Asia
Banyan
Indonesia and the South China Sea
Indonesia wades into the South China Sea
Aug 2nd 2010, 8:37 by Banyan
IT IS interesting to learn that Indonesia’s government last month, through its mission at the United Nations, wrote to a UN commission (“on the limits of the continental shelf”), contesting China’s position on the South China Sea. Attention has been drawn to the letter by an excellent article (behind a pay barrier) by Michael Richardson in Singapore's Straits Times. The letter argues that China’s claim to sovereignty over almost all the sea “clearly lacks international legal basis” and “encroaches [on] the legitimate interest of the global community.”
The letter was sent before the row over the sea flared up again at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi later in July. It is rare these days for any South-East Asian country publicly to challenge China, much as the region’s diplomats privately fret about the recent muscularity of Chinese diplomacy.
Indonesia's intervention now suggests three things. The first is that this is an issue where it feels it has a role to play. That is partly because—unlike Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam (as well as China and Taiwan)—it has no claim of its own on any of the sea's islands [see correction below], and so can present itself as an honest broker.
Also, as an archipelagic country, Indonesia has long been interested in the law of the sea. Hasjim Djalal, a veteran Indonesian diplomat and legal expert, chaired the International Seabed Authority, and tried long and hard to set up a mechanism for tackling the South China Sea—some of his writings on the topic can be seen at a useful online archive. (Mr Hasjim is the father of Dino Patti Djalal, who is Indonesia’s ambassador-designate to the United States, having been spokesman and an important kitchen-cabinet member of the president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono).
But the second lesson of Indonesia’s letter is to show just how worried the region is by China’s approach. One of Mr Hasjim’s goals was to make China confirm that its interest in the South China Sea was of a different and lower order from, for example, its dispute with Taiwan. In fact, the exact reverse has happened. In talks with America, China has elevated its claim over the sea to a “core national interest”, ie, just like Taiwan (not to mention Tibet).
Mr Richardson’s article has some numbers that help explain why. China’s internationally recognised “Exclusive Economic Zone” (EEZ) at sea is just 880,000 sq km (340,000 square miles). In the South China Sea, it claims an area four times as big.
The third implication of the letter may be that—at long last—Indonesia is beginning to show a bit of assertiveness in its own diplomacy. Under the long Suharto dictatorship, the regional giant exercised its de facto leadership of ASEAN by stealth. Now it seems, tentatively, to be flexing a few muscles of its own.
Correction: I erred in saying that Indonesia has no claim in the sea. In fact its EEZ does overlap with China's claim. Rather, Indonesia bases its aspiration to be an "honest broker" on the fact that, unlike the other countries listed, it has no claim on any of the islands (mostly, in fact, uninhabited specks) in the Spratly or Paracel chains.
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I like the third implication cited the best, although the other two are also excellent! It's time Indonesia, as the largest country in South East Asia, asserted itself. No other ASEAN country comes even close and therefore Indonesia, if it is inclined, will be the unchallenged leader of ASEAN. But Indonesia itself has always been ambivalent abt its ASEAN role. It has been frustrated in its efforts to open up Myanmar and found itself out of sync with quite a few fellow ASEAN members on that score. It shd have a better outcome picking this subject to burnish its leadership credentials. Bravo, Indonesia!
O, Indonesia, THE Indonesia, one of the two or three supposed favourite sons and daughters of the esteemed Magazine the Economist News-Paper.
Most of Indonesia and of the Indonesians are either or both Islamic and/or Muslims, but they are NOT suicide-bombers, the common and general contemporary stereotypes regardless and notwithstanding; and they are absolutely, affirmatively and definitely NOT looking for or to make or to commit their own mass suicides.
If NO A.-Bombs, NO N.-Bombs, NO nuclear submarines, NO ICBMs, and NO B-52s or equivalent,
Then affirmatively and absolutely NO right to the Sea, the Seas and the Oceans, and no right to Islands, WHATSOEVER!
(The REAL LAW of the Law of the Seas and of the Oceans.)
End of the Story!
Freedom really is NOT Free!
Freedom really is NOT Free!
Are you the Indonesians prepared to actually FIGHT and DIE over the South Seas and over the Sea of China, even for your own Republic, and country, State and Nation, Indonesia, or NOT?! Or what?!
Seriously, does anyone seriously expect the Chinese and/or the Vietnamese to take the Indonesians, or even the Malays, the Malayans and the Malaysians, or the Brunei-Malays, many of, if not most of, them DO NOT EVEN have or use SURNAMES, in any serious fashion, or seriously?!
How many Han Chinese persons or Vietnamese persons have, or claim to or are known to have, Muslim or Indonesian, or both, Step-Fathers or Step-Mothers, anyway and anyhow?!
You know, Indonesia is only talking about this because they are at a crossroads.
@politico-economist wrote:
Aug 2nd 2010 12:56 GMT
"I like the third implication cited the best, although the other two are also excellent! It's time Indonesia, as the largest country in South East Asia, asserted itself. No other ASEAN country comes even close and therefore Indonesia, if it is inclined, will be the unchallenged leader of ASEAN. But Indonesia itself has always been ambivalent abt its ASEAN role. It has been frustrated in its efforts to open up Myanmar and found itself out of sync with quite a few fellow ASEAN members on that score. It shd have a better outcome picking this subject to burnish its leadership credentials. Bravo, Indonesia!"
I have to agree with you here. It's important that Indonesia is involved, at least it helps the likes of Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. Indonesia's involvement turns it into a "regional issue" where the whole of ASEAN is involved and other parties, preventing China from strong arming individual ASEAN members via bilateral agreements.
Most people don't understand how important the South China Sea is to most countries in ASEAN, including Indonesia. Indonesia biggest trading partner is Japan by far, its trade is 3 times what it does with China. Most of the exports / imports from Indonesia to Japan go through the South China Sea. Some sort of regional body should be set up, just like Malaysia-Indonesia-Singapore have done with the Malacca Straits.
Let's put the ASEAN (“THE ASEAN”, not “ASEAN”) AWAY and ASIDE for a moment; and please do go and do go on thinking, THINKING over what exactly is THE so-called “South-East Asia” anyway and anyhow?
Essentially they are anything and everything to the South of China; BUT, ARE there ANY real, true and actual SCIENTIFIC basis behind and for that and such a and of the definition?
Essentially they are anything and everything to the South of China; BUT, ARE there ANY real, true and actual SCIENTIFIC basis behind and for that and such a and of the definition?
There are NO rivers, NO Mountain ranges, and NO Seas that are or that can be or could be used to properly and to clearly separate and demarcate at least HALF of the so-called “South-East Asia” from the “East Asia”.
A REAL and a TRUE “South-East Asia”, if ever there WERE, in the plural past tense, EVER one and be one, would ONLY be consisting of TWO (2) PLUS ONE (+1) countries, and Republics and Nations States,
The Austronesian (Out-of-Taiwan and Out-of-Formosa South-Austronesian) Archipelagos, of the Roman-Catholic Christian Philippine Islands, and of the Malayic Malay-Javanese-Sundanese Muslim and Islamic Indonesia, with all the EVENTUAL India-Hindustan-and-Pakistan-style armed-military rivalries;
And alongside the lone and the orphaned Austro-Asiatic Khmer Cambodia, supposed that the Thai Tais and the Viêtnamese would continue to allow it to live and to exist.
A solid regional institution needs to be established to arbitrate China, Vietnam's (and others) respective claims to the South China Sea. Otherwise, China will continue to exercise its power without consideration of its neighbours.
realpolitiktoday.wordpress.com
What kind of a and sort of a “REAL”-POLITIK if it is clearly UNREAL anyhow and anyway?!
Arrangements of these, that and such a kind and a nature can ONLY be IMPOSED upon by WAR.
The River Danube, the Black Sea and the Sea of the Marmara, and with the Two Straits of the Bosphorus and of the Dardanelles, all came under one form of another of some forms of Multi-National and/or of International arrangements, control, management, sovereignty, occupation, administration, and/or supervision,
ONLY after WARS;
The War on the Crimea of the years from 1853 to 1856, and the First War in the Balkans of the years from 1912 to 1913, and the FIRST WORLD WAR the GREAT WAR and the WAR TO END ALL THE WARS,
AS WELL AS the SECOND WORLD WAR.
The War upon the Crimea of the years from 1853 to 1856, and the First War in the Balkans of the years from 1912 to 1913, and the FIRST WORLD WAR the GREAT WAR and the WAR TO END ALL THE WARS,
AS WELL AS the SECOND WORLD WAR.
The Control, by “CERTAIN” countries and Nations States, over the South Seas and over the Sea of China WERE LOST once and for all, or at least for now, after both the VIÊT-NAM WAR and in the Wars in Indo-China,
BY the LOSERS, BOTH THE Commonwealth of AUSTRALIA and the PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, along with North America (THE United States) along with the entire NATO (L'OTAN).
Both the author and THE Banyan TRIED A LITTLE BIT TOO HARD, a stretched for a LITTLE BIT TOO FAR; and Indonesia being a so-called “honest broker” would be one of those (unless there is a guest writer and author, and the and that guest writer and author being either a certain Mr Citizen Obama the American, or being the current, present and incumbent President of the United States).
(And For-Your-Information: The claim that Indonesia and the Indonesians have no claim over any Islands in the South Sea and in the Sea of China ARE (probably) UNTRUE either, especially with them already having the Riau Islands and the Riau Archipelagos.)
Anyone, NOT the Dalai Lama and NOT the members of the “Save Tibet” Free Tibet campaign and movement, and who ACTUALLY KNOWS the history of the Inner South-East Asia,
Would know “THE KONFRONTASI (THE DE CONFRONTATIE)”.
Indonesia and the Indonesians only and have only TOLERATED as de facto, but not and have NEVER really properly and fully ACCEPTED Brunei, and the Malayans and the Malaysians, upon Borneo-Kalimantan, in the same fashion as the claim by the Philippine Islands over the Malaysian State of the Sabah (and in the case of both parties, along with any Malayan-Malaysian and Brunei-Malay Islander and Insular claims over the Seas away from the coastal lines of Borneo-Kalimantan).