Czech expert warns US and the Philippines not to play fire in South China Sea

At present there is no greater concentration of conventional forces in the world than the US Naval presence in the Western Pacific, and there isn't any balance to that power, said political science professor Oskar Krejčíthe, director of the Institute of Global Studies of the Jan Amos Komensky University Prague and former adviser to the Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak government, to Prvnizpravy.cz (PZ).

PZ: In several of our interviews you said that the situation in the South China Sea presents one of the riskiest areas of tension in the world - if not the most dangerous. Don't you think you overestimate the importance of those current events?

Oskar Krejčí: In comparison to other outbreaks such as Syria or Ukraine, it isn't a confrontation of major powers mediated - it is largely direct...

PZ: If we follow the Western media, the United States is the one offering good office, including the mediation of solutions to the confrontations between countries around the South China Sea, and the US calls for respect for the right of free navigation - in accordance with of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Oskar Krejčí: That's right. The United States offers good office and call for the respect of international law. They advocate the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is a real paradox - the US in fact, unlike China, refused to sign the Convention. The main problem of the good office offered by Washington is that the US is not an impartial party to the dispute. On the contrary - the United States has been, for more than a hundred years, an extremely active player in this area. It suffices to recall three events. First, in 1898, the US signed, with Spain - whom they had defeated in the war - a contract to sell the Philippines to the United States. For $20 million. Because, at that time, the Filipino freedom fighters seized Manila, US forces began fighting against them. According to some records one million Filipinos were killed in that war. Until the occupation of the Philippines by Japan, Washington was trying to integrate the Philippines into the US, in the same way that Hawaii joined.

Second, in 1900, in an effort to open up China to colonial powers, Western and Japanese troops set off to Beijing, the American units set off from the Philippines. And, do not forget that, thirdly, the South China Sea borders Vietnam, where the United States in the 1960s and 70s led a war, which according to various estimates, cost the lives of between 1.5 and 3.9 million people.

PZ: That sounds truly committed, but it is the past. The Cold War has ended; Vietnam signed a contract with the US for the supply of military equipment...

Oskar Krejčí: The Cold War ended - i.e. one cycle of the power struggle. Now we have a new cycle, in which the interests or rather the ambitions of some states remain unchanged. In 2012, the United States began a policy of "rebalancing", or "restoring equilibrium" in the Pacific Ocean. This is associated with the transfer of its military emphasis from the Atlantic to the Pacific. By 2020, in the Atlantic region, there will remain 40 percent of US naval forces, while in the Pacific Ocean, which is designated as the new Heartland, there should be 60 percent of its military naval capacity.

PZ: Alright, but how does this relate to the South China Sea?

Oskar Krejčí: At this point in the exercise, six out of 10 US aircraft carriers are on the mission, out of which, two are in the Pacific Ocean. Several weeks ago, there was created a naval union, by the addition of two naval aircraft carriers - the Ronald Reagan, which forms the core of the 7th Fleet, and the John Stennis. Each underlies a strike group which includes battleships, cruisers, submarines and other naval-military escorts. They sail through the East China and South China Sea and according to the latest reports, they are in the Philippine Sea and therefore in the Western Pacific. The official justification by the US Navy is that they say their aim is to show the ability of the US to manage this massive merger of two assault groups. I think that, at this moment, there exists no greater concentration of conventional forces than this naval union anywhere in the world.

This is not how a restorer of the balance or the actions of an independent justice of the peace looks like. It is a manifestation of the "forward of a military presence" strategy and, by politicians, the containment or pushing back of China. And therefore, an effort to maintain US hegemony in the region.

PZ: Why so much interest in the South China Sea?

Oskar Krejčí: There are several reasons. The latest is related to the above-mentioned fact that in the coming days the Permanent Court of Arbitration should deliver a verdict on a Philippines' complaint concerning the islands in the South China Sea. The whole thing is bizarre. The Permanent Court of Arbitration should deal with arbitration. In the case of the Philippines, in January 2013, they asked for a verdict on 15 requirements under the Convention of the Law of the Sea.

China did not consent to arbitration and are not participating in the arbitration, which makes this issue more than problematic. Forced arbitration cannot relate to disputes over sovereignty, on border demarcation or historical property. Reservations on the Convention on the Law of the Sea of this type were announced by more than thirty countries, including all the permanent members of the UN Security Council - with the exception of the US, which does not recognize the Convention. In short, the Permanent Court of Arbitration should not even deal with this matter.

PZ: Does this mean that China avoids a legal resolution to the dispute?

Oskar Krejčí: China proposes to solve the disputes by bilateral diplomatic negotiations, without third party intervention. It can be assumed, however, that in the Western media - whatever the outcomes of the Permanent Court of Arbitration are - we will hear about the aggression of China and its unwillingness to negotiate.

PZ: Some might say that you are biased and unnecessarily skeptical. Why should the media be so engaged?

Oskar Krejčí: Apart from the geopolitical interests in the so-called rebalancing, therefore keeping China back by maintaining superiority, there are also the economic interests of all participating states. These are also complicated by the tangle of the historical claims and ambitions.

PZ: You did not say this very clearly. What economic interests?

Oskar Krejčí: Fishing and raw material resources in the Paracel and Spratly islands area, especially oil. This theme emerged in the 1990s in connection with the economic growth of countries around the South China Sea. Then there are concerns connected to the fact that the South China Sea is on the eastern side of the Strait of Malacca, through which flows most of the oil from the Middle East to China, Japan, South Korea, Australia. In the opposite direction, in terms of movement of goods, they travel not only to the Middle East but also to Africa and Europe. It is also an important gateway to the south, a marine band of the new Silk Road. That’s why there is an American effort to control the region militarily.

PZ: That is obvious, but in what do you see the tangling of claims?

Oskar Krejčí: Those islands are not claimed only by China which claims that its rights derive from the fact that the Chinese presence dates from antiquity with the inclusion of the islands in their drawings of maps. China is building there "Great Sandy Wall" and performs restoration, which according to some data was completed a year ago and marked the expansion of the territory of the islands by 13.5 square kilometers. It is also associated with a strategy of zonal defense in the near seas. The islands, however, are also claimed by Taiwan, which is in fact a part of China's claim - in practice; however it narrows any room for maneuvering by Beijing, which can not be seen as a worse defender of Chinese interests than Taipei. Taiwan’s claim is based on the fact that when Chiang Kai-shek led the Republic of China, along with the United States in 1948, it set out a demarcation line, which is called the "nine-dash line", sometimes called the "line of nine strokes". The given islands are drawn as Chinese whilst the demarcation line is not continuous, but a collection of lines with factual or possibly problematical territories.

For a long time, nobody raised an objection against this line. This concept was adopted by the People's Republic of China in a Declaration of 1958; in the same year the same stance was approved by the North Vietnamese premier. The South Vietnamese government however claimed a part of the islands. China, in 1974, militarily occupied some of the Paracel islands (during the war in Indochina), when the islands attempted being administered by the Republic of South Vietnam, supported militarily by the United States. In 1979, after winning the war, Hanoi adopted the South Vietnamese stance. A very unpleasant conflict then occurred in 1988.

PZ: Disputes in the South China Sea are therefore Sino -Vietnamese? There are talks about an upcoming supply of weapons into Vietnam.

Oskar Krejčí: Today, in reality all the coastal states of the South China Sea raise some claim; into this dispute are also pulled India and Indonesia. Vietnamese claims have similar roots to those of Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines: they come from colonial times when the region was disputed by the French, British, Dutch and the Spanish and, by extension, the United States. The roots of the current phase of litigation are from 1978, when the Philippine President unilaterally declared that 60% of the Spratly Islands in the territory of the Philippines is, based on the proclamation that 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from the coast according to the Convention of the Sea Law, a sovereign economic zone of the Philippines. In 2012, the next Philippine president announced that part of the South China Sea is to become the "Western Philippine Sea". In 2014, Manila then turned to the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The probability is that nothing the Philippines did was done without the "good office" of Washington is near certain.

PZ: OK, and where, therefore, according to you, does the truth lie?

Oskar Krejčí: Historically speaking - China. Personally, I believe that history should not tie policy to the extent that it leads to war. However, each negotiation without the use of force or threat of force must be based on the status quo. There stand against each other two legal principles. The first is the Convention on the Law of the Sea, where the claims are crossed depending on whom currently manages the island. The second offers a precedent in the form of a verdict by the Permanent Court of Arbitration of 1928 concerning the Island of Palmas Case, a dispute between the US and the Netherlands around the Miangas Islands (now Indonesia). The decision was then based on the principle of "effective occupation", the attitude that actual tenure confers the right of ownership. Even this principle however cannot satisfy all the parties in the dispute. In such a situation, indeed, the only reasonable solution is diplomatic negotiation.

PZ: What solutions in such a situation do you consider to be possible and advantageous?

Oskar Krejčí: Perhaps the best compromise would be that the islands remain Chinese and a way of joint use of natural resources would be found. But to reach any kind of compromise would currently be possible only on the basis of bilateral talks. Even if it is in the spirit of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, which in 2002 was signed by China and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). In that, Article 4 states that disputes will be resolved within the countries concerned, through negotiation and consultation. Of course, with good will, as manifested for example in 2000 with the signing of an agreement between Vietnam and China about the Gulf of Tonkin which set the borders and determined the rules for common fishing.

Provocation of the type of forced "arbitrage", the purpose of which is purely propaganda, only increases tensions. Feigned good office, in the dispute in the South China Sea, while warming up selfish geopolitical ambitions, is dangerously playing with fire. Tensions, however, must be reduced - and to negotiate, negotiate and negotiate. The most longer and convoluted negotiation is better than one day of war.