This article can be found in its original form at ASPI here, and was republished with permission.
In the past 12 months, China has provoked considerable attention with its reclamation activities in the South China Sea, particularly in the Spratlys where it controls seven maritime features.
China’s history of salami-slicing presents a dilemma to regional countries as well as external powers with regional interests: do they escalate an incident each time China slices the salami and risk open conflict, or stand down and allow China to augment its territorial claims.
The million-dollar question remains: who or what will freeze China’s reclamation in the South China Sea? The answer: nothing, really.
It has been proposed, for example, that like-minded states carve out a ‘code of practice’ that would stress the rule of law and mirror the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. Another option being considered by the Pentagon is to send US aircraft and ships within 12 nautical miles of the Chinese-built reefs in the Spratlys, to challenge its influence there.
While useful, such proposals won’t freeze or rollback China’s attempts to change the facts on the ground (or the high sea). China’s reclamation seeks to pre-empt any decision that would come from the Philippines’ challenge in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea over China’s nine-dash line claim to the South China Sea.
It’s noteworthy that China hasn’t only engaged in salami slicing; it has sought to use the attraction of its economy, trade and aid to offset its high-risk behaviour.
Following the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident with the Philippines, China launched a charm offensive in 2013, wooing ASEAN with a treaty of friendship and cooperation, stressing that it intended to take China–ASEAN relations from a ‘golden decade’ to a ‘diamond decade’.
This year, when concerns about China’s reclamation have intensified, China has offered a carrot: US and other countries would be welcome to use civilian facilities it’s building in the South China Sea for search and rescue and weather forecasting, when ‘conditions are right’.
China has also used its economic weight to deftly tilt the balance (of influence, at least) in its favor. Its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is attracting long-standing American allies such as Great Britain, Australia and South Korea. China has stolen a march on the US in the battle to win friends and influence people.
And the economic offensive doesn’t end with the AIIB. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership—a free trade agreement that would involve ASEAN, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea—is seen as a rival to the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership. China’s Silk Road Economic Belt is also another lure for peripheral countries keen on leveraging on China’s economic ascent.
Concerted and effective opposition to China’s fait accompli in the South China Sea requires an astute mix of diplomacy and deterrence. It might take the form of a regional effort to get China to clarify its nine-dashed line claims based on UNCLOS principles, an ASEAN ultimatum for China to at least freeze its reclamation activities, and joint ASEAN–US patrols near the reefs being reclaimed by China. This looks unlikely to emerge anytime soon.
ASEAN was damaged in 2012, when it failed—for the first time in its 45-year history—to issue a communiqué due to differing views over the South China Sea. ASEAN has recently upped its game by underscoring the dangers of China’s reclamation, but there’s little the group can do apart from pushing for a formal Code of Conduct. A successful conclusion of the code isn’t assured; China dangles the carrot of code negotiations to buy time even as its carries out reclamation.
For all its rhetoric about the need to uphold international law and the freedom of navigation, the US is conflicted when it comes to China. It all boils down to this: will the US risk its extensive relationship with China over a few rocks in the South China Sea? As Hillary Clinton once said: how does the US ‘deal toughly’ toward its banker?
To get a sense of the effect of China’s creeping invasion of the South China Sea, one only need look at Vietnam. Faced with China’s challenge to its claims to the Paracel Islands, Vietnam has purchased Kilo-class submarines, reportedly armed with sub-launched land-attack Klub missiles that could threaten Chinese coastal targets. But Vietnam didn’t fire a shot when China towed a US$1b oil rig into waters claimed by Vietnam last year. On a recent trip to Hanoi, Vietnamese scholars told me that Vietnamese military officers urged sterner action, such as firing on Chinese ships, but senior leaders vetoed them, instead deciding to sit back and let China incur ‘reputational damage’.
Not many people in Asia would agree with what China is doing in the South China Sea. But as it stands, China’s strategy—salami slicing, using offsets to soften risky behavior and accelerating its reclamation activities in the absence of significant opposition—can be summed up in two words: simply brilliant.
William Choong is a Shangri-La Dialogue senior fellow for Asia-Pacific Security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Construction on South Johnson Atoll, includes a ramp and a large enclosed storage area where China is thought to have moved PLC-09 122mm self propelled artillery, seen in satellite photos. (VietnamNet.vn.)
By Zachary Abuza
Since 2014, China has engaged in massive reclamation efforts in the Spratly islands, adding nearly 2,000 acres according to the U.S. Department of Defense. The placement, construction, and capabilities of these islands, including Johnson South, Cuateron, Gaven, Fiery Cross, Subi, Hughes, and Mischief Reefs has given China several strategic advantages and puts many Vietnamese held features in a vulnerable position. As a result of the reclamation approach, China can not only potentially control sea lines of communication and enforce an air defense identification zone (ADIZ), but challenge the status quo control of features in the Spratly Islands through anti-access area denial (A2/AD) operations.
While Chinese assertiveness and lack of transparency have driven Hanoi and Washington closer together, there remain limits to how far the relationship can grow as their strategic concerns and priorities do differ, despite US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s 31 May – 2 June visit to Vietnam where he signed a Joint Vision Statement for Operations. While the United States is focused on freedom of navigation and overflight, Hanoi is primarily concerned about how the potential for China’s reclamation to challenge their Spratly holdings. Hanoi is right to be worried. China’s Military Strategy, released on 26 May 2015, makes clear that its patience for the “militarization” and “illegal occupation” of what it deems its territory is unlikely to be tolerated as it continues to make strategic investments in its maritime capabilities in the sovereign defense of its maritime domain.
Disputed islands in the South China Sea. (South China Morning Post)
Chinese reclamation efforts and their ambiguous territorial claims threaten US interests in freedom of navigation. China has already said that “freedom of navigation definitely does not mean military vessel or aircraft of a foreign country can willfully enter the territorial waters or airspace.” On 25 May, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman put it this way: “The freedom of navigation and over-flight, however, is not tantamount to the violation of the international law by foreign military vessels and aircraft in defiance of the legitimate rights and interests as well as the safety of over-flight and navigation of other countries.” China has warned that US challenge flights and ship passages, which to date have observed a 12NM distance from China’s reclaimed islands, are “irresponsible, dangerous” and risk provoking war.
The United States has signaled that it is going to increase its freedom of navigation and overflight challenges. On 27 May, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter warned Beijing: “There should be no mistake about this: The United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world.” The establishment of territorial waters from artificial islands and the potential declaration of an ADIZ is an absolute redline for the United States.
But for Vietnam, the concern is less about freedom of navigation for the $5 trillion in international trade that passes through the South China Sea, and a more immediate concern about what Chinese reclamation efforts mean for the security of their held features.
Without naming Vietnam, China’s Military Strategy warns that “some of its offshore neighbors take provocative actions and reinforce their military presence on China’s reefs and islands that they have illegally occupied.” And in response to the international media’s focus on Chinese reclamation, their state-controlled media has highlighted Vietnamese efforts. As such, the 2015 white paper makes very clear that the China’s over-riding strategic interests are maritime in nature and that its force development will focus on “critical security domains,” maritime being the first.
China’s white paper singled out external countries that “Maintain constant close-in air and sea surveillance and reconnaissance against China,” i.e., the United States, it warned that “some of its offshore neighbors take provocative actions and reinforce their military presence on China’s reefs and islands that they have illegally occupied.” The focus on that “illegal occupation” will be driven by China’s new capabilities garnered through its reclamation efforts.
While China’s white paper reiterates Beijing’s long-held position that it only uses force defensively, Vietnam has an acute understanding of Chinese pre-emptive tactics. The white paper states a goal of “enrich[ing] the strategic concept of an active defense.” This translates into stealthy, proactive and pre-emptive tactics used to “defend” Chinese sovereignty. Their “active defense” strategy also talks about force “flexibility and mobility,” improved joint operations, “concentrat[ion] of superior forces, and the “integrated use of all operational means and methods.” The South China Sea is the proving ground for these new doctrines.
Vietnamese lawmakers are raising the concern that once China’s current reclamation efforts are completed, that it will have the military capabilities in place to renew offensive operations and grab other features, such as they did in March 1988 on Johnson Reef.
Yet that is unlikely for two reasons. First, the diplomatic fallout would be too great. A majority of the ever cautious ASEAN would be galvanized to act. There’s nothing that threatens China’s strategy more than a multilateral response and possibly even ASEAN moving forward with a Code of Conduct, without Chinese participation. Until now, as Patrick Croninput it, China has successfully “relie[d] on this risk-averseness, and resort[ed] to divide-and-conquer tactics any time the 10 Southeast Asian countries appear to be uniting on anything, even a broad statement, that might be construed as antithetical to China’s interests.”
Second, Vietnam’s own military modernization has not gone unnoticed in China. Hanoi has seen the steadiest increase in military expenditure in the region: 314 percent between 2005 and 2014. In that time it has developed the most lethal power projection capabilities in Southeast Asia, including one of the largest navies, with three advanced Kilo-class submarines already delivered and the final three due in service by 2016, two Sigma class corvettes, two Gepard class frigates, with two more with ASW capabilities to be delivered this year, Molniya class corvettes now in indigenous production. Vietnam also has the most sophisticated missile force in the region, which now includes Yakhont and Shaddock anti ship missiles in indigenous production, Brahmos anti-ship missiles and Klub submarine launched missiles that could target Chinese facilities in the Spratlys. While Vietnam could not prevail in a a protracted conflict, it does have the capabilities to significantly raise the costs for China in a short-term exchange.
As such, China will continue to build islands, but by continuing to seize un-occupied and sub-surface features. It has no need to provoke armed conflict by attacking manned islands. Scarborough Shoal, seized in 2012 from the Philippines, should be seen as the template for future Chinese action. No country has China’s capacity for making islands out of nothing. Reclamation efforts will soon be complete and their fleet of dredgers will move on to the next strategic locales.
And it is this that gives Hanoi pause. More than armed conflict and the military seizure of some of the its 19 features with military personnel, is the fear of China becoming emboldened to begin engaging in A2/AD activities, harassing Vietnam from resupplying its small and indefensible concrete structures and some 16 lighthouses and aids to navigation, until diplomatic pressure against them builds and cooling off for a period of time before resuming those operations.
One of Vietnam’s two Gerard Class Frigates. Two more will be delivered later this year.
China is increasingly poised to engage in A2/AD operations against Vietnam in two locales, the Union and Thitu Reefs. The recent reports of self-propelled artillery being deployed on those reclaimed islands, as well as ramps in new structures to store such equipment, only adds to the mounting evidence that China is laying the groundwork for A2/AD operations, should it determine the conditions to be favorable.
For example, the two newly reclaimed islands of Johnson South and Hughes, are located in close proximity (eyesight) to four Vietnamese held features: Sin Cowe Island, Sin Cowe East Island, Collins Reef, and Landsdowne Reef. Sin Cowe is the seventh largest feature in the Spratlys, an eight hectare natural island, which the Vietnamese have built several all weather facilities, a lighthouse and done limited reclamation efforts. The latter two are simply concrete structures built on submerged reefs. While neither Johnson South or Hughes will have an airfield, both have helicopter pads and ports to enforce a maritime siege. Likewise, the newly created Gaven Island poises China to be able to deny access to Vietnam’s Sand Cay, a natural island, but also its small facilities on nearby Namyit, Eldad, and Petley Reefs.
Of even greater, though longer term, concern to Hanoi is the reclamation and construction on Cuateron Reef and Fiery Cross Reef, with its 3,000 meter airstrip, which will ultimately give China the ability to project power southwesterly into the Vietnamese-dominated London Reef region.
There needs to be serious thinking in both Hanoi and Washington about contingency planning should China try to enforce A2/AD policies. To date, China has used both grey hull and white hulled coast guard ships to try to block resupply efforts to the derelict Philippine ship Sierra Madre grounded on Second Thomas shoal, east of Mischief Reef. These newly reclaimed islands give them all the more capabilities for A2/AD operations. China will likely raise the costs for others for what it terms the “illegal occupation” of its national sovereignty. Routine and concerted harassment efforts may become a cornerstone of China’s strategy.
As Vietnam and the United States continue to deepen ties, including the current visit by Secretary of Defense Carter and the June 2015 visit to Washington by Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, the two sides need to seriously discuss the strategic implications of China’s reclamation, and how they may be used to challenge the status quo. Aid for maritime security modernization, including $18 million for patrol craft are insufficient. And while the US and Vietnam have agreed to move forward with arms sales, there will always be limits to how much Hanoi is willing to and can afford to buy; though there are suggestions of some joint production. On 1 June, Secretary Carter and Vietnamese Defense Minister General Phung Quang Thanh signed their first “joint vision statement for greater operational cooperation.”
Make no mistake, Hanoi will never formally align itself with Washington against China. But it would be an important signal if this document addressed Chinese A2/AD operations, though unlikely as the bilateral defense relationship is still defined by the 2011 Memorandum of Understanding, which does not include kinetic operations.
And yet, the two sides need to have candid discussions regarding such scenarios. If China begins to engage in A2/AD activities how will the two sides respond, if at all? Could A2/AD operations against Vietnam pull in the United States? Should, for example, China try to prevent helicopter access to Vietnamese islands, would the US consider that the de facto imposition of an ADIZ? Is the harassment of Vietnamese resupply ships equivalent to trying to prevent international maritime shipping or freedom of navigation challenges by the US Navy?
Vietnam is clearly pleased with a more robust US presence in the South China Sea and its more assertive challenge to Chinese sovereignty claims. But efforts to date failed to deter China from reclamation. The next phase has to be developing a strategy that deters China from using the reclaimed islands to challenge the territorial status quo, freedom of navigation and overflight.
Zachary Abuza, PhD is an independent analyst of Southeast Asian politics and security affairs. Follow him on Twitter at @ZachAbuza.
CAPT Peter Swartz (Ret.) is well known in circles of strategy and navy policy… but today he brings us a story more personal than policy. We interview him on his time in Vietnam, from field operations to staff work in Saigon, how he met his wife in-country, working for ADM Zumwalt, and how is family was evacuated from Vietnam after the 1975 fall.
This year’s CIMSEC HQ Christmas party featured a number of ‘unofficial’ polls on the main naval developments of 2014 and prospects for 2015 (the results of which can be found inCIMSEC’s Twitter feed). These provided a most interesting glimpse both of recent events and of what the immediate future may hold in store. Needless to say, 2014 has indeed been an eventful year in the maritime domain, not least in the Indian Ocean-Pacific Region.
One of the main challenges of the year, highlighted in the polls, is how to respond to the use of non-lethal force, that is to coercion by means of a limited amount of violence, designed to gradually expand control over disputed bodies of water without leading to casualties or a major reaction by the victim country and other maritime democracies with a stake in freedom of navigation and the rule of law at sea (also known as “Salami Slicing“). This non-lethal force approach usually features coastguards, other state agencies, oil rigs, and civilian vessels (mainly trawlers) in lieu of navies. The difference is often rather academic however, due to the size, capabilities, and numbers of some of the vessels involved. Equipped with modern communication technologies these forces are bound together not just by institutional links but also subsidies, participation in part-time militias, extreme nationalism, and an integrated whole-of-government approach to the maritime domain. They operate in the grey areas between peace and war, naval warfare and law enforcement, public security and private enterprise, and have made significant advances in areas like the South China Sea. The use of ramming by these forces, rather than firing, is a reminder of ancient times, yet state of the art of technology is still very much in display.
While Beijing’s inability or unwillingness to take a Bismarck-like step by step, divide and rule approach to expansion has helped usher a new era of regional cooperation, contributing to the U.S.-Vietnamese reconciliation and Japan’s normalization as a military power, unless naval planning is geared toward the whole spectrum of conflict, including undeclared non-lethal wars, we risk preparing for a conflict that will never come, losing instead the one that actually takes place. We should never forget that, as the saying goes, the enemy has a vote too.
Two brief historical references may prove useful. First, the roots of President John F. Kennedy’s insistence on developing a strong counterinsurgency capability lied in the previous administration, but it ultimately derived from a recognition that it was not credible to threaten to employ nuclear weapons or massive conventional forces against every single instance of aggression (“trip wire approach”). Similarly, it is not credible to threaten naval war against any attack on freedom of navigation or against any grab of maritime territory. A revisionist power aware of this may react by adopting the gradual “Salami-slicing strategy” approach, pushing, never carrying out any individual action likely to trigger in and by itself an armed response.
Faced with such strategy, and taking into account China’s extensive economic connections with the United States and other major powers, the prospects of conventional force being employed to stop Beijing’s expansion seem rather slim. This is not to say that the modernization of nuclear weapons and the continued reinforcement of traditional naval power should be neglected. However, these two legs should be accompanied by a third one, giving rise to a whole-spectrum capability able to withstand any challenge to peace and security in the Indian Pacific-Ocean Region, freedom of navigation, and the rule of law at sea.
A second useful historical reference may be the United States’ Vietnam, or Second Indochina, War. Almost half a century later, historians still debate why the Republic of Vietnam, the United States, and their allies did not prevail. One major school of thought argues that it was self-imposed restrictions, in other words a failure to wage a more total kind of war, which doomed Allied efforts. As evidence, they point out that it was conventional troops, not guerrillas, which delivered the coup de grace to South Vietnam in 1975. Another major school of thought argues that it was the failure to master counterinsurgency, and more widely nation-building, that ultimately doomed the efforts to save the Republic of Vietnam. Without entering this debate, we may perhaps note that in Vietnam it was not just conventional or insurgent forces that one faced, but both, and that any lasting victory required prevailing against the two.
Furthermore, while some restrictions may seem or even plainly be irrational and self-defeating, simply criticizing them leads nowhere. The military cannot live in a fantasy land where total war is the rule and limits are few. Historically this has not been the case, and also because in today’s complex web of international relations and extensive economic connections, any “tripwire” or “massive retaliation” strategy is unlikely to enjoy the necessary political support and thus deterrence credibility. Therefore, the need to be flexible and able to deal with very different scenarios simultaneously is one of the great lessons from that controversial war, and one equally applicable on land and at sea. It is, to mention a relevant example, one of the inspirations behind the U.S. Marine Corps’ “Three Block War” concept.
For the disputed maritime spaces in the Pacific this means that countries in the region and other interested parties such as the United States need to develop a full capability spectrum. With conventional naval warfare on one extreme, it must extend to non-lethal violent clashes on the other, and cover all intermediate scenarios. This must be the underlying rationale for acquisitions, doctrine, regional cooperation, and training. It will of course require an additional effort from everyone involved, but there is simply no alternative.
Some of the weapons systems currently in development hold great promise in the event of hostilities breaking out, but there is no realistic prospect of their use being authorized short of a major conflict, a scenario that right now seems remote. Just to show how remote, a comparison with Russia is useful: replicating the sort of sanctions directed at the Kremlin is simply unimaginable, and has never been suggested when discussing Chinese expansionism (although there is indeed a discrete trend away from FDI in China by countries like Japan). In other words, lasers, just to give an example, are great, and their development surely must continue, but they will not stop a trawler fleet or an oil rig, simply because the necessary permission to fire will never come.
This does not mean that there is no way to counter such tactics. Coast guard capacity building, one of the main pillars of Japan’s security and defense cooperation with the Philippines and Vietnam, is a major step in that direction. It should not be seen, however, as an isolated step, but rather as one of many to be taken in the coming years. What we face is a long, undeclared, mixed, war at sea. A war without great battles or big names, without campaign medals, a war where many advanced weapons systems will merely be silent witnesses. It will be one, however, whose ultimate impact on future generations will be as great as many of its more heroic, spectacular, counterparts. A war that maritime democracies cannot afford to lose.
Alex Calvo is a guest professor at Nagoya University in Japan and focuses on security and defence policy, international law, and military history in the Indian-Pacific Ocean Region. He tweets at @Alex__Calvo and his work “China’s Air Defense Identification Zone: Concept, Issues at Stake and Regional Impact” is available at the Naval War College Press Working Papers.
