Sino US Geopolitical Struggle: Maritime Choke Points In South and East China Sea: Whither Their Importance?

By Phar Kim Beng
Founder/Chair
Strategic Pan Indo-Pacific Arena
Strategicpipa.com
Twitter: @indo_pan
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Strategicpipa

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Southeast Asia, has always been the cockpit of great power rivalry, by virtue of its character as a fertile landmass, which includes the strategic Indo-China area, and maritime chokepoints, the latter manifesting in the form of the existence of the Straits of Malacca, indeed, the North Natuna Sea, that belongs to the Republic of Indonesia. But the East China Sea, dominated by the allies of the United States, namely Japan and South Korea, is a perennial problem to the naval strategists of China too.

Be that as it may, Josh Kurtlanzick, at the Council for Foreign Relations, even affirmed in 2015, that the administration of then-President Barack Obama, should have “pivoted” to Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore more than any other countries in the region due to the maritime access and width with which they can provide to the US Indo Pacific command.

But what is true is not just what Southeast Asia can offer any great powers. Rather, Southeast Asia is a rich reservoir of fossil resources ranging from oil to the Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), that is attended by a huge appetite for them too.

In fact, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA), based in Dubai, the renewable energy of Southeast Asia is one of the best prospects that the region can offer to itself, invariably, to the world; making it the source of great power competition to break into this region first.

For a more nuanced and careful analysis of the energy trajectory of Southeast Asia viz the rest of the world, a reference to the International Energy Agency confirms just as much. Southeast Asia consumes a lot of energy as it has close to 680 million people, and not all ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) have taken to embracing renewable energy as aggressively as China. The future of renewable energy would be in Southeast Asia, which can lead to a contest between the US and China, affirmed a top energy analyst in Singapore.

That Southeast Asia is a “collective” jewel in the crown of any great powers that seem to want to assert its preeminence in the Indo-Pacific region, which in the ASEAN Outlook on Indo-Pacific (AOIP) considers Indian Ocean and South China Sea as a contiguous maritime area, is now a given. ASEAN Leaders Summit had approved of AOIP in June 2019 in Bangkok, Thailand.

Thus, historically, while the value of Southeast Asia is typified by the glories of possessing this region in the colonial era — — especially its burgeoning spice trade — — in the current era it is a region that is capable of growing at twice the rate of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), even after the effects are SARS Cov II are factored into the calculation in future due to the younger demography in the region, which makes it adept to the transition of a global economy driven by sound use of algorithm, artificial intelligence, analysis of big data and automation.

While COVID 19 will continue to linger, there is no reason to doubt that Southeast Asia will be more important than anyone cares to acknowledge. Anecdotal search in Google.com and Yippy.com can produce important glimpses of this region.

Yet, it is interesting that Southeast Asia has been defined by the geopolitical contest of the great powers in the South China Sea alone, as noted Kavi Kittichongvorn based in the International Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) at the prestigious Chulalongkorn University.

According to Kavi, the Greater Mekong Region (GMR) that starts with Lanqiang river in Yunnan Province in China has had more effects of affecting the livelihoods of the riparian states downstream, such as Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos (Source: various interviews with Kavi Kittichongvorn between 2018–2019, especially when the author of this article was briefly the Director of Political and Security Community in ASEAN Secretariat in 2019).

The latter, apparently, is made valid when more electrical hydro dams are completed in the Mekong River, or, the source of the river in China upstream.

But if one were to strip away all the issues mentioned above, the predominant tagline of the global media is the structural conflict of China and the United States over their geopolitical primacy in Southeast Asia, especially South China Sea, which hosts up to USD 5 trillion of maritime bourne trade, according to William Pesek, a columnist at Bloomberg.

Two, great powers challenging each other, according to Graham Allison at Harvard University, makes for a Thucydides Trap; not unlike what the city-states of Greece and Sparta, had experienced more two thousand years ago in 250 B.C.

Therein the puzzle: why should something that has happened in the ancient corner of Europe more than two thousand years ago, suddenly become analogous, to the Sino-US conflict that will shape the fate of the whole Indo-Pacific region? This is because such rivalries have happened too many times before when a preponderant power does not share the same political system or open society of the next rival.

While Graham Allison offered sixteen sets of such competitive dyads, he also explained that with wisdom and prudent statecraft the Sino-US relationship, neither countries are necessarily “destined” for war. This seems to be the view of Declan Sullivan, a keen analyst of Graham Allison’s work at The Strategy Bridge.

The truth of the matter on the Sino-US conflict may not be encapsulated by a classic Thucydides Trap alone. Rather, it is also shaped by the extent to which China has grown economically over the last twenty years especially when China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2002, with the sponsorship and blessings of President Bill Clinton, if not the previous Bush administration too.

But to the degree both countries’ bilateral relationships have witnessed a downward spiral, the most proximate causes seem to be, China’s behavior in the South China Sea coupled with the United States’ tendency to bring China to book over a large slew of trade issues.

To the degree the latter is valid, China has also pointed to the US attempt to act in bad faith since 2015 on every trade and financial issues, preceding even the arrival of President Donald Trump.

As such, whether Sino-US cauldron has reached a point of no return, or, would it be salvageable, depends on what degree has Southeast Asia been “sucked into” the conflict between 2015–2020, and what does the future portend for the rest of the world after the Presidential election of the United States after November 3, 2002?

The answer to this question depends on Southeast Asia’s maritime chokepoints being used for the titanic struggle of the two major powers, both in the sea and under the water in submarine and anti submarine warfare.