return to being number one in Asia. My friend Sally Payne here in the department, she sits a few offices down. She wrote a book on the sign of Japanese War of 1894-95. a few years ago. On page one of that book, she points out that Japan, by defeating the Qing Dynasty's Navy off the West Coast of Korea in 1894 and 1895, basically upended the Asian order. China's used to being number one in Asia. It has been that way for many, many centuries,

but by defeating the Qing Dynasty, Japan essentially made itself number one in Asia, and China's been that way more or less ever since. And China would like to reverse that relationship. It would like to reverse the results of the various wars that has fought against Japan and lost and thus reestablish itself at the pinnacle of the Asian order. That would be the second thing I would list. The other one is simply, it's almost a negative aim. China is quite aware that ever since the 1830s, it has been victimized by outside sea powers, particularly European sea powers. In the 1830s forward, there was a series of what they called the opium wars in which the Europeans waged a series of victorious wars against the Qing dynasty, essentially to compel.

help China to admit opium, they admit the drug trade to the country. China objected to that, not just because it was a breach of sovereignty, but also because large numbers of Chinese actually got addicted to opium and thus created a lot of problems for the society as a whole. So there's just a mishmash of interests and not strictly rational interests that are propelling what China wants to do. I would say any country is going to have some sort of honor and prestige motives as well, but this is quite repealing the century of humiliation is really a stock quotation that you'll come across in China over and over again. Is that sort of motivation or nationalism getting stronger under the current president?

Or is it Xi Jinping? Or is it just something that's continuing to build as they gain power and economic money? It's almost a chicken and egg question. Yeah, I think certainly he's trying to, I think he's certainly trying to tap into that. I mean, you hear him describe it as the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong passed on in the mid-19. 70s. I think he's quite worried about China's economic situation, whether the growth is slowing down, maybe slowing even more than we think. It's kind of hard to tell from outside. And yes, he's he is certainly trying to consolidate and control and he used that sort of ideological passion.

I mean, all Chinese people, I think, have a passion for China. I mean, China, where they get in all caps. And I think this is something that Danny the year can play on. It actually makes me kind of sad because you actually see the Chinese as they feel under duress in the world. They get more and more ideological and more and more rigid about that ideology. China feels like it's getting very authoritarian relative to 10 years ago or 15 years ago when it looked like it might be liberalizing. You see something coming out of Beijing almost every day demanding that universities tow the party line, not embrace liberal ideologies such as here in the West and so on

and so forth. So I think they're actually doing themselves a disfavor by doing that. So it be because, I mean, if you believe in intellectual freedom and then that's the engine of progress. I think they're actually doing self-defeating things. But yeah, so it's kind of hard to, it's kind of hard to say. I do think that there's something basic there in China that would not be abridged by, even if China became a democracy, I still think that's that sort of national pride, the desire to do away with past humiliation. All that stuff is still going to be there as well. So I think things would be better between us and our allies and China, but I think that would still be,

that would still be at work underneath the surface as well. You know, you don't abolish that just by changing a type of regime. So my last thought that I wanted to ask about is just what do you see as being the next likely steps over, let's just say like the next year. What kind of developments are you expecting? You know, your great Yogi Berra says prediction is tough, especially about the future. It's really, really hard to, we know that politics and strategy and warfare is a very, is a equally interactive process in which it's constant one-upsmanship by, but by the respective parties. without a crystal ball, I would anticipate that China will not back off. If the United States and its allies were able to push back effectively,

you might see China sort of stage a tactical withdrawal, sort of cool things down for a while. But ultimately, given the value that they attach to what they want in Southeast Asia, I have a very hard time seeing them back off over the long haul. So I think that's probably the best we can do is try to solidify our alliances and coalitions and partnerships up and mount a sustained deterrence against China. It hopes that over time, you know, perhaps over the very long haul, things might mellow out in China. And China might become something that we can love with. As far as predictions go, though, it's really hard to see.

I have a hard time seeing them relent on the island approval projects, Starborough-Scholl, Mr. Freep, all of these other island projects, and deployment of military hardware out there. So I guess my one prediction would be it's going to become a more and more contested environments. And thus, and as it is, I think the spark that it would take to light the Tenderbox, would be, to mix metaphors would be smaller and smaller. Jim, thank you so much for your talking to us today. This is James Holmes, New U.S. Naval War College, so I think the information you gave us is stuff that people should take seriously.

Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate being on. Thanks for listening to this week's show. We hope you enjoyed it. If you did, it would be terrific if you tell your friends about us. You can also subscribe to the show on iTunes or through the Google Play app, And we tweet, and our handle is War underscore College. The show was created by me, along with Craig Headock, and this week, Jamila Knowles was our producer.

The drums come courtesy of the sound library, and you can blame Craig if you don't like them. Next time on War College. One of the first tasks that DARPA did was to determine the precise number of minutes that it took for a nuclear war. had to get from the Soviet Union to the United States. This information is technically still not releasable by the Defense Department.

I located it in the DARPA records, and it is 23 minutes.