OP-ED: Global trade depends heavily on the South China Sea since it facilitates one-third of international maritime commerce while being an essential location for geopolitical competition. The regulatory framework that controls access to its waters faces growing difficulties. The People’s Republic of China has strengthened its maritime status quo transformation efforts, thus leading to a wider conflict about maintaining international rules-based systems.
Through the vague “nine-dash line”, China has expanded its territorial claims, thus leading to significant transformations across the region. Beijing has conducted extensive land reclamation activities, which transformed reefs and shoals into artificial islands that house airstrips and logistics facilities, and missile systems. These facilities enable China to better track activities while controlling maritime routes and applying forceful pressure against smaller neighbouring states. The Chinese actions violate UNCLOS legal provisions as well as ignore court decisions which challenge extensive historical claims. China has recently intensified its maritime strategy by drawing a “ten-dash line” which extends beyond Taiwan to claim sovereignty over the island, while intensifying conflicts with Taiwan and the worldwide community.
The United States has taken steps to strengthen its security presence in the Indo-Pacific region as a response to current events. The United States performs regular Freedom of Navigation Operations to defend international maritime access and uphold the principle of open water. United States foreign policy now focuses on strengthening bilateral alliances alongside expanded multilateral partnerships. Through its enhanced security alliance with the Philippines, Washington provides ongoing maritime rights backing to Manila through enhanced joint operations and capacity enhancement programs.
The responsibility for achieving this equilibrium now extends beyond both the United States and the claimant states. European nations have stepped up their engagement because they need to protect their vital maritime trade routes. France, together with Germany and the United Kingdom, has strengthened their naval operations to show backing for UNCLOS principles and navigation freedom. European naval forces, including Italy, have made public statements that the region needs global attention for stability purposes. The South China Sea’s global trade and security are supported by these periodic naval deployments, although they occur less often than U.S. operations.
The South China Sea situation now features India as one of its key participating nations. Through its Act East policy and its rising maritime trade needs, India defends open seas while advocating for a rules-based international order. India does not possess territorial claims in the South China Sea, yet it has strengthened naval exercises and maritime domain awareness partnerships with Southeast Asian countries while establishing defence collaborations. The strategic actions improve regional stability while demonstrating that any attempt to alter maritime governance unilaterally will face unified opposition.
Southeast Asian states handle these forces by using strategic hedging as their approach. These nations stay away from rigid alliances with China, yet they keep building trade and investment relations with China and simultaneously develop security relations with the United States, Japan, Australia and India and through ASEAN diplomatic channels. Vietnam has improved its maritime strength while maintaining economic relations with China, while the Philippines develops its defence ties with external powers. The hedging strategy enables nations to protect their sovereignty while managing risks during dangerous times.
The South China Sea maintains more than its current significance in terms of fisheries, hydrocarbons and shipping lanes. The dispute at its essence represents a clash between two opposing norms about whether international governance based on law and open access and equal sovereignty can survive against concentrated power. China’s military construction activities and refusal to accept judicial decisions about its historical claims threaten the foundations of these established principles. Multiple nations have developed parallel approaches which combine military deterrents for raising coercive costs alongside diplomatic networks for sustaining normative pressure alongside legal mechanisms to enforce UNCLOS standards in dispute resolution processes.
The countermeasures in question have several limitations that need to be taken into consideration. The ability to work together is impeded by the different perceptions of threats, by asymmetric capabilities and by the strong economic ties that exist between Southeast Asian states and China. European navies are unable to maintain a permanent large-scale presence in the region, and the tendency of Southeast Asian states to hedge makes it more difficult to have a unified response; the risk of escalation from maritime incidents always remains high. Thus, the maintenance of order requires diplomatic efforts to be ongoing while having effective incident-management systems and deterrence strategies which reduce the likelihood of coercion without leading to unnecessary conflict.
Despite these challenges, distributed patrols, strengthened partnerships, cooperative capacity-building and sustained diplomatic engagement have increased the costs and reduced the viability of unilateral dominance. To support this strategy stakeholders should take the following concrete steps: accelerate the negotiations to reach a binding ASEAN-China Code of Conduct that includes incident-management procedures; expand the maritime domain awareness networks to enable sharing of surveillance data between partners; establish institutionalised joint capacity-building programs for regional coast guards; and invest in legal-diplomatic efforts that will keep arbitration outcomes and UNCLOS principles central to dispute resolution. Such actions will strengthen predictable norms and reduce the chances of conflict.
The South China Sea has become a global test of international resolve. States should maintain coordinated deterrence and keep diplomatic channels open and diversify their economic dependencies to preserve the normative foundations of maritime governance. However, if coercive strategies continue unchecked, the alternative may be a more hierarchical order in which access is determined by power rather than law. In the coming years, policymakers will decide whether law or might will govern the future of maritime security through their balance between deterrence, dialogue and economic interdependence.
[The opinions expressed in this article are of the author. Europeantimes.org takes no responsibility for the same.]
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Simon Hutagalung
Simon Hutagalung is a retired Indonesian Foreign Ministry diplomat and received his Master’s degree in Political Science and Comparative Politics from the City University of New York. He writes opinion pieces for Europeantimes and all opinions expressed in his article are his own.
