Revision of U.S. ratification of UNCLOS won't help resolve disputes in South China Seas from Wed, 05/31/2017 - 16:33
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
Opponents of the United States becoming a party to UNCLOS argue or might argue one or more of the following:
- China’s ability to cite international law (including UNCLOS) in defending its position on whether coastal states have a right to regulate foreign military activities in their EEZs73 shows that UNCLOS does not adequately protect U.S. interests relating to navigational rights in EEZs; the United States should not help lock this inadequate description of navigational rights into permanent international law by becoming a party to the treaty.
- The United States becoming a party to the treaty would do little to help resolve maritime territorial disputes in the SCS and ECS, in part because China’s maritime territorial claims, such as those depicted in the map of the nine-dash line, predate and go well beyond what is allowed under the treaty and appear rooted in arguments that are outside the treaty.
- The United States can adequately support the ASEAN countries and Japan in matters relating to maritime territorial disputes in the SCS and ECS in other ways, without becoming a party to the treaty.
- The United States can continue to defend its positions on navigational rights on the high seas by citing customary international law, by demonstrating those rights with U.S. naval deployments (including those conducted under the FON program), and by having allies and partners defend the U.S. position on the EEZ issue at meetings of UNCLOS parties.
I understand the force of this argument. The U.S. already adheres the key principles in UNCLOS, so joining UNCLOS will allow the U.S. to push back more effectively against China’s aggressive and expansionary activities.
But is there really any evidence that formal accession would change China’s view of the U.S. position on UNCLOS issues? China is already a member of UNCLOS and other countries (like Japan and the Philippines) are also members of UNCLOS. But I don’t think UNCLOS has really bolstered their effectiveness in pushing back against China. Moreover, as Professor Dutton explains, China has a radically different interpretation of its authority to regulate foreign ships and aircraft in its Exclusive Economic Zone under UNCLOS. How will joining UNCLOS help the U.S. change China’s interpretation of UNCLOS?
As a practical matter, UNCLOS does have a way of compelling member states to conform their interpretations: mandatory dispute settlement in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea or in Annex VII arbitration. But as China and Russia have demonstrated in recent years, these mechanisms are not likely to be a serious constraint, especially on questions that touch sovereignty (which is how China frames most of its activities). I suppose if the U.S. joins UNCLOS, and subjects itself to UNCLOS dispute settlement, that might make a difference. But I don’t think it would be a very large one (after all, Japan, China, and the Philippines are all already subject to UNCLOS dispute settlement, which has accomplished little so far).
First, while the United States has a strong interest in peaceful resolution of competing territorial claims in the South China Sea, it is not itself a claimant, and thus UNCLOS would provide no additional tools for the United States to use in addressing disputes in the South China Sea. While U.S. ratification of UNCLOS would allow U.S. nationals to serve on arbitration panels, such representatives are expected to exercise independent reasoning and do not take instructions from member governments.
If anything, the presence of an American on the panel would have played to the suspicions of hardliners in China who view international legal regimes as a vehicle for advancing U.S. interests. If this sounds farfetched, consider that the Chinese ambassador to ASEAN recently accused Washington of “staying behind the arbitration case as the manipulator, and doing whatever it can to ensure that the Philippines wins the case.”
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.
The dispute in the South China Sea is even more complex. Drawing on ancient maps and historical accounts, the Chinese and Taiwanese insist that the sea’s two island chains, the Spratlys and the Para- cels, were long occupied by Chinese fisherfolk, and so the entire region belongs to them. The Viet- namese also assert historical ties to the two chains based on long-term fishing activities, while the other littoral states each claim a 200-nautical mile EEZ stretching into the heart of the sea. When com- bined, these various claims produce multiple over- laps, in some instances with three or more states involved—but always including China and Taiwan as claimants. Efforts to devise a formula to resolve the disputes through negotiations sponsored by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASE- AN) have so far met with failure: While China has offered to negotiate one-on-one with individual states but not in a roundtable with all claimants, the other countries—mindful of China’s greater wealth and power—prefer to negotiate en masse.
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The authors argue that while there are good reasons for the Senate to ratify UNCLOS, pushing it to advance U.S. policy in the South China Seas is not one of them as it would result "only in a slight modification to Chinese rhetoric, and no change in Chinese policy."
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The author disputes the idea brough up in recent testimony that the U.S. could improve its bargaining position in negotiating a resolution to the South China Seas dispute by ratifying UNCLOS.
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