The US has played an active security role in the South China Sea in recent years, but with China increasingly confrontational in the region, things could come to a head.
US ships and aircraft have repeatedly operated within the wide expanse claimed by China to assert international rights to navigation, carried out military exercises with regional allies, and reaffirmed its commitments to regional partners.
It has also helped Southeast Asian countries to modernize their militaries and deepen ties with countries pursuing similar security goals.
However, some Asia regional analysts warn that any further attempt to intensify US efforts in the contested waters could agitate regional partners, trigger China’s ire, and backfire on the US and its partners.
“The last thing that any Southeast Asian country wants is for this to spill over into an active conflict,” Bill Hayton, an associate fellow with Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific program, told Business Insider.
On the other hand, a US pullback would enable China to bully its smaller neighbors in ways that could also trigger a military clash.
They “want a Goldilocks situation in the South China Sea — not too hot, not too cold,” he added.
Keeping a balance
Southeast Asian leaders have tried to keep a balance between the US and China through ASEAN, a political and economic union of 10 countries with the stated goal of “promoting regional peace and stability.”
ASEAN held its annual summit in Laos this week, in part to discuss territorial tensions in the South China Sea. China has made expansive and legally dubious claims to nearly all of the sea, which is a major shipping route and boasts natural resources like fish and oil fields.
Recent months have seen clashes between Chinese coast guard vessels and ones from the Philippines, including one encounter where swords and knives were brandished and a Filipino soldier reportedly lost a thumb.
Speaking at the ASEAN summit, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Southeast Asian leaders that the US was concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed waters.
“The United States will continue to support freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight in the Indo-Pacific,” he added.
The US is the only military with the size and sophistication to push back on China’s forces, however, any US attempt to step up its role in the region could affect the delicate balance.
Hunter Marston, a Ph.D. candidate in international relations at the Australian National University in the Coral Bell School of Asia-Pacific Affairs, said all 10 ASEAN countries have their own security interests and different views about the US’ role in the region.
While countries that keep close ties to the US, like Singapore, the Philippines, and to some extent Vietnam, would be “very” supportive of increased US security in the region, other countries that fear a larger US military presence in the South China Sea, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and perhaps Cambodia, would be “more vocally” opposed to it, he said.
Another aspect is that China’s wide claims don’t directly affect Indonesia and Cambodia, meaning they have less to lose.
A bipartisan issue
Ramping up the US security role in the South China Sea without upsetting the balance of power is “a challenge that dates back to at least the Bush administration,” Marston said, referring to the administration of George W. Bush.
Following 9/11, the Bush administration stepped up its security involvement in the region by strengthening the US military presence there and increasing diplomatic ties with key ASEAN nations.
The Obama administration then pursued a policy of strategic “rebalancing,” with the underlying goal of preventing China from becoming the dominant power in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Trump administration took a harder line, stepping up its freedom of navigation patrols, conducting naval exercises in the region, and at one point deploying all of its forward-deployed nuclear attack submarines into the Western Pacific.
Marston said the Biden administration has adopted elements of Obama’s policy and tried to ramp up diplomatic efforts and strengthen US alliances and security partnerships.
Yet, China has remained undeterred in its efforts to dominate the contested islands, and has grown more aggressive in encounters with regional claimants, notably the Philippines.
“It’s really plagued multiple administrations,” Martson said.
A polarized region
Gregory B. Poling, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Southeast Asia Program and the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, told BI that the South China Sea has served as a “wedge” within ASEAN because only four out of 10 countries have a direct stake in it.
“Frankly, a lot of them would rather the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia just give up their rights in order to make this issue go away so they can get back to trading and investing with China,” he said.
According to Chatham House’s Hayton, increased US intervention could further split the alliance and also potentially drag the US into a conflict with China that jeopardizes Southeast Asian countries’ economies.
The US might be called in to help enforce freedom of navigation or defend its partners in the event of a military confrontation between China and its neighbors.
Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, hinted at this last August, saying the US could send ships to escort Philippine vessels in the South China Sea following clashes with China in recent months.
Even without a boosted US presence, the US could be dragged into a regional confrontation via its partners.
At a minimum, Hayton said a conflict would trigger disruptions to shipping, supply lines, and supply chains and hurt the region’s economic growth, “even before we start to think about military actions.”
A conflict in the South China Sea — a critical trade route estimated to carry one-third of global shipping — could result in a 10-33% loss in GDP for Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, according to a 2020 working paper by the US National Bureau of Economic Research.
Escalating tensions
Tensions in the region have been escalating over the past few months, especially between China and the Philippines.
A month after the armed encounter, China’s largest coastguard vessel dropped anchor in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, and in August, a Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson said China had deployed 40 vessels to block the delivery of supplies to its soldiers stationed in the contested Sabina Shoal.
Earlier this week, the Philippines said three Chinese Coast Guard vessels and a navy ship fired water cannons toward two civilian vessels while they were on a routine resupply mission in the West Philippine Sea.
Poling described these as “the most violent months in the South China Sea since 1988,” and added that the Philippines’ “natural” response would be to seek help from its treaty ally, the US.
Under a Mutual Defense Treaty signed in 1951, the US must come to the Philippines’ aid in the event of an armed attack — something China has carefully avoided by conducting gray-zone operations.
In an interview with CBS News 60 Minutes last month, Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro said that there were ongoing discussions about what scenarios would prompt the US to get involved.
Meanwhile, according to Poling, China’s official position is that everything the Philippines does is because the US made it do it.
“That’s one of the things that makes this so hard to deescalate,” he said.
A war with China in the South China Sea is a prospect the US would likely want to avoid at all costs, given the ongoing conflicts raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.
“But there’s no world in which the US can sit on the sidelines, watch China potentially kill Filipinos in Philippine waters, and do nothing,” Poling added.
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