What is the U.S. strategy in the South China Sea?–May 17, 2012 Copyright © 2012 www.coshoctontribune.com. All rights reserved.

May 17, 2012

What is the U.S. strategy in the South China Sea?

Xiaoxiong Yi

The U.S. seems to be sending a mixed signal to Asia.

On the one hand, the Obama administration has reassured one of its closest allies in the region, the Philippines, that the U.S. is standing ready to defend the Philippines from any “third country attack.” On the other hand, however, Washington has maintained that it will remain “neutral” in the Manila-Beijing confrontation in the South China Sea, potentially the biggest flashpoint for a conflict in Asia.

China is escalating its quarrel with the Philippines about the Scarborough Shoal in South China Sea. The People’s Liberation Army Daily, the newspaper of the Chinese army, ran a tough editorial recently, warning that China would not allow anyone to interfere with its sovereignty claim about the entire South China Sea.

“Not only the Chinese government will not agree, neither will the Chinese people, and the Chinese Army will disagree even more,” the editorial declared. To walk the walk, five ships of the PLA Navy Southern Fleet, including two guided missile destroyers, is sailing toward South China Sea on a two-month-long deployment. And according to China Daily, Beijing’s official mouthpiece, “In order to better protect China’s maritime rights, another 36 inspection ships will join the Chinese surveillance fleet.”

The U.S.’ seemingly “non-committal” stance in South China Sea has been criticized by the Philippines and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. As the tense confrontation between Manila and Beijing enters its second month, attention is shifting toward what role the U.S. might play in this escalating territorial conflict in the South China Sea.

During their unprecedented “2+2″ meeting with Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto del Rosario and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin in Washington earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had told their Philippine counterparts that the U.S. will maintain a “neutral stand” in the sovereignty dispute.

In the same meeting, however, Clinton and Panetta also made it clear the U.S. is committed to the 1951 Philippine-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty, which provides for each country to come to the other’s defense in the event of a third country attack.

So what is the U.S. strategy in the South China Sea?

The U.S. strategy can be summarized in one sentence: to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

As Simon Tisdall, of the Guardian, puts it, “China syndrome dictates Washington’s Asia-Pacific strategy. Barack Obama has no wish to conjure the specter of a new cold war but is determined to beat back any Chinese bid for hegemony in Asia-Pacific.”

To do so, the first step in the U.S. South China Sea strategy is to build up the defense capabilities of the Philippines and other members of ASEAN so to improve their ability to protect their own shores.

As George Amurao, of Mahidol University in Bangkok, said, “Washington’s openness towards Manila’s military wish list suggests a belief that well-armed smaller claimants can keep China at bay. In an official statement released by the Philippines on May 3, the U.S. government has agreed to triple the Foreign Military Financing it will award to the Philippines in 2012.”

As part of Washington’s high-profile foreign policy shift toward the Asia-Pacific, the U.S. also is going beyond ASEAN to enhance and enlarge its alliance system with other key states in the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, Japan, South Korea and India. To counterbalance China’s growing power, the Obama administration announced the establishment of a permanent military base in Darwin, Australia. Amid the global troop cuts, U.S. ballistic missile defense cooperation with Japan is well advanced, and the U.S. military presence in South Korea will be reinforced. And Washington’s desire to contain China’s ambitions is a driving force behind the recent rapprochement with New Delhi.

Finally, to safeguard one of the busiest sea lanes in the world, the U.S. evolving Asia-Pacific strategy includes a stronger presence in the South China Sea. “This area is growing in importance to the future of the U.S. economy and our national security,” announced Panetta, “this means improving capabilities that maintain our military’s technological edge and freedom of action.”

While an all out U.S.-China shooting war in South China Sea is not an inevitability, the U.S.’ new South China Sea strategy represents a delicate tightrope act, one that aims to contain China’s growing territorial ambitions in the South China Sea but avoid to oblige the U.S. to an open confrontation with China.

Conflict coming in South China Sea–Copyright © 2012 Lancaster Eagle Gazette, April 26, 2012, All rights reserved

Conflict coming in South China Sea

Xiaoxiong Yi

Philippine navy and Chinese patrol vessels once again are engaging in a dangerous standoff, this time near the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea — an area Manila and Beijing claim as sovereign territory.

The Chinese-Philippine conflict first started on April 10, when two Chinese surveillance ships prevented a Philippine naval warship from arresting Chinese fishermen found poaching in Scarborough Shoal. The conflict is 124 nautical miles from the Philippines and occurred within Manila’s Exclusive Economic Zone. EEZ is recognized under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which China is a signatory.

The Philippines moved forcefully in the early stages of the confrontation, sending its largest and most modern warship, Gregorio Del Pilar, to intercept the Chinese ships. A standoff ensued, however. China sent in more ships, and it is reported that Chinese nuclear submarines are being dispatched to the disputed waters.

In the recent Scarborough conflict, Beijing also flatly rejected Manila’s request to take the dispute to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea and claimed that Filipino sailors had harassed Chinese fishermen in Scarborough Shoal. In return, Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin testified it is the Philippines who are being bullied by China. “How can an ant bully an elephant?” asked Gazmin. Manila now is calling for an international diplomatic offensive to pressure Beijing into accepting recognized international law.

The Scarborough Shoal conflict reflects at least the second time in less than a year the Chinese navy has faced down the navies of smaller South East Asian states in South China Sea. The Sino-Association of Southeast Asian Nations disputes in South China Sea took the center stage in June 2011 as Chinese patrol boats slashed cables of the survey ships operated by Petro Vietnam. Hanoi publicly denounced China as intentionally attacking its ships inside Vietnam’s EEZ and the tensions had fueled anti-Chinese sentiment across Vietnam.

With Chinese maritime power growing, Beijing is claiming the entire South China Sea as China’s territorial water. Philippines and other ASEAN countries are becoming increasingly worried. Viewing from Southeast Asian capitals, Beijing is taking a very aggressive stance on its South China Sea claims.

“It would be rather absurd if England were to try to claim sovereignty over most of the English Channel, Iran the Persian Gulf, Vietnam the Gulf of Tonkin, Japan the Sea of Japan, or Mexico the Gulf of Mexico,” wrote Vietnamese journalist Huy Duong. “But that is exactly what China is trying to do by claiming most of the South China Sea, a body of water about the size of the Mediterranean Sea bordered by 10 nations and the main gateway between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.”

As Manila remains locked in the standoff with Beijing, on April 16, a 12-day, large scale joint war game between the United States and the Philippines — Balikatan or “shoulder-to-shoulder” in Tagalog — got under way in the South China Sea.

While the U.S.-Philippine joint military exercises take place every year, the context within which the Balikatan 2012 is taking place has changed. As Amiel Ungar of Israel National News points out, “It was a classic case in of calling in big brother after a run-in with the local bully. Although scheduled way in advance, the annual war games involving the U.S. military and armed forces from the Philippines could not have come at a more appropriate time — from Manila’s perspective.”

As China has come out on top in every dispute with its smaller South East Asian neighbors, these “aggrieved nations protest and cite the rule of law, but they are ultimately accepting the principle that might makes right, …” wrote Michael Auslin of American Enterprise Institute. “At this rate, the United States will find it increasingly hard not to be drawn into future confrontations. As it becomes harder to contain Chinese muscle-flexing, America’s allies in the region will increasingly call for it to live up to its security commitments and help defend the freedom of the seas.”

Beijing’s assertive policy of ratcheting up pressure on ASEAN claimants to the South China Sea has unleashed a coming conflict in the maritime commons for energy and security. The Obama administration’s policy of “return to Asia” will, on the one hand, raise expectations for a U.S. leadership role in the region and, on the other hand, further exacerbate tensions already generated by the territorial disputes between China and ASEAN states. South China Sea, the most dangerous waters in Asia, has just become scarier.

In solving North Korea problem, all roads lead to Beijing–Copyright © 2012 www.lancastereaglegazette.com. All rights reserved.

The 2012 Nuclear Security Summit, attended by leaders from 54 nations, including the United States and China, concluded in Seoul on March 27. South Korea is an important choice for the global nuclear summit because of its unique location as a non-nuclear-weapon state with a nuclear-armed North Korea on its border.

Pyongyang, however, had hijacked the world nuclear conference by announcing a plan to blast a satellite into space on the back of a long-range rocket in mid-April. The U.S. and its allies immediately condemned the North’s satellite launching as a disguised way of testing military missiles in defiance of the U.N. Security Council resolutions 1718 and 1874, which banned “all missile activity” by North Korea, including “any launch using ballistic missile technology.”

Washington has called Pyongyang’s announcement of the launch “highly provocative.” Merely a month ago, U.S. chief negotiator on North Korea Glyn Davies and North Korean vice foreign minister Kim Kye-Gwan held “substantive and serious” bilateral nuclear talks in Beijing. Under the Feb. 29 Davis-Kim agreement, Pyongyang agreed to set a moratorium on its long-range missile launches, suspend its enrichment of nuclear fuel and permit the resumption of inspections at North Korea’s nuclear facilities by IAEA representatives. For its part, Washington pledged to provide North Korea with 265,000 tons of food aid.

Some analysts and media pundits have hailed the Obama administration’s “Food for Peace” plan as offering “plenty of reasons for hope.” As an editorial in the Pittsburgh Post put it, “What’s different now? First, North Korea’s previous leader, Kim Jong-Il, died in December and was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-Un. When an older hardliner is replaced by a younger ruler, there is some reason to look hopefully for positive change. The other difference is North Korea’s 24 million people have suffered more hunger, penury and isolation since talks with Pyongyang were suspended in 2008. Everyone should be hopeful about the prospects for this agreement. A North Korea that does not wave its nuclear weapons around is a meritorious goal in Asia and in the world.”

North Korea’s decision to launch another satellite around the April 12-16 launch window has greatly frustrated these North Korea watchers. “This planned launch,” Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia and Pacific Security Affairs Peter Lavoy told the House Armed Services Committee, “manifests North Korea’s desire to test and expand its long-range missile capability. We believe this reflects their lack of desire to follow through on their commitments, and so we’ve?been forced to suspend providing nutritional assistance to North Korea.”

So just when one thought it was safe to go back to the negotiation table with the North Koreans, Pyongyang pulled the rug out from under everyone. What is Pyongyang up to?

Perhaps no one should be surprised by Pyongyang’s sudden change of course. As Ralph Cossa of Center for Strategic and International Studies points out, “the promised U.S. nutritional assistance was neither in the form nor quantity desired, came with monitoring strings attached-recall the North had just turned down an offer for food aid from South Korea because it wasn’t ‘pure’, i.e., it included monitors. Why put up with such indignities when Beijing continues to provide for all your needs with no apparent strings attached and despite your bad behavior?”

Indeed, China is the key in solving the Korean quandary and once again, it all comes down to China-unless Beijing steps in and stops protecting Pyongyang unconditionally, everything will go according to Pyongyang’s plan: creating divisions between the United States and its allies by trying to fly a missile or two through Northeast Asia has long been a time-honored North Korean game.

As a result, some in the Obama administration are now beginning to openly criticize China for its knowingly ignorance of North Korea’s bad behavior. Most recently, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made it clear that he sees the “reckless behavior of the North Korean regime” as “enabled by their friends in China.”

China and the United States have significant shared interests on the Korean Peninsula. However, for the sake of Sino-U.S. cooperation, as Gordon Flake of the Mansfield Foundation emphasized, “Chinese leaders need to realize that their current approach is counterproductive, threatening not only U.S.-China cooperation, but the very stability of the Korean Peninsula and the region. What’s required is not for China to abandon its erstwhile ally, but simply to stop shielding North Korea from the consequences of its actions.”

Central Asia: The old battlefield for a new ‘Great Game’–The Marietta Times, June 18, 2011

America’s global strategic position has just been further challenged and eroded. The China-sponsored Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was joined by Afghanistan in mid-June at the 2011 SCO Summit in Astana, Kazakhstan’s new capital.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with its six original members, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, was founded in 2001 in Shanghai. Today, the SCO is a robust political and military organization that works year-round at many levels, from high-powered summits to foreign and defense minister meetings. It is also aimed at creating a “common security sphere” in and around Central Asia.

The SCO, once maintained it had no plans for expansion, is changing its course. Mongolia, Iran, India and Pakistan are all its “observers” now, with Belarus and Sri Lanka as its “dialogue partners.” Moreover, although SCO claims that it has no plans to become a military bloc, its key members’ emphasis on “increased threats of terrorism, extremism and separatism” is calling for a full-scale cooperation of armed forces.

With Afghanistan becomes its observer and then further down the line a full member, the SCO’s strategy is shifting to be heavily focused on Afghanistan, a state at the heart of the Eurasian Continent where a drawdown of U.S. and NATO troops is in the offing. “NATO’s leaving,” says Dmitry Kosyrev of Russian International News Agency, “will change the region, but it will not necessarily become safer or more stable.”

Central Asia, the region extending from Iran in the west to the Xinjiang region of China in the east and from the Russian steppes in the north to Pakistan in the south, is the true heartland of Euro-Asia in the 21st century. In 1904, Sir Halford Mackinder, the father of geopolitics, predicted that “who rules the heartland rules the world” and “control of the heartland by any one power could be a springboard to world domination.” Mackinder’s theory was much derided at the time because the heartland of Euro-Asia was divided between then-imperial powers. A century later, however, Mackinder’s prediction has finally come true in this reborn heartland of the Eurasian Continent.

The United States has vital interests in this heartland. “The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline project and the mineral and hydrocarbon resources of the Central Asia are important to the U.S.,” writes Shrinivasrao Sohoni, advisor to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, “not only for fueling its economy, but also to keep them out of its fast-emerging rival China’s reach. Juxtaposed against the Russia, and intervening between Europe and China, this region is also of primary strategic value. It is crucial for the U.S. to position itself in this space in order to retain and protect the option of controlling and drawing on its resources. The other equally important objective is to block China’s push into Central Asia and its southwestward initiatives from the Karakoram, through Afghanistan, to the naval and sea port being developed by China at Gwadar, Pakistan, and beyond to the Gulf and the east coast of Africa.”

As the Shanghai Cooperation Organization edging toward an eventual merger to counter-balance NATO, many analysts see the deepening collaboration between Russia, China, Iran, and key Central Asian states as a Mackinder geostrategic nightmare for America.

“Not surprisingly,” noted Andrei Volodin at Russian Academy of Sciences, “the prospect of SCO enlargement and its growing influence on world politics is hardly welcomed by the Americans, who see these new processes as signs of the growing geopolitical activity of China and Russia.”

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya of Canadian Centre for Research on Globalization has gone one step further, “The chess pieces for a colossal geostrategic project are being put into place and coming together. In Eurasia and beyond a ‘Coalition of the Reluctant’ has evolved, from what was put together by mutual concerns, into a global counter-alliance. Such a Eurasian alliance would dwarf the U.S. At best, America would become a secondary power like France, Britain, and Germany.”

The reemergence of Central Asia as a key region will have significant influence on both world politics and America’s global strategy. While the domestic unpopularity of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan is understandable, maintaining American power in Central Asia and deploying American forces in this pivotal region, including base-building in Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan, will serve to protect immediate as well as long-term U.S. strategic and economic interests. To fail to do so will only result in the emergence of new dominate player or players in this vital heartland.

© Copyright 2011 The Marietta Times. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy: Development under autocracy–The Marietta Times, May 28, 2011

The man who built Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, 87, resigned from his last cabinet position as the Minister Mentor on May 14.

Henry Kissinger has described Lee Kuan Yew as “a big man on a small stage.” “One of the asymmetries of history,” wrote Kissinger of Singapore’s patriarch Lee, “is the lack of correspondence between the abilities of some leaders and the power of their countries.” And Richard Nixon once speculated that, had Lee, Singapore’s founding father and master strategist, lived in another time and another place, he might have “attained the world stature of a Churchill, a Disraeli, or a Gladstone.”

As the architect of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew has ruled the city-state for more than five decades. Today, his stage, says Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, “does not look quite so small. Singapore’s per capita GNP is now higher than that of its erstwhile colonizer, Great Britain. It has the world’s busiest port, is the third-largest oil refiner and a major center of global manufacturing and service industries. And this move from poverty to plenty has taken place within one generation. In 1965, Singapore ranked economically with Chile and Mexico; today its per capita GNP is five times theirs.”

Lee Kuan Yew not only has shaped the fate of Singapore, but also is one of the most powerful minds that helps to shape the course of Asian politics. As Lucian Pye, author of Asian Power and Politics, wrote, Lee is a statesman “who knew how to ‘get it right’ in world politics. Throughout his career, Lee’s analysis of political problems displays the workings of a brilliant lawyer’s mind unencumbered by lawyer’s jargon. He also demonstrates a genius for reading human character. His forthright evaluations of the personalities of a host of foreign leaders provide a degree of candor rare in the memoirs of political leaders.”

One of most important legacies of Lee Kuan Yew, however, is his belief that economic development has nothing to do with political democracy. Lee has managed a miraculous economic transformation in Singapore; but he also maintained a tight political control over the country. “Singapore’s government,” says Zakaria, “can best be described as a ‘soft’ authoritarian regime, and at times it has not been so soft.”

Served in the cabinet without any interruption for 52 years and as a blatant admirer of the 16th century Italian political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli, Lee Kuan Yew’s name is often synonymous with dictator. “I have never been over-concerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader,” Lee once said, “between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I am meaningless.”

“Lee Kuan Yew was a formidable authoritarian leader who fully appreciated the value of fear,” noted Roberto Coloma of Agence France-Presse, “people who dared to oppose Lee often found themselves in court, while dissidents were held without charge as threats to national security. Lee’s admirers insist the end justified the means-Singapore is now the second-richest society in Asia whose economic model is admired by many developing countries.”

Lee Kuan Yew does not believe that the Western concepts of democracy and human rights will work in Asia. “Lee Kuan Yew’s track record,” stated former South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung, “makes it obvious that his admonition to Americans ‘not to foist their system indiscriminately on societies in which it will not work’ implies that Western-style democracy is not applicable to East Asia… Lee makes these claims to justify his rejection of Western-style democracy. He even dislikes the one man, one vote principle, so fundamental to modern democracy, saying that he is not ‘intellectually convinced’ it is best.”

Lee is also critical of the social breakdown that he sees in America and doubts that American-style individualism will ever catch on in Asia. “The expansion of the rights of the individual has come at the expense of orderly society,” so says Lee Kuan Yew.

It is the Lew Kuan Yew-style of economic growth under authoritarian rule, rather than the American belief that without political democratization, there will be no sustainable economic development, that is now spreading across Southeast and East Asia. Lee Kuan Yew has provided authoritarian regimes in Asia and beyond with a powerful justification that economic development can only come with the blessing of a political autocracy.

© Copyright 2011 The Marietta Times. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

North Korea, China are strange bedfellows–Zanesville Times Recorder, July 26, 2011

Pyongyang is sending up an ominous flare again, this time, the threat to commence a “merciless sacred war” against South Korea. And viewing from Washington, North Korea poses a “very real” threat to peace and stability in East Asia.

North Korea launched two attacks against South Korea in 2010, and they might attack again, says chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen.

“North Korea shows no sign of relenting in pursuit of its nuclear capabilities, and I am not convinced they won’t provoke again,” America’s highest ranking military officer warned in Seoul on July 14. “I have said for a long time the only thing that is predictable about North Korea is their unpredictability. The U.S. and South Korean forces have a sense of urgency to work on planning to deter the North from further provocations. And the expectation is that unless the leadership in the North is deterred, they will continue to attack.”

To deter North Korea, Mullen urged Chinese leaders “to play a leadership role” in restraining its ally during his recent four-day visit to Beijing. China is North Korea’s major ally and its economic lifeline.

“I believe that China certainly has influence in Pyongyang,” Mullen said. “With Beijing’s growing power and capabilities comes responsibility for regional and global stability.”

Looking from the outside in, the longtime ties between Beijing and Pyongyang are enduring, and everything is rosy in a relationship that, says Chinese President Hu Jintao, “has stood the test of history.”

Most recently, in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the North Korea-China Mutual Assistance Treaty, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il vowed to strengthen ties with Beijing: “The conclusion of the treaty marked an epoch-making event which provided a permanent basis for the DPRK-China cooperative relations sealed on the road of struggle for independence against imperialism and for socialism.”

His Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, also reassured the Kims that “it is the unshakable strategic policy of the Chinese party and government to steadily consolidate and develop the Sino-DPRK cooperative relations.”

Looking beyond the surface, however, the debate is raging in China on its bond with North Korea, and the relationship is becoming an increasingly difficult one.

“As an estranged couple in the middle of a divorce who smile and hold hands to keep up appearances for the cameras, a similar description serves well to characterize ties between China and North Korea,” Sunny Lee of Asia Times said.

It is true that China is North Korea’s most important (and virtually only) ally, biggest trading partner and main source of food and fuel. Since the Korean War divided the Peninsula, China has lent political support to three generations of the Kim Dynasty: Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il and now Kim the Third, Kim Jong-Un.

But China, as an emerging world power with increasing international responsibilities and prestige, does not welcome Pyongyang’s military provocations and does not endorse the Kims’ nuclear adventurism.

China, in fact, is angry at North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship, especially after Pyongyang’s 2009 nuclear test.

As Barbara Demick of the Los Angeles Times writes, “North Korea’s latest nuclear test raises the question of just how long the bonds forged between old communist allies will endure. The test was conducted barely 50 miles from the Chinese border. The ground rumbled in northeast China and schools were evacuated because of fears of an earthquake. It was quite shocking-the location where the North did the test was a lot closer to China than to where Kim Jong-Il is living in Pyongyang.”

China’s North Korea policy experts are divided on how to handle North Korea. Beijing’s official mouthpiece, Global Times, surveyed 20 of China’s top foreign policy experts and found them split down the middle –10 arguing for tough policy on North Korea and 10 opposed.

“Traditionally, China has been very forthcoming to North Korea, but now there is a feeling that Pyongyang is causing us too much trouble,” Zhang Liangui, China’s leading Korea expert, told the Global Times.

Divided on its policy toward its “lips and teeth” ally, China is alarmed that North Korea, if not managed, might become a threat to China itself. Consequently, as Andrew Scobell of Texas A&M University said, “No action by China should be ruled out where North Korea is concerned,” including stopping propping up Pyongyang and allowing the North to fall and a contingency plan to dispatch troops to North Korea in case of instability.

South China Sea is the most dangerous water in Asia–Lancaster Eagle Gazette, July 7, 2011

The South China Sea is becoming Asia’s most dangerous waters. Tensions are escalating between China and major Southeast Asian states over the Spratly Islands in South China Sea. Disputes could lead to grave instability in Asia.

Viewing from Southeast Asian capitals, Beijing is taking a very aggressive stance on its claims in the potentially oil- and gas-rich maritime area, and China has initiated a series of provocations that could escalate further into a full-scale conflict.

The Spratly Islands, named after British mariner Richard Spratly, are part of a cluster of more than 650 islands, islets, reefs, cays and atolls in the South China Sea. Together, they comprise less than five square kilometers of land area, but spread over more than 400,000 square kilometers of sea. They are claimed in whole or in part by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. The area now is deemed by U.S. intelligence as one of the top flashpoint areas in the world.

The disputed islands are mostly uninhabited but include vital shipping lanes and major reserves of oil and gas. As CNN reports, “Chinese estimate suggests as much as 213 billion barrels of oil lie untapped in the South China Sea, which, if true, would make it the largest oil reserve outside Saudi Arabia.”

The competing claims in the South China Sea are nothing new; territorial assertions to the islands stretch back decades. But the dispute took center stage in recent months as Chinese patrol boats slashed cables of the survey ships operated by Petro Vietnam in late May and again in early June. Vietnam is not the only nation skirmishing with Chinese patrol boats; the Philippines also is angered by Chinese boats threatening to ram its survey ships. And in June alone, the Chinese Navy’s South Sea Fleet has staged six military exercises in South China Sea.

Hanoi is publicly accusing China of “intentionally” attacking its ships inside Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone. “The tension has fueled anti-Chinese sentiment across Vietnam,” reports Joel Adriano of Manila Times, “with thousands taking to the streets in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to protest Chinese naval operations in the disputed waters.”

“Hanoi has no illusions about Beijing’s readiness to provoke,” said David Brown of Asia Times, “managing its unequal relationship with its northern neighbor is the core concern of Hanoi’s foreign policy. To avoid war with the northern colossus, history suggests, the Vietnamese will kowtow but finally fight rather than capitulate.”

China’s risk-taking behavior also rattled the Philippines. The Philippines officially is protesting the Chinese “incursions.” “If they attack us, we will fight back,” announced General Eduardo Oban, Chief of Armed Forces of the Philippines, referring to “repeated” Chinese intrusions into the Philippines-claimed portion of the Spratly Islands.

What is more important, the Philippines is welcoming the U.S. to get back in Southeast Asia. As Al Labita, a Filipino journalist, noted, “Manila is seeking American weaponry and assurances to keep China’s ‘gunboat diplomacy’ in check. From waging a joint war against Islamic terrorists, the United States and Philippines now find themselves shifting to another battle front: checking China’s provocations on the high seas. In what could be a prelude to an imminent face-off with China, American and Filipino naval forces are launching war games on June 28-July 8 off the coast of Palawan Province, west of Manila, near the hotly contested Spratly islands in the South China Sea.”

To hedge against a more assertive China, not just Vietnam and the Philippines, but other Southeast Asian states also are turning to Washington. As John Mair of Reuters puts it, “Harsh rhetoric and occasional standoffs have long been part of the jousting over the contested South China Sea, but recently the incidents are more frequent and the complaints from Southeast Asian capitals about China’s actions are much louder. The region cannot take on Beijing militarily, but nor do they want to roll over and lose territories near their coastlines. Internationalizing the dispute, including encouraging a U.S. presence in the sea, is one way to protect their interests.”

Risks are growing in South China Sea. Incidents at high seas involving China and major Southeast Asian states are turning South China Sea into a “danger zone.” Public and nationalist sentiment might force political leaders to adopt a more belligerent tone on the sea, further escalate into diplomatic crisis or even armed confrontation — not that any of the countries want to have a conflict, but a conflict of miscalculation, misapprehension and misperception.