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View all search resultsEveryone loses
If war or conflict prevails in one of the world’s busiest maritime trade corridors, then swaths of economic activity get thrown out the window.
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T
he South China Sea dispute is heating up, and it is happening at the worst possible time. Tensions have risen between the United States and China in recent weeks, marked by Washington’s announcement earlier this month that it had toughened its stance on the South China Sea issue.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led the rebuke by declaring that America stood with its Southeast Asian allies in protecting their “rights to offshore resources”. Beijing responded strongly, accusing Washington of “inciting confrontation in the region” and sabotaging its efforts to engage peacefully with ASEAN.
On either side of this confrontation, the superpowers traded barbs, deployed military assets and conducted maneuvers in contested waters.
The US-China rivalry has already spilled over into global efforts to curb COVID-19, as questions have been raised about the World Health Organization’s authority and susceptibility to national influence.
Some observers will frame the US policy shift in the South China Sea as a politically motivated step to bolster President Donald Trump’s claims to be tough on China. Others see it as a welcome return to a region that was left wanting for an answer to Beijing’s coercive negotiation tactics.
None of these analyses account for the grim reality faced by all ASEAN countries: the struggle to revive an economy arrested by the onset of a dangerous health crisis. As a result, even non-claimants in the dispute have been pulled into the mess.
Indonesia began a major, five-day naval exercise on Wednesday that featured warfare simulation on a beach on Singkep, an island in the Riau Islands province at the edge of the South China Sea. Experts see it as a show of determination to assert sovereignty over the country’s territory.
