strategic importance of south china sea

Thats why the United States has urged countries to resolve maritime claim disputes peacefully and in accordance with international law. This puts more pressure on Washington to intervene and U.S. allies and partners in Asia are watching carefully and drawing conclusions about U.S. commitment and staying power in the region. Cobra Gold, hosted by Thailand and led by the United States, is the largest annual multilateral military exercise in Asia. The South China Sea is one of the most important trade pathways in the world. The message will be clear; the era of American international leadership and predominance is over and a new preeminent power has taken its place. Most of China's global trade is seaborne. Not taking a position on sovereignty allows the United States to flexibly intervene in the South China Sea to defend its interests and international rules and norms, while undercutting Chinese attempts to paint U.S. actions as a threat to Beijings sovereignty. 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But in order to achieve renewed stability in the regionto ensure that Southeast Asians are not susceptible to non-military Chinese coercionthe United States must strive to become more than just the security partner of choice. Today's world is the US-led where China is a rising giant economically and politically. The three core areas that must be defended and secured are the Malay Peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak. This is the first of three short essays examining the South China Sea as a first order strategic problem for the United States. U.S. military advantage is of limited utility in this area and Washington has struggled to convince local partners to join in freedom of navigation operations. The United States will continue to stand with our allies and partners to uphold the order that we helped build, Pencesaid. The growing size and capability of the Chinese air force, navy, and coast guard allow Beijing to consistently monitor and exercise de facto control over most of the South China Sea. As building of military facilities continued in 2015, the US explicitly announced its opposition to these constructions and tasked surveillance assets to conduct over flights in the SCS and significantly raised tensions. The USA have a direct connection to the area through various allies, connections and trade, and this will naturally continue. This access will allow for more frequent, more sustained flights over the South China Sea, including over the disputed Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal. In 2010, the US declared its freedom of navigation in the SCS to be a national interest in response to Chinas increasingly assertive posture. The strategic signal of an Indian presence in the South China Sea Harsh V. Pant India has wider stakes in South China Sea as nearly 55% of India's trade with the Indo-Pacific region passes through these waters. Expanding U.S. access to Vietnamese facilities as described above could eventually render access to Thai facilities somewhat redundant, further weakening the institutional support for the alliance in the United States. Unfortunately, the allies now lack a shared strategic outlook, thus reducing the impetus to overcome recent bilateral political hurdles. It remains entirely plausible that any Chinese strategy could have a long term goal of possessing the power to deny US or western warships access to the SCS, with China largely laying claim to most of the area as it's own waters. Not only Vietnam is the strongest opponent of the Chinese nine-dash line claim in the region, Vietnam's sustained economic growth has pushed it to emerge as an important player in the South East Asia, which China perceives is not in its interests. The Strategic Importance of the South China Sea (With reference to the geopolitical, economic, and military aspects) South China Sea is known as one of the most significant and dangerous cluster of Islands in the contemporary world. When China moved a massive oilrig, theHaiyang Shiyou 981, into Vietnams exclusive economic zone in 2014, Vietnam had limited options to respond, at either the low end or the high. African community leaders take home lessons from U.S. It can receive large aircraft (including C-17s and C-130s); it is close to a deep seaport; and it has infrastructure capable of handling command and control systems. This segment will address American interests. In particular, Thailand has a much more benign outlook on Chinas rise and on its activities in the South China Sea, and although suggestions that Bangkok would dump Washington for Beijing are certainly overstated, Thai elites are hesitant to be drawn into what they see as a U.S. effort to contain the kingdoms largest trade partner. The strategic landscape of the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia in the early 1990s was remarkably benign with optimism in full flower. The most important and least tangible stake in the South China Sea concerns the preservation (or not) of a regional rules-based order supported by U.S. power. The region also is the subject of more than a dozen overlapping and interconnected disputes over who is in charge of the various islands, rocks, shoals and reefs scattered throughout the South China Sea waters. China, too, considers control of these waters to be of high strategic importance. The United States needs to consider a wider variety of non-military responses to Chinas efforts to control the South China Sea, and more effectively build a local coalition to support these responses. Chinas militarization and territorial expansion in the South China Sea is illegal and dangerous, Vice President Pence said at the East Asia Summit last year. Utapao has been suggested as a permanent Southeast Asian Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) hub. Chinas rising military power and political influence is generating anxiety and suspicion among some of its neighbours and western powers. The Thai people are lurching towards a new political arrangement, a process that Thais have to see through for themselves. U.S. access to the South China Sea is coming under increasing threat as Chinese power increases, but can be preserved if the United States maintains a sufficient military advantage over China. A third of the world's shipping passes through it, its fisheries are critical sources of food for millions of people. . The annual Cobra Gold exercise is Asias largest multilateral military exercise. This order embodies certain foundational political principles respect for international law, preservation of the real sovereign independence of regional states, a refusal to legitimate unilateral territorial expansion, and the unconditional acceptance of the sea-lanes as a global commons. through South China Sea Port is 1400 kms long. Since the mid-1990s, China has pursued a strategy . The United States and the West more broadly can live with such an outcome. It is a rich source of hydrocarbons and natural resources. LinkedIn and 3rd parties use essential and non-essential cookies to provide, secure, analyze and improve our Services, and to show you relevant ads (including professional and job ads) on and off LinkedIn. This article aims to highlight security dynamics of the US-China competition in the Indo-Pacific associated with the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea through the prism of Balance of Threat Th. In October 2020, Hong Kong's air traffic control denied a Taiwanese flight access to Pratas Island, a Taiwan-occupied feature in the South China Sea. With the incoming administration likely to grapple early with South China Sea issues, the CSIS Southeast Asia Program, directed by Dr. Amy Searight, worked in collaboration with other Asia colleagues at CSISDr. If China succeeds, in displacing U.S. power in the Western Pacific and Chinese territorial expansion into the South China Sea becomes permanent and codified, global geopolitics will have entered a new and very different era. South China Sea has geo-strategic, geo-politic and geo-economic importance due to half of the world trade passage and presence of precious resources of oil and gas. What is the Strategic Importance of the South China Sea? Vietnam already flies modern Russian fighter jets and is expecting delivery this year of its sixth and final Kilo-class submarinesubmarines so quiet that the U.S. Navy refers to them as black holes. If the Chinese Navy wants to have its way in the South China Sea, it will have to dedicate resources to tracking those subs, a task with which the PLAN has limited experience. Burma, however, is a potential bright spot for the U.S. position in continental Southeast Asia. In addition, the United States has affirmed some responsibility for the defense of Taiwan and has close security ties with Singapore and New Zealand. Importantly, the countries of maritime Southeast Asia are not aligning only with the United States, but with a grouping of external states concerned with the nature of Chinas rise. With a new Southeast Asian strategic alignment taking shape as described, geography makes Indonesia and Malaysiaespecially due to its Sabah and Sarawak states on Borneothe regions key swing states. What countries are claiming sovereignty, and to what extent is this disrupting regional stability? It has also been known to give its fishermen military training for years, but recently this has been reported as more assertive with fishermen helping to underwrite and enforce sovereignty claims by occupying territory at sea, carrying out surveillance and harassing other vessels under the guise of civilian fishing boats. The most likely single scenario for a major military engagement against a great power adversary would be one against China centered on the South China Sea. The two major power of the world i.e. The United States also faces a challenge in enforcing international law in the South China Sea. A critical and early Chinese test of U.S. resolve is likely to come in the South China Sea, where Washington has struggled to respond effectively to assertive Chinese behavior. The Strategic Importance of the South China Sea. . But if China continues to play its cards wrong and if the United States proves itself a dependable partner, American warships could one day regularly operate out of Cam Ranh Bay, the strategically located port-of-call, for the first time since the Vietnam War. Despite all that, Beijing now faces a competition with Washington (and Delhi and Tokyo) for influence in Naypyidaw. Yet, it was and is all of that. To counter Chinas efforts to control the South China Sea, the United States needs a sustainable strategy to bolster its own capabilities, work more effectively with capable allies and partners, and strengthen the regional order. 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Importance of South China Sea The South China Sea is a busy international waterway, one of the main arteries of global trade worth more than $5 trillion and is growing year on year. Geopolitical platform, analysis of political, military, security, economic, social events with international and geopolitics relevance. The South China Sea is one of the most important economic and environmental regions in the world. The South China Sea is considered a "near sea" and its geographic proximity to the mainland is central to the China's strategic imagination and threat perception. The Asia Program promotes policy debate and intellectual discussions on U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific as well as political, economic, security, and social issues relating to the worlds most populous and economically dynamic region. The neighboring South East Asian countries of the highly volatile and busiest waterways of the South China Sea (SCS) have overlapping claims of sovereignty. Countering Chinas efforts has become a key test of perceived U.S. commitment to many in the region. That redundancy will grant the United States flexibility in a couple of ways. The global focus of economic power has traditionally been centred over the west with the UK and the USA as the key contributors; however in recent years, this has shifted east (see Figure 1), with the main reason for this being rapid urbanization in developing countries, in particular China. Shortly after the ARF concluded, an official spokesman for the Chinese Defense Ministry asserted Chinas indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea.