Conflicts in the South China Sea and China-ASEAN Economic Interdependence: Challenge to Cooperation (original) (raw)
Related papers
ASEAN's Centrality in Managing Conflict of Claims in the South China Sea
2018
ASEAN’s centrality has been the most strategic position for managing potential conflicts and building regional security order in the South China Sea. ASEAN’s centrality is of importance for managing regional major powers, such as the United States and China, in building regional security architecture. Territorial disputes in the South China Sea have escalated tensions and possible military confrontation between rival claimant states, particularly between China and Vietnam, and China and the Philippines. Other ASEAN’s member states involved in the dispute are Brunei and Malaysia. This paper seeks to analyze how ASEAN has sought to manage its relationship towards the US and China as a strategic path in resolving the South China Sea dispute. This paper proposes soft balancing strategy which involves various efforts of persuading the US to act as counterweights to China’s influence in the region. This soft balancing strategy is appropriate with several issues that ASEAN should deal with...
2015
The territorial disputes in the South China Sea have become the major flashpoints of both potential and existing conflicts in Asia. With claimant states from both China and member states of ASEAN, the aggressive military gestures of the claimant states have led to a myriad number of confrontations throughout the years. The inevitability of ASEAN being in the center of the disputes, have led many critics towards the regional organization on its capacity to establish any significant changes towards the dynamics of the South China Sea disputes. This research argues the opposite of the existing academic literatures, which views ASEAN as not an ideal actor in facing the fast paced dynamics of the South China Sea conflicts. It argues of ASEAN’s ability and capacity to persuade China into some forms of compromises into its policy, reflected through its defined position of a conflict management institution throughout the South China Sea crisis. The research thus argues how there is an existing misperception of ASEAN’s conflict management endeavors with the occurrence of China’s recent assertive gestures, ASEAN’s ability in instilling cooperative values and confidence building measures among conflicted states, and relevance of ASEAN’s multilateralism measures despite of China’s historical stance of bilateral means of conflict resolution in regards to the South China Sea conflict.
Institutionalization as weapons of the weak: ASEAN and the South China Sea disputes
International Relations and Diplomacy
“Institutionalization” can be understood as a process of norm and law setting to regulate and control individual attitudes. An institutionalized area could be more stable and ordered, then the relationships between the factors can be identified by the predicted signals. Institutions can help to provide a key form of such frameworks, through which all states, but especially the stronger states, can use rules and other normative expectations of conduct in the international relation. Weaker states, in return, gain limits on the action of the leading states and access to the political process, in which they can press their interests. This article analyzes the disputes in the South China Sea, particularly between China and ASEAN countries to prove the argument. It is argued that ASEAN, in the situation of power asymmetry between dominant (power-holders) and dominated groups, has used “institution” and “institutionalization” as a countermeasure to constrain the powerful China in the two ways: (i) trying to lock-in China in a rule-based order, in order to restrict its power, and (ii) by institutionalizing the way in which the disputes in the South China Sea should be resolved, ASEAN countries want to create a frameworks for setting rules of games, which are shaped by principles and norms instead of balance-of-power.
Divided Resistance: ASEAN, China and the South China Sea Disputes
Occasional Paper , 2018
Hamstrung by its de facto unanimity-based decision-making process, the ASEAN has failed to forge robust resistance to aggression of extrnal powers, especiallly China’s in the South China Sea. Moreover, strategic acqueincene of key countries, especially the Philippines under Beijing-friendly President Rodrigo Dutetre, has further weakened the ASEAN’s hand, risking the prospect of ASEAN peripepherality, rather than centrality, in shaping the security arhcitecture. Nonetheless, resistance by and minilateral cooperation among three key Southeast Asian powers of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, the current ASEAN chair, portends increasing resistance to, albiet in a divided fashion, to Chinese revanchist ambiitons in the South China Sea. Moving forward, however, the ASEAN should contempltate fundamental institutional reforms and pro-actively foster greater internal coherence in order to effectively address the China challenge. What is at stake is not only ASEAN centrality, but also peace and stability in the region.
ASEAN's Dysfunction in Managing South China Sea Disputes
This article analyzes ASEAN's dysfunctional behavior in managing the South China Sea Dispute (SCS), leading to inefficient and unresponsive outcomes. In the last two decades, ASEAN as a regional organization has not been able to show concrete results in negotiating with China to mutually agree on the territorial rules of the exclusive economic zone in the SCS region. While many argue that the failure of the ASEAN-China agreement of Code of Conduct (COC) is likely to be influenced by the complexity of ASEAN's inter-state cooperation relationship with China, this article provides an alternative approach by developing a constructivist approach based on the sociology of institutionalism and the notion of international organizational pathology to capture ASEAN's bureaucratic culture that impedes dispute resolution. I argue that ASEAN exhibits dysfunctional, even pathological behavior towards the South China Sea dispute caused by ASEAN's bureaucratic culture. To support the argument, this article investigates five features of ASEAN that may result in pathology as follows: First, irrationality of rationalization. Second, universalism. Third, normalization of deviance. Fourth, organizational insulation. Fifth, cultural contestation. To illustrate this logic, this article considers ASEAN not only as an arena for states pursuing interests but also as a social entity that has a culture, legitimacy concerns, and dominant norms that govern behavior.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is always proud to have the unique 'ASEAN Way' for setting the record of not having inter-regional conflict because of the principle of non-intervention and favoring consensus over confrontation. Now that the issue on South China Sea disputes is affecting four member-states of ASEAN, namely Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, the ASEAN Way will be put into test. While several studies have been written about the success of the ASEAN Way in terms of maintaining peace in the region at least in preventing open warfare, it is also important to examine the hindrances it imposes on its member states which also affects the region's interaction with other international players. This study examines whether the ASEAN Way is a contributory factor or a hindrance to the peaceful resolution of the South China Sea disputes. This issue was examined using Acharya and Johnston's framework explaining the link between the differences in institutional design of six regional organizations (EU, NATO, ASEAN, OAS, AU and the Arab League) and the variation of cooperation amongst states. Applying the framework to explain the impact of the ASEAN Way to the South China Sea disputes, the study reveals that the ASEAN Way and the principles behind it hinders the member states to come up with a united regional stand on the disputes.
This paper examines the limitations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN’) approach in managing the South China Sea dispute. It observes that since the mid- 1990s, the ASEAN member states have tried to manage this territorial row by attempting to embed China into its system of diplomatic consultations and confidence-building measures. This system is aimed at building mutual trust among small and medium size powers on a multilateral basis with the eventual goals of mitigating existing disputes, and finding means of resolving them. Unfortunately, China has prevented the ASEAN member states from pulling it into this system. Ironically, China has succeeded in dividing these small powers, and in effect, weakening ASEAN as a regional organization. This development, however, led the United States and Japan to balance China from achieving its long-term objective in the disputed waters—“Prevailing in its struggle to defend the South China Sea and construct a Great Wall at Sea.” In the long run, the current strategic impasse between China on the one side, and the U.S. and Japan on the other side can lead into a major armed confrontation in the region that can divide ASEAN and cause its irrelevance in the regional power equation.
ASEAN’s Search for Neutrality in the South China Sea
Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, 2014
This article seeks to make a contribution to the existing literature on the South China Sea issue by focusing on the impact of regional institutions on conflict management and resolution as well as the limits these institutions face when seeking to de-escalate disputes. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has attempted to preserve its neutrality and unity over sovereignty disputes and has focused on the establishment of a conflict management mechanism with China-the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea. However, ASEAN's efforts have been undermined by an escalation of the situation in the disputed waters and by rising China-U.S. competition in the region. The article concludes by discussing various scenarios regarding the future of ASEAN's South China Sea policy.
ASEAN'S CENTRALITY IN THE INDO-PACIFIC AND THE SOUTH CHINA SEA DISPUTE
EPRA International Journal of Research & Development, 2020
The South China Sea is the contested region between several ASEAN member nations and China. The rise of China along with its offensive Realpolitik policy has offended the sovereignty of many territorial nations in the South China Sea. In this article, the researchers would schematically analyze through the documentary analysis on the ASEAN’s Centrality. Based on the epistemological and ontological inference, the researchers would argue that the ASEAN’s centrality is based on the neo-liberal dilemma of reciprocity and thus neglecting the Statism in the South China Sea.
Examining the effectiveness of ASEAN in the South China Sea dilemma
The South China Sea, a major shipping route, has long been a source of territorial and maritime jurisdiction disputes. These tensions have been largely shaped by China’s growing assertiveness towards its sovereignty claims over the South China Sea, which contradicts the claims of several ASEAN claimant states. ASEAN, as Southeast Asia’s primary intergovernmental organization, has been involved to manage these tensions. In this protracted dispute, critics have charged ASEAN of ineffectiveness, pointing to the lack of any significant change in the dynamics of the South China Sea. This paper shall examine if this criticism contains any merit, and how ASEAN has been effective (or not) in defusing the crisis in the South China Sea.