US should respond to Chinese might in South China Sea

Tension rose again this week over disputed territory in the South China Sea, with US Defence Secretary Ash Carter warning Beijing that its deployment of surface-to-air missiles on a contested island constituted “aggressive action”. Philippines authorities meanwhile accused the Chinese navy, through its permanent presence in the disputed Spratly Islands, of blocking access to fishing grounds.
 “China must not pursue militarisation in the South China Sea,” Carter said in a speech in San Francisco on Tuesday. “Specific actions will have specific consequences.” Those consequences include increasing the number of American servicemen deployed to the western Pacific. Washington is also planning its joint military exercises in the region through 2020, especially with those countries engaged in sea disputes with China. Maritime security and
 freedom of navigation will provide the central themes.
Thirty per cent of world exports traverse the South China Sea. As a superpower with a huge stake in global trade, the United States is understandably irritated by the escalating threat to security in these crucial transit lanes. The low, rocky atolls to which a handful of nations claim sovereignty are for the most part barren and could well disappear beneath the waves as climate change takes full effect, and yet nationalist tempers flare at their mention.
Two decades ago the picture among the disputants was very different. Everyone was contentedly discussing win-win resolutions to the conflicting claims. Whether it was the fish to be caught or the potential oil and gas treasures lying under the sea floor, there was talk of sharing the spoils equitably. Nothing was agreed, of course, and now thoughts of war are entertained beneath the raucous banners of sovereignty.
China took the first step in exerting territorial claims in 1947, when Nationalists landed on Woody Island, one of the Paracels, arriving just ahead of a squadron of colonialist French sailors. Now, with France long gone, Vietnam has inherited its claim to the islet.
And it’s here, on Woody Island, almost 70 years later, that China has erected a permanent fixture of sorts – its armed missile launchers – putting in place a far more ominous military threat than the French and the Nationalists could ever have imagined. It’s been reported that China also wants to build radar facilities on artificial islands just
 to the south.
Other claimants to atolls and islands in this sea are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but the organisation has always shied away from confronting Beijing, a crucial trading partner, over the issue. In any case Beijing has always insisted it will only negotiate with individual claimants, not with Asean as a bloc.
While the leaders of Asean were meeting US President Barack Obama in California recently, US Secretary of State John Kerry was receiving Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Washington – and Beijing was mounting its missiles on Woody Island. Thus diplomacy proceeds as usual while Beijing does as it wishes to advance its territorial ambitions and become the dominant players in the region, able to stand up to the US in any context.
If ever there was a time and place for the US to deploy troops in line with its pledge to rebalance its global influence in the “Asia pivot”, this is it, and the Philippines is its most likely base. That country is, like Thailand, a major non-Nato ally of the US, as well as a member of Asean, and for a century it hosted US military bases.
If it is to grant that privilege to America again, Manila must first take into consideration the sensitivities of its immediate neighbours and give Singapore – which coordinates Asean-China relations – the chance to try and arrange an alternative scenario. Regardless, given the clear and present threat signalled from Woody Island, Asean requires unity now more than ever. With China’s aggressive action, hope dims in the much-vaunted code of maritime conduct being negotiated. It might be too late for such niceties.