1)South China Sea – The geopolitics and it’s impact on India :-
Background :- South China Sea (hereafter referred as SCS) , has been in news for past few years, but the confrontation has never grown out of context or become large enough to be a major flash point in international geopolitics until now. The SCS confrontation has now taken a global dimension which led to rather self restrained president such as Barack Obama to take bold steps such as sending US naval vessel to enter into the water of SCS. How the SCS conflict unfolds is a case to watch out for, but to understand the future , it is necessary to understand the past and present conditions of confrontation.
Introduction:-
- The South China Sea area comprising of islands, rocks and reefs are considered strategic, economic and political assets for the littoral states in the South China Sea because, they can serve as legal base points for states to project their claims of exclusive jurisdiction over waters and resources in the SCS.
- The sea is believed to be harboring large reserves of oil and natural gas and is in demand for its rich fishing. With the rise in demand for energy resources, the disputes in the area have been further exacerbated. It is a critical navigational waterway in this region which is used from the west of the Indian Ocean to East Asia.
- The island groups and the security of the sea lanes (marine terrorism, piracy, marine ecosystems) have been perceived as important since it is an important shipping lane and ASEAN, India, Taiwan, China, Japan and South Korea are all heavily dependent upon international and extra regional trade-most of which is shipped through the area.
- As economies develop, the SCS is fast becoming the focus of tension. The straits that separate these islands are important not only because restrictions upon passage would seriously disrupt international commerce but also because control over the islands would permit dominance over those routes.
- China’s Involvement:-
- Although the assertions of sovereignty, rivalry over maritime resources, nationalism and attempts to consolidate jurisdictional and legal claims have been long standing issues where actions by one claimant or another has drawn reaction from others, it is China’s assertive actions backed by modern maritime enforcement capabilities that are proving to be a cause of concern. As such, China receives the greatest attention because it is by far the most powerful claimant and has the record of using force to pursue its territorial claims.
- China’s economic engine is becoming more dependent on imported energy, and recent Chinese moves suggest safeguarding its energy sources
near and far has become an unstated “core issue”. - As defined by the Chinese officially, core issues are those that must be protected and secured by any means including military measures. China has been relentlessly increasing its capacity to exercise control over the Sea by strengthening its capacity and capability to establish its increasing maritime domain area (MDA) and its emergence as Asia’s pre-eminent naval power.
- These moves taken by Beijing also indicate its growing aggressiveness and unilateralism, which clearly go against the spirit of the 2002 DOC (Declaration of Conduct of parties), a multilateral political document agreed upon by the ASEAN and China that calls for resolution of ‘territorial and jurisdictional disputes by peaceful means, without resorting to the threat of force.
Focus of Confrontation:-
- It is a dispute over territory and sovereignty over ocean areas, and the Paracels and the Spratlys – two island chains claimed in whole or in part by a number of countries.Alongside the fully fledged islands, there are dozens of rocky outcrops, atolls, sandbanks and reefs, such as the Scarborough Shoal.
- Although largely uninhabited, the Paracels and the Spratlys may have reserves of natural resources around them. There has been little detailed exploration of the area, so estimates are largely extrapolated from the mineral wealth of neighbouring areas.
- The sea is also a major shipping route and home to fishing grounds that supply the livelihoods of people across the region.
- The below map can help in understanding the claims:-
- More over China has been flexing its military muscle and building naval bases by reclamation of islands in the sea, as illustrated in the below map:-
- Apart from the reclamation and building artificial islands, China also claims that , historically it has sovereignty over the territory what it call as Nine Dash Line :-
- Beijing says its right to the area goes back to centuries, when the Paracel and Spratly island chains were regarded as integral parts of the Chinese nation, and in 1947 it issued a map detailing its claims. It showed the two island groups falling entirely within its territory. Those claims are mirrored by Taiwan
- Vietnam hotly disputes China’s historical account, saying China had never claimed sovereignty over the islands before the 1940s. Vietnam says it has actively ruled over both the Paracels and the Spratlys since the 17th Century – and has the documents to prove it.
- The other major claimant in the area is the Philippines, which invokes its geographical proximity to the Spratly Islands as the main basis of its claim for part of the grouping.
- Both the Philippines and China lay claim to the Scarborough Shoal (known as Huangyan Island in China) – a little more than 100 miles (160km) from the Philippines and 500 miles from China.
- Malaysia and Brunei also lay claim to territory in the South China Sea that they say falls within their economic exclusion zones, as defined by UNCLOS – the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
To sum up the confrontations are around two major islands :- Paracel and Spratly island ; and Scarborough Shoal.
Implications for INDIA :-
- Although India is a non claimant to the SCS Island it is concerned with the developments in the SCS. Even though the SCS area may seem far from the Indian mainland but in actual terms it is not so when one considers the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is also important to note that India’s trade with Japan and South Korea has
been growing and hence, it is crucial that freedom of navigation is maintained in the South China Sea through which the trading routes between India and these East Asian countries pass. India’s sea bound trade that passes through Indian Ocean constitutes 92-95 per cent of its total trade and, there are estimates that nearly 25 per cent (and growing) of this sea bound trade passes through South China Sea. - India like China is also energy deficit country and is stretching its resources all over the world to access hydrocarbons in what ever form and quantity available. India’s oil and gas exploration and extractions in Myanmar and Vietnam need to be understood in this respect. Therefore, there is no way that India would retreat from South China Sea just because China or any other country has taken an exception to its economic and naval activities in this region.
- Meanwhile, India-ASEAN trade has reached US$ 57.89 billion in 2010-11. Any major conflict in the South China Sea region is bound to impact Indian economic interests.
- Besides, India is worried that if China controls this sea space it will dictate maritime traffic, both civilian and military. Therefore, its priority is to maintain freedom of navigation in the sea both merchant and naval ships. India is of the opinion that the SCS region was a key to its energy security, and that the conflict must be resolved peacefully as per international laws.
- China has objected Indian Naval presence and oil exploration projects in and across Vietnam (INS Airavaat in 2011 , ONGC Videsh project in Vietnam in 2011 )
- This has a geopolitical significance as well. India has an advantage in Indian Ocean , to counter it China has been building chain of ports encircling India, which is otherwise known as “String of Pearls” . By being assertive in SCS , China hopes to claim a dominant position in the SCS and use this as a bargain chip in case of a conflict breaks out.String of pearls can be understood from the below map :-
- The activities of China in SCS, puts India in a disadvantageous position , it is also meddling in the Indian Neighborhood states such as Nepal, Srilanka and Pakistan.Thus it is a greater concern for national security of India. The way forward is a complex architecture of diplomatic re-balancing , which is yet to be fully realized by India, the Indian counter being Project Mausam which is still in incessant phase.
P.S. – Kindly note down the ports in String of Pearls map and other important areas , as UPSC is known to ask the question related to it – both subjective and objective.
Recent Posts
The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.