We’ll back US exercise likely to annoy China

The Obama administration is extremely likely to conduct naval and air operations, called a freedom of navigation exercise, in the waters surrounding disputed territories in the South China Sea that are claimed by China.

This will involve the US sailing within 12 nautical miles of artificial islands and airstrips the Chinese are building in territory they claim is sovereign.

This is the inescapable conclusion from a series of briefings, interviews and conversations with senior US and regional sources conducted by my colleague Rowan Callick and myself over the past few days. The Chinese will bitterly resent the FON exercise. Australia will support the US actions diplomatically. It is worth bearing several points in mind. The Chinese routinely send their coastguard vessels within 12NM of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, which are administered by Japan, and over which both Beijing and Tokyo claim sovereignty. Beijing demonstrates it does not accept Japanese sovereignty there.

Second, much of the Chinese claim to territories in the South China Sea is inherently ridiculous. These are coral atolls more than 1000km from the Chinese shore but often almost on the continental shelf of the Southeast Asian nations involved.

Beijing has engaged in massive land reclamation projects in order to build airstrips, in one case a 3000m effort, which can be used to station intimidating air force and other military facilities.

Washington and Canberra are officially neutral about competing territorial claims. However, the US and Australia have criticised Beijing’s land reclamation activities. Canberra, like Washington, supports The Philippines’ move to seek adjudication of Manila and Beijing’s claims under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Some of the Southeast Asian nations have also undertaken land reclamation works but at a minuscule level compared with Beijing.

Artificial islands cannot legally generate land rights along the lines of exclusive economic zones or territorial waters, so the US could sail within 12NM of the artificial islands Beijing is building even if it recognised, which it doesn’t, China’s spurious claims to sovereignty.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has taken a position against the Chinese activity and explicitly against any declaration by the Chinese of an air defence identification zone. The Chinese declared an ADIZ over the Senkaku islands.

In response the US flew military planes across the Senkakus without notifying the Chinese to make it clear it did not recognise the ADIZ. The Japanese did the same. Australia and South Korea strongly criticised Beijing’s ADIZ.

The Chinese were somewhat embarrassed by this experience as they had declared an ADIZ without having any capability to back it up. Southeast Asians are seriously worried that once the Chinese have built their facilities in the South China Sea and stationed military resources there, they will declare an ADIZ in one or more areas of the sea.

The Americans are determined to demonstrate they will not accept, recognise or abide by any such ADIZ. The Abbott government, in my view, will support any FON action the Americans take. The Abbott government acted quickly, as did the Pentagon, to correct the misleading impression given by new US Assistant Defence Secretary David Shear in congressional testimony last week.

In a hearing on US responses to Chinese actions in the South China Sea, Shear suggested B-1 bombers would be stationed in Australia. In fact no American forces are based in Australia. None. And no B-1 bombers have so far been rotated through Australia.

Shear’s remark was clumsy, mistaken and impolite because he had neither sought nor received agreement about B-1s from Canberra, nor had he made any arrangements about the remarks themselves. So both the Abbott government and the Pentagon corrected Shear’s mistake. But the Abbott government was not, as some perfectly idiotic interpretations suggested, moving away from its support for US positions in Asia.

Tony Abbott, in response to a question on this, in which he restated Australia’s strong friendship with China, also remarked: “Occasionally we have disagreements with China … when China declared an ADIZ over disputed islands in the East China Sea we strongly took issue with that. I guess the point we want to make is that freedom of the sea and freedom of the air is absolute.”

Abbott was certainly not anticipating his government’s possible response to a hypothetical situation in the South China Sea — namely the Americans challenging Chinese sovereignty claims by overflying or close sailing as they did in the Senkakus. However, it is obvious, at least to me, that Canberra would back the US if it did do this. This would also have been the judgment of any recent Labor government.

The US is responding more urgently to Chinese actions in the South China Sea for two reasons. First, Chinese actions have accelerated massively in the disputed territory. Kevin Rudd has occasionally proposed elegant solutions to the conflicting territorial claims in the East and South China seas.

These always involved both parties to disputed territory promising not to engage in any unilateral development on disputed territory. Bob Carr as foreign minister made a similar proposal. The Chinese in the South China Sea have made a mockery of any such proposal. Since last year they have already built more than 800ha of runways and reclaimed lands and artificial islands.

Second, a critical change in personnel in Washington has provided leadership for a more forward-leaning policy. Ashton Carter succeeded Chuck Hagel as Defence Secretary. Because Secretary of State John Kerry takes so little interest in Asia and in any event has such little consequence, Carter has become the Obama administration’s go-to man on Asia.

Carter’s position is paradoxically strong. As Barack Obama has chewed through so many defence secretaries, he cannot possibly sack another one. Obama couldn’t get his main choice — Michelle Flournoy — to take the job. No one who sees themselves as a chance to serve in a Hillary Clinton administration wants to work for the Obama administration in its weak and dying days. So Carter, a pointy-headed physicist and policy wonk, was the last senior man standing and took the job.

But Carter is a strong personality with long experience of Asia and a realistic view of China. The appointment of the redoubtable admiral Harry Harris as Pacific commander reinforces Carter’s best instincts. The Americans will mount their FON operation, I think, we will support it and the Chinese will cope. But we live in interesting times.