U.S. ratification of UNCLOS won't help resolve disputes in South China Seas
Ratification of UNCLOS will neither sway China nor guarantee U.S. navigational rights in the South China Seas any more than continued U.S. naval presence through the Freedom of Navigation program.
Quicktabs: Arguments
Second, the only thing that the United States would achieve by joining UNCLOS—at least from the perspective of modifying Chinese behavior—would be to deprive Beijing of its talking point that U.S. exhortations to claimant states to comply with UNCLOS amount to “hypocrisy.” Deprived of this talking point, there’s no reason to believe that Beijing would submit to the tribunal’s authority. Although U.S. ratification of UNCLOS would be a boost to the prestige of the convention, Beijing has evidently made a calculated judgment that defending its perceived sovereignty and the strategic value of physical control of large stretches of the South China Sea outweighs whatever reputational damage it suffers as a result of flouting the tribunal’s decision.
There are many reasons why ratification of UNCLOS serves U.S. interests—not least of which, the convention would allow the United States to make claims on the arctic seabed beyond its current exclusive economic zone. Perhaps most importantly, as Sen. Ben Cardin recently pointed out, ratification of UNCLOS would help the United States continue to “build a world of rules, law, and order.”
None of these benefits changes the fact that Senate ratification of the treaty will result only in a slight modification to Chinese rhetoric, and no change in Chinese policy. While Washington and most Southeast Asian nations would like to see tensions in the South China Sea resolved through application of shared rules and norms, Beijing has shown its determination to settle the matter through power politics. To be sure, the United States must continue to show that international law is the way to peacefully resolve these disputes—but the United States joining UNCLOS will not have a tangible impact on that effort.
Commander of U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) Admiral Robert F. Willard testified this week before the Senate Armed Services Committee that “…China does not make legal claims to this entire body of water…” (the several bodies of water that China calls its “near seas”). When it comes to at least one of these seas—the South China Sea—the statement is meaningless.
Admiral Willard notes—and he would know—that China does “seek to restrict or exclude foreign, in particular, U.S., military maritime and air activities” in the South China Sea. A number of incidents over the last couple years point vividly to this problem. And China often uses legal arguments to explain its behavior.
But China’s underlying sovereignty claims are not just “legal.” They are historical. In 2009, the Chinese circulated the famous nine-dash map that lays out its historical claim to virtually all of the South China Sea. That provoked a complaint from Indonesia. Indonesia is not generally considered one of the claimants in the South China Sea dispute. However, it objected because while it sees no threat in China’s legal claims, the historical claims represented by the nine-dash map include Indonesian waters.
Now the Philippines has formally registered an objection to the Chinese sovereignty grab, to which the Chinese have responded by citing both the legal and historical bases for their claims.
This brings us back to Admiral Willard’s statement. The legal basis of China’s claims to the South China Sea is meaningless as long as it maintains an alternative historical case. This also means that UNCLOS—which Admiral Willard gently urged the Senate to ratify—is irrelevant to settlement of the dispute. In fact, the treaty’s filing deadlines and apparent wiggle room on things like “Exclusive Economic Zones” (EEZ) and baseline determinations seem to have exacerbated the conflict.
Proponents of UNCLOS ratification claim that the United States can’t counter China’s claims without ratifying UNCLOS itself. Yet the United States already acts in accordance with international law and custom, whereas China, which has ratified UNCLOS, uses UNCLOS to flaunt the law.
By twisting the UNCLOS into pretzels, China is changing the rules of the game. The liberal order made rules to accommodate the rights and interests of those who decided to participate in it. It turns out China doesn’t much like those rules and is attempting to overturn them – especially those rules that protect freedom of navigation and those that make it difficult for China to pursue its territorial ambitions in Asia. Ratifying UNCLOS isn’t an effective way to combat that effort. These disputes are about power politics and neither China nor the United States will allow them to be settled in court – UNCLOS approved or otherwise.
Rather, the United States must continue doing what it has always done. It should continue to operate naval vessels in international waters – including in other countries’ EEZs – where and when it wants to do so. Operations should run the gamut of peaceful activities – surveillance activities, exercises, and so on.
And Washington must clearly state its intention to continue abiding by centuries-old customary international law pertaining to freedom of the seas including provisions of UNCLOS that are consistent with those practices. In interactions with Chinese counterparts, American diplomats should repeatedly and consistently restate the American position – there should be no question as to where the United States stands.
As it does so, the U.S. should engage China in diplomacy, pointing out – among other matters – that China itself conducts military activity in other countries’ EEZs. We need rules of the road with China to manage competition, not wishful thinking about what U.N. bodies can resolve.
It has always been practice that has determined international law of the oceans. China understands this, and is working to shift law and custom through its own practices. Only by continuing to act on the high seas as it always has can the United States hope to maintain a system of international rules that serves its own interests. Ratifying UNCLOS could very well have the opposite effect.
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