By Ankit Panda
Asian maritime disputes stem from deeply entrenched national interests.
Writing for Flashpoints, my colleague Prashanth Parameswaran is understandably pessimistic about the ability of a “new” multilateral maritime organization to succeed in the East Asian diplomatic milieu. The proposal discussed in Prashanth’s reflections, the Asia Maritime Organization for Security and Cooperation (AMOSC), would ostensibly attempt to create a breakthrough where a host of other international institutions and forums, including ASEAN (and its related processes, including the +3, ADMM, and ARF), have failed. Prashanth gets at a point in his thoughts that I want to state more overtly here: the problem with Asia’s institutions failing to address maritime security issues seriously has nothing to do with the quality or processes of these institutions; the problem stems from widely divergent national interests, particularly between China and other states with maritime interests and claims.
Before you rush to the comments to praise/denounce that assertion as true/false, consider that China’s role in any process to “solve” maritime disputes, in the South China Sea, for example, is central. Beijing’s claim to the waters and land features of the South China Sea is the most capacious by far, as seen in its dashed-line claim to almost the entirety of the sea. Additionally, Beijing’s preference for dealing with disputes diplomatically in bilateral forums over multilateral settings is well-known. Multilateral efforts at merely alleviating practical issues in the South China Sea dispute, such as the ongoing process on a code of conduct for Southeast Asian states and China in the South China Sea, have been entirely rendered stagnant due to Chinese recalcitrance. Most recently, the Chinese delegation to a preparatory meeting for this year’s ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus) refused to allow South China Sea issues onto the agenda. Simply put, on a two-axis chart charting state preferences for multilateralism vs. bilateralism on the horizontal axis and cooperation vs. competition on the vertical when it comes to Asian maritime issues, Chinese preferences are almost certainly in the bottom-left quadrant.
Read the full story at The Diplomat