Maritime security in Southeast Asia

Maritime disputes in Southeast Asia should be viewed less as a single big basket of problems, and more as smaller individual problems with their own corresponding solutions. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach. And three inter-related policy contexts can help explain why some troubles persist more than others.

The first is that regional policymakers do not always rank maritime disputes as their top priority. In fact, foreign policy in general does not rank very high among increasingly inward-looking regional governments. They are likely to be more concerned with pandemic management and economic recovery, for example. Even within the hierarchy of foreign policy priorities, maritime disputes are rarely the first order of concern. ASEAN member states are still grappling with issues such as the Myanmar crisis, ongoing Covid-19 effects and dozens of other “regular” problems, such as regional connectivity.

Where maritime disputes are entangled with great power politics, such as over the South China Sea, regional governments prefer to downplay the issue by using vehicles such as the ASEAN-China Code of Conduct (CoC) process. The CoC gives the appearance of “working through” the disputes while side-stepping great power politics, even though after two decades there is no end in sight to tensions over the resource-rich waterway.

Avoiding great power entanglement in maritime disputes is a deliberate choice for some countries whose elites depend on certain great powers for private benefits and public goods. A performative platform such as the CoC also gives the strategic space for claimants under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to postpone clarifying, aligning and finalising their maritime claims. In short, these countries engage in performative tension management to provide domestic political cover amidst great power competition.

The second context is the maritime security landscape. Daily “operational” challenges – from illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and armed robbery at sea, to terrorism and illegal trafficking – occupy Southeast Asian maritime policymakers and demand sizeable portions of their budget. Most maritime disputes, meanwhile, are classified as long-term “strategic” problems. Given their complexity and cost, regional policymakers are not always eager, willing or capable to address them immediately.

The South China Sea is also not the only maritime dispute Southeast Asian policymakers worry about. Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines remain concerned about – and continue to have – unresolved maritime delimitation claims among themselves. Some of these have festered for decades and have elicited stronger domestic political pressures than the South China Sea.

These two contexts suggest that Southeast Asian policymakers do not always have the strategic and domestic bandwidth to focus on maritime disputes. The longer they can delay directly dealing with them, the more time, energy and resources they can spend on what they believe to be other urgent priorities. Unsurprisingly, many regional policymakers do not have a long list of “out of the box” options to address the disputes over their waters.

This has implications for the third policy context, which relates to countries’ strategic toolkit diversity. It is safe to assume that claimant state officials are generally aware that the “solution” to their disputed waters involves clarifying their claims under UNCLOS and engaging in delimitation talks. But the domestic resources and will required in such complex decades-long endeavours are not always readily available, especially if policymakers are not fully confident in their own claims under UNCLOS.

As such, maritime diplomacy short of delimitation talks should not be viewed as a “dispute resolution” tool. It is at best a “tension management” pathway – some of which, such as the CoC, was designed to be a precursor or precondition for “good faith” final future delimitation talks. The distinction between dispute resolution and tension management is important in understanding what tools are designed for and what outcomes to expect.

There are, of course, more than just multilateral tension management options available. The United States and China have plenty of bilateral tension management tools at their disposal. Economic and fisheries cooperation between some of the South China Sea claimants can also be viewed in the same light. The problem has been that regional states seemed locked into path-dependent options such as the CoC process. Over time, as the costs of investing in the CoC have increased, regional policymakers have found it more difficult to contemplate new options.

This is why China’s grey zone tactics in the South China Sea have become so effective. As the tactics operate below the threshold of kinetic aggression, Southeast Asian policymakers cannot easily – or may not want to – present them as requiring an urgent set of policy responses. In other words, if regional policymakers remain committed to the CoC without developing new options, China’s grey zone tactics become all the more effective.

These three contexts – policy priorities, the maritime landscape, and toolkit diversity – help explain why some maritime disputes in Southeast Asia persist longer than others. In the South China Sea, one cannot be faulted for thinking that regional policymakers are willing to tolerate a prolonged CoC process because they cannot contemplate other options, or that they find it easier to buck-pass the problem to ASEAN and forego the cost of clarifying their claims and beginning delimitation talks.

If the region is pushing for solutions, they must be precise and custom-made.
 

This article is part of a series examining regional perspectives on maritime security. This project is led by La Trobe Asia, Kings College London and Griffith Asia Institute with the support of the UK High Commission in Canberra.

While regional countries respond to Covid-19 and the many social and economic consequences, ensuring peace and stability in the South China Sea has become even more important due to its role in connecting continents, fostering international trade and ensuring supply chains are not broken. This will allow the economies of the region to quickly recover from the pandemic and address the legitimate needs of the peoples.

The South China Sea continues to face many uncertainties even as new forms of international cooperation are expected to help improve the situation.

In July 2021, for example, to mark the fifth anniversary of the South China Sea arbitral tribunal ruling, a number of countries expressed their support for the finding – a common theme being the need to respect the role of international law and the rules-based order in the region, as well as peaceful settlement of disputes. The United States recognised, for the first time, that the rules-based maritime order is most threatened in the South China Sea. The European Union countries affirmed their respect for the rule of law and that the ruling is binding. The Philippines said it would not surrender its interests in the South China Sea.

In September, the United States and Australia issued a Joint Communiqué following the Australia–US Ministerial Consultations, emphasising the importance of countries being able to exercise their maritime rights and freedoms in the South China Sea, and cooperating with each other to deal with the so-called “grey zone operations” in the region. Later that month, the first in-person summit of Quad leaders issued a joint statement underscoring objections to China’s claims in the South China Sea.

In October, British naval ships paid a four day port visit to Vietnam following joint exercises in the South China Sea involving a number of countries. This was preceded by a visit from three Australian warships to Vietnam for joint cooperation activities. The United States has also continued to conduct Freedom of Navigation Operations in the South China Sea, as well as helping to boost local capacity by building a maritime training centre in Indonesia and transferring a coast guard ship to Vietnam.

However, uncertainties persist. Challenges include the continuous and unusual presence of survey ships operating in the overlapping exclusive economic zones of the various claimants as well as the presence of aircraft in the declared air defence identification zones of other countries. Some countries have also expressed concerns about domestic laws, such as China’s revised maritime laws, being applied to other parties in the region, and thereby adding to tensions. The risk of local conflict remains, complicated by other issues such as piracy, people trafficking, lack of coordination in maritime scientific cooperation, dealing with climate change, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has taken a similar position on the South China Sea in meetings since 2020. Given the interests and capabilities of the United Kingdom, Australia and ASEAN members, there are a number of opportunities to enhance cooperation.

First, issue regular statements in favour of greater cooperation in the South China Sea on the basis of international law and participation in joint activities, such as navy ship visits and military exercises, to ensure greater security and respect for international law in the region.

Second, coordinate better on dealing with non-traditional maritime security challenges such as piracy, human trafficking and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

Third, prioritise the promotion of more economic development with Southeast Asian countries to take advantage of the enormous potential for both sides. This can extend to joint efforts to promote maritime scientific research or deal with climate change.

Developments such as the Quad and AUKUS appear to offer new forms of cooperation that will help support the centrality of ASEAN in promoting the comprehensive development in the region. While more thought can be given to how “minilateral” initiatives and multilateral institutions can manage regional disputes or potential conflicts in the long term, economic initiatives and cooperation towards regional development are of equal importance to achieve the same ends.

States should continue the multi-layer joint efforts we have witnessed during the last year. Many people in Vietnam are highly appreciate of the activities of the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries either on their own or in cooperation with other partners to promote stability and development in the region.

This article is part of a series examining regional perspectives on maritime security. This project is led by La Trobe Asia, Kings College London and Griffith Asia Institute with the support of the UK High Commission in Canberra.

When in 2016 the Arbitral Tribunal issued its watershed ruling in the case between the Philippines and China, responses from the international community were lacklustre. The Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative’s “arbitration support tracker” suggests that eight governments have publicly called for the Tribunal’s ruling to be respected, 35 have made positive statements but stopped short of calling for it to be implemented, and eight have publicly rejected it. Given the diplomatic and economic influence that China can wield, it is arguably surprising that the number of repudiations of the Tribunal’s award is not higher.

From the outset, China refused to participate in the case, but the Tribunal nevertheless found that it had the right to proceed. Although the Tribunal’s award is only binding on the parties to the case – the Philippines and China – it has clearly changed the international legal dynamics of regional maritime disputes and addressed but key uncertainties in the existing law of the sea.

The arbitration case stemmed from the dispute resolution provisions contained in Part XV of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS or the Convention). Accordingly, it could only address issues related to the law of the sea and not the core of the South China Sea disputes, that is, sovereignty over disputed islands.

What the award of the Arbitral Tribunal did do was to effectively dismiss China’s nine-dash line, ruling that the country’s claims to historic rights within this discontinuous line were extinguished where they were incompatible with the rights provided under UNCLOS. The Tribunal provided the first detailed international judicial interpretation of the Regime of Islands, including the notoriously problematic issue of distinguishing between fully entitled islands and mere “rocks”. This led to the finding that all of the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal – both claimed by China as part of their territory – are legally rocks.

The Tribunal also found that China had violated the rights of the Philippines in waters off its coasts by interfering with Philippine fishing and petroleum exploration, constructing artificial islands, and failing to prevent Chinese fishing activities. It ruled that China had caused severe harm to the coral reef environment and violated its obligation to preserve and protect fragile ecosystems and the habitat of depleted, threatened or endangered species through its large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands – actions that had permanently destroyed evidence of the natural condition of the disputed features.

The consequence of the arbitration award, if implemented, would be to radically shrink overlapping maritime claims from about 80 per cent of the South China Sea lying within the nine-dash line, to 12 nautical mile wide pockets of territorial sea around the disputed islands.

It is increasingly clear that the majority of South China Sea littoral states base their claims on the Tribunal’s award. This became evident in 2009 when Vietnam alone, and jointly with Malaysia, made submissions to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), provoking protests and counter-protests. Malaysia’s December 2019 partial submission to the CLCS prompted a wave of diplomatic notes. From these exchanges, it is clear that the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam all take the view that the Arbitration award represents an authoritative interpretation of international law, that the South China Sea islands are legally rocks and that China’s nine-dash line claims are invalid.

This is hardly news, but the fact these states have increasingly referred to the Tribunal’s ruling to back up their positions is significant. Both Indonesia and the Philippines made direct reference to the award in their diplomatic notes, with respect to its decision that none of the Spratly Islands generate exclusive economic zones or continental shelf entitlements, while the language contained in Vietnam’s diplomatic note is entirely consistent with its findings. Moreover, extra-regional players including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany and Japan also weighed in to support UNCLOS, the rule of law and the award. The 2016 award case therefore now underpins the maritime claims of the majority of the South China Sea littoral states, as well as the perspectives of extra-regional players, and has had a substantial impact on the international legal dynamics of South China Sea disputes.

Of course, the key caveat here is that China has consistently and vociferously rejected the ruling and there are no mechanisms by which it can be enforced. Nonetheless, the way that the award of the Arbitral Tribunal is now embedded in the positions of states both within and beyond the South China Sea suggests that its findings will not simply evaporate as readily as Beijing might wish. There is every indication that China will maintain not only its claims to sovereignty over all of the disputed South China Sea islands, but to maritime areas within the nine-dash line as well. Unfortunately, and ominously, this clash of legal and spatial visions would seem to set the stage for ongoing friction and incidents in the South China Sea as coastal states attempt to assert jurisdiction of “their” waters and marine resources whilst China continues to maintain its claims within the nine-dash line.
 

This article is a part of a series examining regional perspectives on maritime security. This project is led by La Trobe Asia, Kings College London and Griffith Asia Institute with the support of the UK High Commission in Canberra. 

Vietnam recently banned the film Uncharted from domestic distribution due to a scene depicting an “illegal image” of China’s infamous “nine-dash line”.

This is not the first time popular culture has become embroiled in the politics of the South China Sea.

In 2021, the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs lodged a protest with Netflix about its series Pine Gap, co-produced with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The Guardian criticised the show for “great amounts of yakkety yak interspersed with occasional scenes of bonking” in a memorable one-star review, but it was the depiction of the nine-dash line that landed the production in hot water in Southeast Asia. The Philippines’ Movie and Television Review and Classification Board reportedly ruled that two episodes showing the nine-dash line “violated Philippine sovereignty” and were “unfit for public exhibition”. Vietnam also lodged a complaint over Pine Gap, and Netflix removed the entire series from Vietnamese distribution.

In 2019, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines banned the joint DreamWorks/Pearl Studio film Abominable from cinemas for showing the nine-dash line. In Vietnam, film distributor CJ CGV was fined VN$170 million (US$7400) for showing the film. At the time, tensions were high, with China and Vietnam engaged in a stand-off for months as the Chinese vessel Haiyang Dizhi 8 conducted surveys within the disputed waters around the Spratly Islands. Complaints were also raised in Vietnam and the Philippines about the use of the nine-dash line in the Chinese series Put Your Head On My Shoulder and US series Madam Secretary, both shown on Netflix.

It’s not just television and films that have portrayed the nine-dash line. The American broadcaster ESPN was heavily criticised for televising a map featuring the nine-dash line in US coverage in 2019. The Philippines and Vietnam also refused to stamp new Chinese e-passports featuring the nine-dash line. In Australia in 2020, a recalled textbook used in Victorian schools also featured the nine-dash line.

Why is this a problem?

The nine-dash line is used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to illustrate claims to the South China Sea. One of the key issues though is that the nature of the claim is deliberately ambiguous and it has never been made explicit by the CCP what the nine-dash line represents. Instead, it has been left to analysts, academics, international lawyers and an arbitral tribunal to interpret what the CCP is claiming through the interaction between its words, policies, actions, laws and maps.

The nine-dash line encompasses approximately 90 per cent of the three million square kilometre South China Sea. Within this area, China makes sovereignty and maritime claims. Some Chinese analysts view the nine-dash line as a maritime border, reflected in the use of dashes rather than a continuous line. Moderate Chinese legal scholars have argued that the nine-dash line reflects China’s sovereignty and, drawing partly on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), sovereign rights to fishing and other resources. Yet there are concerns that the nine-dash line may suggest that Beijing conceptualises the seas as part of its sovereign territory and domestic jurisdiction. This is not just reflected in maps, but in how Beijing has sought to use naming, administrative and legal strategies to exert control over maritime area and land features, including those that are not subject to sovereign appropriation, such as low-lying elevations.

Strategic narratives are one component of lawfare: the use (and misuse) of law for strategic ends. Even great powers need to justify their exceptionalism, and one method is through the use of quasi-legal rhetorical and representational justifications for their claims and activities. Maps play an important role in bolstering such strategic narratives.

The use of popular media comes in handy because it can contribute to normalising images and maps that may be legally dubious and deeply political, yet are not being disseminated by political parties or actors.

When maps of Australia, for example, are used in popular culture, the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone or continental shelf claims are not likely to be depicted. This is because these maritime jurisdictional entitlements are accorded to Australia by UNCLOS, and these zones do not have the same relationship to the nation as land. In these maritime areas, Australia has sovereign rights, but does not have absolute sovereignty.

In contrast, the nine-dash line map contributes to a form of “maritime territorialisation” in which sovereignty over maritime area is represented and reinforced. While the dashes may reflect a maritime rather than a territorial boundary, their representation in popular maps suggests that land and sea are analogous and linked to nationhood in a way that does not reflect contemporary international law.
 

This article is a part of a series examining regional perspectives on maritime security. This project is led by La Trobe Asia, Kings College London and Griffith Asia Institute with the support of the UK High Commission in Canberra.

The Southeast Asian maritime domain continues to be fraught. The Covid-19 pandemic brought about an observable increase in transnational crimes such as smuggling – at first, pandemic-related medical material, then later food – as well as illegal drug trading and human trafficking. Piracy and armed robbery against ships, a perennial maritime security challenge in Southeast Asia, remains a problem. In 2021, the Singapore Strait saw a six-year high in incidents, although most of them were not ship-jacking episodes and did not involve serious loss of property or casualties. And since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021, Southeast Asia has been bracing for the possible spill-overs and growing threat of resurgent transnational terrorism. In the wake of Covid-19, Southeast Asian countries will continue to focus their energies on addressing these maritime security challenges.

At the same time, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is likely to add to the geopolitical uncertainties felt by regional governments – perhaps wary of a scenario revolving around China’s military invasion of Taiwan or limited armed conflict in the South China Sea. But arguably more important will be trepidations about a potential shift in US focus from the Indo-Pacific to Europe, despite Washington’s assurance.

Longstanding deficiencies in maritime security capacities further complicate attempts to devote equal amounts of attention to all these challenges simultaneously. Ballooning post-pandemic debts and growing public clamour for more resources to be devoted to healthcare and social security all complicate moves to increase naval and coastguard spending. Indonesia may have an opening following the loss of a submarine in April 2021, but the country’s spending needs across a multitude of socio-economic priorities does put into question the long-term sustainability of major defence acquisition programs that would be financed mainly via borrowings. The Armed Forces of the Philippines is trying to finalise as many of its outstanding acquisition programs as possible before the end of the Duterte administration, but has not been able to lay its hands on all the desired capabilities, such as submarines.

This means Southeast Asian countries will seek to maintain and enhance their economic and strategic engagements with interested extra-regional powers. These plans fit nicely into ASEAN’s principle of inclusivity in regional security architecture, even if there is no concerted, coordinated effort in this regard by the member states. But it is important to understand that due to sensitivities over sovereignty and jurisdictional rights, Southeast Asian countries seek to police their own waters, so extra-regional aid for capacity-building should come in the form of fiscal, materiel and training assistance, as well as information sharing.

Extra-regional military presence contributes to this capacity-building assistance, and the value of political signalling is often useful in providing security assurance and a deterrent to potential regional adversaries. This latter aspect is important, especially given the uncertainties surrounding Beijing’s irredentism in the South China Sea. At the same time, Sino-US rivalry has presented new opportunities for Southeast Asian countries to explore cooperation with other regional and international parties.

There is certainly no one-size-fits-all approach to maritime security capacity-building assistance in Southeast Asia. It boils down to the specific context of each recipient of the aid, inter alia, their national interests, maritime security priorities and national defence and security architecture (not to mention the accompanying intricacies of inter-agency/service turf wars and stovepipes). In a nutshell, capacity-building assistance has to be targeted and tailored for each country. Ideally, it would be helpful for contributors to coordinate and synergise those efforts in order to minimise, if not avoid, duplication.

High-powered arms sales (and accompanying technology transfers) and the transfer of second-hand equipment have largely characterised capacity-building in Southeast Asia, especially for the navies. Some regional navies continue to perform constabulary and maritime law enforcement missions, hence aid would not only be required for coastguards, which continue to rank behind their “grey hulled” counterparts in terms of national budget priorities. The Russia-Ukraine conflict may provide ammunition for militaries to justify bigger budgets vis-à-vis their civilian counterparts, including coastguards. Regional capacity-building assistance therefore should focus on beefing up Southeast Asian coastguard capacities. However, this does run the risk of sharpening the rivalry that traditionally exists between navies and coastguards in the region.

Regional capacity-building assistance should also not focus solely on the uniformed agencies, but more broadly on promoting better maritime governance in Southeast Asia. Not all countries have a concerted marine or ocean policy that guides prioritisation, planning and allocation of scarce resources. Extra-regional parties could play bigger advisory and consultancy roles in this regard. Materiel assistance does not always have to come in the form of naval or coastguard assets; even mundane equipment such as satellite-based vessel monitoring systems and automated identification system tracking access would be helpful in enhancing maritime governance in Southeast Asia.
 

This article is part of a series examining regional perspectives on maritime security. This project is led by La Trobe Asia, Kings College London and Griffith Asia Institute with the support of the UK High Commission in Canberra.

The United Kingdom became ASEAN’s newest dialogue partner in 2021 soon after launching its Indo-Pacific tilt. In the new diplomatic life after Brexit, the UK’s renewed attention to the broader two oceans, and ASEAN in particular, needed reframing. The dialogue partner status presents a chance for the UK to justify its own priorities and distinguish itself from similar Indo-Pacific ideas of the European Union.

So far, Southeast Asia has welcomed external partners, the interest from Europe and elsewhere, and a tradition of cooperation has been well established. Engaging with external actors helps escape the perception of a US-China domination of world politics.

But there is a sense of conflict between “the more the merrier” approach of welcoming, even actively engaging, external partners, and a growing concern about “over-crowdedness” in the region resulting in competition over agency and control. Overcoming this challenge will depend on the implementation and consistency of the EU and the UK’s respective Indo-Pacific strategies. While it’s still early days, such a challenge is worth bearing in mind from the outset.

The question is whether there are too many Indo-Pacific inputs right now from various European actors, individually and collectively? Is it helpful to have ASEAN-UK, ASEAN-EU, ASEAN-[fill-in-the-blank] mechanisms on the same issues? As natural as it may sound in the usual conduct of ASEAN-related diplomacy, it presents as a bureaucratically challenging exercise.

Nor should it be assumed that Australian collaboration with the United Kingdom in the Southeast Asia region will be automatically welcomed. As the recent example of AUKUS demonstrated with mixed regional reactions as well as expression of outright concern, local political sensitivities need to be considered.

ASEAN itself also encompasses a diverse set of interests and it cannot be assumed that engaging the organisation guarantees that each will be treated equally. The system of a rotational chair for ASEAN will inevitably involve a shift in preferences and emphasis for issues, such as maritime cooperation for example, along with varying levels of eagerness to cooperate with individual external partners.

For the United Kingdom it is a natural fit to focus on maritime issues in engaging ASEAN. Given the UK’s strengths in the maritime domain here are some areas categorised into two separate streams where I see the most difference could be made, allowing that there will always be challenges about prioritisation within resource constraints:

Protecting the old and already committed to, but often violated, or dismissed elements of maritime order

• Investing in capacity training in legal expertise among the Southeast Asians for the maritime order, particularly involving legal issues. The UK, as well as Australia, have been attractive higher education destinations. This mutually beneficial interest can be further leveraged by more scholarships offered in legal, especially maritime law, studies.
• Securing a safe and protected marine commerce environment, particularly given the disturbance of the global supply chain and trade disputes. This objective also applies for offshore resources, including oil and gas. This issue requires reinforcing adherence to the international law and understanding the obligation of the parties.
• Forging a common approach in response to the grey zone tactics and provocations that seriously challenge the peaceful conduct of maritime activities. Establishing such a common approach will be difficult but without the effort the chances for sustaining maritime order are slim.

Innovating in the maritime order for new opportunities and to address renewed challenges

• Support for environmental research and protection, including areas such as fisheries, plastic pollution, climate change and disaster prediction. This can be further facilitated by technology and information sharing, creating research repositories for the development of knowledge and technologies relating to transboundary issues.
• Informing the “blue economy” – something that excites all ASEAN as a new buzzword for post-pandemic recovery. Combined with the opportunities of the digital transformation, helping the region develop common definitions and standards would be of significant benefit.
• Cooperation in capacity building in technology, cybersecurity and maritime-based digital infrastructure. Technology adoption is transformational and will define the future of maritime activities and safety in the Indo-Pacific and affect Southeast Asia’s safety, security, livelihoods and economies.

Most importantly, external partners must strive to sustain and foster an atmosphere of cooperation. A decline of multilateralism in recent years has been detrimental to what ASEAN has liked to call “habits of cooperation”. The nature of the maritime domain as a global common requires a cooperative spirit. That, self-evidently, is in everybody’s best interest.
 

This article is a part of a series examining regional perspectives on maritime security. This project is led by La Trobe Asia, Kings College London and Griffith Asia Institute with the support of the UK High Commission in Canberra.

The recently released Sixth Assessment Report from the International Panel on Climate Change emphasised the urgency of adapting to and mitigating climate change in coastal regions to “prevent the further acceleration of sea-level rise beyond 2050”. Climate change is likely to have significant implications for maritime security, particularly so for the coastal and archipelagic states of Southeast Asia and the Pacific where existing challenges will be exacerbated.

According to the International Military Council on Climate and Security, climate change could alter security dynamics in the Indo-Pacific region, with increased piracy and transnational crime caused by climate displacement, poverty and overfishing due to pollution, ocean warming and acidification. This could overwhelm existing state resources and maritime security capabilities and increase the need for additional ocean management and policing.

In terms of the region’s population, the United Nations Refugee Agency predicts rising sea levels will create a humanitarian crisis. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimates that 65.9 million people became displaced due to natural disasters in Southeast Asia and the Pacific between 2008 and 2020. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, the Indo-Pacific could see as many as 89 million climate refugees, most of whom will come from Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

Climate change will also impact state sovereignty, with coastlines and maritime boundaries in flux due to rising sea levels. These shifts will impact the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) exclusive economic zones and how maritime zones are defined. Maritime boundaries are vital for ensuring access to resources and navigation rights. In Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, action is already being taken to combat sea-level rise. In Tuvalu, two of its largest islands are disappearing. 

The blue economy, which incorporates renewable energy, fisheries, maritime transport, tourism and waste management is vital for economic security and livelihoods in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Increases in floods and ocean acidification, for example, threaten the fishing industry on which 200 million people in the Indo-Pacific depend for food and jobs. Tuna fishing alone in the Pacific is a US$6 billion industry.

Southeast Asia has been classified as one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change, with all Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries apart from Singapore listed in the top 50 most climate-affected between 1997 and 2016. The top ten included Myanmar, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. Indonesia has the world’s second longest coastline, and Jakarta is the world’s fastest-sinking city. Parts of Ho Chi Minh City, Manila and Bangkok will be underwater by 2050.

Despite this, Southeast Asian states have faced criticism for climate inaction and failing to meet their Paris Agreement targets. This could be an opportunity for Southeast Asia and the Pacific to collaborate on climate affected maritime security issues. ASEAN’s maritime security capabilities are stronger than those of the Pacific, and the Pacific Islands are skilled at climate change activism. There is potential for both regions to cooperate to enhance their own maritime security and that of the Indo-Pacific. 

Alongside climate change and maritime security, both regions are managing geostrategic competition between China and the United States. During times of geopolitical rivalry, smaller states’ security concerns must be heard among those of bigger states. For Southeast Asian states, the importance of ASEAN centrality in the broader Indo-Pacific regional architecture is key to ensuring that their concerns are heard. In the Pacific, attempts to reconceptualise the region’s island states into a collective under the “Blue Pacific Continent” strategy demonstrates a desire to address long-term climate challenges and empower Pacific voices.

Currently, there is little collaboration between ASEAN and the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) on climate change and maritime security. Invitations to ASEAN and PIF meetings should be extended to regional counterparts to ensure a truly regional approach to these issues. Dialogues at the Track I and II levels between Southeast Asian and Pacific states would ensure more collaboration on shared climate threats to maritime security.

Southeast Asia and the Pacific could also unite to advocate “fixed” maritime boundaries as sea levels rise. ASEAN’s maritime law has been focused on strengthening UNCLOS to manage territorial disputes in the region, particularly in the South China Sea. At the 2021 PIF meeting, leaders committed to a Declaration on Preserving Maritime Zones in the Face of Climate Change-related Sea-Level Rise. The declaration recognises the importance of UNCLOS in determining maritime zones and advocates fixing maritime borders so they are not reduced due to climate-induced territorial erosion.

Indo-Pacific stakeholders, such as Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, have an important role in bringing the two regions together. The three states have Southeast Asia and Pacific climate change programs, however more exchanges between the programs will ensure a holistic and regional approach to climate-related maritime security issues.

The effects of climate change on maritime security in Southeast Asia and the Pacific will challenge international legal norms, destabilise blue economics, threaten livelihoods and see mass displacement. The regions should team up to combat these transboundary issues, share oceanic resource management tips, and strengthen the UNCLOS-led maritime order.

Without a genuinely regional approach that includes the most affected coastal and archipelagic states in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the Indo-Pacific will be unprepared for the impacts of climate change in its vast maritime domains. 
 

This article is part of a series examining regional perspectives on maritime security. This project is led by La Trobe Asia, Kings College London and Griffith Asia Institute with the support of the UK High Commission in Canberra.

In recent years, the rise of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing activities, transnational organised crime at sea, expansion of terrorist networks and activities by sea, and increasingly belligerent assertions of unilateral maritime claims have prompted coastal states in the East Asian region to strengthen efforts to establish and maintain law and order at sea to pursue their national security.

More often, they approach issues individually, by engaging in maritime modernisation programs for their civilian and military armed services, as well as updating and enacting laws or regulations in an attempt to control what they see to be problematic maritime activities. Such efforts tend to be nationalist in character, often propelled or justified by domestic, popular demands or influences on the political leadership. Incursions by both non-state and state actors into the maritime domain are perceived as indications of loss of domestic law and order at sea, hence the national responses attempt to regain domestic control.

In East Asian waters such as the South China Sea, this competition has become increasingly tense in recent years. The biggest actor is China, whose unparalleled expansion of the China Coast Guard is an integral element in its pursuit of excessive territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea, by creating de facto administration and control of ocean space legally under the jurisdiction of surrounding smaller states. The latter have responded by expanding and modernising their own coast guard or corresponding naval and air services, in an effort to maintain control and jurisdiction over their own waters under international law but claimed by China.

Since these are all basically efforts to project domestic authority in order to establish and maintain jurisdiction, friction and tensions become inevitable – and ultimately they all signify challenges to the maritime order.

The solution to these clashes theoretically can be provided for the most part by existing international law, especially the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which lays down fundamental norms and rules for resolving competing jurisdictional claims between states in the maritime realm. Thus, there is a direct connection between maintaining and bolstering international maritime law and order and pursuing and defending the system of rules already codified in UNCLOS. However, there is a need to deliberately tread the fine line between encouraging unilateralism and promoting internationalism in the effort to address the ultimate sources of instability in law and order at sea.

It is necessary to popularise the international system that currently exists to create maritime law and order. State actions, whether in terms of legislation and regulation or actual operations at sea, are often justified as being undertaken on behalf of their respective citizenry. There is a need to educate the citizenry by promoting the understanding of the international system and UNCLOS as a means of creating a fair, equitable, and beneficial order at sea.

Broad knowledge and familiarity of this should not be limited to specialists, academics, and government functionaries, but should be shared among everyday citizens, literally the people eking out a livelihood by fishing off a boat, so that the constituencies fully understand the reasons and implications of their governments’ actions and policies.

Whether it is a tense diplomatic exchange or a successful cooperative exercise, ordinary people must be made aware of the benefits of maintaining the current international system centred around UNCLOS. Specialists and academics should not limit their audience to select government officials or operators at sea; their interpretations and explanations must reach the wider audience for whom such officials and operatives act.

This need to share knowledge has become more urgent, and has also been made possible, in the present due to the spread of information and communication technology. The ubiquity of social media, along with heightened popular awareness and sensitivity to maritime issues and disputes, is especially found in the East Asian region. But without active guidance and proper information, populations tend to project their national or domestic worldviews and expect other countries to simply conform to their local demands and opinions, unaware that there is a need to balance and compromise interests in accordance with the system of international law established for that purpose.

To offset these tendencies, it is necessary to ensure that the popularisation project must also promote truly knowledgeable, cosmopolitan, and internationalised citizens who act consciously as members of a true community of nations existing under a recognised system of international law. Increasing public awareness must be accompanied by an expanding internationalist worldview. This is the way to address the tendency for nationalist and unilateralist responses to problems on the part of states: by imbuing inherent reflexes in favour of internationalist and multilateral solutions not only in governments but even in their constituencies.

In this regard, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is already confronting this with its efforts in ASEAN Community-building, but it is admittedly easier said than done, and has been stymied by internal and external obstacles. ASEAN economic linkages have been opened and fared much better and improved much more over the decades, while political solidarity has waxed and waned, and cultural and social connections remain more disparate.

In this, Australia and the United Kingdom, together with other like-minded partners, have the opportunity of playing role to support the popularisation and internationalisation of maritime law and order. Investments in the fields of social education, maritime business and the “Blue Economy”, as well as multi-media platforms in conventional and social media, need to be made and harnessed to promote common interests in a fair, stable, and equitable system of maritime norms and rules. These would, in turn, contribute to promoting a coherent and consistent effort among coastal states to shore up the maritime order in their jurisdictional waters, by strengthening the existing international order that is increasingly being challenged by unilateralist actions.

Between China and smaller states in East Asia, the latter would certainly be more inclined toward an idealist and multilateralist legal order represented by UNCLOS and the existing international system. Thus, efforts along these lines will likely be welcomed and will gain more traction in the years to come.
 

This article is a part of a series examining regional perspectives on maritime security. This project is led by La Trobe Asia, Kings College London and Griffith Asia Institute with the support of the UK High Commission in Canberra.

Maritime scholars and practitioners often wrestle with the question of what a “desirable” architecture for maritime security should be, and how must it be properly implemented? The issue is complex, because although security is best delivered in collective and cooperative settings, there is often a lack of clarity about how cooperation between multinational security agencies should be practically operationalised.

Two aspects seem particularly knotty. First, how does one account for the material and strategic costs of military cooperation? It is no secret that naval collaboration entails political costs. India, which has long faced pressure from Russia to reduce strategic engagement with the United States (that in turn pushes New Delhi to lessen its military dependence on Moscow), is familiar with the costs of strategic cooperation. ASEAN, too, with a history of balancing between the United States and China, is conscious of the downsides of maritime collaboration.

But there is also a second and more complicated dimension. If integrative frameworks are rooted in national security and national interest, can region-wide maritime cooperation ever be functionally effective? Again, no answers are easily forthcoming. Notwithstanding the acknowledgement of the need for collaboration in the maritime domain, the political leadership in many countries is unclear about the extent of acceptable cooperation. Navies broadly know they must work together, but “to what degree”, “to what specific ends”, and “at what cost”, remains unexplained.

In the absence of clear guidance about how maritime cooperation is to be operationalised, navies engage in short-term arm’s length collaboration, which does not translate into much over the longer term. Each side develops its own model of cooperative security, based entirely on the appreciation of national interests. On occasion, the military interactions are robust – such as during constabulary and humanitarian missions – but for the most part, maritime forces avoid working together in formats that risk provoking powerful players and disturbing the strategic balance of power.

The preference for balanced interactions is markedly high in the Indian Ocean region, where many states regard non-traditional security as the holy grail of maritime operations. Particularly in South Asia, human security and livelihood challenges are accorded priority over traditional security threats. Despite its record of aggression in the Indo-Pacific, China is widely regarded as an economic and security partner, and not as a threat to the rules-based order.

India, of course, is an exception to the consensus in South Asia. New Delhi recognises the China challenge in ways its neighbours do not. From an Indian standpoint, a Chinese maritime presence in the Indian Ocean has implications that go beyond naval confrontation. The realists in New Delhi know that Chinese dual-use ports under the Belt and Road Initiative are meant to establish Chinese power and hegemony in India’s natural sphere of influence, and shift the regional balance of power away from Delhi.

Yet the Chinese threat in India’s backyard is qualitatively different from the challenge in the South China Sea. Unlike in Southeast Asia, where Beijing aspires to full-spectrum dominance, China’s strategy in the Indian Ocean is one of incremental stakeholdership. If India used force against China, New Delhi (and not Beijing) would be seen as the aggressor.

In the Western Pacific, too, the picture is mixed. Southeast Asian states have resisted Chinese efforts to dominate the littorals, and even upped their collaboration to help fight irregular security challenges. But non-traditional security isn’t the low hanging fruit it was once assumed to be. Despite successes in counter-piracy and humanitarian relief, law enforcement agencies remain reluctant to jointly tackle armed robbery at sea, illegal fishing and other crimes that occur in coastal spaces. For all their professed zeal for integrated operations, navies and coastguards remain unwilling to allow foreign partners access into coastal waters.

Against this backdrop, can the AUKUS trilateral security pact, the Quad and ASEAN succeed in creating the conditions for sustained cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region? The foregoing suggests it would be difficult. That, however, should not dishearten avid proponents of vigorous strategic collaboration, for country priorities are wholly circumstantial and shaped by the vagaries of geopolitics. India, which has consistently advocated “security and growth for all in the region” (SAGAR), is today more confrontational towards China (in the wake of the border crisis in Ladakh). Chinese aggression in Taiwan and Hong Kong has forced ASEAN also into hardening its Indo-Pacific posture. 

But scholars and practitioners should beware of reducing maritime security to a simple contest of narratives. Those that insist the rules-based security order must focus on “enforcement” and “red lines” of acceptable conduct, should recognise that “order” rather than “strict rules” animates the policy preferences of many Asian states. We ought to be more creative in generating consensus around long-term cooperation. The aim should be to identify avenues for association and partnerships in areas where states may not necessarily agree on a way forward.

The imperative to forge issue-based coalitions in a post-Covid world – where resources are scarce and commitments diverse – is bound to draw likeminded states into tighter embrace. The need of the hour is for maritime forces to improve interoperability, expand collaboration in “hard” and “soft” security, and share the burden of littoral security. The habits of cooperation they now foster will hold navies in good stead when the threats begin to crystallise in ways that few today imagine or anticipate.
 

This article is a part of a series examining regional perspectives on maritime security. This project is led by La Trobe Asia, Kings College London and Griffith Asia Institute with the support of the UK High Commission in Canberra.

The Indo-Pacific maritime security order consists of international treaties, multilateral diplomatic forums and, increasingly, minilateral security initiatives. The first two are under stress due to China’s assertive behaviour in the maritime domain and have led to the formation of the latter.

The principal treaty underpinning the rules-based global maritime order is the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). A product of the Cold War, and the consensus of over 100 developed and developing countries, UNCLOS contains ambiguities and imperfections. But it remains the single most important treaty governing maritime norms, rights and responsibilities.

In the Indo-Pacific, UNCLOS has been eroded by China’s actions, especially in the South China Sea. The biggest problem is China’s expansive jurisdictional claims denoted by its “nine-dash line”. In 2013, the Philippines challenged those claims under UNCLOS dispute resolution procedures and won: in July 2016 an arbitral tribunal ruled that the nine-dash line was incompatible with UNCLOS and that China’s actions had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ)–and by extension the sovereign rights of the other Southeast Asian claimants, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. China not only refused to participate in the legal proceedings but also rejected the award and has continued its unlawful activities in Southeast Asia countries’ EEZs ever since.

Although the United States has repeatedly called out those unlawful activities, because it has not ratified UNCLOS, China has accused Washington of hypocrisy. Unfortunately there seems little prospect that the United States will ratify UNCLOS any time soon.

Equally unlikely is the international community convening to revise, refine and renovate UNCLOS to resolve those ambiguities, strengthen adherence and take into account new challenges such as climate change.

The maritime states of Southeast Asia are firm believers in the importance of UNCLOS, because in theory international law levels the playing field between large and small countries.

ASEAN and China are currently negotiating a code of conduct for the South China Sea. There is much the 11 parties agree on – at least rhetorically. But China has inserted several problematic provisions into the preliminary texts designed to promote its nine-dash claims and undermine the arbitral tribunal’s award.

It is imperative that the five Southeast Asian claimants coordinate their positions in the code of conduct talks and present a united front in defence of UNCLOS. Indonesia’s call in December 2021 for a meeting of the five states plus Singapore to discuss the situation in the South China Sea is an encouraging first step, though it remains to be seen whether it signals that Jakarta is finally willing to assume a leadership role.

ASEAN itself has highlighted the importance of maritime security for decades. However, ASEAN-led forums have not been very efficacious. The ASEAN Regional Forum has failed to enact effective confidence-building measures let alone preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution. The East Asia Summit is too high-level to produce detailed agreements. And although the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus has promoted the use of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) during naval exercises, the agreement is voluntary, does not cover coast guards and there have been lapses between practice and implementation.

Due to the limitations of ASEAN, countries have formed minilateral security initiatives which are more flexible, informal and targeted than larger multilateral forums.

Southeast Asian countries have established minilateral security initiatives to deal with the problem of piracy and sea robbery in the Straits of Malacca and the Sulu-Celebes Seas. Thailand and Laos have joined with China to conduct coordinated patrols in the Mekong River to counter maritime criminals. The three initiatives have been relatively successful, and aside from sensitivities over sovereignty, have been uncontroversial.

More controversial are the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) and AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom and United States). Both minilaterals were established in response to the perceived threat of a rising China. The Quad is not yet a letter-head organisation, and AUKUS is primarily a technology-sharing agreement. Both may yet evolve into something else. Other regional states may plug in and play on an ad hoc basis, but Southeast Asian countries will be wary of antagonising China and undermining the concept of ASEAN centrality by actively endorsing them. Yet at the same time, due to concerns about China, they will not actively oppose them.

The chances that Beijing will alter its behaviour and renounce its so-called “historic rights” in the South China Sea are vanishingly small.

Southeast Asian countries are not without influence and agency, and understand well the costs to their economies and strategic autonomy if they recognise China’s claims. Countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia can provide succour, if done sensitively and in a coordinated manner. The provision of hardware such as radars, drones, surveillance aircraft and patrol boats would help regional states improve their maritime domain awareness. This would allow the Southeast Asian claimants to draw attention to China’s violations of UNCLOS. The sharing of best practices with regional navies and especially coast guards would also be beneficial.

Australian and British universities are also well-placed to offer courses and workshops to Southeast Asian officials, postgraduate students and security practitioners on the importance, essence and complexities of UNCLOS–both to highlight regional states’ rights and disabuse Southeast Asians of China’s insidious narratives concerning its “historic rights” in the South China Sea and wrongful interpretations of the law of the sea.
 

This article is a part of a series examining regional perspectives on maritime security. This project is led by La Trobe Asia, Kings College London and Griffith Asia Institute with the support of the UK High Commission in Canberra.