U.S. Navy Will Drill With Southeast Asian Navies

By Mike Ives

A United States Navy reconnaissance plane on Okinawa, Japan, after a mission last year over the South China Sea. Some analysts say America’s military posture in the disputed sea has hardened under President Trump.

HONG KONG — Southeast Asian countries tend to be deeply reluctant to collectively challenge China’s growing military and economic prowess in their region.

But this week, they appear to be doing just that — by holding their first joint naval drills with the United States Navy.
The drills, which will take place partly in the South China Sea, a site of geopolitical tension, began on Monday. 

They were not expected to focus on lethal maneuvers, or to take place in contested waters where China operates military bases.
But the maneuvers follow similar exercises held last year by China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in an undisputed area of the sea, making them a riposte of sorts to Beijing.
During a summer of heightened tensions over territorial claims, plus an escalating trade war between China and the United States, the drills are being closely watched as the latest move in a high-stakes geopolitical chess match between the superpowers and their shared regional allies.
Some analysts see the drills as part of an incremental hardening of America’s military posture in the South China Sea under President Trump, a strategy that has not been accompanied by additional American diplomacy or incentives for its partners.
“The United States is taking a risk both that its partners will be less inclined to work with it because they are nervous about signaling security cooperation when there’s nothing else there, and that China will continue to advance in the places in which we are absent” on diplomatic and economic fronts, said Mira Rapp-Hooper, an expert on Asian security affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

United States Navy sailors monitoring radar and other instruments aboard the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016.

“So from a basic balance-of-power perspective, we are not holding the line nearly as well as we should be,” she added.
The United States Navy declined to comment on the record ahead of the drills, citing operational sensitivities.
But in a statement late Sunday, the Navy said the drills would include “a sea phase in international waters in Southeast Asia, including the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea.” 

It said they would focus partly on “search and seizure,” “maritime asset tracking” and “countering maritime threats,” among other subjects.
The statement said the drills would include eight warships, four aircraft and more than 1,000 personnel. 

It said the American military hardware included a littoral combat ship, a guided-missile destroyer, three MH-60 helicopters and a P-8 Poseidon plane.
The Poseidon is a type of reconnaissance aircraft that the United States has used to conduct surveillance flights over the South China Sea, including around disputed reefs that China has filled out and turned into military bases.
The drills were scheduled to begin on Monday at Sattahip, a Thai naval base, after “pre-sail activities in Thailand, Singapore and Brunei,” and to end in Singapore. 

The Navy’s statement did not say when the drills would end.
Many of the drills will take place this week off Ca Mau Province, on the southern tip of Vietnam, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a Thai political analyst. 

He added that the drills would “reinforce the view that geopolitical tensions are shifting from land to sea.”

An MH-60 helicopter preparing for to take off from the U.S.S. Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016.

The timing is ideal for Vietnam, which is deeply worried about a state-owned Chinese survey ship that has been spotted this summer in what the Vietnamese regard as their own territorial waters. 

Last month, the State Department called the survey ship’s movements an effort by Beijing to “intimidate other claimants out of developing resources in the South China Sea,” including what it said was $2.5 trillion worth of unexploited oil and natural gas.
“Vietnam should be happy” that the drills are taking place given China’s recent “aggression in its waters,” said Luc Anh Tuan, a researcher at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
“Hanoi nevertheless will manage to downplay the significance of the drill because like other ASEAN fellows, it does not want to create an impression of a coalition against China,” added Tuan, who is on educational leave from the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security.

The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry confirmed in an email last week that the drills were happening, but declined to answer other questions.
Beijing’s actions in the sea are hugely sensitive for Hanoi because it is under heavy domestic pressure to be tough on China, its largest trading partner and former colonial occupier. 

But Vietnam is also racing to find new energy sources to power its fast-growing economy.
In a sign of those tensions, there were rare anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam in 2014, after a state-owned Chinese company defiantly towed an oil rig into disputed waters near the Vietnamese coast, prompting a tense maritime standoff. 

Three years later, Vietnam suspended a gas-drilling project in the sea by a subsidiary of a Spanish company because the project was said to have irritated Beijing.

The Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016, with a Chinese Navy frigate in the background.

ASEAN countries will be more concerned about China’s reaction to the drills than they were about the American reaction to last year’s drills with China, said Gregory B. Poling, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 

He said that was especially true for countries, such as Thailand, that had no territorial disputes in the sea with China.
“They don’t want to do it in a way that upsets the apple cart” of trade with China, he said of the Thai authorities. 

The Thai Navy declined to comment.
The United States Navy said in its statement that its joint naval drills with ASEAN were first proposed in 2017 and confirmed last October. 

That is the same month that China held its first joint naval drills with ASEAN, off its southern coast.
In a telephone interview, Kasit Piromya, a former Thai foreign minister, downplayed the risks for ASEAN of holding naval drills with the United States. 

“From Thailand’s point of view, it’s still an open sea,” he said, adding that any such exercises with any outside partner should be neither aggressive nor defensive.
But Beijing’s territorial claims in the sea have no legal basis, he added, echoing the conclusion of an international tribunal that ruled against China three years ago. 

He said a key question now was whether Southeast Asian leaders could summon the “guts” to confront China’s construction of artificial islands and military bases in the sea, even though some of them have been “kowtowing to Chinese pressures and financial generosity.”
“I would urge the ASEAN leaders, the 10 of them, to get together and speak in a black-and-white manner to the Chinese leadership without being blackmailed or bought out by China’s financial offers,” he said.

The Necessary War

SAYING CHINA IS BLOCKING TRILLIONS IN OIL AND GAS, U.S. WILL SEND NAVY FOR ASIA DRILLS
BY TOM O'CONNOR 

The United States has accused China of preventing Southeast Asian countries from accessing trillions of dollars worth of untapped oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea as the Pentagon planned to hold its first exercise with regional powers near the strategic region.
In a press statement, State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said Thursday that the "United States is deeply concerned that China is continuing its interference with Vietnam's longstanding oil and gas activities in Vietnam's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claim" following recent incursions there by Chinese survey ship Haiyang Dizhi 8 and an armed escort. 

Beijing has laid vast claims to the South China Sea and does not recognize boundaries established there by a number of Southeast Asian nations who are supported by the U.S. 

The most recent incident occurred last week near Vanguard Bank, a Vietnam-administered outpost in the Spratly Islands, and Ortagus attributed the move to China "pressuring Vietnam over its work with a Russian energy firm and other international partners."
"China's actions undermine regional peace and security, impose economic costs on Southeast Asian states by blocking their access to an estimated $2.5 trillion in unexploited hydrocarbon resources, and demonstrate China's disregard for the rights of countries to undertake economic activities in their EEZs, under the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, which China ratified in 1996," Ortagus said.
Chinese survey vessel Haiyang Dizhi 8 conducts research on behalf of the Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey in this photo shared July 25, 2018. The ship once again entered what Vietnam's exclusive economic zone near Vanguard Bank of South China Sea's Spratly Islands on August 13 of this year.
Washington has signed, but not ratified the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, though it justified sending warships through Beijing-claimed waters in the South China Sea by citing "freedom of navigation" operations outlined in the deal. 

China has responded by scrambling military ships and aircraft to intercept the U.S. vessels in the resource-rich region.
While China may have backed Vietnam's communist revolutionaries in their victory over U.S. and allied local forces decades ago, Beijing and Hanoi quickly became rivals and engaged in deadly border clashes, including near the Spratly Island, lasting up until the 1990s. 

In 1995, Vietnam and the U.S. normalized their relations, putting pressure on China as the region's geopolitical dynamics shifted.
As the U.S. began to increasingly assert its own presence in the South China Sea, it has sought to push back on China there, exploiting territorial tensions between Beijing and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-nation grouping of which Vietnam was a part. 

Washington sided with Hanoi in 2014 when China moved its Hai Yang Shi You 981 oil rig near the disputed Paracel Islands and sank a Vietnamese fishing vessel amid a standoff there.
Last year, the U.S. sent a historic message to China by sending Nimitz-class supercarrier USS Carl Vinson to dock in Vietnam in March. 

In May, the U.S. disinvited China from the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise involving Vietnam and several other ASEAN states over Beijing's increased militarization of the Spratly Islands.
The U.S. also began planning joint drills with ASEAN, but it was China that secured an exercise alongside the regional collective months later in October. 

That same month, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis confirmed that a U.S.-ASEAN exercise was still in the works and on both The Bangkok Post and Nikkei Asian Review reported Thursday that the maneuvers were set to begin early next month in Thailand.

A map created July 30, 2012 details the multinational, overlapping territorial disputes involving Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam in the South China Sea. Many of these countries, especially China, have expanded their presence on contested land masses known as the Spratly Islands and an incident on August 13 of this year took place on the westernmost stretch of reefs.

Tensions in the South China Sea add to an array of issues already putting a major strain on ties between the world's top two economies. 

President Donald Trump and Chinese Xi Jinping are embroiled in a multibillion-dollar trade war of tit-for-tat tariffs with Vietnam finding itself right in the middle of the feuding powerhouses.
Beijing has also repeatedly accused Washington of interfering in its internal affairs, both in the ongoing protests that U.S. officials and politicians have expressed support for in the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong and in a recent $8 billion arms sale involving F-16V fighters jets to Taiwan, an independent island nation also claimed by Beijing.

Axis of Evil

China and Russia’s awkward romance
By Jonathan Hillman

Oriental despots: Xi Jinping hosted Vladimir Putin in Beijing to discuss increasing economic and military cooperation between their two countries. June 25, 2016. 

This week, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are capitalizing on President Trump’s absence from two major summits. 

Putin met with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Singapore, and Xi will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Papua New Guinea. 

In Asia, where economics is strategy, Xi and Putin are not only showing up but claiming to champion a new approach to globalization.
Lately, Xi and Putin like calling for openness and inclusivity, appropriating Western language to fuel resentment in many of the places that have benefited from globalization the most. 

They even pledged to link their signature economic visions in 2015, a political act kept alive by endless joint statements and signing ceremonies, including those last week. 

China’s Belt and Road Initiative promises $1 trillion of new infrastructure, trade deals and stronger cultural ties with over 80 countries. 

The Eurasian Economic Union puts Russia at the center of a single market for goods, services, capital and labor.
The problem is not American ignorance of this threat but the absence of a coherent strategy in meeting it. 

“Moscow and Beijing share a common interest in weakening U.S. global influence and are actively cooperating in that regard,” the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded in a 2017 report. 

But unintentionally, the cumulative effect of U.S. sanctions against Russia and tariffs against China could hasten the very threat Washington seeks to avoid: an anti-Western authoritarian partnership between the world’s largest nuclear power and second-largest economy.
That nightmare can still be avoided. 

Thankfully, the Sino-Russian partnership still has an artificial flavor, supported more by leaders-on-high than organic developments on the ground. 

After each round of ceremonial signings and partnership promises, China still towers above Russia in economic and demographic terms. 

With a long history of invasions, Russia’s paranoia about foreign powers approaching its borders will not vanish overnight.
But Russian policymakers must be persuaded to take China’s economic power as seriously as the West’s military power. 

China’s grand ambitions run through Russia and its neighbors, but its investments and infrastructure projects have not yet triggered alarms in Moscow. 

Russia is the gatekeeper for China’s overland push westward, but Xi now holds the keys in the form of investment and respect that Putin, economically and diplomatically isolated from the West, craves.
Washington should highlight the risks of China’s Belt and Road in Russia’s backyard. 

Three of the eight countries with the highest debt risk from Chinese lending are Russia’s close neighbors: Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. 

China can exploit the weakness of small economies that borrow big, as it did when it wrote off a portion of Tajikistan’s debt in exchange for disputed territory in 2011. 

Inevitably, as China’s economic footprint grows, so will its security footprint. 

Sightings of Chinese military vehicles and construction in Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor suggest this expansion is already underway.
To take the air out of Xi and Putin’s globalization tale, Trump’s trade policy must be updated. Yesterday, a memorandum of understanding was signed to boost trade between ASEAN and the Eurasian Economic Union. 

China is backing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a regional deal that gained momentum when Trump withdrew from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

Easier said than done, but the United States urgently needs to get back into the game of offering regional alternatives rather than bilateral ultimatums.
Finally, a bit of old-fashioned diplomacy would go a long way. 

For now, the United States does not need to choose between Russia and China, as President Richard Nixon famously did over four decades ago. 

It would be wiser to work selectively with both sides, toning down the “with us or against us” rhetoric and noting areas of existing cooperation. 

Before reflexively approving the next round of sanctions, American policymakers should carefully evaluate their longer-term consequences, such as encouraging the rise of alternative payment systems, harm to the dollar, and pushing U.S. competitors closer.
With restraint and patience, the United States could reestablish itself as a natural wedge between Russia and China. 

At the very least, it must avoid becoming a bridge that unites them.

US criticises China’s empire and aggression in Asia

US vice-president Pence takes swipe at Beijing’s regional ambitions ahead of Trump-Xi meeting at G20 
By Stefania Palma in Singapore

Mike Pence: 'Empire and aggression have no place in the Indo-Pacific' 

Mike Pence, US vice-president, has condemned “empire and aggression” in Asia in a veiled swipe at China’s growing influence across the region, fuelling tensions ahead of a meeting between the two countries’ leaders at the G20 summit later this month
 The rhetoric marks one of Washington’s strongest attacks on Beijing’s growing sway in the region, and comes amid a trade war that has seen the world’s two biggest economies slap duties on more than $350bn worth of trade, rattling global financial markets. 
 “We all agree that empire and aggression have no place in the Indo-Pacific,” Mr Pence told a gathering of Asian leaders at the Asean summit in Singapore.
“In all that we do, the United States seeks collaboration, not control. And we are proud to call Asean our strategic partner.”
 The US delegation has used the Singapore meetings to reassert its commitment to Asean — the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — from which the White House seeks support to push back against Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and to urge North Korea towards denuclearisation.
 Mr Pence’s speech highlighted the tensions dominating Sino-US relations ahead of a key meeting between President Trump and Xi in Buenos Aires later this month, the scheduling of which had signalled a potential breakthrough in the countries’ escalating trade dispute. 
 Wang Qishan, Chinese vice-president and close confidant of Xi, last week said that Beijing was ready to talk with Washington to resolve the trade dispute, while the US and China held high-level talks in Washington that included a meeting between John Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser, and Yang Jiechi, a Chinese state councillor with responsibility for foreign affairs. 
 The stakes of the meeting in Argentina are high.
These “significant” talks will cover a wide range of issues including trade and “will help give [the two presidents’] senior advisers guidance as to how to proceed going forward,” Mr Bolton told journalists at the Asean summit. 
 If no deal is reached, the most likely scenario is that the tariff rate on most of the $250bn of targeted Chinese exports to the US will rise from 10 per cent to 25 per cent in January.
President Trump could then proceed to what US officials describe as phase three of the trade confrontation with Beijing, imposing tariffs on all US imports from China.  
Mr Pence on Thursday said that the US’s vision of the Indo-Pacific “excludes no nation. It only requires that every nation treat their neighbours with respect, that they respect the sovereignty of our nations and the international rules of order.”
Washington has accused China of military intimidation and economic coercion of other countries in the region.
It argues that Beijing’s militarisation of the South China Sea has effectively robbed rival claimants of fair access.
Washington also says that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the foreign policy framework that builds Chinese influence through massive infrastructure projects, forces less powerful countries into dangerous dependence.
 At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Papua New Guinea this weekend, Mr Pence is due to unveil details of America’s Indo-Pacific strategy, aimed at providing an alternative to China’s BRI.
 The US plan “stands in sharp contrast to the dangerous debt diplomacy that China has been engaging in throughout the region and has led several countries . . . to have serious debt problems from accepting loans that are not transparent”, a senior US administration official told reporters in Singapore.

Chinese Aggressions

Australia to stress international law in South China Sea dispute
By Colin Packham

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop talks during a news conference with Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto (not pictured) in Budapest, Hungary, February 22, 2018. 

SYDNEY -- Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop will on Tuesday hail the role of international law in settling regional conflicts, comments apparently aimed at bolstering Australian efforts to build a coalition against Chinese assertiveness.
Bishop, in a speech ahead of a special meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Sydney, will not name China but will argue that international law will stabilize a region strained by rival claims in the South China Sea.
“The rules-based order is designed to regulate behavior and rivalries of and between states, and ensure countries compete fairly and in a way that does not threaten others or destabilizes their region or the world,” Bishop will say in Sydney, according to a leaked draft of the speech seen by the Australian Financial Review.
“It places limitations on the extent to which countries use their economic or military power to impose unfair agreements on less powerful nations.”
China claims most of the South China Sea, an important trade route which is believed to contain large quantities of oil and natural gas, and has been building artificial islands on reefs, some with ports and air strips.
Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, all of which are members of ASEAN, also have claims in the sea.
Australia, a staunch U.S. ally with no claim to the South China Sea, has long maintained its neutrality on the dispute to protect economic relationship with China.
But with Australia’s relations with China souring in recent months, Bishop’s comment underscore a new Australian tactic.
“Australia is trying to get ASEAN on side with the notion that China is a rule-breaker that everyone would be better served by abiding by,” said Nick Bisley, professor of international relations at Melbourne’s La Trobe University.
“If it can get ASEAN to use that language, it will strengthen Australia’s position considerably.”
ASEAN and China in August begun talks to develop a code of conduct for the South China Sea, though a deal is unlikely before 2019, Singapore’s Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said in February.
The issue of the South China Sea is set to dominate the unofficial agenda of a special three-day meeting of ASEAN countries and Australia beginning on Friday.
Officially, the summit will focus on fostering closer economic ties among the 10 members ASEAN and Australia, and countering the threat of Islamist militants returning to the region from the Middle East.
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi is expected to travel to Sydney where she will hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is under pressure to publicly condemn the deaths and expulsion of thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar’s Rakhine State over recent months.

Chinese Peril

India plans closer Southeast Asia maritime ties to counter China
By Sanjeev Miglani

A cyclist rides past an ASEAN-India Commemorative Summit billboard the side of the road in New Delhi, India, January 23, 2018. 

NEW DELHI -- India is gathering the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Regional Cooperation (ASEAN) for a summit on Thursday to promote maritime security in a region dominated by China, officials and diplomats said.
India has been pursuing an “Act East” policy of developing political and economic ties with Southeast Asia, but its efforts have been tentative and far trail China, whose trade with ASEAN was more than six times India’s in 2016-17 at $470 million.
China has also expanded its presence in South Asia, building ports and power plants in countries around India’s periphery, such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and spurring New Delhi to seek new allies.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited the leaders of all ten ASEAN nations to join him in the Republic Day celebrations on Friday in the biggest ever gathering of foreign leaders at the parade that showcases military might and cultural diversity.
The leaders, who include Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, will hold talks on maritime cooperation and security, the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Both India and the Southeast Asia nations have stressed the need for freedom of navigation and open seas and India already has strong naval ties with countries such as Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, Preeti Saran, secretary in the Indian foreign ministry, said.
“The ongoing activities of ship visits, of coordinated patrols, of exercises that take place bilaterally, are taking place very well,” Saran said. 

“And every time we have defense to defense talks or navy to navy talks, there is a great deal of satisfaction that has been expressed by the ASEAN member countries.”
But several Southeast Asian countries locked in territorial disputes with China have sought even greater Indian engagement in the region, experts say.
“China’s distinctly hegemonic moves in the last few years in the South China Sea and its growing assertiveness have made ASEAN look towards India as a partner for equilibrium,” said Arvind Gupta, former Indian deputy national security adviser who now heads the influential Vivekananda International Foundation in New Delhi with close ties to the ruling government.
But India, which has been building up its navy, is wary of getting entangled in South China Sea disputes and provoking a backlash from China.
One of the plans the Indian and ASEAN leaders will be discussing at the close-door summit on Thursday will be for their navies to exercise near the Malacca Straits between Malaysia and Singapore, one of the busiest routes for international shipping, a navy official said.

Chinese Peril

Mattis to make call for Asean unity against China at meeting of defence ministers

The Straits Times

US Defence Secretary James Mattis will meet his counterparts from Japan and South Korea on Oct 23 to discuss North Korea. He is due to visit Thailand and South Korea as well on his eight-day tour.

CLARK FREEPORT, PHILIPPINES - US Defence Secretary James Mattis is expected to make a call for South-east Asian unity against China during a meeting of defence ministers in the Philippines on Monday (Oct 23), the Associated Press reported.
The Asean bloc has been divided as the US and China vie for influence in the region, with the tensions magnified by a dispute over China's island-building activities in the South China Sea.
US influence has taken a hit from President Donald Trump's decision to cancel the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact championed by his predecessor, Mr Barack Obama, appearing to give Mr Obama's "pivot to Asia" short shrift.
"(Asean gives) voice to those who want relations between states to be based on respect, and not on predatory economics or on the size of militaries," General Mattis told reporters ahead of his meetings in the Philippines, though he did not mention China by name. 

"The United States remains unambiguously committed to supporting Asean."
The US sees a united Asean as a bulwark against China, which pursues individual bilateral relations with members at the expense of the bloc. 

It also wants Asean to squeeze North Korea amid a crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
Gen Mattis' comments echoed US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's call for a India as a populous, democratic counterweight to China, inviting it to take a leading security role in the Indo-Pacific region. 

The US has made India a major defence partner, offering it top-flight weapons systems. 

Gen Mattis will meet Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during his trip to the country this week.
On Monday, Gen Mattis was to hold an informal meeting with Asean members, who have been divided on taking a strong joint position over the South China Sea, making no mention of a 2016 ruling in The Hague that found no legal basis for China's expansive territorial claims.
Cambodia and Laos have taken sides with China in the dispute, while US allies Thailand, Vietnam and recently the Philippines have opposed Beijing. 

But under Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines relationship with China has warmed even as US ties soured.
Gen Mattis will meet his counterparts from Japan and South Korea on Monday to discuss North Korea. 

He is due to visit Thailand and South Korea as well on his eight-day tour.

Chinese Aggressions

Indonesia, Long on Sidelines, Starts to Confront China’s Territorial Claims
By JOE COCHRANE

Security ship crew members of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries prepare for a patrol along Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone in the Natuna Islands. 

JAKARTA, Indonesia — When Indonesia recently — and quite publicly — renamed the northernmost waters of its exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea despite China’s claims to the area, Beijing quickly dismissed the move as “meaningless.”
It is proving to be anything but.
Indonesia’s increasingly aggressive posture in the region — including a military buildup in its nearby Natuna Islands and the planned deployment of naval warships — comes as other nations are being more accommodating to China’s broad territorial claims in the South China Sea.
The two countries had three maritime skirmishes in 2016 involving warning shots, including one in which Indonesian warships seized a Chinese fishing boat and its crew.
Indonesia is challenging China, one of its biggest investors and trading partners, as it seeks to assert control over a waterway that has abundant resources, particularly oil and natural gas reserves and fish stocks.
The pushback from Indonesia takes direct aim at Beijing’s claims within the so-called “nine-dash line,” which on Chinese maps delineates the vast area that China claims in the South China Sea. 

It also adds a new player to the volatile situation, in which the United States Navy has been challenging China’s claims with naval maneuvers through waters claimed by Beijing.

The coastline at Ranai, the administrative center of the Natuna islands. 

Indonesia “is already a party to the disputes — and the sooner it acknowledges this reality the better,” said Ian J. Storey, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, where he researches South China Sea issues.
The dispute largely centers on the Natuna Sea, a resource-rich waterway north of Indonesia that also lies close to Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone.
Before naming part of the contested waterway the North Natuna Sea “to make it sound more Indonesian,” Mr. Storey said, Indonesia last year began beefing up its military presence in the Natunas. 

That included expanding its naval port on the main island to handle bigger ships and lengthening the runway at its air force base there to accommodate larger aircraft.
For decades, Indonesia’s official policy has been that it is not a party to any territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, unlike its regional neighbors Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. 

Last year, however, Indonesia and China had the three maritime skirmishes within Indonesia’s 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone off its Natuna Islands, which lie northwest of Borneo.
After the third skirmish, in June 2016, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement in which it claimed for the first time that its controversial nine-dash line included “traditional fishing grounds” within Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.
The administration of Indonesian President Joko Widodo, whose top administrative priorities since taking office in October 2014 include transforming his country into a maritime power, has ordered the authorities to blow up hundreds of foreign fishing vessels seized while illegally fishing in Indonesian waters.
Mr. Joko, during a visit to Japan in 2015, said in a newspaper interview that China’s nine-dash line had no basis in international law. 

He also chaired a cabinet meeting on a warship off the Natunas just days after last year’s third naval skirmish — a move analysts viewed as a show of resolve to Beijing.
On July 14, Indonesia’s Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries held a conspicuously high-profile news conference to release its first national territorial map since 2005, including the unveiling of the newly named North Natuna Sea. 

The new map also included new maritime boundaries with Singapore and the Philippines, with which Indonesia had concluded agreements in 2015.
Arif Havas Oegroseno, a deputy minister at Indonesia’s Coordinating Ministry of Maritime Affairs, told journalists that the new Indonesian map offered “clarity on natural resources exploration areas.”
That same day, Indonesia’s Armed Forces and Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources signed a memorandum for warships to provide security for the highly profitable fishing grounds and offshore oil and gas production and exploration activities within the country’s exclusive economic zone near the Natunas.

Susi Pudjiastuti, Indonesia’s minister of maritime affairs and fisheries, attending an Independence Day ceremony in Natuna on Aug. 17.

Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo, the commander of the Indonesian Armed Forces, said at the time that offshore energy exploration and production activities “have often been disturbed by foreign-flagged vessels” — which analysts took as a reference to China.
Although several countries take issue with China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, few do so publicly, and the Trump administration has recently sent mixed signals about how willing it is to challenge China on its claims. 

That has made the Indonesian pushback more intriguing.
Frega Ferdinand Wenas Inkiriwang, a lecturer at the Indonesian Defense University, said Indonesia’s public naming of the North Natuna Sea “means that Indonesia indirectly becomes a claimant state in the area, perhaps due to territorial integrity issues.
“It’s in the vicinity of the Natunas,” he said, “and the Natunas contain natural resources which are inherited and will be beneficial for Indonesia’s development.”
The Indonesian Navy would be no match for the Chinese Navy in a fight, although the first of last year’s clashes involved only a Chinese Coast Guard ship and an Indonesian maritime ministry patrol boat. 

It is unlikely that the two countries’ navies would clash within Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone, according to analysts.

A fisherman repairing his boat at a fishing village in Teluk Buton in the Natuna Islands. 

Members of the 10-state Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, have repeatedly expressed concern about China’s aggressive posture in the South China Sea, including its naval standoffs and land reclamation projects in disputed areas, and the stationing of military personnel and surface-to-air missiles in the Paracel Islands — which are controlled by China but are also claimed by Vietnam.
Indonesia, the grouping’s largest member and de facto leader, had in the past remained on the sidelines of the various South China Sea disputes and offered to help mediate between Asean claimant states and Beijing.
Given that China is among Indonesia’s biggest investors and trade partners, analysts say Jakarta will go only so far in challenging China’s territorial claims, at least publicly. 

But its more aggressive military posture and other moves regarding the Natunas are nonetheless sending signals to China.
“It doesn’t make Indonesia a claimant state,” said Aaron Connelly, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, Australia, who follows the South China Sea disputes. “They’ve never accepted the legitimacy of the nine-dash line, which is why they say there’s no overlap” with its exclusive economic zone.
“China says it has ‘traditional fishing rights,’ but Indonesia is doing things in a legalistic way right now,” Mr. Connolly said. 

“This is a more effective way of challenging it.”
Evan A. Laksmana, a senior researcher on security affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, agreed that the naming of the North Natuna Sea was not specifically done to trigger a dispute with China.
“But the international legal basis underpinning Indonesia’s new map is clear,” he said.
“We do not recognize China’s claims in the Natuna waters — we don’t feel like we should negotiate our map with Beijing or ask their consent,” Mr. Laksmana said.

South China Sea: Vietnam takes up fight against China

• Vietnam isolated as China goes on charm offensive
• Divisions emerge among ASEAN nations

By Gregory Poling

When it comes to the disputed waters of the South China Sea, Vietnam's leaders must feel very lonely these days.
Their fellow Southeast Asian claimants have either reversed course after years of escalating tensions with Beijing, or are keeping their heads down and letting Hanoi take up the fight.
In June, the Vietnamese government refused a Chinese demand to halt drilling by a subsidiary of Spanish company Repsol in an oil and gas block on Vanguard Bank—an area of the seabed that, as far as international law is concerned, is undisputedly Vietnam's.
A month later Hanoi reversed course, after Beijing threatened to use military force against one of its outposts in the South China Sea, which Vietnam calls the East Sea.
Now Vietnam could be on the hook to Repsol for hundreds of millions of dollars and it will have a hard time convincing other companies that any of its offshore contracts are a smart bet.
Repsol didn't respond to a CNN request for comment, and Vietnam's Foreign Ministry said its oil and gas activities take place in waters entirely within its sovereign rights.

Chinese military bases destroy reefs in South China Sea
Deafening silence
How did Vietnam's neighbors and the international community respond to this act of bullying by China? 

With deafening silence.
After pushing back against Chinese coercion for years, the Philippines has turned defeatist under the year-old government of Rodrigo Duterte. 

Manila now appears eager to trade silence regarding its maritime claims for economic carrots from Beijing.
Malaysia, whose government is embroiled in corruption and is barreling toward political crisis in the next general election, has little appetite for confrontation with China, an important benefactor.
And Indonesia is happy to occupy a middle ground, resisting at the margins when it comes to Chinese fishing encroachments in its waters, but uninterested in taking a more active role in the disputes.
Even Singapore, which remains deeply skeptical of China's long-term intentions, is keeping its head down after being made a diplomatic punching bag by Beijing for its perceived support of the Philippines' international arbitration victory last July.

Divisions on display
The divisions within Southeast Asia were on full display during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Minister's Meeting earlier this month.
The 10 ASEAN ministers spent several days arguing over how the South China Sea disputes should be addressed in their customary joint declaration.
The Philippines, which hosted the summit, and Cambodia wanted to strip out anything that could irritate China. 

But Vietnam, smarting from the Vanguard Bank incident and convinced that China's diplomatic softening over the previous year was just a delaying tactic, argued for stronger language.
Its tactics got it singled out in a China Daily editorial, which slammed Hanoi for "hypocritically trying to insert tough language criticizing China's island building."
Late on Sunday, the group reached a compromise that reinserted several points from previous ASEAN statements, including concern over recent land reclamation and militarization.
The comprise language in the communique was weaker than some previous statements, particularly the Sunnylands Declaration signed by ASEAN leaders and President Barack Obama in 2016.
But it was stronger than the group's last statement, issued by Duterte following the ASEAN Summit in April, and helped avoid a repeat of the group's 2012 debacle when then-host Cambodia blocked the release of any statement at all.

Modest victory
Hanoi paid a diplomatic price for its activism, with China's foreign minister Wang Yi canceling a planned bilateral meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart.
Still, Vietnam had won a modest victory and received a measure of support, even if grudgingly, from its neighbors. 

But the victory was short-lived.
The next day, Philippine foreign secretary Alan Peter Cayetano sided with China, telling the press,"I didn't want to include it. It's not reflective of the present position. They (China) are not reclaiming land anymore. So why will you put it again this year?"
It was a surprising break for an organization built on consensus. 

Here was the group's chair publicly airing disagreements with the supposed consensus and appearing to back an outside power over a fellow ASEAN member.

Wang Yi arrives in Manila on August 5, 2017 to attend the ASEAN meeting, where Vietnam urged other Southeast Asian nations to take a stronger stand against Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea.

One-two punch
The one-two punch of China's successful coercion over Vanguard Bank and ASEAN's tattered consensus in Manila has left Hanoi exposed.
That isolation, which has been building for months, helps explain why Defense Minister Ngo Xuan Lich arranged a visit to Washington on the heels of the ASEAN meetings.
Following his meeting with Defense Secretary James Mattis, the Pentagon announced that the two had "agreed to deepen defense cooperation, including by expanding maritime cooperation." 

They even confirmed plans for a US aircraft carrier to visit Vietnam in the future—something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
Hanoi remains convinced that China's new charm offensive in the South China Sea is mostly smoke and mirrors—a conclusion strengthened by its recent experiences—and that sooner or later its neighbors will figure it out too. 

In the meantime, it will look for support wherever it can find it.

The Chinese thief crying stop thief

By XUAN LOC DOAN 

On Monday and Tuesday, China’s state-run media used very strong language to attack Vietnam, its communist neighbor and a key South China Sea rival. 

This reproach came after the foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) endorsed a joint communiqué that indirectly criticized Beijing’s territorial and military expansion in the disputed area.
China, which claims nearly all of the 3.5-million-square-kilometer sea, was believed to have gotten an easy ride from the regional bloc on the maritime disputes at its recent ministerial meetings in Manila.
Yet, reportedly pushed by Vietnam, instead of avoiding tackling their hulking neighbor’s contentious activities, the 10 ASEAN foreign ministers “discussed extensively the matters” and eventually issued the final statement on Sunday night. 

In it, they “took note of the concerns expressed by some ministers on the land reclamations and activities” and “emphasized the importance of non-militarization and self-restraint” in the area.
Arguably upset by the communiqué’s wording and particularly Vietnam’s posture, state-run newspaper China Daily accused Hanoi of hyping up the South China Sea issue and acting as a “thief crying ‘stop thief’” in the hotly contested waters. 

In its view, it is not China but Vietnam that has been working on land reclamation and boosting its military deployment there in recent years.
Xinhua claimed that “Vietnam is the very country [that] has vigorously seized islands, reclaimed lands and pushed for militarization in the South China Sea”.
While it did not cite which figures it referred to, China’s official news agency asserted: “Figures show that since 2007, Vietnam has increased the pace of its large-scale land reclamation … and even built a number of new military facilities in the South China Sea.”
But from observing Beijing’s claims and actions relating to the South China Sea disputes in recent years, many would agree that the contrary is true. 

Indeed, Beijing’s massive land reclamation and militarization in the world’s most disputed waters has been well documented and widely recognized.
For instance, a study by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and Australia’s Strategic Forum published last year concluded that China had alarmingly increased its expansionism in the South China Sea since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), a US think-tank that monitors developments in maritime-security issues in the region, also found that “since 2013, China has engaged in unprecedented and ecologically devastating dredging and island-building at all seven of the features it occupies in the Spratly Islands”, creating nearly 1,300 hectares of new land.
In contrast, by the AMTI’s estimation, Vietnam has reclaimed about 49 hectares at the reefs and islets it occupies, amounting to less than 4% of the scale of Beijing’s work. 

The methods employed by Hanoi are also far less destructive.
In terms of facility construction and military installation, Vietnam’s work likewise pales in comparison with China’s.
According to the Washington-based group, and as widely reported, several of China’s man-made islands, including its three largest, are now equipped with kilometer-long runways, weapons – including surface-to-air missiles and anti-missile systems – or storage facilities for military equipment.
In contrast, Vietnam has built only one airstrip and some hangars at one of its bases. 

Moreover, as noted by the think-tank, Hanoi’s modest work is a response to its giant neighbor’s construction of military facilities on artificial islands in the region.
It is also worth noting that after years of public denial, an official Chinese magazine has finally not only acknowledged but hailed Xi Jinping’s leading role in “building islands and consolidating the reefs”, praising the fact that his decisions “fundamentally changed the strategic situation of the South China Sea”.
Beijing’s vehement opposition to, and furious anger at, the inclusion of the contentious activities in the area in the drafted or endorsed joint communiqués by ASEAN or other groupings, such as the Group of 7, even though they do not mention China by name, can also speak volumes about its maritime conduct.
If it were a benign and responsible country, which did not engage in any unlawful and aggressive activity in the sea, there would be no need for it to react in such a negative, resentful way. 

Instead, it should wholeheartedly welcome ASEAN’s latest joint communiqué because the agreed statement called for “non-militarization and self-restraint in the conduct of all activities by claimants and all other states” in the area.
Its rejection of the statement, which was adopted by consensus, is mainly because, though China is not directly named, the world – and even perhaps Beijing itself – knows, it is mainly aimed at its contentious behavior in the region.
After all, it is China’s extensive claims, large-scale island-building and huge military buildup – not Vietnam’s behavior – in the region that have raised widespread attention, denunciation and apprehension.
Thus by accusing its smaller neighbor of acting as a “thief crying ‘stop thief’”, it is not Vietnam, but rather China, that behaves hypocritically.
In the same vein, it could be argued, instead of presenting itself as a benign, responsible and peaceful power and calling “for Vietnam to readjust [its] attitude and promote peace” in the South China Sea, China should perhaps reconsider its own behavior.

Vietnam wins U.S. defense pledges as tension with China grows

By Eric Beech and My Pham

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (L) hosts an honor cordon for Vietnamese Defense Minister Gen. Ngo Xuan Lich (R) at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., August 8, 2017.

WASHINGTON/HANOI -- Vietnam has won the promise of a visit from a U.S. aircraft carrier and deeper defense cooperation from the United States as strains show with China over the disputed South China Sea.
Within Southeast Asia, Vietnam has become an increasingly lonely voice in challenging Chinese claims to the vast majority of the waterway and was forced to suspend some offshore oil drilling last month after pressure from Beijing.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Vietnamese counterpart Ngo Xuan Lich in Washington on Tuesday that a strong defense relationship was based on common interests that included freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
"The Secretary welcomed Vietnam's engagement and growing leadership in the Asia-Pacific region," a statement from the Pentagon said.
The defense ministers agreed on a visit by a U.S. aircraft carrier to Vietnam next year -- the first such visit since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. 

President Donald Trump discussed the possibility of a carrier visit with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc when they met at the White House in May.
The agreement was consistent with Vietnam's diplomatic strategy of being open to all countries, said Ha Hoang Hop, a Vietnamese political analyst who has advised the government.
"Vietnam is not willing to compromise on issues of sovereignty and also makes its own preparations," he said.
Beijing has been irritated by Vietnam's growing defense relationships with the United States and rival Asian powers, including Japan and India.
Tension has risen since June, when Vietnam infuriated China by drilling for oil and gas in an offshore block that Beijing disputes. 

The exploration was suspended after diplomatic protests from China.

China was also annoyed by Vietnam's stand at an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting at the weekend, when it held out for language in a communique that noted concern about island-building and militarization in the South China Sea.

A scheduled meeting between Chinese and Vietnamese foreign ministers on the sidelines of the summit was canceled. 

China also pointed to Vietnam's own reclamation work in the South China Sea.
Beijing is sensitive to even a veiled reference by ASEAN to its reclamation of seven reefs and its military installations in the South China Sea, which it claims in almost its entirety despite the competing claims of five other countries.
More than $3 trillion in cargo passes through the waterway every year.
Australia, Japan and the United States urged Southeast Asia and China on Monday to ensure that a South China Sea code of conduct they have committed to draw up would be legally binding and said they strongly opposed "coercive unilateral actions".

Sina Delenda Est

Australia, Japan And U.S.: The South China Sea Isn't China's Own Sea
By Panos Mourdoukoutas

Australia, Japan and the U.S. have a clear and loud message for China: The South China Sea isn't China's own sea. 

It's an international sea. 

That’s why the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Beijing must establish a set of rules that were "legally binding, meaningful, effective, and consistent with international law."
The message, which came at a recent gathering of the foreign ministers of the three countries in Manila, echoes a similar message America and its naval allies, France, Japan and Britain sent to Beijing six months ago stating that the South China Sea should be open to all military vessels.
That’s according to a recent Chinatopix.com report. 

"Japan and the United States are worried by China's efforts to exercise unilateral control over the South China Sea, a concern shared by France, which controls several Pacific islands, including New Caledonia and French Polynesia."
Financial markets in the region do not seem that concerned, at least for now, focusing on the economic fundamentals rather than the geopolitics of the region.
Meanwhile, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte called himself a “humble” friend of America in Southeast Asia, suggesting that he is getting ready for another in a series of flip-flops in the South China Sea dispute.
China considers the waterway its own sea, and is building artificial islands, defying international tribunal rulings, though Rodrigo Duterte isn't prepared to stop Beijing -- Philippines is the country that won an international tribunal ruling against China.
Nonetheless, the ruling fueled a wave of blunt messages and naval demonstrations between China on the one side and America’ and its close ally, Japan, on the other. 

Last August, for instance, China told Japan to stay away from its “own” South China Sea, as three China Coast Guard vessels entered Japanese waters around the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, according to the Japan Coast Guard.
And there’s China’s warning to Japan a month earlier, when Beijing told Japan “not to send Self-Defense Forces to join U.S. operations that test the freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea,” according to a Japan Times editorial.
While it is still unclear whether America and its allies will manage to tame China’s South China Sea ambitions, investors should keep a close eye on the ongoing disputes in the region, as accidents can and do happen, taking financial markets for a wild ride.

Why China can bully India and the West

Beijing has the temerity to threaten India from Indian soil with consequences if New Delhi does not withdraw from Doklam.

By KANWAL SIBAL

China gets a level of international esteem that it does not deserve. 

The explanation lies in the West’s long standing fascination for China that overlooks or tolerates China’s frequent misconduct.
Despite its bullying and intimidatory tactics in dealing with others, its assertion of territorial claims contrary to international law, its open rejection of democracy and western values, its curbs on the internet, its enormous internal security apparatus, its intolerance of internal dissent, its suppression of the rights of the Tibetans and the Uighurs, the expansive military doctrines it is adopting, the hegemonic ambitions in Asia that the Belt and Road Initiative represents, western opinion at large is not only unwilling to actively deplore this reality, there is a tendency to find reasons why China behaves as such, show a degree of comprehension for its conduct and even sympathise with it as a victim of historical violation of its rights by outside powers.

Muscle-flexing
The ASEAN countries are surprisingly timid towards China, even though their collective strength is not negligible and China’s divisive tactics can be foiled if they acted with greater unity. 

If ASEAN was initially built as a bulwark against communist China, it can fulfil its purpose in the changed context of a hegemony seeking, national power obsessed, mercantilist China.
The West has manoeuvred itself into a weak position vis a vis China by fuelling its economic rise and forging deep trade and financial links with it that now inhibit any really strong response to Chinese muscle-flexing.
Whether it was the romantic notion that as China develops economically and becomes more prosperous, the political aspirations of its growing middle class will make it more democratic and the country will become more wedded to the existing world order. 

Or whether it was the business interests of western multinational corporations that in driving the agenda of economic globalisation focused on China as an untapped market of vast proportions for their products and technology, can be debated.
The US does not as yet feel seriously threatened by China as the military gap between the two remains vast and China is for the time being pushing against US power in its periphery and is not endangering US national security by dominating the Pacific. 

For the US the challenge is to preserve its alliance system in the region by retaining the confidence of its allies in the security cover it provides, keep China bottled up in the Western Pacific, and to the extent China tries to escape these constraints, expands its naval power and extend its presence to the Indian Ocean, to work together with countries like India and Japan to limit this.
Given its huge investments and other links with China — far more than with India — Japan too is careful in handling China and would want to avoid any serious showdown with it. 

Europe is too far away geographically, has no significant military involvement in the western Pacific, and is therefore focused on its economic ties with China in the hope to expand mutual trade and benefit from Chinese investments.
Australian opinion is divided on policy towards China, torn between its security links with the US and its economic links with China as its biggest trade partner.

Ugly face
With Russia now willing to play second fiddle to China on the economic front, and US/EU sanctions pushing it further into the arms of China and weakening its position vis-a-vis the latter even more, China’s tail is up. 

All this has given China considerable room to conduct itself in its extensive neighbourhood with a sense of impunity.
It is baring the ugly face of its diplomacy more and more, using unbecoming language, adopting condescending postures, crowing about the disparity in power between it and others and unashamedly acting as a bully where it thinks it can. 

The churning created by rapid transformation of China from poverty to enormous wealth seems to have thrown up towards the top the many base elements in its society that have known how to profit most from the change.
This might explain the boorishness and lack of refinement in its diplomatic conduct.

Low-level polemics
The statements coming from the Chinese Foreign Office and the People’s Liberation Army spokespersons on the Doklam stand-off are illustrative of the coarseness of Chinese diplomacy. Summoning India to withdraw humbly and unconditionally from the plateau before China teaches it a lesson worse than in 1962, warning that its patience is running out and that Indian forces will be evicted by force, brandishing its military might as a tool of intimidation, shows that the Chinese have lost all sense of proportion.
China’s diplomatic loutishness has reached a point that its number two diplomat in Delhi in a show of professional incompetence has the temerity to threaten India from Indian soil with consequences if India does not withdraw from Doklam. 

In normal circumstances, he should be recalled or expelled, but the government has decided, not wrongly, to avoid escalation, abjure low-level polemics, state our position firmly but leave the door open for diplomacy, discreetly warn China of the economic costs it will bear if it is reckless.
The absence of a matching Indian response to China’s fulminations conveys a sense of quite confidence on our part which no doubt unhinges the northern bully even more.

Chinese aggressions

Australia joins with US, Japan to rebuke China
By PRIMROSE RIORDAN
Julie Bishop has joined the Foreign Ministers of the US and Japan in singling out China and the Philippines over South China Sea maritime disputes.

Australia has joined the United States and Japan in issuing a rebuke to China over the South China Sea at a meeting directly after ASEAN took a softer stance on the issue.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has been in the Philippines over the past few days for the East Asia Summit and ASEAN-Australia ministerial meetings.
At the meeting ASEAN countries announced they had come to a consensus on a framework for the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea, which despite lobbying by Vietnam, did not include a reference to whether it would be legally binding.
Despite the Philippines initiating international legal proceeding against China over the South China Sea in the first place, the county’s incumbent administration has downplayed the dispute at times in order to have stronger economic relations with the superpower.
After the ASEAN meetings, Ms Bishop met with US Secretary of State and Japanese Foreign Minister Tarō Kōno for the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue.
The three ministers issued a long statement which singled out China and the Philippines and expressed “serious concern” over South China Sea maritime disputes.
“The Ministers called on China and the Philippines to abide by the Arbitral Tribunal’s 2016 Award in the Philippines-China arbitration, as it is final and legally binding on both parties,” the statement read.
The ministers backed in Vietnam and said the code of conduct should be legally binding, a principle Ms Bishop has previously pushed for.
“The Ministers further urged ASEAN member states and China to ensure that the COC be finalised in a timely manner, and that it be legally binding, meaningful, effective, and consistent with international law.”
Ms Bishop, Mr Tillerson and Mr Kono said they strongly opposed island building in the South China Sea.
“The Ministers voiced their strong opposition to coercive unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions.”
“In this regard, the Ministers urged SCS claimants to refrain from land reclamation, construction of outposts, militarisation of disputed features, and undertaking unilateral actions that cause permanent physical change to the marine environment in areas pending delimitation.”
The statement addressed the North Korean missile tensions and terrorism.
The ministers said nations should “make further efforts” to change Pyongyang’s behaviour.
“The Ministers called on the international community to implement strictly UNSC resolutions and impose additional diplomatic and economic measures to address the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threat posed by the North Korean regime and its destabilising behaviour, and to make further efforts to urge North Korea to abandon its current threatening and provocative path and immediately take steps to denuclearise.”
The Turnbull government has repeatedly urged China to place pressure on its rogue neighbour and ally to turn away from its nuclear weapons program.
The UN Security Council, which includes China, voted unanimously over the weekend for new sanctions on Pyongyang after a number of long-range missile launches this year.
The sanctions include a partial ban on exports, new asset freezes and travel bans, as well as measures which target North Korea’s primary foreign exchange bank.
Australia supported the move and said they would add additional individuals and seven entities to the county’s blacklist.
“In support of international efforts on North Korea, Australia will also apply targeted financial sanctions and travel bans on several additional individuals and seven entities under Australia’s autonomous sanctions regime,” Mr Turnbull and Ms Bishop said in a statement.
Ms Bishop also met with Rodrigo Duterte to discuss the three month old crisis in the country where Islamic State-inspired extremists captured the southern city of Marawi.
In June Australia announced it would send two AP-3C Orion aircraft from the Royal Australian Air Force to help the Armed Forces of the Philippines spy on the militants.
“I met Filipino President Duterte to discuss the ongoing situation in Marawi,” she said in a statement to The Australian.

Vietnam, Yielding to Beijing, Backs Off South China Sea Drilling

By MIKE IVES

Vietnamese Coast Guard ships in Da Nang last year. Vietnam may have halted drilling in the South China Sea this summer for fear of its vessels being overwhelmed by Chinese warships, one analyst said.

HONG KONG — Vietnam appears to have retreated in a high-stakes maritime gambit against China, suspending a gas-drilling project that it had approved in the South China Sea but that was said to have irritated Beijing.
The drilling, by a subsidiary of the Spanish energy company Repsol, had started in June off the southern Vietnamese coast, analysts said.

The offshore block where the drilling was occurring straddles the border of Vietnam’s 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone but is challenged by China, Vietnam’s hulking northern neighbor, which is building artificial islands in the sea for its military.
Analysts say the project’s suspension, which Repsol confirmed to Reuters on Wednesday, appears to be another strategic victory for China at a time when the Trump administration is distracted by turmoil at home. 

They say it also highlights the difficulty that Vietnam faces as it mounts long-shot challenges to Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea — without much help from its neighbors in Southeast Asia or from Washington.
Vietnam’s leaders “can try their best to deter the Chinese” in the South China Sea, said Gregory B. Poling, a fellow in the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 

“But when the Chinese push back hard, like they just did, the Vietnamese are out on a limb all by themselves.”
In an emailed response to questions about the Repsol project and Vietnam’s strategic priorities in the South China Sea, Le Thi Thu Hang, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said that Vietnam supported the settlement of any disputes in the sea by peaceful means and according to international law.

“Vietnam calls on relevant parties to respect the legitimate rights and interests of Vietnam and make positive and practical contributions to peace and cooperation in the East Sea,” she said, using the Vietnamese term for the South China Sea. 

Repsol did not respond to a request for comment.
Unlike the Philippines and Japan, Vietnam is not a treaty ally of the United States, meaning Washington is not legally obligated to protect it in the event of an attack. 

Mr. Poling said that Hanoi found itself isolated on South China Sea policy in part because it was unsure how the Trump administration would react if a conflict escalated there.
“I think it’s fair to say the Vietnamese are still not entirely confident” that the administration cares about the South China Sea in the way that the Obama administration did, he said.
Vietnam’s strategic isolation has worsened as the Philippines, another major territorial claimant in the South China Sea, has warmed to China since Rodrigo Duterte came to power in June 2016.
Last July, the Philippines won a landmark case when an international tribunal ruled that Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over most of the sea had no legal basis. 

Vietnam saw the ruling as a giant step toward its decades-long goal of creating a unified diplomatic front against Chinese territorial encroachment in the South China Sea.
But Duterte appeared to undercut the victory last year by saying that he favored direct talks with China over territorial disputes. 

Eufracia Taylor, a political analyst based in Singapore at the British risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, said that while Vietnam and the Philippines were once “in the same boat” on South China Sea policy under Duterte’s predecessor, President Benigno S. Aquino III, bilateral relations had deteriorated since Duterte took office.

The Vietnamese-occupied Southwest Cay, part of the Spratly Islands, in the South China Sea.

It hardly helps that other Southeast Asian countries, which have less of a direct stake in South China Sea disputes and are mostly eager to woo state-backed Chinese investment, are reluctant to publicly discuss Beijing’s island building or the arbitration ruling, said Collin Koh Swee Lean, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
“This is not surprising because Asean would not want to spoil the atmosphere” as it tries to negotiate with China about establishing a so-called code of conduct in the sea, he said, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Vietnam’s South China Sea strategy may also be constrained by domestic concerns.
When a state-owned Chinese company defiantly towed an oil rig into disputed waters near the Vietnamese coast in 2014, it provoked a tense maritime standoff as well as anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam that destroyed foreign-invested factories and led to the deaths of a few Chinese workers.
Analysts say Vietnam’s top leaders worry that another such standoff could again inflame a lingering popular sentiment that the ruling Communist Party is not standing up to China, and therefore damage the party’s legitimacy in the eyes of the country’s 93 million people.
Alexander L. Vuving, a Vietnam specialist at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii, said that concern appeared to explain why Vietnam did not publicize the Spanish drilling project. 

“This time they were more aware of the threat from their own population,” he said.
Then there are naval considerations.
Dr. Vuving said that Vietnam may have ordered Repsol to stop drilling in the South China Sea this summer because it feared its Coast Guard could be overwhelmed by a potential riposte from the Chinese Navy.
By Dr. Vuving’s calculations, Vietnam roughly doubled the size of its Coast Guard, in terms of tonnage, from 2013 to 2017. 

That buildup has been widely seen as a response to the 2014 crisis, in which large Chinese Coast Guard vessels encircled wooden Vietnamese fishing boats near the controversial oil rig, embarrassing Hanoi.
Analysts and defense officials said in interviews that Vietnam was also investing in maritime surveillance capabilities, conducting limited reclamation work on islands that its military controlled in the South China Sea and training crews to operate its six new Russian-built attack submarines.
Mr. Poling said Vietnam’s overall aim was to deter Chinese aggression in the sea by developing the ability to at least give China a “bloody nose” in a hypothetical military conflict.
“Vietnam’s building up its naval power in order to efficiently and effectively protect its sovereignty and defend its security” against China, said Nguyen Hung Cuong, a South China Sea expert at Vietnam National University in Hanoi.
Ms. Taylor, the Verisk Maplecroft analyst, said that she expected Vietnam to continue exploring offshore energy resources with foreign partners, in part because the government was eager to have energy security that could help power brisk economic growth.
She noted that Vietnam had so far “held the line” on a separate plan to drill for gas in another area of the sea in partnership with Exxon Mobil.
Ms. Taylor said that Vietnam’s uncertainty over the United States’ commitment in the South China Sea under the Trump administration was significant, but also a familiar feeling across Southeast Asia for decades.
Even the Obama administration’s so-called strategic pivot to Asia, she said, had been “a little late — maybe better than never, but not enough to assure people.”

China set for easy ride from ASEAN on disputed South China Sea

By Manuel Mogato

MANILA -- Southeast Asian ministers meeting this week are set to avoid tackling the subject of Beijing's arming and building of manmade South China Sea islands, preparing to endorse a framework for a code of conduct that is neither binding nor enforceable.
The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has omitted references to China's most controversial activities in its joint communique, a draft reviewed by Reuters shows.
In addition, a leaked blueprint for establishing an ASEAN-China code of maritime conduct does not call for it to be legally binding, or seek adherence to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The two drafts highlight China's growing regional clout at a time of uncertainty whether the new U.S. administration will try to check Beijing's assertiveness in the disputed waters.
The South China Sea chapter in the latest draft communique, a negotiated text subject to changes, is a watered-down version of one issued in Laos last year.
ASEAN expressed "serious concern" in that text, and "emphasised the importance of non-militarisation and self-restraint in all activities, including land reclamation."
But the latest text calls for avoidance of "unilateral actions in disputed features" instead.
The role of the Philippines as 2017 chair of ASEAN has helped China keep a lid on discord.
Once ASEAN's most vocal critic of China's conduct, the Philippines, under Rodrigo Duterte, has put aside disputes in exchange for Chinese funding pledges of $24 billion.
ASEAN ties with the United States, under Donald Trump, have been in flux, as questions linger over Washington's commitment to maritime security and trade in Asia, diminishing the grouping's bargaining power with Beijing.
A legally binding and enforceable code of conduct has been a goal for ASEAN's claimant members -- Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam -- since a 2002 pact to ensure freedom of navigation and overflight and leave rocks and reefs uninhabited.
That pact, the Declaration of Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the South China Sea, has been largely ignored, particularly by China, which reclaimed seven reefs and can now deploy combat planes on three, besides defence systems already in place.
China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that China was willing to work with ASEAN to maintain the "hard won" stability in the South China Sea and steadily push forward with talks on the code of conduct.
Analysts and ASEAN diplomats worry that China's sudden support for negotiating a code of conduct is a ploy to buy time to further boost its military capability.

A horse cart driver waits for tourists near the ASEAN logo ahead of the 50th ASEAN Foreign Ministers meeting and in Manila, Philippines August 2, 2017.
"We could have done more to push China to agree to a much stronger document, holding claimant states more accountable," said one ASEAN diplomat.
The agreed two-page framework is broad and leaves wide scope for disagreement, urging a commitment to the "purposes and principles" of UNCLOS, for example, rather than adherence.
The framework papers over the big differences between ASEAN nations and China, said Patrick Cronin of the Center for a New American Security.
"Optimists will see this non-binding agreement as a small step forward, allowing habits of cooperation to develop, despite differences," he said.
"Pessimists will see this as a gambit favourable to a China determined to make the majority of the South China Sea its domestic lake."

Consensus Constraints
Diplomats say ASEAN's requirement of consensus in decision-making allows China to pressure some members to disagree with proposals it dislikes. 

China has long denied interfering.
A separate ASEAN document, dated May and seen by Reuters, shows that Vietnam pushed for stronger, more specific text.
Vietnam sought mention of respect for "sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction" not only in accordance with international law, but more specifically, UNCLOS.
Sovereign rights cover entitlements to fish and extract natural resources.
Experts say the uncertain future U.S. commitment to Asia leaves Vietnam in the most exposed position, as it has competing claims with China and relies on imports from its neighbour.
Opposition by China has repeatedly disrupted Vietnam's efforts to exploit offshore energy reserves, most recently in an area overlapping what Beijing considers its oil concessions.
The code of conduct framework was useful to build confidence, said Philippine security expert Rommel Banlaoi, but was not enough to manage and prevent conflict in the South China Sea.
China claims almost the entire South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion in goods pass every year. 

Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam also have claims.

Chinese Peril

China Scores Victory at Southeast Asian Leaders' Meeting
By Andreo Calonzo and Ian C Sayson

ASEAN's Ten Dwarfs: Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak, from left to right, Myanmar's State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, Indonesia's President Joko Widodo and Laos Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith join hands as they pose for a 'family photo' at Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders' summit in Manila on April 29, 2017.

China won approval from Southeast Asian leaders on Saturday at a meeting where U.S. allies in Asia have previously criticized Beijing over its actions in disputed maritime territory.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has enjoyed an upswing in relations with China for some time, ended a summit in Manila with a statement noting “the improving cooperation between Asean and China” in the South China Sea.
The leaders also welcomed “progress to complete a framework of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea” by the middle of this year, and recognized “the long-term benefits” of peace, stability and sustainable development in the region.
The leaders’ avoided mention of sensitive issues such as land reclamation or militarization, or last year’s ruling by an international court that rejected China’s claims to more than 80 percent of the South China Sea in a case brought by the Philippines under the administration of former president Benigno Aquino.
China’s efforts to assert its dominance over the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes that carries more than $5 trillion in annual trade, have in the past angered Southeast Asian nations with competing claims such as Vietnam and the Philippines. 

The waterway has become a flash-point in a broader tussle for regional influence between China and the U.S. in Asia.
Speaking after the meeting, Philippines President and current Asean chairman Rodrigo Duterte said China’s recent actions in the South China Sea were not discussed at the leaders’ meeting on Saturday, describing any talks on the issue as “useless.”
“The biggest victor in diplomacy in this summit is China,” Lauro Baja, former Philippine foreign affairs undersecretary, said on Saturday. 

“Asean seems to feel and act under the shadows of China.”
“China is engaging Asean in a very successful diplomatic position,” Baja said. 

“Asean considers what China feels, what China thinks and how China will act in its decisions.”
Before the summit, Duterte told reporters that arguments between the Philippines and China over disputed maritime territory were not an issue for Asean. 

A Philippine delegation is due to travel to China in May to discuss issues related to the South China Sea.
“Closer relations with China has lent itself to a more cohesive Asean and promises to prevent war and escalated conflict in our part of the world,” Wilfrido Villacorta, a former Philippine Ambassador to Asean and also a former Deputy Secretary-General of Asean, said in an email Saturday.
“President Duterte’s inclusive foreign policy has significantly transformed the security architecture and balance of power in Southeast Asia.”

Trump Call
After wrapping up the Asean summit, Duterte spoke with Donald Trump to pass on Asean concerns on regional security, including the threat posed by North Korea, according to a readout of the call provided by the White House.
“Trump enjoyed the conversation and said that he is looking forward to visiting the Philippines in November to participate in the East Asia Summit and the U.S.-ASEAN Summit,” according to the White House statement.
Trump also acknowledged that “the Philippine government is fighting very hard to rid its country of drugs” and invited Duterte to visit the White House to discuss the importance of the U.S.-Philippines alliance, which is “now heading in a very positive direction.”
Since being sworn into office last June, Duterte has launched a brutal crackdown on drug pushers that has claimed thousands of lives and attracted condemnation from the around the world.

Trade, Integration
At the summit, Asean leaders also instructed ministers to redouble efforts toward bringing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership with Asean dialog partners, including Japan, China, India and Australia, into force as soon as possible.
With a combined gross domestic product of $2.55 trillion in 2016 and robust year-on-year real GDP growth rate of 4.7 percent that is expected to accelerate to 4.8 percent this year, Asean leaders also committed to continue efforts to further integrate the region’s economies.
Asean leaders also welcomed progress on a roll-on, roll-off shipping network between Davao in the Philippines and Indonesia, and stressed the need for cooperation against piracy and other crimes at sea.

Judgement Call
On Asean’s decision not to raise last year’s international court ruling on the South China Sea, former undersecretary Baja said it was “a judgement call” by Duterte.
“Most of us were expecting that, as chair of the Asean, we could have been more expressive and assertive in pushing for Philippine advocacies. The arbitral ruling is one of them,” Baja said.
Albert del Rosario, who was Philippines Foreign Secretary under Duterte’s predecessor Benigno Aquino from 2011 to 2016, also criticized the decision.
“Our government, in its desire to quickly accommodate our aggressive northern neighbor, may have left itself negotiating a perilous road with little or no room to rely on brake power and a chance to shift gears if necessary,” Rosario said in a text message Saturday.