China is aggressively pressing Vietnam by staking out Vietnamese waters with an oil drilling rig guarded by numerous non-navy ships and an actual navy presence. Over the years, proponents of America joining LOST have claimed that the treaty would help cool down territorial disputes such as this.
China has signed the treaty, but that doesn't seem to affect their claims:
Vietnam says the structure is parked on a continental shelf where the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea guarantees Vietnam exclusive rights to hydrocarbon and mineral resources. China, which rejects this argument, has laid claim to most of the South China Sea, a vital world trade route. As a result, China is also in conflict with the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan, which have rival interests in the sea, its islands and its rocks.
So the treaty says the area is Vietnamese. Other nations have claims that trump China's claim to virtually all of the South China Sea. But China has a legal theory that trumps the treaty. You see, as the editorial notes, the South China Sea area in question is "China’s inherent territory" according to the Chinese.
Well! Why didn't they say so first? That trumps every other legal argument. It's like calling dibs on the last slice of pizza. Or calling shotgun in the car. You call it, it's yours?
But the fact is, LOST has no provisions for regulating these disputes. Indeed, LOST creates many of these disputes--including in the South China Sea--by providing for exclusive economic zones (EEZs).
Another unpleasant fact is that China is increasingly aggressive in defying international law that they've purportedly agreed to accept because their naval capabilities are rising rapidly.
So can we expect to see more of this?
One curious twist to this week’s turbulence: PLA Navy units were among the mix of vessels tangling in the Paracels. Is Beijing abandoning the small-stick diplomacy that has served it so well in recent years? Maybe. It wouldn’t be the first time China’s leadership has chucked out a promising diplomatic venture (see Offensive, Charm) for mysterious reasons, or missed an opportunity to smooth out relations with Asian neighbors (see Haiyan, Typhoon). Dumb and self-defeating things are part of Beijing’s strategic repertoire.
In this case, however, they may be paying Vietnam a backhanded compliment rather than blundering. China likes to behave like Sun Tzu’s Hegemonic King. It likes to overawe its neighbors, keeping them from making common cause against China, and to generally bask in its own awesomeness. But officialdom doubtless remembers past Sino-Vietnamese clashes on land and on the waves. And it remembers that China has occasionally come off the worst against this tough, determined opponent.
The leadership may reckon that it can’t overpower Vietnamese forces with white China Coast Guard hulls alone. Navies fight for disputed objects, whereas coast guards enforce domestic law against non-state lawbreakers. By sending warships, Beijing may be tacitly admitting that Vietnam — unlike the Philippines, whose navy and coast guard are utterly outclassed — is a serious antagonist. Take a bow, Hanoi.
This fits with my reasoning that nations with disputes with China need the ability to fight small battles with China over bits of rock so that China can't get away with using conscripted fishing vessels and Chinese coast guard ships to bully their way into control of regions China claims. Vietnam has the reputation for being able to fight China, so China ups the ante in the confrontation.
So while this may be an exception to the rule because of Vietnam's military power, as the Philippines arms up to have a credible military option to resist low-level Chinese aggression, the exception expands. Japan's power would require China to deploy armed forces, too, in the East China Sea dispute.
At some point the exception just becomes the rule. But China's growing naval power allows China to make that leap to military involvement.
The question is, does somebody open fire if they seem to be on the verge of losing the ramming and fire hose conflict?
Then the question becomes, does nationalism in both China and Vietnam push leaders to escalate further?
It seems that violence is inherent in China's aggressive stance on sea territory. And sea disputes are inherent in LOST.
We shall see if international tribunals can sort this out and if it matters. Why would China decide to obey this international ruling when LOST doesn't seem to matter when China has "inherent territory?"
Then the question becomes what does the United States do? Sure, as the author of the lengthy selection notes, the United States is unlikely to go to war with China over ownership of those rocks in the South China Sea.
We've even stated that we don't care who owns them--just that we think that diplomacy should be the means to determine ownership and rights from that ownership.
Oh, and one more thing. We state that whoever owns those rocks and claims EEZs around them, the South China Sea is international waters that our ships can traverse freely.
Just how does our defense of freedom of navigation fit with China's notion that the area is their own "inherent territory?" Not very well.
And so the question of whether America would fight for freedom of navigation becomes the question--not whether we'd fight for control of rocks.
That's a different question altogether, no?
