South China Sea Strategies for other nations (Not China)

SamuraiBlue

Captain
The UN general assembly can always sanction an embargo on various monetary transactions in and out of PRC against state owned companies. After all the rulings is based on law advocated by UN. This will not need to go through the Security Council since a court authorized by the UN had already made a verdict.
 

solarz

Brigadier
The UN general assembly can always sanction an embargo on various monetary transactions in and out of PRC against state owned companies. After all the rulings is based on law advocated by UN. This will not need to go through the Security Council since a court authorized by the UN had already made a verdict.

The UN is more likely to sanction Japan before sanctioning China.
 

MwRYum

Major
Yanai could recuse himself from naming the judges. Three out of the four judges he named are EU states. Coupled with Philippines' choice of Germany makes it four out of five. Does seem like a geographical imbalance on the panel.
And coupled with the fact that Japan dangled the "support the verdict or no aid" against the ASEAN nations, saying Japan has no agenda in this play is outright lying.

But again, whichever way the verdict goes (everyone bets against China, no surprise there) it'd not result in the removal of the 3 "new islands" that China constructed, except for direct military actions, which neither the court's ruling nor UN has the jurisdiction to sanction one.

My take is that, if the "race war" back in the US don't cool down soon enough, the White House might see a "limited scale foreign war" a viable distraction, and the case file drafted by CDRUSPACOM would be on the top of the pile...

The verdict is due in less than 12 hours now, so the big news on the horizon is "who's going to ramp things up to the next notch?" China? US? Or perhaps Taiwan declare to forsake the Taiping Island, as many have been speculating since last year when Tsai went to the US to seek Uncle Sam's blessing?
 

confusion

Junior Member
Registered Member
Voices of reason are finally making themselves heard in the Philippines under the new administration:
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12:07 AM July 12th, 2016


THE RULING on the Philippines’ case by the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which is scheduled to be handed down today, has been rendered anticlimactic by the recent major policy announcement of President Duterte.

Last week, the President said that whether the ruling of the Arbitral Tribunal would be favorable to the Philippines or not, his administration was willing to start bilateral negotiations with China on the conflict in the South China Sea that has dragged on for years and has become an international concern. He added that even if the Arbitral Tribunal ruled against the Philippines, his administration would accept the judgment.

The President’s announcement was a masterstroke in diplomacy. Certainly, this move would anger Washington which has been egging on the Philippines to confront China’s so-called hegemonic ambition in the area, by hoisting the bogey that China is bent on controlling the sea-lane in the disputed territory to the exclusion of international shipping.

The sea is the main maritime link between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, where over $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes annually. Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei also have overlapping claims to the waters, which are believed to sit atop vast mineral reserves.

If through bilateral talks Mr. Duterte would be able to achieve a modus vivendi with China on the issue concerning the Spratlys, then the threat of China to the Philippines’ security would be eliminated. And since at the moment only China, among the countries in Asia, is perceived to be our potential aggressor, we can now do away with the massive infusion of US military aid to the Philippines.

Even during the election campaign, Mr. Duterte was emphatic in stating his position against any armed conflict over the South China Sea. “We are not prepared to go to war. ‘War’ is a dirty word,” he said.

Just a week into his presidency, he has shown a singular resolve and strong political will in confronting not just domestic issues such as the drug menace, criminality and corruption, but also foreign policy kinks.

His firm determination to resolve the maritime dispute with China through direct peaceful negotiations is in sharp contrast to the tack used by then President Benigno Aquino III, who rallied the United States and other foreign governments in denouncing China’s “bullying” in the region.

Aquino’s position was that China’s claim to most of the South China Sea and its island-building program in the disputed waters violated international law. He also refused to hold direct talks with China on the conflict as he pointed out its insistence that its claims were indisputable and, thus, there was nothing to negotiate.

China has been unequivocal in saying that it would reject any ruling of the Arbitral Tribunal. It insists that the court has no jurisdiction over the issue.

As Christopher Hill, former US assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said in a recent commentary titled “China’s bad-neighbor policy is bad business” (Opinion, 7/6/16), China “obviously has the strength to drive out the Vietnamese, the Filipinos, the Malaysians, the Indonesians, and almost anyone else it chooses to confront.”

And the fact that China has not driven out claimant-countries such as the Philippines from the islands that they have occupied is a positive indication that a peaceful settlement of the dispute could be arrived at.

Earlier, the Chinese Embassy in Manila said that while China’s sovereignty over the whole of the Spratly archipelago is nonnegotiable,it is willing to discuss joint development of the region.

Last July 4, the official China Daily reported that China is ready to start negotiations with the Philippines on issues related to the South China Sea if Manila ignores the arbitration ruling on the long-running territorial dispute.

The China Daily said negotiations between China and the Philippines could cover “issues such as joint development and cooperation in scientific research if the new government puts the tribunal’s ruling aside before returning to the table for talks.”

In June, China’s foreign ministry said the two countries agreed in 1995 to settle disputes in the South China Sea “in a peaceful and friendly manner through consultations on the basis of equity and mutual respect.”

It said China and the Philippines have held many rounds of talks on the proper management of maritime disputes, although there have been no negotiations to settle the actual dispute in the South China Sea.

Alito L. Malinao is a former diplomatic reporter and news editor of the Manila Standard. He now teaches journalism subjects at Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, and is the author of the book “Journalism for Filipinos.”
 

confusion

Junior Member
Registered Member
China's stance on UNCLOS isn't an innovation - its stance on historical claims, compulsory arbitration, and preference for bilateral negotations: it's a stance copied straight from the Reagan administration:

Beyond Claims, South China Sea is Battleground for US, Chinese Exceptionalism
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The Hague: In a few hours, when the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague releases its verdict on the South China Sea dispute, China will likely thumb its nose at a verdict “unilaterally” pursued by the Philippines.

The Philippines may have a territorial dispute with Beijing, but it is only a small player in the struggle for Asian influence between China and the United States that the South China Sea dispute has now escalated. Among the volley of claims and counter-claims that will be parried between Beijing and Washington in the coming days, one in particular from China will stand out: that the United States has no legitimacy to intervene in a maritime conflict when it has not itself ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Various commentators have called out the US insistence in applying UNCLOS provisions to the South China Sea arbitration as hypocritical and all too convenient. A European diplomat posted in The Hague politely characterised the American position to this writer as “awkward”. The United States may not have ratified UNCLOS, but there is nothing in international law that prohibits it from invoking the instrument. India for instance, maintains that it abides by the obligations of ‘Nuclear Weapons States’ in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), although it is not a signatory. As with the US and UNCLOS, India was among the key negotiators of the NPT, with Indira Gandhi choosing ultimately — like the Reagan administration did with UNCLOS — to stay out of the regime based on “enlightened self-interest”. Today, the US military
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that it believes accession to UNCLOS “is in the national interest of the United States.”

To the student of international relations, the US position on UNCLOS is interesting because of the direct bearing it has had on China’s attitude to the South China Sea dispute.

Both China and the Philippines have ratified UNCLOS, but the convention’s applicability to the current dispute
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. In doing so, China is merely invoking the exceptionalism that characterises the US approach to the law of the sea.

Three arguments can be made to support this claim.

‘Historic claims trump UNCLOS’
First, both the United States and China prefer an approach that privileges customary international law — what Beijing implies as “historic rights” in the South China Sea — over the provisions of UNCLOS.

In 1982, when Reagan refused to sign the convention, his special representative and leader of the UNCLOS delegation, assistant secretary James Malone,
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outlining the US position. The United States will abide by obligations in UNCLOS only where they reflected customary international law, wrote Malone.

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China’s 1947 map depicting the “eleven-dash line”, precursor to the ‘none-dash line’. Credit: Wikimedia

In support, he cited the establishment of an Exclusive Economic Zone by the United States. But on the issue of deep seabed mining, the US refused to accept UNCLOS provisions, citing historic claims made through domestic legislation. The US sought full jurisdiction over its “extended continental shelf” on the basis of legal instruments like the Presidential Proclamation 2667 and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) of 1953. The US position was simple: where historic claims had been made, they would overrule UNCLOS provisions. China is making precisely the same claim with respect to its ‘nine-dash-line’ in the South China Sea. The territorial delineation of maritime boundaries, China argues, must respect its “historic rights”. To support its claim, Beijing has
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the 1947 “Map of Chinese islands in the South China Sea”, the Declaration of the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the Territorial Sea of 1958 and the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone of 1992. These instruments claim sovereign jurisdiction over the disputed Nansha/Spratly Islands, in a manner that is entirely inconsistent with the UNCLOS. Whether these claims amount to state practice or customary law is contested, but the US and Chinese positions on UNCLOS are identical in this respect.

No room for ‘compulsory’ arbitration
Second, China’s take on “compulsory dispute settlement” through the UNCLOS regime closely resembles the US position. Arguments against the US ratification of the convention routinely
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as an invitation for “baseless international lawsuits”
.

This argument is central to the US position on UNCLOS. Back in 1983, Malone argued that the “unique and unprecedented provisions of UNCLOS on dispute settlement […] will pertain to treaty parties only”.

China, similarly, has suggested that “the Philippines is abusing the dispute settlement procedures under the convention,” by resorting to compulsory arbitration. In support of its claim, Beijing argues that the current dispute concerns the delimitation of maritime boundaries, an issue from which China sought exemption in 2006 from the UNCLOS arbitration regime.

The resources below
Third, the legal and diplomatic approach of the United States to the governance of marine resources is now being emulated by China in the South China Seas.

On account of not ratifying UNCLOS, the US has mostly negotiated bilateral and regional agreements to exploit fisheries, energy and other economic resources in the oceans. Notably, the United States is keen to create a parallel regime for the governance of the Arctic Ocean to harvest its rich natural resources in a way that
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. China is merely asserting the same claim in the South China Sea. In response to the arbitration process, the position paper of the Chinese foreign ministry cites the many political agreements it has signed with the Philippines and other ASEAN countries to resolve sovereign claims through negotiation. This is perhaps China’s strongest challenge to the jurisdiction of the PCA: Beijing has asserted that the Philippines did not exhaust its options before pursuing legal means. The claim that Manila has not previously raised the management of marine resources in the sea through political channels is conceded by its lawyers.

If the South China Sea dispute marks the rise of an assertive China, its behaviour is modelled on the sole remaining superpower, the United States. Whatever the outcome of the arbitral tribunal, it is now clear that Beijing aspires towards the exceptionalism that marked US conduct in the post-war international order. If Washington sought to use the South China Sea as a flash point to contain the rise of China, it has had the unintended effect of disrupting a stable multilateral regime. In the decision’s aftermath, it is anyone’s guess how Beijing will respond.

International lawyer Julian Ku
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American pressure on the South China Sea dispute may push China “to follow the US example and withdraw from UNCLOS […] to avoid compulsory legal procedures.” For China to opt out of a critical international treaty would be disastrous – but par for the ill-thought course that the United States has steered the region towards.

Arun Mohan Sukumar is at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. He is covering the South China Sea dispute at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague at the invitation of The Wire.
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
The UN is more likely to sanction Japan before sanctioning China

Yes. China is the world's largest trading nation and amongst the largest investors and economies, accounting for up to half of all global growth over the past few years.

It would be counter productive for most nations in the world to implement sanctions against China.

In comparison, if Japan were to develop nuclear weapons, it is possible to see China leading a UN sanctions regime, with the acquiescence of the USA.
 

GreenestGDP

Junior Member
Source: JAPAN Times

The world know Shinzo Abe and Japanese right wingers are very GUNGHO in backing US in SCS.

Will the same Shinzo Abe and Japanese right wingers & Japanese people in very GUNGHO way ... ... forget about how to take ( xxxxxxx ) Hiroshima and Nagasaki intentional nuclear bombings by ... ... US ?

Two questions, however, remain unanswered to this day: Why did the U.S. carry out the twin atomic attacks when Japan appeared to be on the verge of unconditionally surrendering?

... ... And why was the second bomb dropped just three days after the first, before Japan had time to fully grasp the strategic implications of the first nuclear attack?


Why was Nagasaki nuked?
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BERLIN – Just as Hiroshima has become the symbol of the horrors of nuclear war and the essentialness of peace, the visit of the first sitting U.S. president to that city was laden with symbolism, including about the ironies of human action. As Barack Obama put it, when the United States carried out history’s first nuclear attack by dropping a bomb, “a flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.”

Two questions, however, remain unanswered to this day: Why did the U.S. carry out the twin atomic attacks when Japan appeared to be on the verge of unconditionally surrendering? And why was the second bomb dropped just three days after the first, before Japan had time to fully grasp the strategic implications of the first nuclear attack?

Months before the nuclear bombings, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. Japan’s navy and air force had been destroyed and its economy devastated by a U.S. naval blockade and relentless American firebombing raids. ... ...


Source: JAPAN Times

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