The State Department’s top official on East Asian affairs this week said that there is a high possibility of land disputes boiling over in the South China Sea.
Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel remarked that competing claims on islands—mostly between the Philippines and China–and the rhetoric being used to make them don’t bode well for the chances of a peaceful resolution occurring.
“Regrettably, I don’t know anyone in the region who believes that a negotiated settlement between China and other claimants is attainable in the current atmosphere,” he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Russel stated that an agreement could be hashed out, as they have been during past regional maritime border kerfuffles, but added that he didn’t think it was possible in light of “absolutist political position” adopted by actors “who insist that their own claims are ‘indisputable’ and represent territory – however distant from their shores – that was ‘entrusted to them by ancestors.’”
The barb was directed at the Chinese government, which has claimed atolls some 1,000 miles off of the continent—land that is far more proximate to the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The Chinese military has also disturbed its Southeast Asian neighbors and officials in Washington by building installations on some of these rocky outcrops.
While he praised recent increased US-China cooperation and called for “China’s peaceful rise,” Russel also warned that the US would attempt to ensure “freedom of navigation” and that it would “honor our alliance and security commitments.” The US has a defense pact with the Philippines, a country it occupied for decades after winning the Spanish-American War and brutally putting down a local independence movement.
“For us, it’s not about the rocks and shoals in the South China Sea or the resources in and under it, it’s about rules and it’s about the kind of neighborhood we all want to live in,” Russel said. “So we will continue to defend the rules, and encourage others to do so as well.”
The Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday that Chinese officials “have adopted a more conciliatory tone” in the past few days, and have offered to build “fishing heavens, weather stations, and light houses” on disputed islands. It noted, however, that “the Philippines and its Southeast Asian neighbors are dubious.”
Read Russel’s full prepared remarks here.
