Thursday, May 8, 2014

Vietnam-China battle over ocean oil rig/ The US position?

Yesterday, there was a "collision" between Vietnam and Chinese ships in the East Vietnam Sea (or South China Sea as known internationally). Please read until the end as I am interested in your perspectives about the role of the US (if any in this issue).

<<“On May 4, Chinese ships intentionally rammed two Vietnamese Sea Guard vessels,” Tran Duy Hai, a Foreign Ministry official, said at a news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam. “Chinese ships, with air support, sought to intimidate Vietnamese vessels.”
Last week, the Chinese state oil company Cnooc stationed the oil rig 120 nautical miles off the coast of Vietnam, in waters claimed by China and Vietnam. The placement of the rig led to protests and demands by Vietnam that it be withdrawn, and the deployment of a Vietnamese naval flotilla to the area.>>

The U.S. response to the event:
<<In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said the United States was concerned about “dangerous conduct and intimidation” in the region. “Given the recent history of tensions in the South China Sea, China’s unilateral decision to introduce its oil rig into these disputed waters is provocative and unhelpful,” she said at a daily press briefing on Wednesday.>>

To give you some context:
<<The incident is the latest chapter in territorial disputes involving China, . Taiwan also claims swaths of the ocean. The disputes themselves are not new, but an increasingly powerful China with new abilities to reinforce its claims has caused ripples in the region over the last few years. China claims expansive areas of the sea, encompassed in a “nine-dash line” map that critics have said has no basis in international law.>>

To this event, a Vietnamese American business executive in Vietnam made a personal comment as follows:<< The countries [Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia] had previously tried to resolve the long-standing claims and counterclaims through diplomatic channels, but China has finally decided to bypass diplomacy. In response, the U.S. State Department has called China's actions "provocative and unhelpful to the maintenance of peace and stability in the region." Alas, it seems unlikely that the U.S. will intervene even as little as it has in the Ukraine. And so China feels free to respond that "the U.S. has no right to make irresponsible and unwarranted remarks on China’s sovereign rights." [...]

I don't want to project the outcome of this situation. But I do know that this situation along with the Ukraine crisis are inevitable consequences of America's drawing inward in the wake of irresponsible high spend [referring to the military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan]/ low tax policies of the past 15 years
. As much as other nations have decried U.S. overreach around the world (and we certainly have made bad decisions), the silence/absence of a global power enables the strong and ruthless to take advantage of smaller neighbors. Americans need to get our house in order so that we can credibly "speak softly and carry a big stick" before more absurdity arises.>>

I did not think of the US as I read the news but the comment above triggered my curiosity. Do you think the US has any role in the global politics in the Vietnam-China case (and the Ukraine-Russia case)? 

5 comments:

  1. The reason international trade on waters has prospered greatly in the past several decades, especially in the Pacific Ocean, is because of the presence of a hegemonic power, the US Navy. This situation is similar to the British Royal Navy in the late 1800s, where the global economy expanded dramatically because of Royal Navy's presence. Water disputes became more prominent when Germany expanded its navy towards the end of the 19th century. International affairs became more volatile with the rise of Germany and GB's loss of hegemonic status. Eventually, WWI broke out.

    A similar situation is occurring here where US has become weaker on the global stage, encouraging its major geopolitical rivals, Russia and China, to fill in the power vacuum and conduct expansionist tendencies.

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  2. I'm not sure if the U.S. should be heavily involved in issues like these. Currently all the countries neighboring China are putting pressure on China to prevent them from their ruthless expansionism. Japan's Shinzo Abe is also pissed at China due to the ongoing territorial dispute overt the Senkaku Islands.

    Given that the U.S. has so much on it's plate, the U.S. needs to tend its own house before trying intervene in international affairs. Keeping China in check is very important but it has to be an international effort and the whole international community has to carry the burden, not just the U.S.

    Issues like these also show that we need a strong transnational entity that won't let countries like Russia and China make a mockery of international law. Globally though, I don't really think we're at that level of development yet.

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  3. I do agree with Hikaru. The U.S has a lot of issues to attend to, both domestic and international (reference to Afghanistan and Iraq), before attempting to intervene in other international affairs. I find the expectation that the U.S should intervene in every single international conflict very problematic. This, to some extent, threatens some nations' "sovereign rights." This is an international community's problem not U.S's sole problem. I hope to hear some news from the international community on how to address this issue in a peaceful and beneficial way for the parties involved.

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  5. I agrew with Hikaru, this should be a global responsibility, not just the US' responsibility. However, the US is a world leader and should let its support or lack of support be known in the international community.

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