Southeast Asia in an Age of Strategic Uncertainty: Legal Rulings, Domestic Impulses, and the Ongoing Pursuit of Autonomy

Growing strategic uncertainty has defined much of the Southeast Asian context for the last decade. Much of this has been due to changing great power dynamics created, on the one hand, by the growing capacities and confidence of China as a rising power in Asia, and, on the other, the intensified anxieties of the United States and Japan as the region's status quo powers. Developments of 2016 were unlikely to change that basic structural condition, but it did prove to be a year of some notable developments nonetheless. Among the most anticipated was the 12 July ruling on the South China Sea by an Arbitral Tribunal housed at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which unanimously ruled in favour of the Philippines on almost all the fifteen points brought to the court. In a different region such a development might be more decisive, but this is Southeast Asia, where uncertainty remains a defining feature of the strategic environment, where mixed incentives associated with large states produce forces of both repulsion and attraction, and where hedging and the pursuit of autonomy remain the hallmarks of security strategies. Moreover, domestic developments in 2016 may prove to be as, if not more, defining in their implications for regional security and strategic trends.

In the face of heightened flux, three related dangers and imperatives that have long defined the Southeast Asian predicament remained outstanding in 2016: (1) how to ensure that Southeast Asian states are not made casualties of great power conflict; (2) strategies of hedging in defence of Southeast Asian autonomy; and (3) the future of the ASEAN project as a means to greater comprehensive security and in defence of Southeast Asian voice and institutional centrality.

The South China Sea Arbitration Ruling: Dramatic and Not?

After a decade of intensified tensions in the South China Sea, 2016 stands out as the year that the Arbitral Tribunal issued a devastating ruling against China's position and activities in the South China Sea. Among its most notable points, the tribunal ruled that China's nine-dash-line claim based on historic rights had no standing under UNCLOS, which China had signed and ratified and which now "superseded any historic rights, or other sovereign rights or jurisdiction" beyond those set by UNCLOS. Similarly, under UNCLOS, China's activities in the Philippines' exclusive economic zone (EEZ)—its large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands; its interference with Philippine exploration and fishing activities; and its constructions on Mischief Reef, which sits on the Philippines' continental shelf—were found to have violated the Philippines' sovereign rights. Further, it ruled that none of the Spratlys' land features in contention constituted "islands" deserving of an EEZ of two hundred nautical miles. This includes Itu Aba, the largest of the Spratlys' natural features, which, along with other large features, were assessed to be mere "rocks" unable to sustain "a stable community of people" and thus eligible to no more than a twelve-nautical-mile territorial sea.¹

In a sharp rebuke to China, the tribunal additionally concluded that China had knowingly failed to meet its international obligations to protect and preserve the maritime environment when it allowed large-scale harvesting of endangered species and giant clams and that China's construction activities had not only caused "severe and irreparable" environmental degradation in violation of its responsibilities as a ratifier of UNCLOS, but also its continued construction activities following Manila's legal submission "undermined the integrity of … proceedings and rendered the task before the tribunal more difficult".² Further, its harassment of Philippine fishing vessels had "created serious risk of collision and danger to Philippine ships and personnel", violating China's obligations as a signatory to the International Maritime Organization's 1972 Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea.

Predictably, China denounced the tribunal's findings as "biased", "null and void", and as political instruments employed by colluding states (the Philippines and the United States) against China. It also approached Manila with an offer to hold talks...