Trung Quốc có sẽ khai chiến với Việt Nam không? China's Military Moment (FP 26-7-12) -- Chinese leaders thus may believe they must act now or forever lose the opportunity to cement their control of virtually the entire South China Sea" -- Bài quan trọng vừa đăng trên tạp chí quan trọng Foreign Policy ◄◄ A window of opportunity is closing in the South China Sea. Will Beijing strike?
BY JIM HOLMES | JULY 26, 2012
Beguiled by undersea oil and gas deposits and the weakness of fellow claimants to the Paracel Islands, China launched a naval offensive to seize the disputed archipelago. To justify its actions, Beijing pointed to history -- notably Ming Dynasty Adm. Zheng He's visits to the islands in the 15th century -- while touting its "indisputable sovereignty" over most of the South China Sea.
Chinese vessels carrying amphibious troops and operating under fighter cover from nearby Hainan Island engaged a South Vietnamese flotilla bereft of air support. One Vietnamese destroyer escort lay at the bottom of the South China Sea following the daylong battle. China's flag fluttered over the islands.
The skirmish was real -- and the date was Jan. 17, 1974.
History may not repeat itself exactly, but it sure rhymes. Back then, China exploited South Vietnamese weakness to seize the Paracels. Now, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has announced plans to station a military garrison at Sansha, a newly founded city on the 0.8 square-mile Woody Island in the Paracels. Formally established on July 24, Sansha will act as China's administrative center for the Paracel and Spratly islands and adjoining waters.
This is the latest move in China's campaign to consolidate its claim to all waters and islands within a "nine-dashed line" that encloses most of the South China Sea, including large swaths of Southeast Asian countries' exclusive economic zones (EEZs). This month, a Chinese frigate ran aground in the Philippine EEZ after reportedly shooing away Filipino fishermen. That incident came on the heels of a late June announcement that PLA Navy units would commence "combat-ready patrols" of contested waters.
Beijing is reaching for its weapons once again. Unlike in 1974, however, Chinese leaders are doing so at a time when peacetime diplomacy seemingly offers them a good chance to prevail without fighting. I call it "small-stick diplomacy" -- gunboat diplomacy with no overt display of gunboats.
Chinese strategists take an extraordinarily broad view of sea power -- one that includes nonmilitary shipping. In 1974, propagandists portrayed the "Defensive War for the Paracels" (as the conflict is known in Chinese) as the triumph of a "people's navy," lavishly praising the fishermen who had acted as a naval auxiliary. Fishing fleets can go places and do things to which rivals must respond or surrender their claims by default. Unarmed ships from coast-guard-like agencies constitute the next level. And the PLA Navy fleet backed by shore-based tactical aircraft, missiles, missile-armed attack boats, and submarines represents the ultimate backstop.
Beijing can solidify its hold within the nine-dashed line by dispatching surveillance, fisheries, or law-enforcement ships to protect Chinese fishermen in disputed waters, stare down rival claimants, and uphold Chinese domestic law. And it can do so without overtly bullying weaker neighbors, giving extraregional powers a pretext to intervene, or squandering its international standing amid the anguish and sheer messiness of armed conflict. Why jettison a strategy that holds such promise?
Because small-stick diplomacy takes time. It involves creating facts on the ground -- like Sansha -- and convincing others it's pointless to challenge those facts. Beijing has the motives, means, and opportunity to resolve the South China Sea disputes on its terms, but it may view the opportunity as a fleeting one. Rival claimants like Vietnam are arming. They may acquire military means sufficient to defy China's threats, or at least drive up the costs to China of imposing its will. And Southeast Asians are seeking help from powerful outsiders like the United States. Although Washingtontakes no official stance on the maritime disputes, it is naturally sympathetic to countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Some, like the Philippines, are treaty allies, while successive U.S. administrations have courted friendly ties with Vietnam.
Chinese leaders thus may believe they must act now or forever lose the opportunity to cement their control of virtually the entire South China Sea. More direct methods may look like the least bad course of action -- whatever the costs, hazards, and diplomatic blowback they may entail in the short run.
China's motives have remained remarkably constant over the decades. Indeed, the map on which the nine-dashed line is inscribed is an artifact from the 1940s, not something dreamed up in recent years. Chiang Kai-shek's government published it before fleeing to Taiwan, and the Chinese communist regime embraced it.
Now as then, the map visually expresses China's interests and aspirations. Oil and natural gas deposits thought to lie in the seabed obsessed maritime proponents -- most notably Deng Xiaoping, the father of China's economic reform and opening project. Fuel and other raw materials remain crucial to China's national development project three decades after Deng launched it.
The motive of averting superpower encirclement has also influenced Chinese strategy. By the late 1970s, Deng had come to believe that the Soviet Union was pursuing a "dumbbell strategy" designed to entrench the Soviet navy as the dominant force in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. The Strait of Malacca was the bar connecting the two theaters. To join them, Moscow had negotiated basing rights in united Vietnam, at Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang. Beijing believed it had to forestall a Soviet-Vietnamese alliance. Indeed, the PLA undertook a cross-border assault into Vietnam in 1979 in large part to discredit Moscow as Hanoi's defender.
Beijing may view the 2007 U.S. maritime strategy -- the official U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard statement on how the sea services see the strategic environment and intend to manage it -- as a throwback to Moscow's dumbbell strategy, predicated as it is on preserving and extending American primacy in the Western Pacific and the greater Indian Ocean. Chinese strategists fret continually about American encirclement, especially as the United States "pivots" to Asia. For China, it seems, everything old is new again.
Nor should we overlook honor as a motive animating Beijing's actions. Recouping China's honor and dignity after a "century of humiliation" at the hands of seaborne conquerors was a prime mover for Chinese actions in 1974 and 1979. It remains so today. The China seas constitute part of what the Chinese regard as their country's historical periphery. China must make itself preeminent in these expanses.
Expectations are sky-high among the Chinese populace. Having regularly described their maritime territorial claims as a matter of indisputable sovereignty, having staked their own and the country's reputation on wresting away control of contested expanses, and having roused popular sentiment with visions of seafaring grandeur, Chinese leaders will walk back their claims at their peril. They must deliver -- one way or another.
And they have the means to do so. China has amassed overpowering naval and military superiority over any individual Southeast Asian competitor. The Philippines possesses no air force to speak of, while retired U.S. Coast Guard cutters are its strongest combatant ships. Vietnam, by contrast, shares a border with China and fields a formidable army. Last year, Hanoi announced plans to buttress its naval might by purchasing six Russian-built Kilo-class diesel submarines armed with wake-homing torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles. A Kilo squadron will supply Vietnam's navy a potent "sea-denial" option. But Russia has not yet delivered the subs, meaning that Hanoi can mount only feeble resistance to any Chinese naval offensive. That's still more reason for China to lock in its gains now, before Southeast Asian rivals start pushing back effectively.
So a window of opportunity remains open for Beijing -- for now. Chinese diplomacy recently thwarted efforts to rally ASEAN behind a "code of conduct" in the South China Sea. Washington has announced plans to "rebalance" the U.S. Navy, shifting about 60 percent of fleet assets to the Pacific and Indian Ocean theaters. But the rebalancing is a modest affair. More than half of the U.S. Navy is already in the theater, and the rebalancing will take place in slow motion, spanning the next eight years.
Nor will the four-vessel U.S. littoral combat ship flotilla destined for Singapore (the first one is scheduled to arrive next spring) right the balance in Southeast Asia. These are not vessels designed to do battle against the likes of the PLA Navy. But having established the principle that most of the U.S. Navy should call the Pacific and Asia home, Washington can always speed up the rebalancing process, shift more forces, and even negotiate base access in or around Southeast Asia. Beijing knows that.
Beijing may have concluded that patient diplomacy will forfeit its destiny in the South China Sea. In Chinese eyes, it's better to act now -- and preempt the competition. The lesson of 1974: Timing is everything.
Jim Holmes is an associate professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and co-author of Red Star over the Pacific: China's Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy. The views voiced here are his alone.
-TQ 'có những quyết định sai lầm' 26.07.12
Tống Văn Công: Đánh thức lương tri Trung Hoa (viet-studies 26-7-12) ◄◄
– Các lực lượng ‘khuấy đục’ Biển Đông của TQ: Ngư chính và Hải giám (kỳ2) (Infonet).
- Sáu nghị sĩ Mỹ trình nghị quyết biển Đông (PLTP). – Nghị quyết do TNS John Kerry khởi xướng: Các thượng nghị sĩ Mỹ thúc giục ASEAN về bộ quy tắc ứng xử mang tính ràng buộc: Kerry Resolution: Senators Urge ASEAN to Develop Binding Code of Conduct (CSIS). – Asean cần thay đổi hình ảnh và tư duy – (BBC). - ASEAN cần đoàn kết trước nhiều thách thức (TN). - Học giả Úc hối thúc chính phủ điều giải vụ tranh chấp Biển Đông (VOA). - Calming the South China Sea (Project Syndicate). - Tensions heighten in South China Sea (WSWS).
- China’s Military Moment (Foreign Policy). - Trung Quốc “chuyển lửa ra bên ngoài” (TT). - TNS Mỹ Jim Webb: ‘Trung Quốc vi phạm luật quốc tế’ (ĐV). - Các nghị sĩ Mỹ chỉ trích Trung Quốc đơn phương hành động (LĐ). - “Trung Quốc ngày càng có thái độ công kích” (VOV). - Tranh chấp Biển Đông sẽ ảnh hưởng toàn cầu (VNN). – Trung Quốc không có nhiều lựa chọn trên biển Đông – (RFA).
BY JIM HOLMES | JULY 26, 2012
Beguiled by undersea oil and gas deposits and the weakness of fellow claimants to the Paracel Islands, China launched a naval offensive to seize the disputed archipelago. To justify its actions, Beijing pointed to history -- notably Ming Dynasty Adm. Zheng He's visits to the islands in the 15th century -- while touting its "indisputable sovereignty" over most of the South China Sea.
Chinese vessels carrying amphibious troops and operating under fighter cover from nearby Hainan Island engaged a South Vietnamese flotilla bereft of air support. One Vietnamese destroyer escort lay at the bottom of the South China Sea following the daylong battle. China's flag fluttered over the islands.
The skirmish was real -- and the date was Jan. 17, 1974.
History may not repeat itself exactly, but it sure rhymes. Back then, China exploited South Vietnamese weakness to seize the Paracels. Now, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has announced plans to station a military garrison at Sansha, a newly founded city on the 0.8 square-mile Woody Island in the Paracels. Formally established on July 24, Sansha will act as China's administrative center for the Paracel and Spratly islands and adjoining waters.
This is the latest move in China's campaign to consolidate its claim to all waters and islands within a "nine-dashed line" that encloses most of the South China Sea, including large swaths of Southeast Asian countries' exclusive economic zones (EEZs). This month, a Chinese frigate ran aground in the Philippine EEZ after reportedly shooing away Filipino fishermen. That incident came on the heels of a late June announcement that PLA Navy units would commence "combat-ready patrols" of contested waters.
Beijing is reaching for its weapons once again. Unlike in 1974, however, Chinese leaders are doing so at a time when peacetime diplomacy seemingly offers them a good chance to prevail without fighting. I call it "small-stick diplomacy" -- gunboat diplomacy with no overt display of gunboats.
Chinese strategists take an extraordinarily broad view of sea power -- one that includes nonmilitary shipping. In 1974, propagandists portrayed the "Defensive War for the Paracels" (as the conflict is known in Chinese) as the triumph of a "people's navy," lavishly praising the fishermen who had acted as a naval auxiliary. Fishing fleets can go places and do things to which rivals must respond or surrender their claims by default. Unarmed ships from coast-guard-like agencies constitute the next level. And the PLA Navy fleet backed by shore-based tactical aircraft, missiles, missile-armed attack boats, and submarines represents the ultimate backstop.
Beijing can solidify its hold within the nine-dashed line by dispatching surveillance, fisheries, or law-enforcement ships to protect Chinese fishermen in disputed waters, stare down rival claimants, and uphold Chinese domestic law. And it can do so without overtly bullying weaker neighbors, giving extraregional powers a pretext to intervene, or squandering its international standing amid the anguish and sheer messiness of armed conflict. Why jettison a strategy that holds such promise?
Because small-stick diplomacy takes time. It involves creating facts on the ground -- like Sansha -- and convincing others it's pointless to challenge those facts. Beijing has the motives, means, and opportunity to resolve the South China Sea disputes on its terms, but it may view the opportunity as a fleeting one. Rival claimants like Vietnam are arming. They may acquire military means sufficient to defy China's threats, or at least drive up the costs to China of imposing its will. And Southeast Asians are seeking help from powerful outsiders like the United States. Although Washingtontakes no official stance on the maritime disputes, it is naturally sympathetic to countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Some, like the Philippines, are treaty allies, while successive U.S. administrations have courted friendly ties with Vietnam.
Chinese leaders thus may believe they must act now or forever lose the opportunity to cement their control of virtually the entire South China Sea. More direct methods may look like the least bad course of action -- whatever the costs, hazards, and diplomatic blowback they may entail in the short run.
China's motives have remained remarkably constant over the decades. Indeed, the map on which the nine-dashed line is inscribed is an artifact from the 1940s, not something dreamed up in recent years. Chiang Kai-shek's government published it before fleeing to Taiwan, and the Chinese communist regime embraced it.
Now as then, the map visually expresses China's interests and aspirations. Oil and natural gas deposits thought to lie in the seabed obsessed maritime proponents -- most notably Deng Xiaoping, the father of China's economic reform and opening project. Fuel and other raw materials remain crucial to China's national development project three decades after Deng launched it.
The motive of averting superpower encirclement has also influenced Chinese strategy. By the late 1970s, Deng had come to believe that the Soviet Union was pursuing a "dumbbell strategy" designed to entrench the Soviet navy as the dominant force in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. The Strait of Malacca was the bar connecting the two theaters. To join them, Moscow had negotiated basing rights in united Vietnam, at Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang. Beijing believed it had to forestall a Soviet-Vietnamese alliance. Indeed, the PLA undertook a cross-border assault into Vietnam in 1979 in large part to discredit Moscow as Hanoi's defender.
Beijing may view the 2007 U.S. maritime strategy -- the official U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard statement on how the sea services see the strategic environment and intend to manage it -- as a throwback to Moscow's dumbbell strategy, predicated as it is on preserving and extending American primacy in the Western Pacific and the greater Indian Ocean. Chinese strategists fret continually about American encirclement, especially as the United States "pivots" to Asia. For China, it seems, everything old is new again.
Nor should we overlook honor as a motive animating Beijing's actions. Recouping China's honor and dignity after a "century of humiliation" at the hands of seaborne conquerors was a prime mover for Chinese actions in 1974 and 1979. It remains so today. The China seas constitute part of what the Chinese regard as their country's historical periphery. China must make itself preeminent in these expanses.
Expectations are sky-high among the Chinese populace. Having regularly described their maritime territorial claims as a matter of indisputable sovereignty, having staked their own and the country's reputation on wresting away control of contested expanses, and having roused popular sentiment with visions of seafaring grandeur, Chinese leaders will walk back their claims at their peril. They must deliver -- one way or another.
And they have the means to do so. China has amassed overpowering naval and military superiority over any individual Southeast Asian competitor. The Philippines possesses no air force to speak of, while retired U.S. Coast Guard cutters are its strongest combatant ships. Vietnam, by contrast, shares a border with China and fields a formidable army. Last year, Hanoi announced plans to buttress its naval might by purchasing six Russian-built Kilo-class diesel submarines armed with wake-homing torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles. A Kilo squadron will supply Vietnam's navy a potent "sea-denial" option. But Russia has not yet delivered the subs, meaning that Hanoi can mount only feeble resistance to any Chinese naval offensive. That's still more reason for China to lock in its gains now, before Southeast Asian rivals start pushing back effectively.
So a window of opportunity remains open for Beijing -- for now. Chinese diplomacy recently thwarted efforts to rally ASEAN behind a "code of conduct" in the South China Sea. Washington has announced plans to "rebalance" the U.S. Navy, shifting about 60 percent of fleet assets to the Pacific and Indian Ocean theaters. But the rebalancing is a modest affair. More than half of the U.S. Navy is already in the theater, and the rebalancing will take place in slow motion, spanning the next eight years.
Nor will the four-vessel U.S. littoral combat ship flotilla destined for Singapore (the first one is scheduled to arrive next spring) right the balance in Southeast Asia. These are not vessels designed to do battle against the likes of the PLA Navy. But having established the principle that most of the U.S. Navy should call the Pacific and Asia home, Washington can always speed up the rebalancing process, shift more forces, and even negotiate base access in or around Southeast Asia. Beijing knows that.
Beijing may have concluded that patient diplomacy will forfeit its destiny in the South China Sea. In Chinese eyes, it's better to act now -- and preempt the competition. The lesson of 1974: Timing is everything.
Jim Holmes is an associate professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and co-author of Red Star over the Pacific: China's Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy. The views voiced here are his alone.
***************************************
-Calming the South China Sea Project Syndicate -The South China Sea – one of East Asia’s major flashpoints – is making waves again, with military and diplomatic posturing reminiscent of the period from 2009 to mid-2011. A sensible way forward would begin with everyone calming down about China’s periodically provocative behavior.
-
Is China Losing the Diplomatic Plot? Project Syndicate Kishore Mahbubani-TQ 'có những quyết định sai lầm' 26.07.12
Hội nghị Asean ở Phnom Penh không đưa ra được tuyên bố chung
Một học giả nổi tiếng với luận thuyết tương lai thuộc về châu Á phê phán Trung Quốc "bắt đầu có những sai lầm nghiêm trọng", thể hiện qua hội nghị Asean ở Campuchia.
Giáo sư người Singapore Kishore Mahbubani được độc giả ngoài vùng Đông Nam Á biết đến với các tác phẩm khẳng định phương Tây đang đi xuống và trật tự thế giới mới sẽ thuộc về châu Á, với vai trò dẫn đầu của Trung Quốc.
Nhưng trong Bấm bài bình luận hôm 26/7, người đứng đầu Trường Chính sách Công Lý Quang Diệu ở Singapore than phiền "sau 30 năm khôn khéo về địa chính trị, người Trung Quốc dường như đang trên đà để mất sự khôn khéo đó ngay khi họ cần nó nhất".
Ông cho rằng Trung Quốc đã phạm sai lầm lớn tại hội nghị Asean ở Campuchia hồi tháng Bảy, khi Asean lần đầu tiên trong lịch sử không đưa ra được tuyên bố chung.
Chủ nhà Campuchia không muốn bản tuyên bố nhắc đến tranh chấp Biển Đông.
Giáo sư Kishore Mahbubani nói: "Cả thế giới, gồm đa số các nước Asean, xem lập trường của Campuchia là do sức ép to lớn của Trung Quốc."
Ông nói Trung Quốc "thắng trận chiến tuyên bố chung, nhưng có thể đã đánh mất 20 năm gây dựng thiện chí".
"Quan trọng nhất, các lãnh đạo trước đây của Trung Quốc tính toán rằng một Asean mạnh và đoàn kết là đệm chắn hữu ích chống lại mọi chiến lược kiềm chế của Mỹ."
"Nay, khi chia rẽ Asean, Trung Quốc đã giúp Mỹ có cơ hội địa chính trị tốt nhất trong vùng."
"Nếu Đặng Tiểu Bình còn sống, ông sẽ lo ngại sâu sắc," tác giả cảm thán.
Tấm bản đồ 'đeo cùm vào cổ'
Đáng chú ý, vị giáo sư người Singapore dành nhiều đoạn trong bài để chỉ trích yêu sách đường 9 đoạn (đường lưỡi bò) của Trung Quốc.
Giáo sư Kishore Mahbubani nói đường đứt khúc 9 đoạn này "có thể sẽ chỉ là cái cùm lớn đeo vào cổ Trung Quốc".
TQ được cho là đã "mua được ghế chủ tịch Asean" của Campuchia.
Nhắc lại ngày 7/5/2009, Trung Quốc đã gửi Công hàm, trong đó kèm bản đồ có hình “đường lưỡi bò”, lên Liên Hiệp Quốc (LHQ).
Công hàm này nhằm phản đối báo cáo chung về thềm lục địa mở rộng của Việt Nam và Malaysia cũng như báo cáo về thềm lục địa mở rộng của riêng Việt Nam.
Ông nói việc gửi kèm bản đồ năm 2009 của Trung Quốc là "không khôn ngoan" vì đó là lần đầu tiên Bắc Kinh kèm bản đồ trong văn thư chính thức cho LHQ.
"Sau khi đệ trình đường đứt khúc 9 đoạn lên LHQ, Trung Quốc bước vào thế không lối ra, vì khó khăn của việc biện hộ cho bản đồ theo luật quốc tế."
"Như sử gia lớn Wang Gungwu đã chỉ ra, các bản đồ đầu tiên đòi Biển Nam Trung Hoa là của người Nhật, và được Trung Hoa Dân Quốc thừa kế," theo nhà nghiên cứu này.
Ông nói tiếp: "Ở trong nước, đường 9 đoạn có thể gây rắc rối cho chính phủ khi đem lại cho những người chỉ trích một vũ khí hữu ích."
"Mọi dấu hiệu thỏa hiệp sẽ gây khó chính trị cho giới chức," ông nói.
Ông khẳng định Trung Quốc "sẽ phải tìm cách để thỏa hiệp quanh đường 9 đoạn".
"Họ đã ngầm làm thế rồi. Mặc dù đường này bao gồm cả vùng biển đông bắc của đảo Natuna thuộc Indonesia, chính phủ Trung Quốc khẳng định với Indonesia rằng Trung Quốc không đòi đảo Natuna hay Vùng Đặc quyền Kinh tế của nước này."
'Đa nguyên chính trị'
Ông nói cả Mao Trạch Đông và Đặng Tiểu Bình đều sẵn lòng nhượng bộ về lãnh thổ để giải quyết tranh chấp.
"Điều này giải thích vì sao Trung Quốc rộng rãi với Nga trong việc xác định biên giới."
"Mao và Đặng làm được vì cả hai đem lại cho Trung Quốc sự lãnh đạo mạnh mẽ."
"Thách thức hiện nay cho thế giới là Trung Quốc đã trở nên đa nguyên chính trị: không lãnh đạo nào đủ mạnh để có nhượng bộ đơn phương khôn ngoan," học giả người Singapore nhận xét.
Giữa rất nhiều bình luận hàng ngày về Trung Quốc và Biển Đông của giới quan sát, sự chê trách của ông Kishore Mahbubani có thể được giới học giả Trung Quốc chú ý vì lâu nay ông vẫn chê phương Tây và dự đoán Trung Quốc sẽ thay Mỹ ở vị trí số một thế giới.
– Các lực lượng ‘khuấy đục’ Biển Đông của TQ: Ngư chính và Hải giám (kỳ2) (Infonet).
- Sáu nghị sĩ Mỹ trình nghị quyết biển Đông (PLTP). – Nghị quyết do TNS John Kerry khởi xướng: Các thượng nghị sĩ Mỹ thúc giục ASEAN về bộ quy tắc ứng xử mang tính ràng buộc: Kerry Resolution: Senators Urge ASEAN to Develop Binding Code of Conduct (CSIS). – Asean cần thay đổi hình ảnh và tư duy – (BBC). - ASEAN cần đoàn kết trước nhiều thách thức (TN). - Học giả Úc hối thúc chính phủ điều giải vụ tranh chấp Biển Đông (VOA). - Calming the South China Sea (Project Syndicate). - Tensions heighten in South China Sea (WSWS).
- China’s Military Moment (Foreign Policy). - Trung Quốc “chuyển lửa ra bên ngoài” (TT). - TNS Mỹ Jim Webb: ‘Trung Quốc vi phạm luật quốc tế’ (ĐV). - Các nghị sĩ Mỹ chỉ trích Trung Quốc đơn phương hành động (LĐ). - “Trung Quốc ngày càng có thái độ công kích” (VOV). - Tranh chấp Biển Đông sẽ ảnh hưởng toàn cầu (VNN). – Trung Quốc không có nhiều lựa chọn trên biển Đông – (RFA).
