F. William Engdahl
journal-neo.org
Perception
is something we often take for granted. That’s very much the case in
the world’s perception of the actions of the Peoples’ Republic of China
regarding its claims to a number of offshore uninhabited rocks in the
South China Sea and beyond. For the most of the collective Western mind,
the perception is that Beijing has become hysterical, obsessive—in
short, a bit mad—over its asserted claims of territory under various
precepts of international law. The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA)
at The Hague has now ruled against any and all claims of China to
various islands or even rocks inside what is known as the “Nine Dash
Line” between China’s coast and The Philippines. Washington has piously
stepped up, demanding China “respect international law.” At the same
time the Pentagon has started international naval war maneuvers in the
region, “RIMPAC 2016,” provocatively involving the Navy of the Federal
Republic of Germany for the first time since World War II, and largely
excluding China. This is getting ugly and not at all what it appears in the general perception to be.
On July 12 a specially-selected five
judge arbitration panel issued a determination on conflicting claims
between China and The Philippines to portions of uninhabited islands,
largely barren rocks, in the South China Sea. China declined to
participate in the arbitration process or to acknowledge it as having
jurisdiction. The specific decision in this case regards conflicting
claims between China and the Philippines in what China calls the
Nine-Dash Line. It involves the Spratly and the Paracel Islands in a
larger domain where Beijing’s territorial claims to the islands partly
overlap those of the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan.
It also involves rights in what is
arguably the world’s most economically and therefore, militarily,
strategic sea passage lanes. The South China Sea is transit to about
half of the world’s daily merchant shipping, a third of global oil
shipping, two-thirds of all liquid natural gas shipments and more than a
10% of the world fish catch. Some $5 trillion in trade passes through
the waters annually. In a sense it is potentially China’s Achilles Heel
in any future military or sanctions clash with Washington, something a
Hillary Clinton presidency in 2017 would make quite plausible.
Since the UN Convention on the Law of
the Seas (UNCLOS) came into effect in 1994, the Permanent Court of
Arbitration in The Hague has acted as registry in all but one of the
cases that have been arbitrated under UNCLOS. It is not a sitting court
in any traditional sense. Rather, it is a bureaucracy under the
President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS)
that facilitates selection of arbitrators in specific disputes, in
cooperation with both disputing parties, something absent here.
Non-binding
The arbitration panel, whose rulings are
non-binding, determined that, “the Tribunal finds that China has in the
course of these proceedings aggravated and extended the disputes
between the Parties through its dredging, artificial island-building,
and construction activities. In particular, while these proceedings were
ongoing: China has aggravated the Parties’ dispute concerning their
respective rights and entitlements in the area of Mischief Reef by
building a large artificial island on a low-tide elevation located in
the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines…”
Their ruling was that China’s
“nine-dash-line” is invalid; that reclaimed islands have no exclusive
economic zone (under Chinese sovereignty-w.e.); that China has behaved
unlawfully in interfering with Philippine fishing and mineral activities
and constructing artificial islands; and that Beijing has damaged the
environment.
In their concluding remarks, the
Arbitration Panel members admit, “The root of the disputes presented by
the Philippines in this arbitration lies not in any intention on the
part of China or the Philippines to infringe on the legal rights of
the other, but rather—as has been
apparent throughout these proceedings—in fundamentally different
understandings of their respective rights under the Convention in the
waters of the South China Sea.”
Then, in the last sentence of their
conclusion, they write, “The Tribunal considers it beyond dispute that
both Parties are obliged to comply with the Convention (on Law of the
Sea-w.e.) including its provisions regarding the resolution of disputes,
and to respect the rights and freedoms of other States under the
Convention. Neither Party contests this, and the Tribunal is therefore
not persuaded that it is necessary or appropriate for it to make any
further declaration.”
Skillfully hidden amid the somber
judicious-sounding language of the tribunal is the fact that their
entire process is illegal. Arbitration requires that both parties
seeking a resolution to conflicting claims agree to turn to a neutral
arbitrator to resolve their mutual conflicting claims. In this case, the
Washington-friendly regime of former President Benigno Aquino III,
unilaterally, on Obama Administration urging, pressed arbitration claims
in The Hague despite the fact that the second party, China, refused
that arbitration in favor of continuing diplomatic bilateral talks.
Typically, the US State Department is
demanding now that China respect the PCA ruling in terms of the UN
Convention on the Law of the Seas regarding the islands and abandon
them, though the US itself never ratified the Law of the Seas
Convention.
The case never should have come to a hearing.
When the Aquino government unilaterally
went ahead with Washington support in 2013, Beijing realized the
malicious intent of Washington and NATO to militarize the South China
Sea conflicting territorial claims as they had just done in the East
China Sea with promotion of Japanese claims to the barren islands calls
the Senkaku Islands near Taiwan.
China calls the Senkaku the Diaoyu
Islands, and argues that they have been Chinese since at least 1534. In a
2015 meeting with Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is pushing Japan
to become a military power again despite its constitution, US President
Obama said the US would back Japanese claims to the strategic Senkaku
Islands with military force, hardly a neutral gesture of peace and good
will on the part of Washington.
Dramatis Personae
As the events in the South China Sea are
being very carefully planned on the side of China’s hostile opponents
in the region, above all by Washington, not only, but also Abe’s Japan,
it is important to know the Dramatis Personae or key actors in this
tragi-comedy being staged under what is called the UN Convention on the
Law of the Sea.
First we begin with the party who
initiated Tribunal action against China in 2013, the government of the
Philippines. President then was the US-tied scion of the very wealthy
Philippines sugar plantation dynasty, Benigno Aquino III. Under Aquino’s
six-year term in office which ended this June 30, he re-invited the US
Armed Forces to use the former US navy base at Subic Bay as well as the
former US Clark Air Base twenty years after the Philippine Senate forced
the US to leave. Aquino’s tenure also saw the Philippines included in
an emerging new US-led Asian military alliance, forming in the
Asia-Pacific region, to date consisting of the Philippines, Australia,
and Japan. And this April, in one of his last acts as President, Aquino
agreed with US Defense Secretary Ash Carter to begin US troops and
military equipment rotations in the Philippines and joint patrols in the
South China Sea.
In June 2012, the Aquino government,
after months of negotiations with the US Government, said that the
United States military could use the former bases. The US moved back to
its Naval Base at Subic Bay, from which it had been forced out twenty
years before by the Philippines. In September, 1991, despite the
willingness of Aquino’s mother, then-President Corazon Aquino, to renew
the expiring bases treaty with Washington, a hostile Philippines Senate
refused, amid widespread popular outrage against repeated clashes
including countless rape incidents between US military personnel and the
local Philippine civilians. The bases were ordered closed.
The US move back to the bases in the
Philippines was an integral part of the Obama “Asia Pivot” which, as is
now clear, is an ill-disguised US-led “China Pivot” to contain the
growing global influence of China. In April, 2014 the Aquino government signed an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the United States.
The decision of the Aquino government,
in office until June 30, 2016, to initiate, against the wishes of China,
The Hague arbitration on the Spratly Islands dispute, was a calculated
provocation against China, fully backed by the Obama Administration, as
usual these days, “leading from behind.”
Japan’s Dirty Role
Once the pro-US Aquino regime agreed to
unilaterally go ahead, knowing China would reject arbitration, the trap
could be set. Instead of adhering to the legal procedures in the UNCLOS
treaty for mutual naming of a five-person arbitration panel in the
islands dispute, the Philippines named one judge and, extraordinarily,
the then-President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
(ITLOS), Shunji Yanai, himself, named the other four members. None were
China friendly.
Yanai, a former Japan Ambassador to
Washington, is an adviser to right-wing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe. Yanai, who was forced to leave the Japanese Foreign Ministry amid
an embezzlement scandal some years back, in 2014, soon after leaving the
ITLOS, presented a report to Abe advocating lifting the ban on Japan
sending its military overseas. In August 2013 as he was still choosing
arbitrators, Yanai told Japan’s national NHK TV that Japan’s islands
were “under threat” and that Japan has “enemies” and needs to improve
its military strength for safeguarding security.
Notably, Yanai is also consultant to
Japan’s huge Mitsubishi Group, Japan’s leading defense industry group,
the major industrial advocate in the 1920’s and 1930’s for Japan’s
military turn, which today stands to reap billions in military contracts
from a constitutional change such as Yanai advocates and Abe backs.
Washington’s Asia Pivot
Until 2013 China and the Philippines had
been in diplomatic dialogue on the island dispute. Once the unilateral
2013 Philippine formal request for Hague arbitration of the disputed
islands was filed over China’s objections, other increasingly hostile US
military actions surrounding China took place. These included US covert
interference in China’s Xinjiang Province to foment Uyghur unrest and
US National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored Hong Kong “Umbrella
Revolution” protests in September, 2014. Beijing began to take very
seriously the growing hostility towards China coming from Washington.
The Obama Administration free-trade push with Japan and other Asian
nations, deliberately excluding China from a new Trans Pacific
Partnership trade agreement in late 2015, also made clear for Beijing
that future relations with NATO and especially Washington would become
ever more conflicted. However nothing made that more clear than
Washington’s 2011 decision to implement the Asia Pivot military strategy
to encircle China.
In 2011, the Obama Administration
announced that the US would make “a strategic pivot” in its foreign
policy to focus its military and political attention on the
Asia-Pacific, particularly Southeast Asia, that is, China. During the
final months of 2011 the Obama Administration clearly defined a new
public military threat doctrine for US military readiness. During a
Presidential trip Australia, the US President unveiled the so-called Obama Doctrine. The following sections from Obama’s speech in Australia are relevant to the present islands dispute:
“With most of the world’s nuclear
power and some half of humanity, Asia will largely define whether the
century ahead will be marked by conflict or cooperation…As President, I
have, therefore, made a deliberate and strategic decision — as a Pacific
nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in
shaping this region and its future…I have directed my national security
team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top
priority…we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong
military presence in this region. We will preserve our unique ability
to project power…We see our new posture here in Australia…I believe we
can address shared challenges, such as proliferation and maritime
security, including co-operation in the South China Sea.”
In August 2011 the Pentagon presented
its annual report on China’s military. It stated that China had closed
key technological gaps noting that China’s military investments had
“allowed China to pursue capabilities that we believe are potentially
destabilizing to regional military balances, increase the risk of
misunderstanding and miscalculation and may contribute to regional
tensions and anxieties.”
The Pentagon strategy against China that
the Asia Pivot is preparing is called “Air-Sea Battle.” This calls for
an aggressive, coordinated US attack in which American stealth bombers
and submarines knock out China’s long-range surveillance radar and
precision missile systems located deep inside the country. The initial
“blinding campaign” would be followed by a larger air and naval assault
on China itself. Crucial to the advanced Pentagon strategy is US
military navy and air presence in Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam
and across the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. Australian troop and
naval deployment is aimed at accessing the strategic Chinese South China
Sea as well as the Indian Ocean. The stated motive is to “protect
freedom of navigation” in the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea.
Little wonder that some in Beijing began
to look very seriously at the waters around the South China Sea in
terms of its very survival in a potential future conflict with NATO and
the United States, one with Japan playing a dirty vassal role for
Washington.
The 2005 US intelligence Annual Report
to the US Congress on China described what they saw as Chinese military
strategy to defend her access to vital oil from the Persian Gulf and
elsewhere:
“…a growing dependence on imported
energy resources needed to sustain its economic development exposes
China to new vulnerabilities and heightens its need to secure new energy
sources and the sea lines of communications from East Asia to the
Persian Gulf and Africa needed to move energy supplies to China.”
Those China growing vital sea supply
line vulnerabilities, China’s economic Achilles Heel, are precisely what
Washington and NATO today are targeting in the islands disputes. The US
prodding of the Aquino government in the Philippines in 2013 to
unilaterally initiate The Hague arbitration procedure is de facto
illegal, unabashedly so as Washington refuses to ratify the UN
Convention it uses to beat China with.
As China has repeatedly pointed out in
explaining why it refused to partake, arbitration of an international
dispute, by definition, can only take place when both parties—in this
case, the Philippines and China—would agree to turn to a mutually-agreed
arbiter or panel of neutral, mutually-chosen arbiters, recognized
experts on international maritime law, to resolve matters.
In comments to the press, Motofumi Asai,
a former Japanese Foreign Ministry official specializing in China
relations, stated after the July 12 Hague ruling, “From the result of
the arbitration, people can see that it was conducted by a bunch of
people who knew very little about the South China Sea issues.” Japanese
political analyst, Jiro Honzawa, stated in his blog, “The Philippines
was abetted by the US and Japan to apply for arbitration, because the
latter two want to contain China…
The arbitration was a trap set up by Japan and the US.”
At this point it remains to be seen how
the newly-elected President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, reacts
to pressures from Washington to escalate the conflict with China. By the
Philippine Constitution, Aquino was barred from re-election in the May,
2016 elections that saw Duterte win by a landslide margin, and Max
Rojas, Aquino’s choice, soundly trounced in an election where 81% of
eligible voters turned out. In early June, before the arbitration
decision but after his victory had become official, Duterte told press
that under his presidency, the Philippines would not rely on the United
States, indicating an inclination to greater independence from
Washington in dealing with China and the South China Sea.
The international differences between
China and the Philippines, as between China and Japan over wet, barren
islands in the South China Sea and in the East China Sea are not about
grabbing potential offshore oil and gas, nor about catching a few
million more fish for Chinese fishermen. It’s all about the security of
China and the security of her most vital shipping lanes. It would be
interesting to see how readily compromises among various parties,
especially between China and the Philippines, might arise were
Washington to get its dirty nose out of the matter along with Japan’s
Abe government.
F. William Engdahl is
strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics
from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and
geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
http://journal-neo.org/2016/07/21/why-china-risks-war-over-those-wet-rocks/
