Settle any SCS dispute ‘through talks’

JAPANESE submarine “Kuroshio” has joined helicopter carrier “Kaga” and destroyers “Inazuma” and “Suzutsuki” in anti-submarine warfare exercises in the South China Sea, the Japanese defense ministry announced this week. The submarine called at Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay Monday, then joined the other three warships just southwest of Scarborough Shoal.

Scarborough Shoal is Panatag, also called Bajo de Masinloc. It is an islet just west of Zambales, well within the 370-kilometer Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. But in 2012, in a confrontation with Chinese ships, the Philippines chose to withdraw and so Scarborough is now described in international reports as Beijing-controlled, although Filipino fishermen have been allowed to fish in its rich waters.

Japan’s entry into the South China Sea with its warships has been described as the latest challenge to China’s military buildup and in the sea, 80 percent of which it claims as its sovereign territory. Like the United States and other maritime nations, Japan rejects this claim of sovereignty and so it is now carrying out naval exercises in the area.

China’s foreign ministry has called on Tokyo to “respect the efforts made by regional countries to resolve the South China Sea issue through talks.” It was referring to China’s agreement with the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to draw up a “Code of Conduct” aimed at avoiding confrontation and conflict in the South China Sea.

Certain other nations, notably the US, are firm in saying the South China Sea is an international waterway and cannot be claimed by any nation as its sovereign territory. The US regularly sends its ships to the sea, claiming freedom of navigation, and sends its planes flying near islands which China has built out of rocky islets. These moves have been protested by China but there have been no violent confrontations.

Japan’s decision to send a submarine, a carrier, and two destroyers into the disputed waters is the biggest challenge yet to China’s claim of sovereignty. It raises fears, especially since there is a history of conflict between the two nations which were bitter enemies in World War II. At one time, Japan occupied much of the eastern part of China.

After Japan’s loss to the US and its allies in World War II, it was ruled by Gen. Douglas MacArthur for a while and made to adopt a pacifist constitution. But now Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is moving to reform the constitution. Its recent decision to send its warships in defiance of China’s claims in the South China Sea may be part of Japan’s rising awareness of its long repressed power.

We must hope that fears of possible confrontation are baseless, that the war exercise will stay just that – an exercise. But sometime soon, an effort must be made to settle the long-standing dispute over sovereignty “through talks,” as the China’s foreign ministry itself said in its appeal to Tokyo.