MANILA, Philippines - The United States should “unequivocally support” the right of the Philippines to stake its claims in the South China Sea as well as point out the “aggressive, unreasonable nature” of China’s territorial claim in the area, a US-based think tank has said.
Walter Lohman, director of the Heritage Foundation Asian Studies Center, said that while the US does not support any particular claim, it should “bring attention to the responsible, deliberative, legal nature” of the Philippines’ claim. Lohman’s observation is contained in a policy research paper titled “Spratly Islands: The Challenge to US Leadership in the South China Sea.”
Lohman said that legality aside, any territorial claim should pass a common sense test. “Claiming sovereignty over 648,000 square miles of sea bordering on eight countries is absolutely untenable. And the US ought to say so,” Lohman said of China’s claim.
“The Philippines has done the world a great favor by reminding it of Chinese ambitions,” he said.
He cited China’s use of 2,000-year-old maps as reference as well as its “imaginative reading” of the Law of the Sea Treaty.
“Ultimately, the US cannot remain neutral in a dispute between an ally and its competition for regional influence - China,” he said.
“If an alliance does not at least mean dispensing with neutrality in choosing your friends, then what does it mean?”
He said the Chinese appeared to be playing on the “ambiguities” in the American position.
“Left unchallenged, the Chinese claim to the South China Sea could one day leave the American Pacific Fleet asking Chinese permission to conduct routine operations,” Lohman warned. “If the Chinese claims calcify at a pace similar to the development of their navy, in another 10 years, the US will have a real crisis on its hands,” he said.
The Spratly Islands dispute, Lohman said, is not just the Philippines’ problem and that it is an even bigger problem for the US and all who rely on its leadership in the Asia Pacific.
The old issue of conflicting claims over the Spratly Islands resurfaced on the eve of the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Thailand last week.
“There is nothing simple about this dispute. Taiwan and Vietnam claim all of the Spratly Islands. And the specific Bruneian and Malaysian claims overlap those of the Philippines,” Lohman said. “But it is the Chinese claim - because of its aggressive scope, the history behind it, and China’s growing military capacity to back it up - that poses the real problem to regional stability,” he said.
He called the Chinese claim “expansive,” noting that the Kalayaan Islands are 1,000 nautical miles from China. By contrast, Lohman said, Palawan is roughly 230 miles away.
“Incidentally, the Kalayaans are a municipality of Palawan. Yet China also claims territory even closer to Palawan Island: Mischief Reef, the source of so much diplomatic scuffling 10 years ago, is only 135 miles away,” he said.
He added that the Chinese claim not only the Spratlys but 80 percent of the South China Sea.
“Critically, the claim is passively supported by China’s growing military prowess (double-digit annual growth in military spending and an expanding fleet of sophisticated warships and submarines) and what increasingly appears to be deliberate ambiguity about the intentions behind this buildup,” he said.
“This is a diplomatic problem,” Lohman said. “The possibility that this dispute could escalate to a point where the US could be called to invoke its treaty obligations to the Philippines is remote,” he said referring to the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty.
“It did not reach that point in the mid-1990s - a much more contentious environment than today. But the risk of serious conflict only increases with time,” Lohman said.