The focus on the South China Sea at the Shangri-La Dialogue will be a welcome addition to the diplomatic efforts to avoid conflict. But it will take many more years of concerted diplomacy to settle this thorny issue.
Tensions in the South China Sea have been rising in recent years. Without a joint resource management regime for the Scarborough Shoal, there will be an increased risk of another confrontation leading to armed conflict.
The current standoff in the South China Sea between the Philippines and China threatens to raise tensions to new heights.
Recent years have seen the intensification of political tensions between various states in the Pacific and East Asia. The rise of China as a military and economic power has necessarily triggered concern in the region, causing nations to reexamine their air-power procurement and development plans.
Recent developments in the South China Sea and China’s emphasis on the modernization of its military raise important issues for the future of U.S. strategic manoeuvring in the region. What can be done to sustain future U.S. presence in Asia while tactfully maintaining a favourable position for its interests and the stability in the region?
China’s military modernization has been a source of great concern for the United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region. Submarines, unsurprisingly, can be expected to play a significant role in Chinese asymmetric A2/AD strategies.The United States must invest to maintain the superiority of its undersea forces and to relearn and redevelop the core ASW capabilities it lost following the end of the Cold War.
The territorial disputes concerning the Spratly and Paracel Islands and adjacent waters are still unresolved. Recently, incidents between Vietnamese seismic survey ships and Chinese coast patrols are a reminder of the conflict potential these border disputes inherit. After a phase of relative easiness among the claimants to the South China Sea islands, these newly heightened tensions cause rising worries in the region and abroad.
Washington’s emphasis on multilateral diplomacy underlines the point that ASEAN as a whole as well as other states have significant interests in the Sea that go beyond the territorial disputes between five states and China.
Arguably, the most significant fact in international relations at the beginning of the 21st Century is the gradual emergence of China as a regional and global power, and the relative decline of what can be loosely termed the ‘status quo powers’ and their most powerful member, the US. A number of mini-crises in the South China Sea this year, are sparking concern about China’s rise and the potential for Sino-US conflict.
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