The South China Sea is a marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Karimata and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan of around 3,500,000 square kilometresPresident Xi Jinping seems to agree with the Athenian general who, more than 2,000 years ago, warned the people of Melos that the strong do what they wish and the weak do as they are compelled. His government insists that nearly all the South China Sea belongs to China—even islets and reefs close to the Philippines and five other littoral states but hundreds of miles from the Chinese mainland. Instead of raising China in harmony, Beijing’s policies point the world toward the brink of war. Intransigent, Beijing rejects the jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and its ruling that China has no historic rights to large swathes of the South China Sea and has wrongly abused not only fishing vessels from the Philippines but the coral riches beneath the water.
Skeptics about international law say that China behaves no differently from other great powers. Few, if any, have bowed to international tribunals. When Nicaragua complained that the United States was mining its waters, the Reagan administrations simply discarded the U.S. commitment to accept compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and rejected the court’s ruling in 1986 against the United States. In a similar vein, the George W. Bush administration “un-signed” the statute creating the International Criminal Court and abrogated, with no legal justification, the Nixon administration’s treaty with Moscow limiting ballistic missile defense.While the UN Charter bans acts of aggression, China’s seizure and militarization of islands and reefs in the South China Sea do not directly violate this standard. Still, China’s actions (along with Russia’s in the Caucasus and Ukraine) do breach the principle enunciated by the U.S. Secretary of State Henry Stimson in 1932. Responding to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, Stimson declared that the United States would not recognize any political or territorial changes accomplished by force. Though not a member of the League of Nations, a U.S. representative joined the League’s investigation of Japan’s puppet state “Manchukuo.” The League said it would not recognize the new state of Manchukuo on the grounds that its establishment violated the territorial integrity of China, and therefore the Nine-Power Treaty to which many prominent league members subscribed. Neither the Stimson Doctrine nor the League’s declaration stopped Japan’s invasion of China. Still, Stimson’s key principle had greater effect when the Soviet Union invaded and absorbed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1940. Even though Washington and its allies came to value Stalin as an ally against Hitler, none recognized Moscow’s annexation of the Baltic states. Indeed, the three Baltic countries retained their embassies in Washington for five decades. Upholding the Stimson principle helped to delegitimize Soviet occupation and enable Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians to reestablish their independence in 1990-1991.Enjoying this article?Taking a leaf from Thucydides on the root cause of the Peloponnesian War, some analysts warn that China and the United States are destined to fight. Indeed, Michael Pillsbury argues that China’s elites are engaged in a hundred-year marathon to displace the United States as global leader. China’s actions in the South China Sea and elsewhere seem to confirm the expectation that rising powers will challenge the existing order and its dominant power.
