As disturbing trends in the South China Sea continue into 2015, some interesting proposals have been floated in various circles about how to resolve – or at least manage – the contentious territorial and maritime disputes there. We have explored some of these direct and indirect approaches at The Diplomat, which range from imposing greater costs on Chinese coercion in the South China Sea to leaving the issue to the next generation altogether.
At a recent conference at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, former director of national intelligence and commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command Admiral Dennis Blair suggested one such idea. In essence, Blair proposed that an ‘International Conference on the South China Sea’ be convened to work out an international solution to conflicting claims in the South China Sea, and that the results of that conference then be used by these actors as the new reality on the ground.
The logic of such an approach, Blair said, would be to establish clarity on how these disputes are handled, something that is absent today. He argued that similar disputes in East Asia have tended to be handled in one of three ways: treaty agreements of some sort (eg. the 1979 agreement between Malaysia and Thailand); tacit agreements to work toward a diplomatic resolution (eg. the Kurils, Dokdo/Takeshima); and military standoffs (eg. Taiwan, Senkaku/Diaoyu, the two Koreas). In the South China Sea, however, Blair said the actors have yet to all work out exactly which method to use, with the declaration of conduct on the South China Sea virtually ignored and China using non-military, gray-zone actions to advance its controversial nine-dash line claim.
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