Time to Show China More than Rhetoric
At a 1974 meeting in Washington, five days after a surprise Chinese attack ousted a South Vietnamese garrison on the Paracel Islands, Henry Kissinger was confused. Was this Spratly Island, he asked? Who started the fight? Since those confusing post-paris Accord days, the map of the South China Sea has changed dramatically. China has dredged out seven large islands. To ensure no one else tries, the islands are dotted with airstrips, missiles and radars. The sea is now an arena of struggle that pits several Southeast Asian nations and the US against an expanding China.
Gregory Poling has combed through archives to produce a valuable history of growing conflict over the body of water that not only contains seafood and undersea oil and minerals but is a vital line of communications. His research has unearthed many new insights that place the evolving US policy in a new light. It is now clear that the US ignored the appeal of its ally South Vietnam for help against the backdrop of China’s advance in the Paracels. China “astutely” gambled that it could engage in “limited military action” without triggering a direct US response, Poling writes. China’s salami-slicing policy to establish its dominance in Southeast Asia, which became clear in the 1980s, had already begun.
After decades of little US action, Poling suggests concrete action now such as coalition building.
“There is still a path to secure US national interests at an acceptable cost,” he writes. “It is narrower and more uncertain ... but that should be cause for urgency, not resignation.” The US and its allies are losing the South China Sea. But they haven’t yet lost.