For a long time, the US has avoided intervening and taking sides in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Instead, it has limited itself to calling for restraint among the concerned parties and insisting they find a peaceful solution. At the heart of US thinking lies the view that the territorial disputes, or indeed open conflict, must not be allowed to affect US navigation rights in the region.
The US, a big maritime nation, still has not signed the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Sea, a clear indication that it is not willing to submit to its restrictions. As countries bordering on the South China Sea have claimed the right to territorial waters extending 12 nautical miles (22.2km) and to an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) extending 200 nautical miles, the US has done nothing, and as a consequence we now face competing interpretations of international law.
Because the US does not agree with the UN convention, it does not recognize the territorial water and EEZ claims by the countries in the region. On March 9 last year, as the USNS Impeccable was engaged in ocean surveillance in the South China Sea, 120 nautical miles south of Hainan Island, it was shadowed and harassed by five Chinese vessels. The US Navy was forced to use water cannons in an attempt to repel the vessels. The main cause of this incident was the differing US and Chinese interpretations of the EEZ. China insists the US ship was not allowed to carry out ocean surveys in China’s EEZ, while the US claims that the incident took place in international waters.
Then in June of the same year, a Chinese submarine collided with an underwater sonar dragged by a US Navy vessel in waters close to Subic Bay in the northern Philippines.
There are also less recent examples of incidents resulting from diverging interpretations of international law. In August 1964, two US gunboats were attacked and chased by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin because North Vietnam claimed that the boats had entered the 12 nautical mile zone of North Vietnamese territorial waters, while the US only recognized that territorial waters extend for 3 nautical miles, not 12. The US then used the incident as an excuse to bomb major North Vietnamese cities and military bases and facilities in what became a prelude to the Vietnam War.
US Navy ships in the South China Sea are sent from the Japanese mainland, the Ryukyu Islands or Singapore, mainly to engage in reconnaissance, prevention and investigation. In particular, US activities in the region are aimed at monitoring the movements of Chinese submarines since China in recent years has been building a naval base for nuclear submarines on Hainan Island.
Once US reconnaissance patrols in the South China Sea were blocked by Beijing, the US knew it would no longer be able to stop Beijing from entering the South China Sea, and it therefore had to start cooperating with other countries in the region.
At the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Hanoi last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said solving the territorial disputes over the islands in the South China Sea was in line with US national interests, and that these disputes hindered commercial maritime traffic and blocked other countries from entering what it sees as the international waters in the region. Clinton even went so far as to say that solving the South China Sea disputes was a leading diplomatic priority pivotal to regional security.
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