Secretary of State-to-be Rex Tillerson testified to Congress on Wednesday that America needs to take a harder line against China in the South China Sea. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops,\u201d Tillerson said. \u201cAnd second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.\u201d This tougher stance is necessary, he says, to deter China from further \u201cpushing the envelope.\u201d
James Kraska, Professor in the Stockton Center for the Study of International Law at the U. S. Naval War College, agrees \u00a0with Tillerson, even while admitting that this could be a dangerous policy: \u201cWouldn\u2019t this raise tension in the region? It surely would, but anything other than acquiescence to China\u2019s unlawful claims will have to take on additional risk in the short term.\u201d
There are several strategic justifications for why America must stand up to China\u2019s expansive territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea. One involves defending our allies in the region and making sure China\u2019s activities don\u2019t threaten their security. Another is about upholding international order and freedom of the seas.
China\u2019s neighbors, although certainly eager to let the United States take the lead in defending their regional interests, seem to have a more sober and realistic view of China than Tillerson. They cooperate diplomatically and trade with China when it suits them, and make a fuss when China seems to push the envelope. The Philippines has recently pivoted towards better relations with China , despite the fallout over the ruling , in the Philippines\u2019 favor, of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague. And Japan still spends only 1 percent of its GDP on defense, less than half the global average , hardly an indication that Tokyo expects a military clash with China over the Senkaku\/Diayu islands.
The second justification, that America needs to uphold international law and order, is even more dubious. First of all, as a great power, China is in good company in ignoring the precepts of international law. As the Harvard political scientist Graham Allison recently made clear : \u201cno permanent member of the UN Security Council has ever complied with a ruling by the PCA on an issue involving the Law of the Sea. In fact, none of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have ever accepted any international court\u2019s ruling when (in their view) it infringed their sovereignty or national security interests.\u201d No state has sued the United States under the UN Law of the Sea because Washington refuses to ratify it in the first place. When the PCA ruled in 2015 that the United Kingdom violated the Law of the Sea over the Chagos Islands, Britain disregarded it. And in 2013, when the PCA ruled against Russia on the Law of the Sea over its seizure of a Dutch vessel off the coast of Russia, Moscow ignored it. So when U. S. officials say military action in the South China Sea is necessary to uphold international law, they\u2019re applying the traditional \u201cfor thee but not for me\u201d rule.
There is a longer term question about whether the South China Sea will serve as a precedent for China\u2019s rise to superpower status, overtaking the United States and revising the international order. China\u2019s surpassing of the United States in relative international power is a very long way off , but even if it were more imminent, it\u2019s not clear that China intends to upend the order that it has spent the past three decades conforming to. After all, China has gotten rich and powerful under this system. Ryan D. Griffiths, in an article in the journal Security Studies (gated) has gone so far as to argue that a Chinese-led world order wouldn\u2019t differ fundamentally from a U. S.-led world order, though in the realm of territorial integrity it may actually be more stable.
The current debate about America\u2019s posture in the South China Sea reflects a very narrow conception of the strategic options at hand. It shouldn\u2019t be relegated to either (1) drawing a red line against China over remote islands of negligible strategic importance to the United States, or (2) ceding regional hegemony to Beijing. It is clearly in the interest of the nations in the region to come to a mutually beneficial agreement that establishes norms of behavior with regard to military presence, resource extraction, access to shipping lanes, and other activities in the South China Sea. And such a diplomatic achievement is perhaps possible. But by focusing solely on a crude deterrence model in which powerful adversaries meekly back down in the face of U. S. threats, we not only forgo those other peaceful diplomatic options, we make them less plausible.<\/p>\n