Worth a look is this balanced take by the Carnegie Endowment's Douglas H. Paal (16 Oct) on the disputes in the South China Sea and the East China Sea.
He reminds us:
"The common media narrative is that China is being more aggressive. But if you trace back the origins of the latest flare-ups—in the South China Sea, East China Sea, and there’s even a China-South Korea rock that they’re arguing about—they actually all started outside of China. What we’re seeing from China are exaggerated reactions, and people notice that more than what was done by the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, or South Korea..."
His advice:
"This is a time when we need to get past elections, past transitions, and allow some cool diplomacy to go to work...
"My own view is that a lot of the fuel from the flames of these tensions in the East China Sea and the South China Sea would be taken out if we could divert the competition for energy and the competition for marine resources into separate dialogues...
"But what would be really difficult is to try to settle the sovereign claims. With China rising, Japan in a difficult period, and Southeast Asia going through all sorts of change, countries are not going to willingly give up their claims on sovereignty. They might settle in the end to leave things as they are. With changing ratios of power among the various parties out there, they’re not likely to settle claims—history suggests they won’t do it...
"As a practical matter, let’s just do what they’ve done for the last forty years in the region and shelve the territorial sovereignty issues and work on the functional problems. I hope that after we get past elections and transitions in East Asia, maybe we can move in that direction."
Much of this resonates with the advice from Sam Bateman that I flagged up a little while ago.
He reminds us:
"The common media narrative is that China is being more aggressive. But if you trace back the origins of the latest flare-ups—in the South China Sea, East China Sea, and there’s even a China-South Korea rock that they’re arguing about—they actually all started outside of China. What we’re seeing from China are exaggerated reactions, and people notice that more than what was done by the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, or South Korea..."
His advice:
"This is a time when we need to get past elections, past transitions, and allow some cool diplomacy to go to work...
"My own view is that a lot of the fuel from the flames of these tensions in the East China Sea and the South China Sea would be taken out if we could divert the competition for energy and the competition for marine resources into separate dialogues...
"But what would be really difficult is to try to settle the sovereign claims. With China rising, Japan in a difficult period, and Southeast Asia going through all sorts of change, countries are not going to willingly give up their claims on sovereignty. They might settle in the end to leave things as they are. With changing ratios of power among the various parties out there, they’re not likely to settle claims—history suggests they won’t do it...
"As a practical matter, let’s just do what they’ve done for the last forty years in the region and shelve the territorial sovereignty issues and work on the functional problems. I hope that after we get past elections and transitions in East Asia, maybe we can move in that direction."
Much of this resonates with the advice from Sam Bateman that I flagged up a little while ago.
All worth remembering as the November summit season looms...
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