US to corral Asean support in South China Sea spat – Financial Times

Later this year an obscure international tribunal in The Hague will issue a decision about contested islands in the South China Sea.

For the Obama administration, the ruling will be a seminal moment in the fierce disputes about the South China Sea — a test of China’s willingness to follow international law in its dealings with its neighbours.

The US also intends to use a summit next week with leaders from Southeast Asia to begin building diplomatic pressure on China over the case. President Barack Obama will encourage other countries in the region to urge Beijing to accept the ruling, which is expected to challenge some of China’s expansive claims.

“This [the tribunal ruling] is going to be hugely important,” Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said in an interview. “I think it is the acid test of whether China will be seen as a nation that abides by international law or whether China is prepared to be seen as an outlier that flouts international law.”

Mr Obama will host the leaders of Asean, the south-east Asian group, on Monday and Tuesday at Sunnylands — the same California estate where he met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2013 for a “shirtsleeves summit”.

US officials see the Asean summit as the culmination of a seven-year effort by the administration to improve relations with the region, which has included unprecedented engagement with Myanmar and stepped-up military relationships with Vietnam and the Philippines. The official agenda includes trade, counter-terrorism and what White House officials describe as the occasional “pull-aside” to discuss human rights violations.

However, in the background for most of the discussion will be China and, in particular, the disputed islands in the South China Sea. Beijing’s aggressive exercise in land reclamation, including the construction of four airfields with potential military use, has alarmed many of its neighbours and intensified their demands for a stronger US presence in the region.

A United Nations tribunal is expected to rule between April and June on a case brought by the Philippines which seeks to invalidate the “nine-dash line” — markings on maps that Beijing uses to claim almost the entire South China Sea.

China lost the first round of the case in October when The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration, which hears disputes related to the UN Law of the Sea, decided that it would accept the case despite protests by Beijing that the tribunal did not have jurisdiction.

In the next stage, the court will rule on Chinese claims to territorial seas around certain land features and rocks that it controls as well as the now-infamous “nine-dash line”.

The “nine-dash line” has allowed Beijing to make broad maritime claims without ever specifying the extent of the territory it believes it controls.

China says it will not recognise the court’s ruling and US officials do not expect it to result in any claims being surrendered. However, the US reckons that by standing together in support of the tribunal, countries in the region can exert diplomatic pressure on China to prevent any military use of the man-made islands.

Indeed, some officials believe that the impending court decision is one reason why Chinese construction has been so aggressive in recent months — to create established facts before the verdict comes down.

“The Chinese strategy has been one of deliberate ambiguity, but that ambiguity is being steadily eroded by the prospect of the tribunal judgment,” said a senior administration official.

The official added: “The verdict is equally binding on China and the Philippines regardless of how it goes. It is in all of our interests to do everything in our power to encourage the Chinese to do what they say they do — which is to adhere to international law.”

But Ernest Bower, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that China was “putting massive pressure” on some Asean countries to prevent a common statement at the summit about the South China Sea — particularly Cambodia and Laos, which do not have any territorial disputes with China.

Mira Rapp-Hooper, an expert on the South China Sea at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, said that the US had “some work to do to maximise the impact of the tribunal decision given that China is not going to comply in the near-term”.

A joint message from the US and Asean would, she said, put a reputational cost on China if it failed to comply. She advocated further backing that up via US freedom-of-navigation operations — naval patrols that contest excessive maritime claims.