The Spratlys: from dangerous ground to apple of discord.

• Author: Womack, Brantly
• Position: Report

The Spratly Islands were long known to mariners as "Dangerous Ground" because of their many uncharted reefs. The South China Sea--where the Spratlys are among the many disputed islands--has proven to be hazardous to diplomatic navigation as well. Because of conflicting sovereignty claims, the South China Sea has become the fulcrum of concerns between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Southeast Asia. The United States joined the dispute when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed an American "national interest" in the area during her speech to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) July 2010 in Hanoi. (2)

But the South China Sea--and the Spratlys in particular--are an unlikely centre of attention. The reason that there are overlapping claims is that there has never been an indigenous population and there are no significant above-ground resources to which historical claims might be attached. The possibility of oil and gas is tempting but remains to be proven, and in any case it would be a major technological and logistical challenge to produce and transport petroleum there. If any state, including China, attempted to seize the Spratlys by force, they would find development difficult, supply lines vulnerable and the costs in regional relationships excessive. If any state used territorial claims in the South China Sea to obstruct innocent passage of international commerce they would be violating international law to which all are parties. The only reasonable approach to dispute management is the one outlined in the ASEAN-China 2002 Declaration on Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DoC): peaceful cooperation. (3)

Why, then, has the South China Sea dispute between China and its neighbours become more acute since 2008, and why the increase in American interest in the controversy? The answer does not lie in the details of conflict, but in changes to the big picture of regional and global relations since the beginning of the global financial crisis in 2008. China's "peaceful rise" was already quite strong by 2008, but with the crisis China's economy made a "peaceful leap forward". The PRC's GDP growth went down to 8.7 per cent in 2009, but this was a much better performance than any other economy in the crisis, and its large cash reserves made possible both a massive domestic stimulus package and large-scale purchases of natural resources abroad. Moreover, the prospects for continued growth remain better for China than for any other major economy.

The South China Sea played no role either in China's prosperity or in the difficulties faced by other countries. However, China's peaceful leap forward has had two effects. First, it has increased the economic distance between China and its Southeast Asian neighbours, making them feel more exposed and vulnerable to China. Second, at the same time it has decreased the economic distance between China and the United States, prompting Washington to worry more about China as a potential rival and challenger. These two changes in China's relative economic position have strong implications for China's political and military relationships as well.

The difference between Southeast Asia's interests and those of China is symbolized by the South China Sea and its disputed atolls. The sea is a common space claimed by China, and the People Liberation Army Navy's (PLAN) new submarine base on Hainan Island gives China the military reach to support its claim. (4) The Paracel and Spratly Islands are disputed, and every claimant, China included, uses the rhetoric of sacred territory to describe its claim and declares that any other claim is totally unfounded. The nationalist rhetoric precludes compromise in principle and implies a willingness to resort to force despite the DoC. China's reluctance to move beyond the DoC into more binding guidelines strengthens the suspicions generated by its rhetoric. With China becoming relatively more powerful day by day, the South China Sea is easily imagined to be a flashpoint of conflict, even if there is little to be gained by conflict and there has been no military bloodshed since 1988 when the PLAN attacked Vietnamese forces at Johnson Reef in the Spratlys.

The United States does not have a claim in the South China Sea nor has it ever supported one claim against another. Why, then, did Secretary Clinton express a renewed interest? The major reason is that China's capabilities are getting too close for comfort to the United States. China is not able to challenge America's role as superpower, but it is becoming powerful enough such that the superpower cannot simply do what it wants in Asia. The military dimension is most obvious. New submarines and new missiles make US intervention too costly in the Taiwan Straits, and the Hainan base extends these capabilities to the South China Sea. There are also the dimensions of debt and trade. The United States will be forced to treat China with respect or else it will make unhappy discoveries about the limits of its own power.

The obvious solution to the South China Sea problem is a multilateral agreement for the joint development and management of its resources. However, its status as a symbol of tension and the rhetorical utility of the conflict for domestic audiences make resolution more difficult. Nevertheless, both China and Southeast Asia have strong traditions of asymmetric cooperation. In Asia, and more generally in an uncertain, multipolar world, the task of neutralizing touchpoints of conflict is likely to grow in importance.

The issues in the South China Sea can be divided into the maritime issues of the sea itself and issues of island ownership, and the latter can be subdivided into the Paracels, disputed only by China and Vietnam and occupied only by the PRC, and the Spratlys, which involve overlapping claims and island occupations by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and the Republic of China (ROC, or Taiwan), and the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) interests of Brunei.This paper concentrates on the Spratlys because of the multiple claims and the importance of land features for the maritime disputes. China's maritime claim beyond the islands is ambiguous, and there are no competing occupations in the Paracels.

The Spratlys in Perspective

The oldest (and more appropriate) name for the thousand kilometre-long Spratly area of reefs and low islands in the South China Sea is "Dangerous Ground", and danger was its defining feature until the prospect of petroleum raised interest in the dispute in the late 1960s. Traditional Asian trade avoided the central areas of the South China Sea and clung to coastal routes along Vietnam or along the western Philippines and the Sulu Sea. (5) Both of these routes were active and the coasts were well mapped, but in the middle was the Bermuda Triangle of uncharted danger. (6) Early Western merchants followed suit, but the desirability of a direct blue water route between India and China led to the exploration of the blank spaces on the map. The British Admiralty published its first general mapping of the area in 1821, but the complex topography required a century of further exploration to pin down the various reefs and low-lying islands. (7) The first mapping of safe transits through Dangerous Ground was made only in 1935-37. (8) There was no indigenous population, no flesh water and little dry land. As in the Paracels, the most prominent features of some islands and reefs were the remains of shipwrecks. It is still an area to be avoided. According to the US Defense Mapping Agency in 1994, "Avoidance of Dangerous Ground is the mariner's only guarantee of safety." (9)

Conflicting jurisdictional claims began to emerge in the twentieth century, and they became especially complicated after optimistic estimates of offshore oil possibilities were made in 1968. (10) Utilizing Greg Austin's dissection of the claims," it could be said that China (combining the claims and activities of the ROC and the PRC) has a stronger claim to the whole of the Spratlys than Vietnam, the other whole claimant. However, the partial claims and occupations of China (ROC sustained occupation from 1956), Vietnam (1973), Malaysia (1983), and the Philippines (1971) raise the issue of whether lawful possession should be determined as a whole or in piecemeal. (12) It should be noted that claims to land features are distinct from claims to EEZs, which opens up a vast new terrain of conflicting claims.

The method of establishing territorial claims in international law has the pernicious effect of maximizing confrontation and hostility. Each state claims more than it occupies, and, given the absence of population (and often of dry land), unchallenged occupation is nine-tenths of the law. Thus each has an incentive to increase its presence and to protest or oppose occupation by others, and all parties to the dispute have done both repeatedly over the past forty years. As experts have noted, "The expansion...