Extragalactic Janitor
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Hi all, I would like to create this thread to discuss all news and issues about the Paracel and Spratlys.
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The Paracel-Spratlys News and Discussion
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- Start date
Srinivas_K
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Fine no problem, First introduce yourself by creating an introduction thread !!
Carlosa
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Thank you for the invitation, just joined and happy to be here.
Extragalactic Janitor
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My friend, I'm a ninja. And a ninja never introduces himself.
BTW, I think I've seen you before, on PDF I think.
Extragalactic Janitor
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Good to see you've join. You can start a Viet military thread and I'll join you.
I'll try to post the quality military articles in this forum, from academic journals. It looks like this forum will be a good place to post and archive them. It won't get buried with 100x off-topic posts like in PDF.
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Srinivas_K
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Extragalactic Janitor
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Thanks, I'll try to post and archive articles on military and geopolitical issues here.
In PDF, it will just get buried under Offtopic posts and flames.
Srinivas_K
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Go ahead Dude , Long live India - Vietnam Relations :thumb:
Extragalactic Janitor
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edit: content deleted due to copyright.
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Extragalactic Janitor
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Edit: content deleted due to copyright.
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Extragalactic Janitor
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Unlike Bradley Taylor who argues for a hard-line military intervention against China, James Holmes argues for a more moderate response against China's assertiveness in the SCS.
Responding to China's Assertiveness in the South China Sea
Responding to
China's Assertiveness
in the South China Sea
BY James R. Holmes
In territorial disputes with the Philippines and
Vietnam, China has taken to deploying coast guard
vessels and other nonmilitary assets as its instruments
of choice to consolidate its claims to South China Sea
islands, atolls, rocks, and waters. Naval warships,
combat aircraft, and other weaponry have kept a low
profile or remained over the horizon—and out of
sight—altogether. This makes for a peculiar maritime
contest pitting fleets of unarmed or lightly armed
ships against each other.
U.S. leaders must discern the nature of the
imbroglio in the South China Sea, undertake some
soul-searching about how much they and American
society prize their aims, and allocate resources—
diplomatic effort, ships and aircraft, manpower,
and so forth—to bring about an acceptable result.
Having thought these things through, officials may
glimpse stratagems whereby they can manage events
in the-region.
THE NATURE OF THE STRATEGIC COMPETITION
How should we classify the struggle in the South
China Sea? It is shaping up to be a protracted
peacetime strategic competition among China,
rival Asian seafaring states, and the United States to
determine whether China can modify the U.S.-led
international order by unilateral fiat. If successful,
Beijing will set a precedent for occupying waters
assigned to fellow coastal states by the law of the
sea and for abridging freedom of the seas as it sees
fit. China will transmute the waters bounded by the
first island chain into a closed sea ruled by Chinese
domestic law. And it will loosen U.S. alliances in
the-process.
Why will the competition be protracted? To all
appearances, China defines not just land but the sea as
territory to be ruled. Chinese commentators depict the
waters within the "nine-dashed line" enclosing most
of the South China Sea as "blue national soil" where
Beijing rightfully exercises "indisputable sovereignty."
Having defined its policy in terms of sovereignty—
a concept that rouses elemental passions among
officialdom and ordinary people alike—the Chinese
leadership has staked out a public commitment that
would be exceedingly difficult to walk back. Although
Chinese leaders might postpone their plans if they
were to encounter effective pushback, it is tough to
envision China foreswearing its territorial claims
altogether for the sake of, for example, a maritime
code of conduct.
What is China attempting to accomplish? China
is prosecuting a sort of hub-and-spoke strategic
competition against both its Asian rivals and the
United States. Chinese diplomats try to keep each
competition separate, in hopes of overpowering
each opponent mano-a-mano while forestalling a
hostile coalition. With regard to the United States,
China is pursuing an access-denial strategy by
deploying aircraft, antiship missiles, and ships
capable of exacting a heavy toll from U.S. forces
operating in Asia in wartime. In short, Beijing wants
to dishearten Washington while discrediting U.S.
alliance commitments. With regard to Asian rivals,
China covets control of islands, seas, and skies. It
starts matter-of-factly policing disputed seas while
daring woefully outmatched antagonists to reverse
its efforts. Rather than reach for the big stick of naval
force, Beijing prefers to brandish the small stick
manifest in the China Coast Guard. This approach
has worked-to-date.
How determined is the United States? Faced
with this multifaceted strategy, the United States
must decide whether it treasures its alliances—and
its stewardship of freedom of the seas—enough to
mount an open-ended effort of major proportions
to defend them. The upfront expenses of halting
China's creeping expansionism threaten to be steep,
while confronting a major trading partner and fellow
nuclear-weapon state entails perils and uncertainty.
Many strategists would counsel against such a
venture unless U.S. leaders place a very high value
on the United States' strategic position in Asia and
its custodianship of the international system. It is
gut-check time, as sportscasters say.
POLICY OPTIONS
Suppose Washington proceeds. How does it beat a
strategy like China's?
First, refuse to be drawn into armed conflict over
the Spratlys and Paracels. Given that the claims and
counterclaims to these flyspecks are murky at best,
Washington should wage "lawfare" instead. The
regime of islands set forth in the UN Convention
on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) defines what
constitutes an island in legal terms. Few geographic
features at issue in the South China Sea qualify. An
island without its own freshwater, for example, cannot
sustain human life or economic activity, and thus is
not an island at all from a legal vantage point. Its
owner can claim only a 12-nautical-mile territorial
sea around it, not a 200-mile exclusive economic zone
(EEZ). Taiwan appears to control the only bona fide
island in the South China Sea. If so, the remainder
of that body of water is mostly high seas, open to
all. Seafaring states should exercise that freedom
to its maximum, flouting China's nine-dashed line.
Washington should encourage Asian governments
to seek a ruling from an international tribunal
confirming the status of islands, atolls, and rocks.
The United States will have prevailed if Asian
states can defend the waters washing against their
homeland-shores.
Second, wage the competition on Beijing's terms—
in one sense. Thinking about the South China Sea as
territory clarifies matters. Viewed this way, Chinese
fishermen operating within 200 nautical miles of
Palawan, for example, are poaching Philippine
natural resources as surely as if they had landed on
the island. China Coast Guard vessels accompanying
the fishing fleet equate to an invasion force protecting
poachers. Framing matters thus may help the United
States summon up some urgency for this endeavor
while putting China on the defensive.
Third, consider committing U.S. Navy and
Coast Guard forces to Asia in more than their
usual training capacity, creating combined naval
and law"‘enforcement fleets with Asian allies. U.S.
mariners would help police offshore waters the way
soldiers helped police NATO soil throughout the
Cold War. The Philippines, for instance, will never
be able to fend off Chinese encroachment on its EEZ.
Its maritime resources are too sparse. But a beefed-
up U.S. Coast Guard forward-deployed to Southeast
Asia—and backed by heavy U.S. Navy firepower—
could give regional states a fighting chance of
upholding their legal-rights.
Are these good alternatives? Hardly. They are just
the least awful ones available.
JAMES R. HOLMES is Professor of Strategy at the
U.S. Naval War College. He can be reached at
<[email protected]>.
The NBR Analysis Brief provides commentary on the
Asia-Pacific from leading scholars and experts. The views
expressed are those of the author.
Responding to China's Assertiveness in the South China Sea
Responding to
China's Assertiveness
in the South China Sea
BY James R. Holmes
In territorial disputes with the Philippines and
Vietnam, China has taken to deploying coast guard
vessels and other nonmilitary assets as its instruments
of choice to consolidate its claims to South China Sea
islands, atolls, rocks, and waters. Naval warships,
combat aircraft, and other weaponry have kept a low
profile or remained over the horizon—and out of
sight—altogether. This makes for a peculiar maritime
contest pitting fleets of unarmed or lightly armed
ships against each other.
U.S. leaders must discern the nature of the
imbroglio in the South China Sea, undertake some
soul-searching about how much they and American
society prize their aims, and allocate resources—
diplomatic effort, ships and aircraft, manpower,
and so forth—to bring about an acceptable result.
Having thought these things through, officials may
glimpse stratagems whereby they can manage events
in the-region.
THE NATURE OF THE STRATEGIC COMPETITION
How should we classify the struggle in the South
China Sea? It is shaping up to be a protracted
peacetime strategic competition among China,
rival Asian seafaring states, and the United States to
determine whether China can modify the U.S.-led
international order by unilateral fiat. If successful,
Beijing will set a precedent for occupying waters
assigned to fellow coastal states by the law of the
sea and for abridging freedom of the seas as it sees
fit. China will transmute the waters bounded by the
first island chain into a closed sea ruled by Chinese
domestic law. And it will loosen U.S. alliances in
the-process.
Why will the competition be protracted? To all
appearances, China defines not just land but the sea as
territory to be ruled. Chinese commentators depict the
waters within the "nine-dashed line" enclosing most
of the South China Sea as "blue national soil" where
Beijing rightfully exercises "indisputable sovereignty."
Having defined its policy in terms of sovereignty—
a concept that rouses elemental passions among
officialdom and ordinary people alike—the Chinese
leadership has staked out a public commitment that
would be exceedingly difficult to walk back. Although
Chinese leaders might postpone their plans if they
were to encounter effective pushback, it is tough to
envision China foreswearing its territorial claims
altogether for the sake of, for example, a maritime
code of conduct.
What is China attempting to accomplish? China
is prosecuting a sort of hub-and-spoke strategic
competition against both its Asian rivals and the
United States. Chinese diplomats try to keep each
competition separate, in hopes of overpowering
each opponent mano-a-mano while forestalling a
hostile coalition. With regard to the United States,
China is pursuing an access-denial strategy by
deploying aircraft, antiship missiles, and ships
capable of exacting a heavy toll from U.S. forces
operating in Asia in wartime. In short, Beijing wants
to dishearten Washington while discrediting U.S.
alliance commitments. With regard to Asian rivals,
China covets control of islands, seas, and skies. It
starts matter-of-factly policing disputed seas while
daring woefully outmatched antagonists to reverse
its efforts. Rather than reach for the big stick of naval
force, Beijing prefers to brandish the small stick
manifest in the China Coast Guard. This approach
has worked-to-date.
How determined is the United States? Faced
with this multifaceted strategy, the United States
must decide whether it treasures its alliances—and
its stewardship of freedom of the seas—enough to
mount an open-ended effort of major proportions
to defend them. The upfront expenses of halting
China's creeping expansionism threaten to be steep,
while confronting a major trading partner and fellow
nuclear-weapon state entails perils and uncertainty.
Many strategists would counsel against such a
venture unless U.S. leaders place a very high value
on the United States' strategic position in Asia and
its custodianship of the international system. It is
gut-check time, as sportscasters say.
POLICY OPTIONS
Suppose Washington proceeds. How does it beat a
strategy like China's?
First, refuse to be drawn into armed conflict over
the Spratlys and Paracels. Given that the claims and
counterclaims to these flyspecks are murky at best,
Washington should wage "lawfare" instead. The
regime of islands set forth in the UN Convention
on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) defines what
constitutes an island in legal terms. Few geographic
features at issue in the South China Sea qualify. An
island without its own freshwater, for example, cannot
sustain human life or economic activity, and thus is
not an island at all from a legal vantage point. Its
owner can claim only a 12-nautical-mile territorial
sea around it, not a 200-mile exclusive economic zone
(EEZ). Taiwan appears to control the only bona fide
island in the South China Sea. If so, the remainder
of that body of water is mostly high seas, open to
all. Seafaring states should exercise that freedom
to its maximum, flouting China's nine-dashed line.
Washington should encourage Asian governments
to seek a ruling from an international tribunal
confirming the status of islands, atolls, and rocks.
The United States will have prevailed if Asian
states can defend the waters washing against their
homeland-shores.
Second, wage the competition on Beijing's terms—
in one sense. Thinking about the South China Sea as
territory clarifies matters. Viewed this way, Chinese
fishermen operating within 200 nautical miles of
Palawan, for example, are poaching Philippine
natural resources as surely as if they had landed on
the island. China Coast Guard vessels accompanying
the fishing fleet equate to an invasion force protecting
poachers. Framing matters thus may help the United
States summon up some urgency for this endeavor
while putting China on the defensive.
Third, consider committing U.S. Navy and
Coast Guard forces to Asia in more than their
usual training capacity, creating combined naval
and law"‘enforcement fleets with Asian allies. U.S.
mariners would help police offshore waters the way
soldiers helped police NATO soil throughout the
Cold War. The Philippines, for instance, will never
be able to fend off Chinese encroachment on its EEZ.
Its maritime resources are too sparse. But a beefed-
up U.S. Coast Guard forward-deployed to Southeast
Asia—and backed by heavy U.S. Navy firepower—
could give regional states a fighting chance of
upholding their legal-rights.
Are these good alternatives? Hardly. They are just
the least awful ones available.
JAMES R. HOLMES is Professor of Strategy at the
U.S. Naval War College. He can be reached at
<[email protected]>.
The NBR Analysis Brief provides commentary on the
Asia-Pacific from leading scholars and experts. The views
expressed are those of the author.
amoy
Senior Member
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- Jan 17, 2010
- Messages
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Wish I could help u....... Howver, in order to know what US SCS strategies may be formulated to counter China it's imperative to learn what China is doing above all.
Following is on SCS's Diego Garcia in the making - building airstrip-capable islands in the Spratlys - a few leaps in PLAAF coverage, expanding first from Hainan Island to the Paracels, then to Spratlys
http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/...-land-reclamation-justified-3.html#post973326
Extragalactic Janitor
Regular Member
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2014
- Messages
- 17
- Likes
- 8
Why the USA may go to war in the South China Sea - TransConflict
Why the US may go to war in the South China Sea
Tension in the South China Sea may make policy makers on both sides think about going to war. As China seeks to exercise its control over disputed islands and maritime waters it may seek to block US warships and military aircraft from crossing through large swathes of the South China Sea. This restriction will prove unpalatable to the US who considers it a legal right to cross these waters.
By Dr. Ian Ralby
It is no secret that the South China Sea is an area of conflict and controversy, but understanding the interests and role of the United States in that region is not intuitive. The situation centers on competing territorial claims by China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, the Philippines and Malaysia over several sets of islands. Attempts by these nations to control the disputed territories have become increasingly intense, bordering on violence, and vessels have narrowly avoided collision in recent displays of hostility. As the BBC reported on 15 October 2014, it even appears as though the United States is practicing for war with China in case the conflict heats up. Most articles on the subject explain that what is at stake is a mix of territory, fishing rights, mineral rights and control of shipping lanes. It is understandable why, given the economic value of those rights, the states competing over the claims would be willing to resort to violence, especially since a number of the claims involve emotionally charged historical ties and concern national identity and pride. But why would the US, which is already facing potentially extensive engagements in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, be at all inclined to enter a naval war with one of its closest peers in terms of economic resources and military might? The full answer involves a number of different justifications, but one of the most important ones has received very little attention. As it requires a nuanced understanding of international maritime law, most articles and reports on this simmering conflict in Southeast Asia have failed to even mention it. Simply put, if China gains the disputed territory, it may be able to block access of US Naval vessels and aircraft through most of the South China Sea.
There are a number of obvious reasons why the US would not want China to succeed in the various territorial disputes. Unequivocal Chinese hegemony throughout the South China Sea would be a considerable setback in the Obama Administration's "Pivot to Asia". It would also greatly increase China's maritime domain and access to fisheries and mineral resources. The US often focuses more on the process of resolving the disputes rather than the outcome. The one thing worse than unequivocal Chinese hegemony would be Chinese victory in the territorial disputes on account of bullying, hostility and force. So in an ironic twist, the US, which is not party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – the most extensive treaty ever drafted, and the principle instrument in international maritime law – nevertheless encourages China, which is a party to UNCLOS, to abide by the Convention's dispute resolution processes. The US recognises most of UNCLOS as customary international law, but does not itself submit to the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which would be called upon to resolve the maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea.
A basic understanding of the international maritime system as espoused by UNCLOS is crucial to making sense of the US interest in the South China Sea. For thousands of years, there has been an ongoing debate concerning the freedom of the seas. On the one hand, many advocate the free movement of vessels throughout the global maritime domain. On the other hand, states seek to exert sovereign jurisdiction over some maritime territory so they can control movement of goods and people into their territory, police the seas adjacent to their land, and access the living and mineral resources in the maritime space off their shores. UNCLOS sets forth a system whereby coastal, island and archipelagic states are granted the right to twelve nautical miles of territorial sea in which they have complete sovereign control, and from twelve to two hundred miles, an exclusive economic zone (EEZ). States have the exclusive right to harvest and control the living and mineral rights within their EEZ. The mounting tension between the US and China concerns their respective interpretation of these fundamental rules.
Under its professed reading of UNCLOS, China does not believe that the principle of free seas applies to foreign warships or military aircraft transiting EEZs. It has tried to stop naval vessels, including one from India, from transiting what would be its EEZ if it won the territorial disputes and took legal possession of the various islands in the South China Sea. It has further claimed that American military maneuvers, surveillance flights, taking of hydrographic surveys (useful in antisubmarine warfare) and other activities in China's EEZ violate UNCLOS. Additionally, a September 2014 incident involving a near collision between an aggressive Chinese fighter jet and a US Naval surveillance plane made clear that China is seeking to claim sovereignty over the would-be EEZs of the disputed islands.
UNCLOS, however, does not expressly clarify this legal point. Since the Convention does somewhat limit the movement of warships within territorial waters, the US interprets that to mean that there are no such restrictions on naval vessels or military aircraft within the EEZ. China is effectively claiming complete sovereignty concerning foreign warships and military aircraft in the entirety of the two hundred mile zone. If, therefore, China won the disputed territory, the US, under the Chinese interpretation of the law, would have to obtain Chinese permission to sail its naval vessels through or fly its military aircraft over most of the South China Sea. From a strategic standpoint, the US cannot afford to lose such freedom of movement through a vital transit point between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
As much as the US may want to block the territorial expansion of China, prevent its further enrichment through access to plentiful resources, and curb its hegemonic influence, one of the main reasons the tension in the South China Sea could mount to the point of open conflict between the world's two largest powers is a disputed interpretation of international maritime law. The free movement of American warships and military aircraft through the South China Sea is of sufficient strategic importance that the US would be prepared to fight for it. In many ways, this matter is actually more fundamental to US interests than the situation in Ukraine or the rise of ISIS in the Middle East. That is why the US may be willing to go to war over the interpretation of an international convention to which it does not belong.
Dr. Ian Ralby is Founder and Executive Director of I.R. Consilium through which he and his team work with governments and organizations on solving complex security-related problems. He has worked extensively with governments in West Africa, the Caribbean, and the Balkans among others. He holds a BA in Modern Languages and Linguistics and an MA in Intercultural Communication from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; a JD from William & Mary Law School; and both an MPhil in International Relations and a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge.
This article was originally published by OpedSpace and is available by clicking here.
Why the US may go to war in the South China Sea
Tension in the South China Sea may make policy makers on both sides think about going to war. As China seeks to exercise its control over disputed islands and maritime waters it may seek to block US warships and military aircraft from crossing through large swathes of the South China Sea. This restriction will prove unpalatable to the US who considers it a legal right to cross these waters.
By Dr. Ian Ralby
It is no secret that the South China Sea is an area of conflict and controversy, but understanding the interests and role of the United States in that region is not intuitive. The situation centers on competing territorial claims by China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, the Philippines and Malaysia over several sets of islands. Attempts by these nations to control the disputed territories have become increasingly intense, bordering on violence, and vessels have narrowly avoided collision in recent displays of hostility. As the BBC reported on 15 October 2014, it even appears as though the United States is practicing for war with China in case the conflict heats up. Most articles on the subject explain that what is at stake is a mix of territory, fishing rights, mineral rights and control of shipping lanes. It is understandable why, given the economic value of those rights, the states competing over the claims would be willing to resort to violence, especially since a number of the claims involve emotionally charged historical ties and concern national identity and pride. But why would the US, which is already facing potentially extensive engagements in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, be at all inclined to enter a naval war with one of its closest peers in terms of economic resources and military might? The full answer involves a number of different justifications, but one of the most important ones has received very little attention. As it requires a nuanced understanding of international maritime law, most articles and reports on this simmering conflict in Southeast Asia have failed to even mention it. Simply put, if China gains the disputed territory, it may be able to block access of US Naval vessels and aircraft through most of the South China Sea.
There are a number of obvious reasons why the US would not want China to succeed in the various territorial disputes. Unequivocal Chinese hegemony throughout the South China Sea would be a considerable setback in the Obama Administration's "Pivot to Asia". It would also greatly increase China's maritime domain and access to fisheries and mineral resources. The US often focuses more on the process of resolving the disputes rather than the outcome. The one thing worse than unequivocal Chinese hegemony would be Chinese victory in the territorial disputes on account of bullying, hostility and force. So in an ironic twist, the US, which is not party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – the most extensive treaty ever drafted, and the principle instrument in international maritime law – nevertheless encourages China, which is a party to UNCLOS, to abide by the Convention's dispute resolution processes. The US recognises most of UNCLOS as customary international law, but does not itself submit to the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which would be called upon to resolve the maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea.
A basic understanding of the international maritime system as espoused by UNCLOS is crucial to making sense of the US interest in the South China Sea. For thousands of years, there has been an ongoing debate concerning the freedom of the seas. On the one hand, many advocate the free movement of vessels throughout the global maritime domain. On the other hand, states seek to exert sovereign jurisdiction over some maritime territory so they can control movement of goods and people into their territory, police the seas adjacent to their land, and access the living and mineral resources in the maritime space off their shores. UNCLOS sets forth a system whereby coastal, island and archipelagic states are granted the right to twelve nautical miles of territorial sea in which they have complete sovereign control, and from twelve to two hundred miles, an exclusive economic zone (EEZ). States have the exclusive right to harvest and control the living and mineral rights within their EEZ. The mounting tension between the US and China concerns their respective interpretation of these fundamental rules.
Under its professed reading of UNCLOS, China does not believe that the principle of free seas applies to foreign warships or military aircraft transiting EEZs. It has tried to stop naval vessels, including one from India, from transiting what would be its EEZ if it won the territorial disputes and took legal possession of the various islands in the South China Sea. It has further claimed that American military maneuvers, surveillance flights, taking of hydrographic surveys (useful in antisubmarine warfare) and other activities in China's EEZ violate UNCLOS. Additionally, a September 2014 incident involving a near collision between an aggressive Chinese fighter jet and a US Naval surveillance plane made clear that China is seeking to claim sovereignty over the would-be EEZs of the disputed islands.
UNCLOS, however, does not expressly clarify this legal point. Since the Convention does somewhat limit the movement of warships within territorial waters, the US interprets that to mean that there are no such restrictions on naval vessels or military aircraft within the EEZ. China is effectively claiming complete sovereignty concerning foreign warships and military aircraft in the entirety of the two hundred mile zone. If, therefore, China won the disputed territory, the US, under the Chinese interpretation of the law, would have to obtain Chinese permission to sail its naval vessels through or fly its military aircraft over most of the South China Sea. From a strategic standpoint, the US cannot afford to lose such freedom of movement through a vital transit point between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
As much as the US may want to block the territorial expansion of China, prevent its further enrichment through access to plentiful resources, and curb its hegemonic influence, one of the main reasons the tension in the South China Sea could mount to the point of open conflict between the world's two largest powers is a disputed interpretation of international maritime law. The free movement of American warships and military aircraft through the South China Sea is of sufficient strategic importance that the US would be prepared to fight for it. In many ways, this matter is actually more fundamental to US interests than the situation in Ukraine or the rise of ISIS in the Middle East. That is why the US may be willing to go to war over the interpretation of an international convention to which it does not belong.
Dr. Ian Ralby is Founder and Executive Director of I.R. Consilium through which he and his team work with governments and organizations on solving complex security-related problems. He has worked extensively with governments in West Africa, the Caribbean, and the Balkans among others. He holds a BA in Modern Languages and Linguistics and an MA in Intercultural Communication from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; a JD from William & Mary Law School; and both an MPhil in International Relations and a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge.
This article was originally published by OpedSpace and is available by clicking here.
Extragalactic Janitor
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Wish I could help u....... Howver, in order to know what US SCS strategies may be formulated to counter China it's imperative to learn what China is doing above all.
Following is on SCS's Diego Garcia in the making - building airstrip-capable islands in the Spratlys - a few leaps in PLAAF coverage, expanding first from Hainan Island to the Paracels, then to Spratlys
http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/...-land-reclamation-justified-3.html#post973326
Hey buddy, thanks for joining in, are you from PDF too?
I'm not 100% sure what the US strategy in the SCS will be, but I really think that the US will make its move after the Abitration Tribunal issue its ruling. I am sure China will ignore the ruling. But how the US will respond, no one knows for sure. It could be a hard line military intervention like how Taylor and Ralby think it should be, or it could be a more moderate response like what Holmes argues for. Or it could be an economic sanction like what Dobbins think is one plausible option.
I'm not sure which option it will be, but I really think that the US will make a move after the tribunal concludes because the Senate has just released a report that strongly rejects China's SCS claims.
To me, it's a sign that the US will make a move if the Philippines wins the arbitration case.
Last edited:
Carlosa
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Why Specks of Land in the South China Sea Are Fueling Tensions Between Beijing and Its-Neighbors
New book reveals that Beijing's claims to the South China Sea are a recent invention.

An officer looks on as his Vietnamese Coast Guard vessel is flanked in May 2014 by a Chinese Coast Guard ship in disputed waters west of the Paracel islands. Vietnam sought support from neighboring nations to force China to withdraw an oil rig it had set up in waters claimed by both nations.
They have names like Pigeon Reef, West Sand, Taisho-To, and Scarborough Shoal. Most are no more than outcrops of rock poking out of the sea. Most have never been inhabited. Few have any direct economic value. If not for the perceived fish and oil wealth in the waters around them, the spat over these specks in the South China Sea would read like the bizarre disputes between Lilliput and Blefuscu in Gulliver's Travels.
But for Beijing, the battle for these remote islands is part of a wider geopolitical aim: control over the entire South China Sea and its potential resource wealth. Tensions are rising. In August a Chinese Navy fighter plane buzzed a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon, narrowly missing it. Two months earlier, an armed Chinese vessel chased and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat. China is also at loggerheads with Japan and the Philippines, which the U.S. is obligated under treaty to defend.
Speaking from his home in London, Bill Hayton, author of The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia, explains how China is a victim of its own propaganda, why the South China Sea is also crucial to American interests, and how "peace parks" could save collapsing fish stocks and defuse military tensions.
The Nanhai, as the South China Sea is known, has always had a deep meaning to the Chinese. Explain its significance.
Its meaning has been projected backwards. One of the things I learned researching the book was how the southern part of China related to Southeast Asia in a way that other parts of China didn't.
For a long time it was seen as a frontier place, from which only bad things came. For the first few thousand years of the South China Sea trade, it was Malays and Indians and Arabs who did most of the trading. It was only relatively late, roughly after the tenth century, that the Chinese got in on the act.
But it was always seen with ambivalence by the imperial court. The idea that the South China Sea belongs to China only emerges as a nationalist idea in the 20th century and has been projected backwards in history.
You write about the Arab dhow found off Belitung Island in Indonesia, which National Geographic covered in 2009. How did it change our understanding of historical trade along the Maritime Silk Route?
It shows how specialized and sophisticated the trade between China and the Middle East already was by then. You have pottery with Islamic motifs being custom made for markets separated by thousands of miles of dangerous sea. It's not just the province of explorers. This is a maritime trade. And we can tell from the different products and where they were distributed in the boat that this ship must have visited several ports, picking up different cargoes along the way. So we get a sense of how these places were connected in a thriving trade more than a thousand years ago.

Filipino and U.S. soldiers taking part in joint military exercises in the Philippines examine spent ammunition during a mock assault scenario, as regional tensions rise over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
The focus of your book is the disputes over a number of islands, many of them barely more than outcrops of rock. Give us a brief tour of the hot spots.
There are three main areas. There are the Paracel Islands, which are disputed between China and Vietnam. China now occupies all of them. Then there are the Spratly Islands in the south, which are disputed between China and Vietnam, but also Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, and to a degree Indonesia. The third layer is the Scarborough Shoal, which is disputed between China and the Philippines.
The problem is that no one is actually willing to clarify their claims and say, We were the first ones to stick our flag on this island—because they don't have the evidence. The first time a Chinese official set foot on the Paracel Islands was probably June 6, 1909, the first time on the Spratly Islands was December 12, 1946. The Vietnamese probably stuck their flag in the Spratly Islands as an independent country in 1956, although the French had been there before them. The Philippines came much later, in the 1970s. (Learn more about a local Vietnamese ethnic group known as the Cham, whose members remain wary of taking sides in the South China Sea dispute.)
But it's not so much the islands that are valuable. It's the spaces in between them. That's where the fish and possible oil reserves might lie. So there's no incentive for the countries to try to limit their claims. They're at the stage where they want to make their claims as expansive as possible.
Deng Xiaoping famously said that the islands of the South China Sea "have belonged to China since ancient times." Is there any merit to that claim?
As late as the 1890s Chinese officials in Guangdong Province were denying responsibility for the islands. There was a case in 1898 where two British ships got wrecked on the Paracel Islands, and pirates looted the wreck. The British complained. But the governor of Guangdong Province denied all knowledge of the islands. Maps of that period don't mention the islands either.
Everything changes in 1909, when a Japanese merchant is discovered digging up guano on Pratas Island, between Hong Kong and Taiwan. Because of the negative feeling toward foreign exploitation in China in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion, this provoked a huge nationalist backlash, leading to boycotts of Japanese products and the decision to make the Japanese merchants leave.
And it's only in 1909 that the Chinese authorities start taking an interest in the South China Sea. If one looks at the names of the islands in Chinese, it's clear many of them are simply translations of the British names. So, for example, Jinyin Dao in the Paracels is the Chinese for "Money Island." The word "Money" actually comes from William Taylor Money, chief superintendent to the Bombay Marine, the navy of the English East India Company.

Vietnamese and Chinese ships shadow each other in the South China Sea off Vietnam, where China had installed a deepwater drilling rig that Vietnam condemned as illegal.
China has recently embarked on a major underwater archaeology program aimed at identifying the 2,000 or so shipwrecks off its coasts. How is maritime history being exploited to bolster territorial claims?
The director of the Underwater Archaeological Research Centre has been pretty open that what he's doing is intended primarily to bolster China's claims to the islands. This is not disinterested scholarship. He sees his purpose as a nationalistic one. So there's an unfortunate but mutually beneficial arrangement between the government, which wants to bolster its claims to islands, and the archaeologists, who are looking to increase their ability to do underwater excavations. But if the archaeology becomes subject to a political agenda, then the scholarship won't be reliable.
Tell us about the Selden Map—and how cartography has shaped the present conflicts.
The Selden Map is fascinating because its history tells us an awful lot about the links between Southeast Asia and Europe at the time. It's a Chinese-made map, although where it was actually made is still not settled. It was called the Selden Map because it was bequeathed to the Bodleian Library in Oxford by John Selden, who was also one of the founders of international maritime law.
Quite how it came into his possession is not yet known. Selden was connected to the English East India Tea Company, and he may well have known the person who stole the map—we assume it was stolen or raided from the Chinese owners. The map itself is richly decorated in the Chinese style, with images of landscapes and trees and plants. But what's also clear is that it contains navigational instructions.
Is this the origin of the so-called U-shaped line?
The U-shaped line, or Nine-Dotted Line, as it is also known, emerges much later, out of the nationalist anxiety of the early 20th century, when the old empire is overthrown by the modern Chinese republic. Up to then, China's borders had never been clearly delineated.
Then in the early decades of the 20th century, Chinese cartographers attempted to show where the rightful boundaries of China should lie, which were, incidentally, well beyond its current boundaries. You can see this in a whole series of maps produced by the Shanghai Cartographic Society. And this is the origin of the U-shaped line.
You say that the battle for these islands represents "psychology and perception trumping any practical benefits." Can you expand on that?
The islands themselves are not worth exploiting. Once upon a time merchants mined guano as agricultural fertilizer. But those deposits have long since gone. What is at stake is the fisheries and perceived oil wealth. There are some oil prospects in part of the disputed areas. But the idea that this is some vast new Saudi Arabia waiting to be tapped is not borne out by the evidence.

Philippine Marines monitor the Spratly Islands in August 2014, watching for surveillance by Chinese patrol vessels. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and several other countries have claimed sovereignty over the islands.
So it's all about nationalism?
China has convinced itself that it's the rightful owner of the South China Sea and that anybody else's claim is invented, and secondary. From that basic belief, we get a whole series of actions, which have alarmed the region. Like installing oil rigs off the coast of Vietnam. These actions are all predicated on the idea that the South China Sea belongs to China.
What I try to show in the book is how this sentiment only emerged in the first part of the 20th century. Nonetheless, it's clear that it's deeply held. Chinese school textbooks tell children that China has three million square nautical miles of maritime territory. The official map of the country has also been changed to show the U-shaped line in its entirety. Basically, the Chinese government is believing its own propaganda.
The U.S. has recently beefed up its presence in the South China Sea, and there have been repeated near collisions with Chinese fighter planes. How close are we to a regional war?
I think we're a long way away from that. But it's clear the Chinese don't want the Americans as close to their coast as they are. The American position is that the Law of the Sea gives them a perfect right to sail up to within 12 nautical miles of the Chinese coast and do whatever they like. That includes listening to submarines or flying surveillance missions along the coast. The Chinese are trying to stop this, which is why we've had confrontations in the air as recently as August.
The South China Sea is vital to the U.S. as a military power and also in terms of commercial shipping. It's vital that the seaways are open for energy shipments and all the products of world trade that go backwards and forwards. The U.S. Navy can't just abandon them and trust that the Chinese are going to look after them. And this is where America's desire to be a world power bumps up against China's desire to be a regional power and control what it sees as its maritime backyard.
You end the book with an alternative vision of mutual cooperation in the South China Sea. Imagine it for us.
If the islands weren't there, everybody could agree to draw up zones where, according to the Law of the Sea, they were beneficiaries of the oil and fishing rights. The Philippines could get access to much needed energy sources. And the different countries could talk about managing fish stocks. Fish stocks face a potential catastrophic decline from overfishing. But since no country is willing to recognize the other countries' authority to regulate fishing, there's no overall body taking control.
John McManus, who works for the American Coral Reef Center, has suggested the idea of a peace park, which could both demilitarize the area and be a place where fish stocks could recover. But it's not getting anywhere, because that would mean everybody would have to take a step back from their nationalist positions.
New book reveals that Beijing's claims to the South China Sea are a recent invention.

An officer looks on as his Vietnamese Coast Guard vessel is flanked in May 2014 by a Chinese Coast Guard ship in disputed waters west of the Paracel islands. Vietnam sought support from neighboring nations to force China to withdraw an oil rig it had set up in waters claimed by both nations.
They have names like Pigeon Reef, West Sand, Taisho-To, and Scarborough Shoal. Most are no more than outcrops of rock poking out of the sea. Most have never been inhabited. Few have any direct economic value. If not for the perceived fish and oil wealth in the waters around them, the spat over these specks in the South China Sea would read like the bizarre disputes between Lilliput and Blefuscu in Gulliver's Travels.
But for Beijing, the battle for these remote islands is part of a wider geopolitical aim: control over the entire South China Sea and its potential resource wealth. Tensions are rising. In August a Chinese Navy fighter plane buzzed a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon, narrowly missing it. Two months earlier, an armed Chinese vessel chased and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat. China is also at loggerheads with Japan and the Philippines, which the U.S. is obligated under treaty to defend.
Speaking from his home in London, Bill Hayton, author of The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia, explains how China is a victim of its own propaganda, why the South China Sea is also crucial to American interests, and how "peace parks" could save collapsing fish stocks and defuse military tensions.
The Nanhai, as the South China Sea is known, has always had a deep meaning to the Chinese. Explain its significance.
Its meaning has been projected backwards. One of the things I learned researching the book was how the southern part of China related to Southeast Asia in a way that other parts of China didn't.
For a long time it was seen as a frontier place, from which only bad things came. For the first few thousand years of the South China Sea trade, it was Malays and Indians and Arabs who did most of the trading. It was only relatively late, roughly after the tenth century, that the Chinese got in on the act.
But it was always seen with ambivalence by the imperial court. The idea that the South China Sea belongs to China only emerges as a nationalist idea in the 20th century and has been projected backwards in history.
You write about the Arab dhow found off Belitung Island in Indonesia, which National Geographic covered in 2009. How did it change our understanding of historical trade along the Maritime Silk Route?
It shows how specialized and sophisticated the trade between China and the Middle East already was by then. You have pottery with Islamic motifs being custom made for markets separated by thousands of miles of dangerous sea. It's not just the province of explorers. This is a maritime trade. And we can tell from the different products and where they were distributed in the boat that this ship must have visited several ports, picking up different cargoes along the way. So we get a sense of how these places were connected in a thriving trade more than a thousand years ago.

Filipino and U.S. soldiers taking part in joint military exercises in the Philippines examine spent ammunition during a mock assault scenario, as regional tensions rise over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
The focus of your book is the disputes over a number of islands, many of them barely more than outcrops of rock. Give us a brief tour of the hot spots.
There are three main areas. There are the Paracel Islands, which are disputed between China and Vietnam. China now occupies all of them. Then there are the Spratly Islands in the south, which are disputed between China and Vietnam, but also Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, and to a degree Indonesia. The third layer is the Scarborough Shoal, which is disputed between China and the Philippines.
The problem is that no one is actually willing to clarify their claims and say, We were the first ones to stick our flag on this island—because they don't have the evidence. The first time a Chinese official set foot on the Paracel Islands was probably June 6, 1909, the first time on the Spratly Islands was December 12, 1946. The Vietnamese probably stuck their flag in the Spratly Islands as an independent country in 1956, although the French had been there before them. The Philippines came much later, in the 1970s. (Learn more about a local Vietnamese ethnic group known as the Cham, whose members remain wary of taking sides in the South China Sea dispute.)
But it's not so much the islands that are valuable. It's the spaces in between them. That's where the fish and possible oil reserves might lie. So there's no incentive for the countries to try to limit their claims. They're at the stage where they want to make their claims as expansive as possible.
Deng Xiaoping famously said that the islands of the South China Sea "have belonged to China since ancient times." Is there any merit to that claim?
As late as the 1890s Chinese officials in Guangdong Province were denying responsibility for the islands. There was a case in 1898 where two British ships got wrecked on the Paracel Islands, and pirates looted the wreck. The British complained. But the governor of Guangdong Province denied all knowledge of the islands. Maps of that period don't mention the islands either.
Everything changes in 1909, when a Japanese merchant is discovered digging up guano on Pratas Island, between Hong Kong and Taiwan. Because of the negative feeling toward foreign exploitation in China in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion, this provoked a huge nationalist backlash, leading to boycotts of Japanese products and the decision to make the Japanese merchants leave.
And it's only in 1909 that the Chinese authorities start taking an interest in the South China Sea. If one looks at the names of the islands in Chinese, it's clear many of them are simply translations of the British names. So, for example, Jinyin Dao in the Paracels is the Chinese for "Money Island." The word "Money" actually comes from William Taylor Money, chief superintendent to the Bombay Marine, the navy of the English East India Company.

Vietnamese and Chinese ships shadow each other in the South China Sea off Vietnam, where China had installed a deepwater drilling rig that Vietnam condemned as illegal.
China has recently embarked on a major underwater archaeology program aimed at identifying the 2,000 or so shipwrecks off its coasts. How is maritime history being exploited to bolster territorial claims?
The director of the Underwater Archaeological Research Centre has been pretty open that what he's doing is intended primarily to bolster China's claims to the islands. This is not disinterested scholarship. He sees his purpose as a nationalistic one. So there's an unfortunate but mutually beneficial arrangement between the government, which wants to bolster its claims to islands, and the archaeologists, who are looking to increase their ability to do underwater excavations. But if the archaeology becomes subject to a political agenda, then the scholarship won't be reliable.
Tell us about the Selden Map—and how cartography has shaped the present conflicts.
The Selden Map is fascinating because its history tells us an awful lot about the links between Southeast Asia and Europe at the time. It's a Chinese-made map, although where it was actually made is still not settled. It was called the Selden Map because it was bequeathed to the Bodleian Library in Oxford by John Selden, who was also one of the founders of international maritime law.
Quite how it came into his possession is not yet known. Selden was connected to the English East India Tea Company, and he may well have known the person who stole the map—we assume it was stolen or raided from the Chinese owners. The map itself is richly decorated in the Chinese style, with images of landscapes and trees and plants. But what's also clear is that it contains navigational instructions.
Is this the origin of the so-called U-shaped line?
The U-shaped line, or Nine-Dotted Line, as it is also known, emerges much later, out of the nationalist anxiety of the early 20th century, when the old empire is overthrown by the modern Chinese republic. Up to then, China's borders had never been clearly delineated.
Then in the early decades of the 20th century, Chinese cartographers attempted to show where the rightful boundaries of China should lie, which were, incidentally, well beyond its current boundaries. You can see this in a whole series of maps produced by the Shanghai Cartographic Society. And this is the origin of the U-shaped line.
You say that the battle for these islands represents "psychology and perception trumping any practical benefits." Can you expand on that?
The islands themselves are not worth exploiting. Once upon a time merchants mined guano as agricultural fertilizer. But those deposits have long since gone. What is at stake is the fisheries and perceived oil wealth. There are some oil prospects in part of the disputed areas. But the idea that this is some vast new Saudi Arabia waiting to be tapped is not borne out by the evidence.

Philippine Marines monitor the Spratly Islands in August 2014, watching for surveillance by Chinese patrol vessels. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and several other countries have claimed sovereignty over the islands.
So it's all about nationalism?
China has convinced itself that it's the rightful owner of the South China Sea and that anybody else's claim is invented, and secondary. From that basic belief, we get a whole series of actions, which have alarmed the region. Like installing oil rigs off the coast of Vietnam. These actions are all predicated on the idea that the South China Sea belongs to China.
What I try to show in the book is how this sentiment only emerged in the first part of the 20th century. Nonetheless, it's clear that it's deeply held. Chinese school textbooks tell children that China has three million square nautical miles of maritime territory. The official map of the country has also been changed to show the U-shaped line in its entirety. Basically, the Chinese government is believing its own propaganda.
The U.S. has recently beefed up its presence in the South China Sea, and there have been repeated near collisions with Chinese fighter planes. How close are we to a regional war?
I think we're a long way away from that. But it's clear the Chinese don't want the Americans as close to their coast as they are. The American position is that the Law of the Sea gives them a perfect right to sail up to within 12 nautical miles of the Chinese coast and do whatever they like. That includes listening to submarines or flying surveillance missions along the coast. The Chinese are trying to stop this, which is why we've had confrontations in the air as recently as August.
The South China Sea is vital to the U.S. as a military power and also in terms of commercial shipping. It's vital that the seaways are open for energy shipments and all the products of world trade that go backwards and forwards. The U.S. Navy can't just abandon them and trust that the Chinese are going to look after them. And this is where America's desire to be a world power bumps up against China's desire to be a regional power and control what it sees as its maritime backyard.
You end the book with an alternative vision of mutual cooperation in the South China Sea. Imagine it for us.
If the islands weren't there, everybody could agree to draw up zones where, according to the Law of the Sea, they were beneficiaries of the oil and fishing rights. The Philippines could get access to much needed energy sources. And the different countries could talk about managing fish stocks. Fish stocks face a potential catastrophic decline from overfishing. But since no country is willing to recognize the other countries' authority to regulate fishing, there's no overall body taking control.
John McManus, who works for the American Coral Reef Center, has suggested the idea of a peace park, which could both demilitarize the area and be a place where fish stocks could recover. But it's not getting anywhere, because that would mean everybody would have to take a step back from their nationalist positions.
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