 I'm Ernie Bauer, back with you, probably know me by now, Chair for Southeast Asian Studies here at CSIS, and it's an honor to chair our last panel, which has the actually very fortunate task of looking at habits of cooperation and confidence building in the South China Sea. We have a distinguished panel here today, and we will start with a distinguished expert from Indonesia, Ambassador Harif Habas Ogresano, who has come to join us from Europe where he serves as the Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to the Kingdom of Belgium and Luxembourg and importantly to the European Union, but the Ambassador during his career has been involved in these habits of cooperation with a legal basis and has a number of impressive successes in that area, and we'll look forward to hearing from you. Ambassador, the floor is yours. Thank you Ernie for the kind words. This afternoon, I would like to discuss about the habits of cooperation in Southeast Asia, but also the habits of respecting international law. I think that's a very important element that we have heard since the last two days. Now, the habits of cooperation, I believe, we can see from the clear witnesses demonstrated by the existence of a number of regional architecture and economic and political aspects. We have the ASEAN, of course, one of the most successful regional organizations in the world that plays a very important role in the regions. We have the APEC, we have even the latest one, the plan to have a large regional, comprehensive economic partnerships that involve nearly 3 billion people bringing along ASEAN, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Korea and India. It shows that the dynamics of regional architectures are there. The habits of cooperation do exist in the regions. It has become one of the main anchor in the creation of peace and stability in our part of the world. But we also have habits of cooperation at sub-regional level that many of you may not aware of. I can give you two examples of sub-regional habits of cooperation. The first one is the arrangements that we have in the states of Malaga and Singapore. Many people do not realize that some parts of the water in the states of Malaga and Singapore have no maritime boundaries. They are not delimited. Some are delimited, some are not delimited yet. But the literal states, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, we manage to do a coordinated patrol to fight against piracy. There is a larger public goods which is to fight against pirates in the states of Malaga and Singapore that put us together in the ability to deploy assets to fight them, regardless of the absence of maritime delimitations. This is very critical and very important because normally the navy are not willing to cooperate if there is no very clear line of the allocation of the authority. But they do cooperate also. There is also a very interesting setup in the states of Malaga and Singapore. We just call the cooperative mechanism. This is a mechanism to work together in the safety of navigations. Again, this is a safety of navigation in a place where in some parts you do not have maritime boundaries. In the cooperative mechanism, we invite user states, not only the literal states, not only Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, but we invite other countries. We invite China, we invite Japan, Korea, the United States, even Greece has a seat in this cooperative mechanism. It is a very interesting setup that we have in the states of Singapore and Malaysia, again, to show that we can cooperate even in the absence of delimitations of maritime boundaries. Another example is the Coral Triangle Initiative. They say a coral reef, very big coral reef protections in the waters between Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, PNG, Solomon Island and East Timor. Many of these countries do not have maritime boundaries whatsoever. Again, it shows that even without maritime boundaries, we can actually do work together for a larger public goods interest. I think these are important examples coming out of the regions. Now, we do also have, as I mentioned before, the habits of respecting international law. We do have disputes of sovereignty disputes who owns the islands, for instance, dispute between the United States and the Netherlands in the early 1900s on one of the islands in the region, Las Palmaso Mianas. We have the case between Indonesia and Malaysia. We went to the ICJ. You have a case between Malaysia and Singapore. On Peter Branca, they went to the ICJ. You have the case between Thailand and Cambodia. Again, going to the ICJ, you have the reclamation case between Malaysia and Singapore, which were in the hit loss. There were a lot of cases in hit loss on the prom and release issue of vessels. Again, you see a tremendous example of the respect of the rule of law international law in the regions. Now, Indonesia itself, on maritime boundaries, we have about 17 maritime boundaries. Other countries in the region, they do have lots of maritime boundaries as well. We started our negotiation in maritime boundaries all the way back since the 1960s. So we do have that deep and trans culture of rule of law of negotiations to achieve in maritime boundaries. Now, our latest maritime boundaries that we had is with the Philippines. We had a negotiation with the Philippines first in 1994, and we concluded in 2014. So it's 20 years, a very long journey. Normally, it is very long. Our boundary with Vietnam was first initiated in 1978, and it was concluded in 2003. So again, it was a very long process of negotiation. But the one that we have with the Philippines is very interesting because Indonesia and the Philippines are close partners, close friends in the negotiation in Anglos, because we both are the large, archaologic countries in the world. Indonesia is the largest, and the Philippines is the number two largest in the world. We have a very strong bond, our diplomats, our lawyers, both countries all the way since the 50s. And when we negotiate maritime boundaries with the Philippines, the Philippines has a problem coming from the treaty between the United States and Spain, the Treaty of Paris, 1898. That treaty provides a rectangular line that was considered by some to be the maritime boundaries line. Along our negotiation, we saw that as an issue, a challenge that we need to overcome. But I think the Philippines took a very great courage through the legal process internally to finally alter the line in the sense that Philippines finally said that yes, they are going to abide by Anglos 1982. And then because of that, we are able to sign an agreement with the Philippines. The most important elements of this agreement are two. Number one, finally, Indonesia and the Philippines has a maritime boundaries. Second, a treaty, a line that is as old as 115 years old still needs to be adjusted with the current international law of the sea, which is Anglos 1982. So that is the most important element. So if you have a projection of your line that is younger than 115 years old, so I would imagine it's much easier to be adjusted by Anglos. So this agreement creates a state practice, creates an example in international law that clearly unilateral projections of map cannot just be accepted just like that. So I think those are the important elements that came out just from recent habits of respect of international law. Now I would like to conclude with a couple of points. We are understanding that there are challenges going on in the region in Southeast Asia and South China Sea, but I think we need to continue the channel of communication from different parts of regional architectures. We need to have continuous dialogue and discussions in the context of ASEAN China, in the context of the East Asia Summit, in the context of the FDA discussions between ASEAN and the other countries in the RCP. So those channels of communication, those architecture needs to be continued maintained because they could balance what happened will be seen lately. And I think secondly the working group on the Code of Conduct, I think they've met recently in Bali. I saw the report, it's very encouraging and this working group needs to continue working. So hopefully at one point we'll be able to conclude all of the elements in the Code of Conduct. And lastly I believe that these habits of cooperation, habits of CBAM and respect of international law do exist and they need to be further maintained and further strengthened. So I close with that and I hope that this session can also add to the dimensions of the debate on the South China Sea that we should not lose our faith and hope. We still do have a number of ways to advance forward and I think this is a very good initiative coming from CSI. Thank you. Thank you. That was absolutely uplifting. Just what I was hoping for from this panel. Thank you, Ambassador. Our next panelist is Dr. James Manicum and he is a research fellow from the Center for International Governance and Innovation in Waterloo, Canada. James, welcome down south. Thanks, Ernie. I'll try to be as uplifting as the Ambassador was. Although I have to admit I've become more pessimistic than I'd like in the last couple of years. I think we've heard so far in the last panel that we heard the word mistrust and the word security dilemma. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you about a project we've started at CG that sort of takes issue with I guess the prevailing approach, sort of default approach that we've got on CBMS in the region which is that we need more CBMS. I suppose my thinking and the thinking of my colleagues, David Welch and Benoit Hardish on Toronto is that we're not going to get much more confidence if we don't start building trust. And so we've started to think about how to build trust in the region instead of confidence. Particularly because, as the Ambassador pointed out, there's a lot of good habits of cooperation within ASEAN. But the central problem in the South China Sea is habits of cooperation between ASEAN and claimant states and China. And there has been some progress there on sort of what we call a little thing for stuff, maritime pollution, that kind of thing. But we really haven't seen any binding codes of conduct or CBMS emerge. And we argue that's because of a fundamental lack of trust between China and the rival claimant states. And so we'd like to sort of, I'm trying to try to provoke you to think about ways to build trust. And we view the gap, specifically we view the gap between confidence in the one hand and trust on the other to be empathy. Empathy, we argue, is the bridge between confidence and trust. Empathy is, of course, very good for cooperation. As you cooperate more and more, you get positive, iterative interactions like Robert Axel, a lot of talk about, and that in time builds more trust, makes future cooperation more easier. So I'll talk a little bit about empathy with these concepts, and then I'll talk about what we call empathy gaps. So confidence in where China and its claimant states do not share the world view of the other. That's what empathy is, your ability not to agree with someone's world view, but to understand their world view. So we often hear about confidence. Confidence we think of as the subjective degree of certainty that you're safe from imminent conflict as a function of your situational constraints. All this, by the way, is laid out in my paper, which should be available on the CSIS site. If you want to build trust, you do things like you would engage in CBMs, right? CBMs improve transparency, provide advance warning, reduce likelihood of a crisis. We heard Mr. Fuchs out in a number of very promising sounding CBMs, which I argue aren't likely to take place because of lack of trust. Trust, by contrast, is a subjective degree of certainty that one can count on nonviolent interaction and peaceful dispute resolution with another actor, right? I am from Canada. We trust the United States most of the time. 80% of the time. That's the only illusion I'll make to a certain pipeline. Anyway, most of the time. If you don't trust your neighbors, you lock your door at night, and you'll feel confident you'll be safe. But if you do trust your neighbors, you don't need to lock your door at night. That's the difference, right? And if you want to get to know your neighbors and develop sort of a wee feeling with them, it's not going to happen overnight, both when trust takes time. But building trust can be greatly supported by empathy, right? By your capacity to understand their worldview, right? You can have confidence with an adversary, right? I can be confident that my adversary is not going to renege on his or her commitments if I believe that their commitments are in their self-interest, right? If adherence is in their self-interest, I have confidence they're not going to affect. But certainly, if I trust them they've perhaps stopped doing my adversary. But if I trust them, then certainly our cooperation is far more resilient, right? Because they trust inherently includes a concern for my well-being in the part of my adversary, right? In the absence of empathy, I think what we've seen in Southeast Asia at least, and with China as well, is that countries, people, actors tend to overestimate one of this disposition for hostility and threat, right? This leads to a preoccupation with the security dilemma, pursuing zero-sum games, and ultimately, I think takes away from a genuine interest in building confidence via CVMs, right? Every claimant, and I'm sorry to say this, every claimant has not followed the DOC as closely as they could have, right? We now hear justifications of deviation from the DOC and the fact that we didn't start this, we're just reacting to what others have done. Or you hear, well, you know, we're just trying to, we're just reacting to a change in the status quo. Perception to the status quo, I would argue, based on work in East China Sea, perception to the status quo are very rarely shared between two actors. So this brings us to empathy gaps in the South China Sea. I'll talk about three groups. Empathy gaps, for another definition, we view as misperceptions or misunderstandings, mutual misperceptions or misunderstandings of others' wants, fears, needs, desires, interests, judgments, and we can identify several. First of all, I think there's one between China and the rest of the world arguably in the South China Sea, right? And that is that no one seems to believe the Chinese when they say that they honestly do believe the South China Sea is some part of their conception of what China is, right? My colleague Li Minjong at RSI has talked with us all the time, right? From the time every Chinese person is in the second grade, they learn the South China Sea as Chinese. We learn the Arctic as Canadian and Canada. It's part of what you grow up with. China's claims, it argues are deeply rooted in history and what we hear more and more from Chinese colleagues is that the fact that these claims predate unclose means that they should somehow be grandfathered in the international law, right? We heard that from the Chinese delegate at the Shungla Dialogue. I think we heard it today as well. In this view, China is justified in reacting assertively to provocations from others because it now has the capability to do so and others are intruding on Chinese territory. We heard that from Professor Chu in the last panel. And this was significant goes to Vietnam, right? The first thing is that no other claimant base that's claimed this way. As a consequence, nobody shares the Chinese worldview with China's claim on the South China Sea. It's beyond just disagreeing with their claim. It's a worldview question. The second of the gap, I think, relates to perceptions of historical experiences of other claimant states. It's curious to me that China justifies its claims in the South China Sea and its dogmatic line on sovereignty and territorial integrity as a function of its colonial past, violations of sovereignty by great powers or colonial powers. But it's curious that China appreciates the fact that Vietnam and the Philippines have had these shared experiences. In fact, if you, you know, there were no unequal treaties for Vietnam. There was just outright straightforward colonization, right? And likewise in the Philippines. And you hear the Vietnamese and Philippines leaders talk about this, right? State President Song said, we're determined to protect our territory and see from violation for every Vietnamese, national sovereignty is sacred and sacrosanct, right? So it must be curious for in Hanoi and Manila that Beijing frames its claims to national sovereignty in that way, but doesn't understand they've had arguably worse historical experiences than China has. And curiously that has not manifested itself as rejection of Western legal concepts in either Vietnam or Manila any more than anywhere else. I think a third, I think arguably the most important set of gaps for this conference relates to the United States and China, right? The U.S., for instance, and this essentially relates to the rebalance, right? I mean, in the Chinese calculation, the rebalance is justification for China to assert itself. Whereas in the U.S. perception, the rebalance is entirely driven by Chinese behavior since 2008, 2009. You see this in the part of a number of publications that come out in both countries and in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs argued that the onus is on China to improve relations in maritime East Asia from a Chinese perspective. Obviously, if you feel you've been executed for the last, or the countries have been taking, encroaching our territory over the last 30 years, that obviously betrays a lack of appreciation for Chinese perceptions, right? So what are the effective empathy gaps on international relations? Well, I think, as I mentioned before, the primary consequence is an overestimation of threat, which of course fuels the security line and undermines the will to take CBMs seriously, right? Hotlines between the U.S. and China have been notoriously underutilized. I heard yesterday that President Bush had to call Jiang Zemin 12 times in order to get him on the phone during the EP3 crisis. The creation of the by contrast can, I think, yield a couple of good benefits. One is, it keeps you from pursuing policy dead ends. In the Sino-Japanese case, the Japanese have figured out that the Chinese don't pursue, don't view CBMs as a pathway to improve political relations. They see it as a reward for political relations, which is the polar opposite to how Japan perceives CBMs, particularly around Senkaku, Jiu Islands, right? As a consequence, I don't think Japan puts a lot of stock in pursuing CBMs with China around those islands. Another thing important advantage to building empathy is it can tell you a lot about restraint. How do you know what restraint is if you don't understand another country's worldview? For a long time, we heard from Chinese scholars and people who interpret China that China was being restrained by only deploying white hulled vessels to the Scarborough Shull and elsewhere. That's a little bit like telling somebody that you've just slapped that you're lucky you didn't punch them in the face. That's not necessarily restraint from the Philippine perspective. So empathy allows it to do a great deal about how another country is going to perceive restraint. So before you can talk about what is restraint, you have to understand how what in their country is actually going to perceive restraint actually is. Empathy, and I'll wrap up soon, empathy is not a panacea. Empathy is not going to improve relations between two countries where there is a fundamental difference of objective. You couldn't build empathy with Hitler, but perhaps you could build empathy with Emperor Wilhelm, with Kaiser Wilhelm. Perhaps that was a term that needed a certain amount of recognition. So empathy is not going to resolve fundamental differences of objective. And this brings us to the South China Sea. If the Chinese have decided that the South China Sea needs to be a Chinese lake, then really there's not much left to say about CBMs or cooperation or even empathy. At that stage the question really is, is that in the US interest, if it's not, what is the US, what cost is the US prepared to pay to prevent that from happening? But if the Chinese have in fact not decided that's the case, then there is still room I think to, for scholars and practitioners to think creatively about ways to build empathy as a pathway of trust between the US, China, and Asian claimants as a way forward in the South China Sea. I'll leave it there. Thank you James, and I promise that we'll get the word trust into the next agenda. Very good point. I don't know how, but Professor Jerry Cohen has managed to get in the middle of this table every time he's been on a panel. So we will now recognize the principle of Cohen's centrality at CSIS and our Southeast Asia program. Professor Cohen as you know you met him yesterday as a senior expert on East Asian law. He was the director of East Asian legal studies at Harvard. He's currently at New York University. Jerry the floor is yours. My remarks today take off from what James has just concluded. What's at stake here really I think is not trust or empathy it's goals and strategy as we've heard from Admiral Kodak. But there's more here. There are two sides to the contemporary Chinese international relations you might say personality or attitude. I went to China for the first time May 20th 1972. A few weeks earlier I'd given a lecture in Japan about the Senkaku Diao Yu problem. About the third day I was in China I was with my highly intelligent guide. We were on the hillside overlooking the gorgeous valley of the 13 tombs outside of Beijing. And I thought I knew this reasonable person well enough to raise the question of what did he think about the Diao Yu problem. And immediately he transformed into an ardent nationalist. China he said will never allow the hated Japanese aggressors to occupy one inch of our sacred soil. And he was getting apoplectic and I nevertheless said to him I should point out to you that one week ago Japan did re-occupy and take over the administration of those islands. And then he changed again and he said well there's a right time and a place for everything he said. There's no rush. We can handle these questions reasonably anytime in the next 500 years. And I saw this mix of nationalism and Chinese pragmatic practical outlook toward life. Now talking about CBMs today and I didn't want to talk about CBMs I wanted to be on the panel for international law and thanks to Odom's departure I was able to do it. But the fact is CBMs reminds me of my first faculty meeting in 1959 a very senior Austrian refugee professor gallantly took me to my first faculty meeting and knowing my proclivities he said you know now that you're here you're going to want us to really take off and do things. And you're going to have a lot of ideas he said. But my advice to you is keep quiet. He said it's all been said before. And that's the way I feel about CBMs. We've been listening for many years to wonderful suggestions by people who affiliate with CSIS and with other organizations. I see my distinguished colleague David Dunoon from NYU in the audience in 1997 he published a stimulating article called Fair Division A New Approach to the Spratly Islands Controversy and he recites the Indonesian workshops and all the other attempts that had already been made to try to provide effective CBMs. Well the moral is of course that if there's no will there's no way and the question is is there a will or should there be or can we as Cronin put it yesterday and we heard also of course earlier today about can we raise the cost to change the Chinese view. As I said yesterday it's nonsense when you listen to a rigid statement like Xi Jinping made that China will not compromise over its sovereignty or territorial integrity. China in many brilliant moves has often compromised properly about territorial integrity and sovereignty. I recited yesterday the example of diplomatic relations with the United States without solving the question of Taiwan and arms shipment to Taiwan. That still rankles today yet to be settled. I talked about the reintegration of Hong Kong into the motherland with this strange one country to system suspension in effect of full sovereignty by China. Very special relationship a very creative thing that got us over a very important crisis in the 1980s about the future of Hong Kong. I put aside the WTO example because that doesn't involve territorial sovereignty etc. But what can one say about the 21 agreements made with Taiwan the whole cross-strait progress. This was nothing if not a compromise, an imaginative enlightened compromise by Beijing. So the question is is there really a will and here I must hand it to the CSIS people for undoubtedly arranging for the decision in the Bangladesh India arbitration to be handled handed down just before our meeting here. Because here is a brilliant illustration of what Peter Dutton and many of us have been recommending. Confidence building can include a resort to the available international decision making institutions that can make a contribution if not ultimate solution to many of these problems. It can be win-win not 100% I lose and 100% you win. And here we have this vivid demonstration and even better we have this right wing nationalist to all my friends in India fear hate Mr. Modi who comes out with just the right policy. Modi says we want to improve our relations with Bangladesh and with Pakistan and other neighbors and he has a foreign office that issues a statement that doesn't encourage the masses of India to run amok in protest against what's happened but who says well this is a reasonable outcome we have to accept and of course we only get 20% of what we wanted but we have to think of the possibilities this opens up for economic development and further cooperation in the area you couldn't imagine a more enlightened foreign office statement so I think the slogan in Beijing should become let's learn from Modi because we're always talking about India-China cooperation etc and the need of other countries to learn from China which they frequently do but I never thought I'd reach today where I'm talking to people and say Modi has said a very favorable precedent here in a democratic country where it's harder to control public opinion than in a dictatorial country where people are punished for speaking out China has the ability to control its public opinion if there's a will to do that. I have a prepared statement and I don't want to go into any more I just want to mention one thing nobody has mentioned yet as far as I can tell the UN we've talked somewhat about what are the current possibilities with respect to ASEAN taking a role in reading David De Noon's paper of 17 years ago I was impressed that ASEAN in the 80s and 90s seemed more lively to the problem we face today than it is today but I want to talk just briefly about the UN you'll notice that Vietnam recently beginning in May wrote several letters to the UN secretary general asking the secretary general to disseminate to all the members the protest Vietnam has been making over the Paracels oil request and China really was stimulated to make a response a more detailed legal response than it had before but can we look to the UN for CBMS I don't think we're going to get much action now out of either the general assembly or the security council. Vietnam knows China can control both. It's a political not a legal forum where fairness and impartial decision making will prevail and I think China knows it may have more to lose by further ventilation of its situation before the world but we shouldn't overlook the possibility of the UN. Well I will just repeat what I said yesterday in concluding if the new Chinese policy is to mix coercion with negotiation and exclude impartial decision making I think we're in for a bad time. I think the other climates and Japan and the United States can do a lot more than they have been doing to improve the climate through various measures and I was happy to hear the deputy assistant secretary of state be very specific today but the real question is will China maintain this strategic imperative for seizing and building on these islands for political, strategic and diplomatic reasons and I hope that this conference and other fora will try to persuade the Chinese leadership to think again that Deng Xiaoping was China's most brilliant international statesman and Jiang Zemin wasn't bad but what does Xi Jinping want to go down in history as being remembered for? Thank you Jerry I'd like to introduce Dr. Alice Ba. She is the director and the department of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware. Alice? Thank you very much. Thank you Ernie and thank you Murray for all your efforts here at CSIS. I've appreciated the complex discussions of Southeast Asia that you guys have been able to provide. Let me begin by my role here by the way is to speak about ASEAN and so let me say that this is a difficult topic not least because of the uptick in tensions in recent years including events of this year point to some serious challenges faced by ASEAN as an institution in managing these disputes and its very important relationship with China. In this sense I think it's important that we be realistic about what ASEAN can do this means being appreciative of the organization's constraints certainly but it also means being cognizant of the ways in which ASEAN and its processes continue to offer unique and important regional platforms from which to engage China. In my presentation I want to make a number of points. One I want to outline some of ASEAN's institutional and geostrategic limitations. Two identify some areas under the ASEAN framework that might be further cultivated as opportunities for confidence building. Three why it's important that the COC negotiations continue despite the challenges as well as the very low expectations that many states have about it especially given events of earlier this year. To be more specific the point I'm going to make about the COC negotiations is that they are themselves a CBM process. Let me start with the first point ASEAN's institutional and geostrategic limitations. I think we're all aware of that ASEAN's key challenge as an institution is that it is an organization of ten different states. Many have elaborated on these differences and so I won't belabor them here. I'll simply say that states differ not just in the importance attached to the disputes but also in their relations with China and the kinds of regional responses prioritized and so clearly such differences can challenge any collective position. In the case of the South China Sea there are also important differences even among the claimant states. ASEAN's four claimant states vary significantly in terms of how they've approached the dispute. We hear a lot from the Philippines and Vietnam not so much from Malaysian Brunei as was also highlighted earlier in the last panel. The larger point here is that until ASEAN's claimant states agree about how best to approach the disputes it's difficult of course for ASEAN also to forge a common position. Now this said what they can work on which is what they've been trying to do is to work towards common approaches towards conflict management and laying out rules of regional order. And a few developments drive ASEAN's greater interest and involvement in this dispute. While most ASEAN states recognize China as having legitimate security concerns and interests in the South China Sea, there is growing unease at what they see to be China's lack of self-restraint and intensification of activities in the South China Sea. Thus one reason for ASEAN's higher profile role in the dispute in recent years is that the South China Sea disputes are now conceptualized as a larger challenge to regional order as opposed to simply a territorial dispute between states. The second reason that helps explain ASEAN's higher profile role these last few years is that it's more than a territorial dispute are at stake. Far more than the 1990s for example, ASEAN itself has much more to lose in terms of regional influence and especially in the way of ASEAN's centrality which others have also mentioned yesterday. And this has become an important part of ASEAN's conceptualization of regional order and also important to giving Southeast Asia smaller powers of course important voice over regional trends. And so when we see for example you know of course the much publicized 2012 breakdown in terms of ASEAN's failure to produce a joint statement we also saw of course a very quick action by Indonesia to produce a statement. It was late but it was late by one week. And so those things are important in terms of the importance attached to the ASEAN process. Now this said the problem of course is that events of 2014 now challenge ASEAN once again an increased interest in non-ASEAN unless diplomatic solutions on the parts of some states. And I want to just give a little bit of attention to some at least one particular dynamic here. And that dynamic that I think has become a much more prominent part of the dispute is of course the United States. Here may be useful I think to highlight how the U.S. role represents an important disconnect I think between China and some ASEAN states especially the most active claimants. Among some in China for example the view that ASEAN states have deliberately brought in the United States to force concessions from China. This unfortunately sits at odds with the view from some states in Southeast Asia. While some ASEAN states have been proactive in engaging the United States there's growing consensus that events also compel them to turn to the United States for assistance. And here I do want to kind of say something about again the events of earlier this year and in particular the placement of the oil rig in contested waters with Vietnam. Yesterday we heard a lot of discussion about where that rig was placed. And here I want to emphasize the timing. Because I think that as regards ASEAN and its mechanisms the critical issue here is again when it took place. The timing is no small matter because basically up until that point there seemed to be some reason to believe that diplomatic processes including the ongoing COC negotiations were returning China ASEAN relations to at least a less volatile place. So I think the timing of the rig is important in terms of at least generating questions about the ASEAN processes. I think the US factor also ultimately raises different kinds of questions however as to ASEAN's influence and the role it's able to play in managing the disputes. The disconnect obviously represents some between China and the ASEAN states represents a political and strategic distrust in emotional empathy gap as James has highlighted. And I think but it's also of course about a gap between the United States and China. And in particular efforts to manage the ASEAN disputes are increasingly challenged by the intersection of major power strategic politics and tensions between the United States as a long time status quo maritime power and self identified maintainer the maritime commons. And China growing historically continental power interested in expanding its maritime reach and presence. And so why do I mention this? Because if we're going to talk about ASEAN's role it obviously raises some questions about it to the extent that that relationship the US-China relationship drives recent events it does raise questions about the extent to which ASEAN of course can shape those developments. Given what some have described as this US-China maritime overlay that now hangs over this dispute. Ultimately for the Southeast Asian states I think that the US role is a little bit too edged on the one hand what it can serve to bolster the seriousness of Southeast Asian objections to China's extensive claims and activity on the other hand it introduces the very sensitive dynamics of US-China relations to China Southeast Asian relations that can complicate of course also a search for a modus medendi on the issue. The two relationships often intersect but they're also not exactly the same. In any case this said ASEAN continues to have an important role to play in keeping opportunities for cooperation open and it looks like I'm really running out of time so let me just say very quickly in terms of confidence building. A couple things. I do think that there are some areas and the ambassador has actually highlighted some. States have already expressed interest in terms of working together on various issues. Scholars, policymakers, analysts have talked about non-traditional security areas as areas for cooperation. Areas that have already shown in which states have expressed interest and these include for example existing mechanisms in place as in the Malacca straight as the ambassador highlighted. There are existing information sharing networks. Those two can be expanded and those are obviously at the sub-regional level but those can also provide models for perhaps broader cooperation with other states. So maritime safety I think is an important area. Fishing has just been such a provocateur or provocative area I think in terms of disputes. That might also be an area that might be further developed. Another area I think and I'm just going to say this very briefly is defense diplomacy. Christian LaMaire mentioned this a little bit in the context of maritime security. In others I've tried to update basically the term in terms of defense diplomacy. Yesterday we also heard much discussion in the U.S. part as defense diplomacy is serving as a mechanism for reassurance towards its allies in building capacity. And here I want to also maybe bring on the table the possibility that defense diplomacy might also provide an area for greater engagement between ASEAN and China. And it may not be just ASEAN China but also with other states. The important point is that China be included as opposed to excluded so China should be included and engaged. And then lastly let me just say that I think the ASEAN China framework also continues to remain an important framework because it is a multiple issue institution. China ASEAN as well as ASEAN itself. These are complex relationships. It is not just about the South China Sea. And so those frameworks provide a means to ensure that all the different issues come into play. Thank you. Thank you very much Allison. Just to clarify that on the timing of the oil rig you mean that it was pulled out into those waters just a week before the ASEAN meeting is that correct? Yeah. Thank you very much. Our next speaker who has been quite patient, he's come all the way from Singapore. He's our last speaker in the conference last but certainly not least, Dr. Ewan Graham is a senior fellow for the Maritime Security Program at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies or RSIS in Singapore. Ewan, floor is yours. Thank you chair. Thank you CSIS for inviting me here. As the last speaker of the conference I realize that there's a double whammy challenge. I want to avoid saying what already has been said and secondly to try and provide some sort of uplifting note. Having said that I think we are where we are and I think it's fairly clear from the deliberations over the last couple of days we have to admit that the habits of confidence building and cooperation have been damaged if not broken over the last five years. And that I think demands the basic challenge question. Given the topic that's been asked to speak to whether in fact there are realistic or achievable confidence building measures that can be put into place to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I agree entirely with what Jerome said before me that if we go back to the 1990s, if we look at the amount of energy that went into track 2, track 1.5 the Jakarta workshops on the South China Sea were mentioned a lot of that actually informed the declaration on a code of conduct in 2002. If we are at the situation where a lot of the confidence has been eroded and we're in a position of distrust and suspicion now it's not for a lack of imagination or effort on the part of track 2 or even for a lack of understanding about what needs to be done. I think it fundamentally does boil down to that question of a lack of political will. Which then asks the sort of demands the question where do you point the finger of blame? I don't want to get into that. I think it's pretty clear that China does deserve its fair share by being simply a larger power than the other claimants. What China does will have a power of motivation read into it that other smaller claimants don't have. That's a kind of unfortunate asymmetry that comes with being a rising power. I think there is a recognition that it's a broader trend, a negative trend that across all the active claimants including China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia that there has been a collective process of territorializing the South China Sea which unfortunately has led us away from that injunction of the original 2002 declaration to pursue cooperation and confidence building which was specifically in its mandate. That incidentally for all its failings is still the best that we have in terms of an existing confidence building measure for the whole of the South China Sea. So what hasn't been said? Well I'll say a little bit. I didn't mention you may have noticed Brunei amongst the active claimants because I think it's more of a nominal claimant in that it falls. There's one feature of the spatlies that falls within its EZ but it hasn't done anything physically to enforce it. Nonetheless the southern edge of that nine or ten dashed line does potentially put Brunei into a maritime dispute with China and that gives it obviously equities at stake. Brunei is interesting. Why do I say that? Because it's a small state, it's non-threatening. I think it has a potential to play a niche role in terms of confidence building. And it has done so in a couple of ways. It had the unenviable task of trying to restore ASEAN after the tumultuous 2012 summit in Plom Pen which I think it did creditably. But beyond that there is actually a live initiative through the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting in which Brunei has the co-chair of the maritime security experts working group in which it's leading an initiative within ASEAN to put together cross-bracing connection of hotlines or to use its preferred term direct communications links between the Defence Ministers. And that has already been signed off at the first stage at the recent Defence Ministers Summit in Myanmar. Now a hotline of course is only a tool. It's only as good as the ability of the people on both sides to pick up and to speak in earnest. So it's not a panacea for crisis management either. But I register it not just as a tool for crisis but also interestingly I think the silver lining of a lot of the tensions that we've seen between China and ASEAN is that the intra-ASEAN little bilaterally that's been the impetus to spur to a lot of cross-bracing from a slow pace but nonetheless we are beginning to see the claimants themselves cooperating more. Don't forget of course that they have overlapping claims of their own and that's been a sort of structural problem in getting that cooperation off the ground in the past. It's not only at that level of the Brunei initiative Vietnam has also I think been forward in leading bilateral navy to navy communications links including some bilateral patrolling and I think that bilateral level is actually where a lot of the real momentum is taking place. That's not to belittle the importance of the code of conduct and the multilateral process of engagement with China but I think that has its place and we've seen frankly in the way that a lot of the reclamation activity that's taking place in the South China Sea has actually torn a whole through large parts of the declaration and the code of conduct. If we read down as far as paragraph five for example it's pretty clear that you shouldn't be engaging the kind of activities that China has been as was mentioned in Admiral Coda's talk. Let me also mention Taiwan which hasn't received much attention so far as well and there's a link here because Taiwan has also been engaging in its own enhancement of port facilities on its one single holding Ituab or typing island within the Spratlys and I think we ignore Taiwan at our peril. It's there of course in a rather peculiar form as a not recognised as a state by the other claimants but nonetheless it has a mirror image claim to China and that gives it a spoiler it's not party to the declaration on the code of conduct that there isn't the same level of restraint and the potential there for a kind of copycat precedent from engaging in that reconstruction activity I think is one negative but it's not only a negative I think Taiwan also maybe holds out some positive model to us as well. Why do I say that? Because I think Taiwan has a pragmatism in its ability to pursue interests based access to marine resources that's actually set aside the question of sovereignty we've seen that in the East China Sea with the way it pursued a fisheries agreement with Japan. Very nationalistic beginning rather tense standoff involving maritime patrol ships with Japan but then very quickly that's dissipated once Taiwan had got what it wanted and we see also that although a arrival claimant with several southeast Asian countries with the Philippines too there was a kind of trough in the relationship after the killing of a crew member by a Philippines Coast Guard vessel in 2013 after an apology was issued from the Philippines very quickly that relationship went back on track and confidence has been restored to the level that I think a fisheries agreement and other forms of cooperation are also completely possible between the Philippines and Taiwan in future. Also back to I think the Philippines and Vietnam are obviously the leads for the intra-ASEAN level of cooperation because they are the frontline claimants who are feeling the pressure most directly from China and therefore they have the greatest motivation to increase their own cooperation. We've seen that stepped up since the Royal Reg incident that the Vietnamese Prime Minister very quickly was over to Manila and there was talk there about increasing that level of cooperation and clearly there's a shared interest there. Vietnam, this is the counter example to confidence building. We should not forget that Vietnam I think over the last couple of years had gone to great lengths to improve the relationship with China. Expanding the joint development zone in the Gulf of Tonkin where for a number of years there had been joint patrols with the PLA Navy and even regular communications and that involved patrolling across the maritime boundary line. That's a significant level of confidence that's involved. Also Vietnam and China had been able to establish their own hotlines at a variety of levels. They have the party to party channel that other ASEANs do not between the defence ministries and even between the agriculture ministries because of the importance of fisheries incidents. But of course in the acid test of a crisis the call was made but no reply came and that I think shows the limitations to direct communications links. As I said they're only a tool as good as the will of both sides to engage. But they're fairly low cost and I think that for that reason it's an initiative worth pursuing in the way that it cross braces between the various ASEANs but also to in future I think it is important for symbolic purposes to get a recognition that there is a problem in that relationship and I think realistically that's how a lot of those hotline links were actually pursued by Vietnam with China. I realize I'm getting very close to the end of my time. So I will just conclude by saying that cooperation is happening at the intra ASEAN level. I think the momentum is mainly at that bilateral level and there is a clear inverse relationship with the lack of cooperation and trust between ASEAN and China and I think that behooves us to realize that there's a need at the same time as trying to do what we can to improve the cooperation and confidence building and trust building measures nonetheless that we are in a need to shift paradigms to crisis management from now on in recognition of where we are. Thank you chair. Thank you very much Ewan really truly appreciate that. I wanted to ask the panel a first question and particularly take advantage of the ambassador being with us. Could you, is it fair to say that one of ASEAN's early successes was actually Indonesia? That Indonesia was the big country in the neighborhood who the other smaller countries were trying to understand what it wanted and what it wanted to be and wouldn't you say ASEAN itself and its incorporation of Indonesia to be the biggest member almost half the region by economy and by people. Is that fair, is that a fair statement and is there any lessons that you could share with us from Indonesia's or ASEAN's success with Indonesia and Indonesia's arguable success with ASEAN that might be attributable to China which is now the big boy in the neighborhood and I think the rest of the neighbors are trying to convince it to play by or make and play by the rules. And the second question for the panel is what do you think China wants in ASEAN? Does it want a strong unified ASEAN or does it really want a weak and you know divided ASEAN? I'll throw that out to the panel. Thank you Ernie. I think Indonesia we agree with you, we are the largest country in Southeast Asia and I think it's very important for us that our behavior is not intimidating. It is very important for Indonesia 240 million people to realize that whatever small move that you make could send a ripple and that is why the government in 65, 266 we ended the confrontation with Malaysia. We also realize that our, although we are large and as big as ASEAN our economic well being cannot be realized if we do not have a regional resilience. We cannot have a prosperous Indonesia if there is a conflict between Indonesia and Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore or with our neighbors because the waters that send goods, exports, imports to Indonesia is also owned and controlled by this country. I think that is very important to realize that even Indonesia is the largest in ASEAN. We should be able to force a strong cooperation. It's not just a lip service but it's something that we strongly believe in. And that is the reason also why Indonesia took the initiative in the 80s to mediate the conflict between Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos coming out of the Indochina war. And because of that we achieve peace and stability in Indochina and they became part of ASEAN it is because of that conviction also that we started the workshop on South China Sea in 1990. So I think the size does matter in many ways and I think one of the ways that we have learned from our founding fathers is that we need to be also tolerant to our neighbors that this size, if you make a wrong move, could send wrong messages. If you look at our history of maritime boundaries negotiations, younger generations, my generation when they do illegal analysis of what we have with Malaysia they would say are you loose because under normal negotiation you would not negotiate with having this kind of boundary but we have a larger interest. Our interest is not just winning a couple of hundred miles of waters or content of the shelf, our larger interest is peace and stability in the region. So I think that comes a very important lesson in the regions. Maybe someday Chinese scholar will sit there and say exactly what you said. And on the question of ASEAN, China's view of ASEAN would anyone like to take a swing? It is in the Chinese interest to have a strong ASEAN. ASEAN will come into a single market coming up 2015. It's a very big market. It's a market with large middle class. Indonesia itself now has a 90 million middle class and counting up. Not to mention the Myanmar economy is opening up. So I believe China wants and have an interest of having a strong ASEAN of the economic perspective. Thank you. Shariman? The gentleman here in the front row please. Can you have a microphone? Are we down to one mic runner? I just wanted a short comment. One of Malaysia's priorities for next year when it becomes chair of ASEAN is to introduce cooperation and search and rescue within the East Asia summit. This is of course in the aftermath of the loss of image 370. The only problem I foresee with this is that and also we were coordinating the search initially and we were giving states, even the United States, giving them very small boxes to look at in the South China Sea all over the place because some countries would take a dim view of if we were to extend the search area into the EEZ. So this territorialization of the EEZ going on that's preventing effective SCR. So I think it's a good idea that we're introducing that next year but we really got this issue of territorialization of EEZ that's preventing effective SCR. Would anyone care to comment on that? Not so much to comment but just to add on a little reference I can't help doing so as I've been from Singapore but it was mentioned earlier the problem of submarine operations and the lack of search and rescue capability amongst several of the new operators including Vietnam and Indonesia which is probably going to be buying new submarines and Singapore has actually entered into bilateral agreements with both of those countries which I think is quite a significant step into confidence building a very sensitive area of military capability so it's just to enhance that there is actually there's a good new story there if you dig for it. That's a good point. Right here. Thank you. Haidang Wu from Vietnam Association of Lawyers I would like to have a question to Dr. James Monicon. When I was in Canada I heard some voices that one Canada to re-engage in the region in the Asia Pacific so can you comment on that? Do you think in the near future Canada will have some role to play in the region? Thank you. You mean you haven't noticed us yet? Shoot, it's not working. I recently I won't take too much time. I recently wrote an article in NBR's Asia policy that talks about Canada's efforts in the region. I think people in Canada that study Asia are sensitive to the fact that our Asian friends miss us and we like that. My government has fairly narrow interests in Asia that are most related to the economy and that those interests are overwhelmingly China focused and our government is still divided on. Our government still has debates about China that America had about China in 1992 human rights versus trade as if you can't pay lip service to one and trade the other way but they'll figure that eventually I'm sure. So our Asia policy is very much a China policy and those of us that do study Asia encourage our government to play a more proactive role in regional security issues. That's difficult because the way our government allocates funding for things like Track 2 has changed. They're now focused on things like deliverables which has never been a strength of Track 2 so that's sort of limiting our ability as scholars to engage on Track 2. At the Track 1 level we did have a really big naval show of force as much as we can have one of those planned for last year but our supply ship caught fire and that was the end of that. I do have to admit I was empathetic to the assessments yesterday of the Philippine Navy. I'll leave it there. Thank you. Carl Thayer, University of New South Wales. Brief comment and two questions. One, Alice, you remarked about defense diplomacy I'd like to point out and the humans remarked about the joint patrols between China and Navy. Yeah, the two Coast Guard ships they've done their 16th joint patrol and every alternate year they break off and do port visits while they're now confronting each other in the South China Sea and the Vietnamese media reports the Chinese are broadcasting the names of the Vietnamese that they met on these patrols so you can have a switch from one to the other. But my questions are as follows. The Declaration on Conduct of Party outlines five confidence building measures but it's my understanding that one of them has not resulted in a working group and that's on safety navigation and communication at sea. Is that correct? There's a guideline from 2011 to 2014. We've got three years without doing that. And two, more fundamentally, I ask all of you and this is a religious question. What the heck are the relationships between confidence building measures and actually addressing the problems that we face? I think they become an end in themselves and I haven't seen any really satisfactory literature that if we do marine science exploration, no matter how important that is, that's going to get the Chinese out of Scarborough Shoal. So I just really raised that. In the beginning, when confidence and trust building measures was proposed by Paul Dibb of Australia with CSCAP and then they took the trust out saying we couldn't distinguish between trust and confidence. Now we're back again to reinventing trust. So I'm taking a 40 year view of all this in pretty jaundice and I still hard line how does a confidence building measure, even if you do it, then really relate to the hard security issues that we're talking about. Thank you. Ambassador, did you want to take the first question and I'll look for fingers on the second. So would you take the first on that? Yeah, it's ongoing, the discussion on the working group. Also, we need to establish the working group on the CCOM and applications. The discussion on the establishment of the working group on the CCOM and applications is ongoing. I use the T word so I suppose I'm responsible for this in some way. I take your point and I share your pessimism. And the point of our project in my paper was to try to introduce the idea that if you can, everybody in the region and this is difficult, everyone in the region led by obviously their policy, elites need to take a step back and if they decide they in fact do want to get along in the region, begin to think about how they can live together and that is involving with sharing their world, which I call empathy. To try to operationalize that a little bit I think the US government has actually done pretty well on this. If you read some of Kerry's remarks, he once again reassures the Chinese that the United States is not trying to contain China. And it's patently obvious to anybody who's familiar with how hard that would be that the United States is not trying to contain China. China's leaders could reciprocate, I think, by changing some of their language about how they refer to the United States in the abstract. I mean China has welcomed US as a Pacific power in the 2009 and 2011 bilateral statements. China could go further and drop the whole Cold War alliance nonsense because they are links to the Cold War but guess what, they're still irrelevant because of Chinese behavior. So China drops, I mean that's a step that sort of speaks to US speaking points. Those kinds of rhetorical sort of tits for tats, exchanges, I think are a very small step. The next challenge is trying to internalize that perspective in the part of the populations. And about that I'm very pessimistic because that involves a sea change in how media in China and in the United States report regional events. And I suppose another way would be to identify areas as Mr. Fuchs said this morning where you'd like to see restraint exercise and actually do it. So one example that is not a South China Sea example, the Chinese have been clear they don't like US intelligence operations off their coast. I've argued in the recent article of Journal of Strategic Studies that's a low cost way because ultimately the US, the way they gather intelligence is less reliant on those ships anyway for them to back off. It speaks to Chinese preferences about restraint. You're showing to the Chinese, okay, we accept what you're doing, we're going to back off, may notify, do it Canada and the US to the Arctic, right? Don't ask permission, just tell them you're coming. It's low cost and it actually does build a little bit of trust if you like. But again, the only way to really internalize that stuff is to communicate it responsibly through populations and I'm not sure if any country is capable of doing that. That's the best I got. Mike Massetic, PBS Online NewsHour. To some extent the ambassador has addressed this but in all the discussion here, particularly Michael Fuchs's increasing reliance on ASEAN, I'd go back to a conference in which a senior Singapore academic was looking at ASEAN, somewhat in the TPP context but nevertheless the same. And he saw this rising tide of nationalism combined with first Thailand and the Shambles, the Indonesian presidential campaign which really was nationalistic, to some extent the same in Malaysia. Maybe this is Professor Ba, to what extent does nationalism get in the way of common ASEAN efforts, whether dealing with China or anything else? I'll just quickly answer that. I mean I think obviously as some of the other panelists both yesterday as well as this morning have highlighted domestic politics can't be ignored in any of the states and so leaders, whether they are elected or not actually have to pay attention to their public if they're going to stay in power. So I think to some extent obviously they complicate I think the search for a solution I think some have mentioned already, I think some of Vietnam's constraints for example in terms of the popular reaction to China I think that in terms of forging a common ASEAN position, some of it is obviously reflected less by nationalism so much as I think different sets of economic interests for one thing that also play into that difficulty. They all have very different relations with China and that's what it comes down to. The gentleman back here. Kerry Gordon from National Defense University. I was just wondering whether global warming might play some role in the whole South China Sea situation. I think of two possible ways it might do so. One is rising seawater. I'm assuming that some of these rocks and other things that are sticking out of the water in some number of years will no longer be sticking out of the water and so the question may become moot with some of those. Secondly as we I think most experts would agree global warming is causing more disruptive weather patterns, storms, typhoons, etc. One could easily imagine a situation where some of these Chinese outposts far from its shores are going to require disaster assistance in the event of storms overtaking some of these structures that are being built. They have sort of an odd, ironic situation where by force have built structures and then need help from closer states in the event of a serious typhoon. Thank you. Ambassador, would you like to start? Yeah, I think even without global warming some of the features are already underwater and with global warming some of the features that are now above high tide could probably be underwater but they still have some large islands, quite large islands that are still in the area. So even if you go up even a meter you still have some big island in the area. I think we need to be careful what you wish for. I mean if some of the stuff goes into the water we're talking about a 1 meter sea level rise and that's I mean that will change the face of a lot of Southeast Asia in a bad way and associated natural disasters and I mean there's a lot of lowline coastal areas that border the sea so I actually don't wish for that. Yeah, I think the rising tide of concrete will outpace climate change unfortunately. So I'm not sure that will provide the solution that you suggest. As for weather, there again maybe weather provides actually a peculiar nature's gift of confidence building them that once you've got the inclement weather in the South China Sea and the East China Sea it's the one thing that keeps the ships at port and you do actually see a seasonality to the tension spikes in both during typhoon season nature is everyone's common enemy and in that sense I don't wish any repeat of super typhoons on the region that obviously is going to increase the importance of humanitarian disaster relief and that is I think although back to Carl's question it's a low glass ceiling that is imposed on confidence building but I think there is going to be an increased need for HADR and that it may not solve the South China Sea issue but it is I think an incumbent need on all of the countries to cooperate on that. Let me just if I can I'll just add really quickly I mean I'll echo the comments just made in the sense that I think climate change affects actually more than you know the appearance of islands I mean I think they're also their economic interests at play but I do think one of the questions here also in terms of the South China Sea is that despite I think the urgency that we feel maybe it's not urgent enough and that's obviously the same problem with climate change these are very slow moving developments I do want to also address Carl's question so that it doesn't seem like I'm ignoring him I mean I also appreciate you know I think the question you raise in terms of the I think the problems of confidence building and I think you know you hear from this panel that there are questions about it even though obviously we fall in different on the spectrum in terms of I guess how much of a value we place on them I think events raise questions about CBMs they're fuzzy in concept what is a CBM even but I would also say that you know they don't solve problems and as you say hard security problems but they might soften some of the I guess the more competitive dynamics that are associated with developments. So trust basically creates an environment where you can solve problems hopefully on that note I would say you know one thing we've learned in running this program and others is that staying on time keeps people coming back including panelists who have traveled you know really from all over the world to be with us and I want to thank all of you for your time and your thoughtfulness and your papers I should mention that all the papers from this conference will be on the CSIS website and available and they're all there from all four years of this conference so it's starting to be quite a library and quite a research resource for those of you studying the South China Sea. I'd also like to thank Murray and our team Ben and Kathleen and Greg and Feng they really worked hard on this conference for months so thank you to our team for putting it together and thank all of you for spending two days with us that's just remarkable to see 400 people here and I guess many hundreds who have followed online I understand and on Twitter so thank you for your interest I think this is really important these discussions we really do I'd like to end on this panel which I took away measured hope and I do have confidence that we will be back together again in a year so thank you very much for joining us and thank you.