 Hello and welcome to Turbulent Tides, the South China Sea. My name is Benjamin McClain, I'm a senior at Tufts University studying quantitative economics and I will be the moderator for today's panel. Today, the South China Sea is one of the most contested regions in the world. Seven nations, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan border it and all have claims to territory within the sea either through exclusive economic zones extended from their coastlines or from islands within the sea itself. Not all of these countries claims, however, are recognized by their neighbors or the international community. Some claims contradict one another. China, Vietnam and Taiwan, for example, all claim the parasol islands. China's nine-dash line claim is the most contentious in the region. It asserts that China has a historical right to almost the entire South China Sea due to a map drawn in 1947 with quite literally nine lines encircling the sea. Unsurprisingly, the international community does not recognize the nine-dash line as legitimate with the exception of Taiwan. It has even been ruled as having no legal basis and a case brought before the permanent court of arbitration in the Hague. Despite the ruling, China continues to act according to its own view that the nine-dash line is legitimate. All of this brings about the question of what makes the South China Sea so important that nations are quite literally willing to go to court over territory in it. Most evident are the fisheries in the sea. Vietnam and China have had skirmishes near the parasol islands over Vietnamese fishing boats in waters that China claims. These episodes climax in April of last year when a Chinese Coast Guard vessel sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat. In addition to fish, natural gas and oil are believed to be abundant underneath the sea. For a nation like China, which relies heavily on imported energy, securing an energy resource close to its shores holds great importance. Lastly, shipping is a large factor as a third of all the globe shipping passes through the South China Sea every year. Adding to the confusion is the building of artificial islands in the sea, a policy that China started in 2014 and continues to this day. These islands have been built near rocky outcrops in the sea and now hold military importance to China with airstrips and ships stationed on them. This has raised some flags for security across the world and lead nations such as the US to perform freedom of navigation operations close to the islands to reassert that they do not recognize these Chinese claims. It was with all these dynamic factors in mind that my classmates and I decided to create the turbulent tides panel for this year's symposium. We hope that through dialogue, this panel will help provide answers as well as prompt deeper thinking about the events happening in the region with an eye towards the future of the South China Sea. With that being said, let us get started. Let me please introduce our first panelist, Rocky Weitz. Professor Weitz is professor of practice, entrepreneur coach and director of the maritime studies program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. He serves as president of the Institute for Global Maritime Studies, Incorporated, a nonprofit seeking practical solutions to global maritime challenges. Professor Weitz, if you'd now like to share your screen. Okay, thank you, thank you, Benjamin. Thank you, Professor Williams. And thank you to the Institute for Global Leadership Team. It's a real honor to be speaking to all of you today. I'll also just quickly say good morning to our participants here on in the East Coast. And good afternoon to those in Europe and Africa. And good evening to those in Pacific Asia. So this is a, so I'm going to give some international context for global context to the South China Sea challenges. And I would say as a starting, as a sort of set the stage here for just a handful of minutes I'll speak is this is a great part of the world to take a multidisciplinary approach to trying to understand various different aspects of international relations and global affairs. So we'll look, I'm going to go through a series of maps to put everything in geographic context but we'll talk about the international legal perspectives with the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. We'll look at global trade and shipping, also regional fishing, so business perspectives and then the strategic and naval perspectives. And lastly, offshore energy, not only offshore oil and gas potential, but also potentially floating offshore wind. And so the South China Sea all of a sudden is important from many, many dimensions. So what you see in front of you is the Northern Hemisphere. And as you can see, I have a globe behind me and my students who are on, you've heard this before but it's really important from my perspective to take a global approach to thinking about all the different challenges, policy challenges, business challenges that we face as a human civilization. And if you take a global approach and a global perspective, then you can put some of the transnational challenges, global challenges like global climate change, human trafficking, illegal fishing in a bigger perspective. And you can also take a planetary approach to these challenges. And I think that's a useful tool and that's what we of course try to train our students to do at the Fletcher School and at Tufts University. So if you look here, a few noteworthy things, all of the South China Sea is north of the equator. Even Singapore is a great Northern economy, 100 miles north of the equator. India, Sri Lanka, it shows you that even much of Africa, most of, all of Saharan Africa and much of sub-Saharan Africa from a population perspective, Nigeria and Ethiopia are north of the equator as well. So when you start to think of the world from a Northern perspective, you realize that the Arctic may be more important in the future, that there's a reason why people talk about North Pacific trade and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are designed in that way. The South China Sea is really at the periphery of the world from a Northern perspective, but it's critical when we start to look at how it also fits in to the Indo-Pacific, the link, the key link between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. So here you see, and I'll start moving faster through the maps, this shows you where shipping is important. And what I like to say is the oceans cover 71% of the world's surface area. They represent 99% of the biosphere in the world. They really drive global climate. They're what links us internationally from a global trade perspective, but not every part of the ocean is as important as other parts. So for example, you don't see much shipping traffic down here in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. And even here in the high North, the Arctic, there's not much there. I can tell you from my previous experience as the founding CEO of Cargo Metrics, which tracks global trade, the Singapore straits the busiest part of the world ocean. And the South China Sea is the busiest ocean body from a trade perspective. These are the various choke points of global trade as well as global naval deployments. So you see here, the Strait of Malacca in red is the key link between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. And as you can see here, there are other important straits, the Taiwan Strait, the Luzon Strait between Taiwan and the Philippines, the Strait of McKessar. Quickly, I'll just highlight for you, the Lombok and McKessar combined are also deep water choke points. And the Sunda Strait is more complicated. There's actually an active volcano in the middle of it. So from a navigation perspective, better to either go through Malacca or McKessar Lombok. Now let's look at the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. So what you see here are the exclusive economic zones that are defined by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is the most comprehensive international treaty ever created by humans. It was pulled together through a series of conventions and signed by various state parties in 1982 and then after, and it was ratified in the 90s. One thing that it did that was quite revolutionary is it extended out various ways that nations can claim maritime territorial rights. So historically, the territorial seas were three miles, some claim six, some claim 12. After much negotiation, they landed on 12 nautical miles for national waters. And then extending further, something called an exclusive economic zone, which is not a national territory, but it is one where the coastal state has a certain exclusive economic rights in the water column as well as the seabed. Now this generally worked relatively well and without controversy through most of the world, as you can see here, but where you see here in red are the disputed areas. And I'll start, you know, there's some here in the Americas between Peru and Chile and here are the Falklands between the UK and Argentina. Turkey, Eastern Med is another area, Arctic, but let's see where the action is here. The China Seas, both the East China Sea and the South China Sea, which is the topic of our conversation today. So let's now zoom in on a regional basis. So we're going local to regional now. So this map is intended to really show you, try to show the scale of the Pacific and how this is really a big empty area of the world from a human perspective, really almost like a maritime desert is the Pacific Ocean with just a handful of Oasis, which are the islands that are there. The trade flows kind of combining a number of things we've talked about here. So here you see the trade flows. This is the Strait of Malacca. You see, these are anchorages. You see here, this is where most of that trade is going. The Spratly Islands and the Parasau Islands, which Benjamin mentioned, this would be the Strait of Macassar here. Obviously Indonesia, a great archipelagic nation, as well as the Philippines here. And these are, this would be areas of the high seas. So once you get beyond the exclusive economic zones that 200 nautical mile from the coastal baselines out, it's high seas. You see much of this even here because of the Marianas and other islands, Micronesia. It's largely captured by the exclusive economic zones. So let's take a territorial view, a terra-centric view of the world. And all of a sudden Eurasia is the world's largest island. And this is from a US perspective, these I just want you to be aware of the first island chain, second island chain. There's also a third island chain. These are, this is a US-centric view looking at the Pacific as sort of first line of defense, would be the first island chain, second line of defense to the US home line would be that, the second one. And then the third is the third line. So the first island chain goes from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines down here to Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia. And then the second island chain Guam is here, the Marianas. And then the third island chain would be the Aleutians in Hawaii. But most people talk when naval strategists are talking about the South China Sea, you'll hear a lot about the first island chain and the second island chain. I just wanted you to be aware of that. Kind of looking at these straits again real quick, just so you've seen some context here. So this would be the Strait of Malacca, the Sunda Strait, the Lombok, McKessar. And let's look at the bathymetry. So how deep is the world ocean here? You can see here that most of this area, the Indochina Peninsula, and I would say geographic terms matter here. This is called the Indochina Peninsula for a reason between the two great civilizations, the Indian civilization and the Chinese civilization. The South China Sea is actually not here. This map is incorrect, it's here. This would be the Western Pacific over here. That's something I'll need to edit. And so let's now look at the South China Sea itself. And so this is that nine dashed line that Benjamin mentioned at first. The Chinese claim, which has been disputed in the Philippines China case through the UN Conventional Law of the Sea. You see here are the Spratly Islands, which also Benjamin mentioned, there's island building campaigns here. These are the Paracel Islands also disputed. And you see here the, let's unpack this really quickly. So this blue territory, this blue line here is Vietnam's claim of exclusive economics. The yellow is Malaysia's, green is Brunei's. So, and then Taiwan, we have here in pink and China and red largely aligned, and then the Philippines. So the key takeaway is this is quite complicated from a jurisdictional perspective under the UN Conventional Law of the Sea. And now let's look at these Spratly Island outposts and facilities. You see here, these red triangles are Vietnam, China's yellow, Philippines is purple, Malaysia is orange. And so Taiwan is white. Actually, Taiwan has the largest feature the Ituaba airfield and island in the Spratlys. These green areas are underwater formation. So this is where the waters are shallow. That's very important for the fishing industry. And another key part of the South China Sea is that it's actually the busiest fishing sea by number of fishing vessels in the world. So it doesn't, it's, there are more fish caught in other parts of the ocean, like around in the high North, around Alaska, the North Pacific or the Southern ocean around Antarctica. But it's pure number of vessels, many of them small family owned vessels. You have the South China Sea is the most important fishing fleet sea in the world with China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia all having robust regional and local fishing communities. Also Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are nearby and have major international fishing fleets. So just to highlight the Belt and Road Initiative that was mentioned at the previous panel at 9 a.m. This shows you the geographic scope of the Belt and Road Initiative, but also the Arctic part of it, the Polar Silk Road. And you can see here, we can talk about this in Q&A if anyone is interested, but I'm gonna go back to this because I do think- Professor Weitz, yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt, but in the interest of having more time for discussion, I'm gonna ask you to please wrap up. Sure, yeah, I was just, thank you Benjamin and sorry. So this just shows that from a global perspective, we should have the Pacific perspective and I look forward to the Q&A. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Weitz for giving us a great overview of what makes the South China Sea so important and also being able to provide a visual for those who might not be as familiar with the subject. I'd now like to introduce our second panelist, Anthony Clark-Arend. Professor Arend is Professor of Government and Foreign Service and Chair of the Department of Government at Georgetown University. His research and teaching is in the fields of international law, national security law, international legal theory and human rights. And he is the co-author of international law and the use of military force. Professor Arend, the floor is now yours. So thank you very much, Ben. And I think Professor Weitz perfectly set the stage for what I wanna talk about. And I really wanna emphasize just two things. First of all, I wanna briefly highlight some of China's claims under international law. And then secondly, I wanna talk a little bit about what the United States should do. So the two claims I wanna highlight are first, the Nine Dash Line, which as Ben noted originally was based on an old map from 1947 where China made a historic claim to the South China Sea, essentially asserting sovereignty over the South China Sea. That is not lawful. That was never lawful. There was no historical basis for that claim. And as Ben noted, the permanent court of arbitration in 2016 explicitly ruled that that was a violation of international law full stop. The second claim that China makes relates to the exclusive economic zone. And Professor Weitz noted the exclusive economic zone. Under the 1982 convention on the law of the sea, coastal states are entitled to claim a maximum of 200 nautical miles from the baseline. In this 200-mile zone, the coastal state enjoys sovereign rights, note, not sovereignty, sovereign rights for, for what? For the purposes of exploring and exploiting, managing and conserving the living and non-living resources of the seabed, the subsoil and the superjacent waters. Those rights relate only to the living resources, fish and other things, and the non-living resources, things which might be on the seabed and also oil and perhaps polymetallic nodules if they are there. China has asserted different rights within the exclusive economic zone. In particular, they are claiming the rights to interfere with free navigation operations that are taking place there. They're claiming the right that they have security interests beyond those rights relating to fish, et cetera. That is also a violation of international law. So both with respect to the nine-dash line, clear violation of international law, claims that they have more rights in the exclusive economic zone beyond what the 1982 convention provides, violations of international law. Now, there are many, many, many ways in which the world and the global community can address it. I just wanna talk about two things the US does or should do, as you will see in a moment. The US conducts, as Ben noted, freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea. This is not the only place in the world that the United States does it, but it is one of those places. Now, what is a freedom of navigation operation? It basically means the United States sends vessels through this disputed area. It flies aircraft over this disputed area. Why? It's important under customary international law. When a state makes a claim, which is bogus, that other states call it out as bogus, that other states demonstrate that they do not recognize it so that our refusal to do something isn't seen as acquiescence under international law. When a state makes a claim, if other states don't contest it, don't do anything, that claim, even though it may have violated international law when it was made, could become legitimated. And that's why the United States conducts these freedom of navigation operations and that's why the United States should continue. The other thing the United States should do is ratify the 1982 convention on the law of the sea. China is a party. 168 states are parties to the 1982 convention. In 1982, President Reagan did not sign the convention. Why? He had no disputes with these navigational provisions. He didn't like the provisions of the convention on deep sea bed mining. In 1994, those provisions were amended through an additional agreement. All the US concerns on deep sea bed mining were addressed. President Clinton submitted the 1982 convention with this agreement to the Senate for Advice and Consent. Twice, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has voted favorably for the Senate to give advice and consent. Once under a Republican Senate, second, under a Democratic Senate, interestingly enough, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Democratic Senate was Senator Joseph Biden. The US should ratify this treaty because it will give us additional leverage with China. We will be able to say we're holding you accountable to the treaty. It's really hard to do that when China can look at us and say, you're holding us accountable to a treaty that you have not ratified. So those two recommendations, continue freedom of navigation operations and for land's sake, ratify the 1982 convention on the law of the sea. I think we could do it. I think the president could push this and I think many people in Congress or in the Senate would be persuaded when we say it is one of the best ways to counter China's rise as a geopolitical challenge. So, Ben, back to you. Thank you very much, Professor Errand. Certainly great to see the more legal perspective and tying in exactly what the US can do about the South China Sea. I'd now like to introduce our third and final panelist today, Ms. Alina Noor. Ms. Noor is the director of political security affairs and deputy director of the Washington DC office at the Asia Society Policy Institute. She's the former secretary of the council for security cooperation in the Asia Pacific, the 21 member track to regional security network. Ms. Noor. Thank you very much for having me. Both professors, Erin and Weitz, tough acts to follow energy wise. But let me try to offer a perspective from the region. I am from Southeast Asia. I am from a climate country in Malaysia. And so maybe I can offer some insight into how the ASEAN claimants in particular have been handling the dispute. And I'd like to do this from two main angles. First, we're talking about managing the peace in the region. And secondly, about the future of the dispute. Now, first on managing the peace in the South China Sea. Every Southeast Asian claimant has handled the dispute differently, both domestically and internationally. The Philippines and Vietnam, for example, have been very vocal about their claims, both at home and abroad. They've used the media to publicize their claims and to generally raise awareness to the domestic populations about the stakes that are being challenged in the South China Sea, particularly by China. Malaysia, on the other hand, has taken a more muted approach. The government has generally sought to keep the issue out of the public eye because there is this concern they're doing. So publicizing the dispute in the media will only inflame nationalist tensions and will complicate negotiations with different disputants. I mean, particularly China, given its just sheer size and strength of not only its military, but also its fishing vessels that have been deployed as sort of maritime militia in the South China Sea. Now, Malaysia broke with this convention slightly when just, I think out of exasperation and frustration at continuous Chinese infusions into Malaysian waters in around 2013-2014, Malaysian politicians and government leaders decided to use social media to raise awareness about what was going on at sea. So this broke with past convention on just having backdoor diplomacy channels with the parties, particularly China. And so, of course, it raised some nationalist tension in Malaysia, but now that the issue is more widely understood, there's been more of informed discussion in parliament, but also among the policy circles in Malaysia. Brunei is very, very rarely talked about as a claimant of the South China Sea. Brunei is often referred to as the quiet claimant. Last year and in the middle of the year, it also broke with convention slightly. It issued a statement on the South China Sea with a very perfunctory statement, essentially reaffirming its two-step approach in addressing the dispute in the South China Sea. And that two-step approach is really about issues, specific issues being addressed bilaterally by countries directly through dialogue and consultations. Brunei also affirmed that the dispute should be resolved in accordance with UNCLOS. Second step to that approach is to stress that all countries in the region need to promote a calm, peaceful and conducive environment. All those niceties that you hear being replicated and repeated in many ASEAN declarations and statements. Now, another way to manage the peace, I say manage, not just resolve the issue because we're nowhere close to resolving the dispute. Managing the issue has been through the declaration on the conduct of parties of China Sea. This was a document that was signed in 2002 by the ASEAN member states, but also with China. And a lot of parties have recalled the principles in the statements, but in reality, the statements has really been violated in spirit and in letter, particularly with regard to 0.5. There are several points in this document, but 0.5 speaks to all parties undertaking self-restraint in the conduct of activities that will complicate escalate disputes. Well, we're way beyond that now with the militarization and fortification of those installations on the artificial islands in the South China Sea. So the DOC as it's called in short is always recalled, but it's really just dead in letter and spirit, as I said. Now, the other way of managing peace that countries have relied on is this code of conduct, a different code of conduct. It's a code of unplanned encounters at sea, referred to in short as cues, which is essentially a manual or a set of ground rules on how to de-escalate unplanned encounters, primarily between naval vessels. And so because it really refers to naval vessels, it doesn't talk about, for example, submarines or it doesn't seem to apply to coast guards. And this is problematic because there's been a lot of use of coast guard vessels, primarily by China to conduct its assertive acts in the South China Sea. Finally, on this issue of magic peace, I think the super imposition of great power rivalry has been a complicating factor. And I understand the need to show presence and to enforce international law through things like the freedom of navigation operations. But these do not necessarily equal to the preservation of peace in the eyes of many claimants in Southeast Asia. So law does not necessarily equal peace, although in theory, as I was trained as a lawyer, that should be the logical extension of the law. In reality, however, it's a little more complicated and we can get to this in discussion. Now, what I'll say about the future and what the future holds for these territorial conflicts is, Professor Aaron referred to the PCA decision of 2016, which clarified that China's nine dash line has no legal basis. But there is a very real concern on the ground and at sea that there is now this action reaction cycle. So for example, because of this massive buildup by China in the South China Sea with regard to its artificial islands, Vietnam is also now building out and shoring up the features that it occupies. There is also this weaponization of coast guards and I touched on this with the deployment of maritime militias using fishing vessels, but also coast guards now. So very, very recently, just a few weeks ago, China passed this law internal law, which basically empowers its coast guards to use weapons against foreign ships in areas of the South China Sea that it considers China's. Now, there are coast guards around the world that do carry small arms on board, but they're usually for law enforcement and self-defense. The fact that China has this nine dash line claim in the South China Sea and the fact that this domestic law authorizes the destruction of structures built by other claimants makes it even more serious for the rest of us in Southeast Asia. So what do we do? In ASEAN, we talk a lot about the code of conduct of state parties, but this code of conduct talks related to this code of conduct have been stretched and they've now been suspended because of COVID. Yes, in theory, you can have these discussions and negotiations through Zoom, but it's probably not the best thing to do given the sensitivity of the topic. You know, it took ASEAN 15 years from the signing of the Declaration of Conduct of Parties, the DOC in 2002, to get to the COC in 2017. But the good news is that there has been some speedy movement since 2017. We now have a single draft negotiating text that was presented in 2019, and there are now numerous issues that need to be hammered out by all parties. And these issues include the geographic coverage, the scope of the COC, how ASEAN states would deal with China's claim to quote historic rights in their own domestic laws, whether the COC will be legally binding. Ideally, it should, but China, for obvious reasons, does not want it to be so. And then also, you know, there are other problems like China wanting to exclude other countries from the COC. A specific example is that China wants all signatories to be able to veto naval exercises with any non-signatory, which would be unacceptable to ASEAN countries because of ASEAN's prioritization of inclusivity and reliance on relations with as many external powers as possible to counterbalance each other. So there are many fundamental issues at play and the COC, even though China unilaterally in 2018 said that we need to conclude this by 2021, the likelihood is that the process is not going to be concluded anytime soon, certainly not this year. Let me stop there, thank you. Thank you so much, Ms. Noor, for giving us a Southeast Asia perspective. Before we open it up to Q&A from the audience, I'd first like to ask the panel members if they'd like to engage in dialogue with one another, if they have any questions based on another presentation. So I'll open it up to you three. Thank you, Ben. I'll just provide a couple of comments, if I may. Really enjoyed the perspectives from Professor Arendt and Ms. Noor. I think they're very important. I would say two things. I'm really glad the Coast Guard conversation came up because I think it's really important. So I'm gonna make two things, two comments, try to engender a lively conversation. I think that the United States Coast Guard needs to be dramatically expanded, probably doubled in size by number of vessels in order to have a presence in the Indo-Pacific in particular, but also around the world, including the Arctic. And how that could be done would be through smaller vessels that would be much less expensive. And the thing that most people don't realize is that the United States Coast Guard is actually usually more aligned as far as vessel size and even mission set that with most of the regional navies in the entire Indo-Pacific, frankly, the whole world, than the US Navy is because US Navy is a blue water naval force. And so dramatically expanding, it would enable the Coast Guard to support partner nations for enforcing their exclusive economic zones and fisheries regulations there, which we already do with the Navy and the Coast Guard, but we just don't have enough Coast Guard cutters, as well as most US territories, actually maritime territory, related to our maritime claims in the Pacific. And so to enforce our own exclusive economic zones would also be helpful. And so in a little context, the China Coast Guard is now the world's largest. It was 10 years ago as the United States Coast Guard. Now it's the China Coast Guard. Japan is investing heavily in its Coast Guard. And so it's time for Coast Guard diplomacy and Coast Guard freedom of navigation operations to respond ops, I think is one point. And the second point relates to how would you do that? I'm working on some research looking at the concept of a modern PT boat, patrol torpedo boat, like we had in World War II in this region, in the Western Pacific. And through that research, I've contacted a number of shipyards and they can, the Hamilton shipyard, for example, down in Texas, could create a modern PT boat about a hundred feet long, with a long distance, heavily armed, stealthy for $40 million a haul. For the cost of one Ford class carrier, you could have 325 Hamilton 96s, which would then all of a sudden, they could be Coast Guard, Marine Corps, or Navy, and they could then be partnering with ASEAN countries, with Pacific Island countries, as well as having a global operation and it wouldn't break the bank. And so we have to, in this post-COVID world in the United States and globally, frankly, we need to think creatively about how we address these major issues of illegal fishing and other things, while also having a presence and do it in a way that doesn't break the budget. Could I make a quick comment on that? So one thing my understanding is a lot of times the Navy can actually be deputized by the Coast Guard and so there are some operations that have taken place like that. Other comment on what Dr. Norr said, which I think is really important, in noting that I think freedom of navigation operations should continue, which I do, this is a form of protest to indicate that we are not accepting claims of international law. That's important. However, we also need to balance that in any given moment with what a particular freedom of navigation operation will produce as consequences. In other words, yes, we should do them, but we should also say, wait a minute, is this one gonna be more provocative? Are there other ways in which we can make the claim? So there always needs to be this balance so that we're not just sailing forth irrespective of the geopolitical consequences of what's happening. I feel like the United States has clearly made its assertion about what it thinks about international law. It needs to continue that, but it needs to be very careful that in a particular operation, we don't make things worse on the ground or in the sea as the case may be. Yeah, I could just piggyback on that. I think with previous U.S. one ops, the reaction from particularly like my country and ministers have maybe not been as expected by the U.S. side. And I think there was a little surprise among the Americans as to why there was some reticence or hesitation or ambivalence about how countries in the region have reacted to one ops. And that's precisely the point that yes, there is this assertion and protest based on international law, but sometimes this provocation might end up escalating the risk that countries in the region are not prepared to take and definitely not capability-wise not able to handle. So I think better communication between all parties involved would probably help to reduce and mitigate those risks, but I'm not sure that that will be the case going forward because there are large countries and there are small countries and some countries feel that they're prerogative to a sale through whenever they want. So I'll just leave it at that. And Ben, I wanna just make one last point. So I will back up the SHIP writer program enables the Coast Guard to actually technically take command of a U.S. Navy vessel and essentially be performing a Coast Guard task that could be for fisheries enforcement, marine pollution, illicit trafficking, whether it's drugs, human people. So what happens, the thing is, so it really leans into Ms. Noor's point as well because imagine the difference. So we recently have done a number, I mean, both Trump and Biden administrations have been doing significant U.S. Navy, Gray Hall, large vessels sailing through the South China Sea, even two aircraft carriers at one point. That's a very different message than a less than a hundred foot long, ideally white painted Coast Guard vessel or three of them saying, hey, we're gonna go and look at fisheries enforcement through the South China Sea and we'll make it a global tour of these. We'll start in Japan and go all the way down if the Japan Coast Guard wants to come with us and make it all the way to the Maldives and back. It's a totally different barrier to local, the regional players, whether they're Vietnam or Philippines or Malaysia and Indonesia saying, oh, we'd be happy to help do some fisheries enforcement. Everyone's against illegal fishing. And so the reason we don't do that now is we don't have enough Coast Guard vessels to even secure the U.S. coastline. So much less have operations in the, we do have them out there, but we're so stretched. And so I think that there's a reason why China after studying in depth their geographic situation invested hugely in their Coast Guard and that Japan is investing in their Coast Guard. And in the U.S. we need to start thinking that way. And part of the challenge is just bureaucratic inertia. The Coast Guard sits under the Department of Homeland Security, you know, and it's just, and it seems that most people on Capitol Hill like big, powerful vessels like the $13 billion Ford carrier. Well, that's great, but it's actually ineffective and expensive. So why don't we try something new? I think that brings about the question then is, a lot of it is actions to show China that the U.S. and other nations around the South China Sea don't agree with China's position. But yet we still see here that China isn't agreeing with their stance and they are sticking to their own opinion that the nine dashed line is legitimate. So I guess the question then is, how do Southeast Asian countries that were either through ASEAN or independently or the U.S. working with this allies get to a point where there won't be escalation in the South China Sea, where China will either agree to secede its claims or get to a point where every nation can agree on what territory is China's, what territory is Malaysia, Vietnamese, et cetera. To avoid any further escalation. And I don't know if that question was directed at me, but I'll take a stab at it. Yeah, to all of you. Well, since you brought up ASEAN, I think, and it gets to several of the questions that have been posed in the Q&A box. First of all, I think it's important to note that with regard to the claims of some Southeast Asian states, the South China Sea is a huge problem with China, but it's not the overwhelming pillar of relations with China. And so countries like Malaysia and Brunei, even Philippines to a certain extent, have been able to segregate the South China Sea from the rest of the relationship with China, particularly economic relationship with China. Second of all, yes, I think as someone has noted in the Q&A box, setting aside China's claims, the ASEAN member states themselves, the three ASEAN claimants have unresolved claims between themselves, among themselves. And so ideally, we in ASEAN would get our act together and sort out these claims ourselves first, but that is going to be extremely difficult because there are a legacy and historical issues tied to some of these claims. For example, the Philippines still maintains its claim over the state of Sabah in Malaysia, and it has complicated discussions and negotiations. And so all of these have to be unpacked very, very carefully. And at one point there was a bit of distrust and suspicion related to whether different Southeast Asian claimants states would cut a deal with China or with other claimants states themselves. So there is also this issue of trust that we in ASEAN are still trying to work on. I think in ASEAN, we have come to the conclusion that China will never set aside its claims and that it will continue to expand upon its claim. I think if we take that as a given, as a realistic given, then we will do ourselves a service in working off that basis and trying to find some creative ways of eventually resolving the disputes, but for now managing the disputes and avoiding any conflict. If I may, Ben, I'll make one point as well. Completely agree with Ms. Norris characterization there. And I think an important dimension that we haven't talked about as much so far is the offshore energy dimension. Because fundamentally, these maritime boundary disputes under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, they tend to become a nationalistic geostrategic issue when there are disputed, particularly oil and gas resources under the in the seabed. And so one interesting question, I think, I certainly don't know the answer to, but is that as the energy transition happens and there's a lot of political will behind that globally, and we saw negative oil prices last April, that once the price of oil and gas, if it starts to plummet as the world transitions to a more electrified, maybe hydrogen-driven economy powered by green hydrogen, then will those claims all of a sudden become less important because there's less at stake? And this would apply not only to the South China Sea, but also certainly the Eastern Mediterranean, which has very concerning there between Greece and Turkey and even potentially the Arctic. And so I think that that's an interesting question because I think that the challenge in the South China to see if that were to happen, then what you're really talking about is then fisheries claims, which are still very challenging to deal with, but you're at least taking the energy side out of it. And so there could be more collaborative arrangements for sustainable fishing on a regional level that would be accepted by ASEAN or ASEAN plus three, however they ended up wanting to do it. But I think that just something to keep on your radars as you start to think about this part of the world over the next 10 or 20 years is what happens with the energy transition? Does that increase tensions among maritime boundaries or does it decrease them? I think it decreases them, but we'll see. Fantastic. So that being said, I'd like to now start getting to some of the questions in the Q and A. Ms. Noor already answered one there, but we have one from Carlos here, sorry, who's a member of Epic and he asks, the South China Sea issue, or sorry, no, not that. Second one, how do you rationalize the diverging positions of China on the South China Sea versus its position on the Arctic Sea? Will the insistence of freedom of navigation and the latter case hurt China's argument in the South China Sea? I'm happy to take that, but also want to defer to my colleagues. Okay, so I think that it's a good question to ask. How China views the Arctic is in many different ways. It's part of the overall Belt and Road Initiative. They issued, if you're interested in this topic, check out their white paper, their Polar Silk Road white paper. And I would say this is a bigger part of their overall commercial diplomacy strategy, which tends to be the central government says these areas are priority for infrastructure, whether it's port or rails or pipelines, whether it's in the Indo-Pacific or up in the Arctic. And then once that central government green light policy position is issued, China does a lot of domestic savings. So they have enormous sovereign wealth funds. And then those sovereign wealth funds essentially have a green light to invest in these infrastructure projects, as well as state-owned enterprises will then be bidding on it. So it's a part of the PRC's commercial diplomacy strategy. It also employs Chinese laborers and companies through the state-owned enterprises. It leverages essentially the sovereign wealth funds. So non-government sources or quasi-government sources of funding to fund infrastructure projects in places like the Arctic and around the world. Now, I would say the big difference to the question that was posed, China doesn't have any kind of tangible historic claims as taking a Chinese perspective to the Arctic or really beyond either the East China Sea or the South China Sea. I mean, they are called the China Seas, right? And so the Arctic is not on that historical radar screen, though they did famously declare themselves a near-arctic nation in 2017, much to the causing a huge trigger in global media coverage of that. But I do think that that's the key difference and that in many ways it's one of geography that the South China Sea is the near abroad of China's sphere of influence from a maritime perspective. And it is important domestically for the fishing industry and also from a naval perspective, whereas the Arctic is more, it can be connected in the sense that as more liquefied natural gas flows from Norway and Russia go through the Bering Strait and then come down, it does reduce China's dependence on the Malacca Strait as a source of energy hydrocarbon imports. And if one thing that's been, I haven't mentioned, but Xi Jinping has talked about what he calls the Malacca Dilemma, which is in some kind of hot war conflict with the US or its allies that the ability of the United States Navy and its allied navies to close off trade through the Malacca Strait off of Singapore and choke China's economy from critical imports of liquefied natural gas or crude oil is an important consideration. So to the extent those are diversifying their supply chains, importing some liquefied natural gas and oil from Russia through pipelines, overland pipelines, same for Central Asia. That's part of the Belt and Road Initiative is meant to help China have a more diversified set of energy inflows globally and that the Arctic and Bering Strait are part of that. Our next question comes from Miliano Jose Soria. And they ask if China keeps on reaffirming their claims regarding the South China Sea, could they in the future sort of military conflict to protect what they claim to be theirs? I'm happy to weigh in, but I don't wanna take up too much air time. Okay, I'll take it. All right, so this is Brennan Brenner from my classes here at the lecture school. So the question is, so that's the big question. And I'm glad it's raised. We haven't had a major naval military hot war since you can argue most recently, the Falkland War in the early 80s between Britain and Argentina. Though the parallels to that in the South China Sea, you could, in that, trying to use that as a parallel, you would say, well, the US Navy is Britain and China is Argentina, it's closer to the dispute, but Britain had a more powerful, more global Navy. And many people would say China and Argentina, I can't really compare them. China is a much, much more powerful economy and military. And so the, then you go back further in history and you really are talking World War II. And so, and it was also disputed in the Western Pacific and the island campaigns. And so military scholars and naval historians spend a lot of time thinking about what has changed in the last 75 years since World War II. And what does that mean for China's claims in the South China Sea, these artificial islands that are disputed. And what, if there were a hot conflict because in moving beyond just kind of islands and navies, China's missile capability, cyber capability, aerial capability, space capability all come into play. And if you're interested in this topic, I would encourage you to take a look at Admiral Stavridis and Elliot Ockerman just published a book a couple of weeks ago called 2034, which is a fictional account of what they call the next war. It actually starts in the South China Sea. And so if you, so you could get that on Amazon and I don't have any, I don't get paid by them. It's just happens to coincide with this topic. If you want to also check it out, it was profiled in Wired Magazine. You can check out four different exposés that's worthwhile. But the big, the true answer to your question is nobody really knows because how can you know with certainty when your most recent parallel took place almost 40 years ago in the Falkland Islands and then you have to go back 75 years to World War II, technologies changed. And so that's why there's so much concern globally about what it would mean as well as regionally. Let me just add a little if I may. There is a lot at stake in the South China Sea resources, but also sovereignty and territory. And just to paint a stark picture for you, Malaysia is physically cleaved by the South China Sea. This nation state that the country has been trying to build and unify since independence is split into half by the South China Sea. And it takes a shorter amount of time to fly from the capital of Malaysia to another country, Singapore or Indonesia, that it does for someone to get to and from Kuala Lumpur and the state capital of Sabah, Kota Kinabalu which takes about three hours. So for a country like Malaysia, there is a lot at stake because it involves territorial integrity and the continuity of the country itself. But having said that, nobody wants a war, certainly not the South China Sea claimants, perhaps not even China in the South China Sea because there's just too much to be lost, especially if, as I said earlier, you consider the South China Sea to be simply a component of a more intricate and comprehensive relationship among all these countries. So the hope and fervent desire is to avoid conflict and that's why even though ASEAN constantly gets criticized for just talking and talking and talking, this is perhaps the best way forward that we in the region feel is to avoid conflict. The next question comes from Jianzhuang Lu and they ask, looking from a legal perspective, if China abandons current claims and sticks strictly to the 1982 convention, does the convention offer a clear way out? For instance, it seems like many of the country's controlled islands are very close to each other. How can the exclusive economic zones be determined in these cases? Yeah, so simply put, the convention provides for dispute settlement mechanisms where you have exclusive economic zones that would overlap where you would negotiate an arrangement to resolve those disputes. And so that would be the way you would undertake that. I mean, it still requires that you negotiate it and reach some kind of agreement, but that would be the process for that. I don't, with due respect to the question, I don't anticipate China just suddenly reneging on all these claims either. I feel the claims are gonna go forward. The question is how much will they press them? And I think Dr. Norr suggests that if we look at other areas of cooperation that can be pursued in a multilateral way or even in a bilateral way, you might be able to get to the point where China will not cancel its claims, but will not push them, will not advance them, and then you can achieve cooperation in other areas. And I would just add one thing, I agree with that. I think that if you're interested in this, the permanent court of arbitration's 2016 decision between the China and the Philippines has some very interesting characterizations of what we've been talking about is islands here, but they say are features. And in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, features or rocks or shoals do not get either a national waters or an exclusive economic zone. And they said everything in the South China Sea, the Spratlys and the Paracels, everything that's disputed between the Philippines and China is our features. It's therefore have no maritime territorial claims of territorial seas and exclusive economic zones. Even though, and usually what is used to determine whether a feature technically becomes an island and then for has those maritime property rights is whether a human life can be sustained independently on that. And Taiwanese will tell you, PRC officials as well, that Ituaba has a, it's a pretty large island. And so if it's a feature, well, what about these other US islands or Japanese islands or the Maldives? Or is it like, do they not actually have an exclusive economic zone? And I think that's actually a really interesting global question. It's about a 450 page decision. So it's not for the faint of heart, but if you are interested, take a look at it. It's the permanent court of arbitration decision, Philippines versus China. Our next question comes from a member of the audience. What role does nationalism play in the disputed areas in the South China Sea? I mean, I'll say it plays a big one. And especially that's where actually the fishing industry for whatever reason globally almost is one that has a lot of nationalistic support. So that's one aspect of it. And then also for energy security, but I just realized Ms. Noor was about to unmute. So I'll let her go. Now I was perfectly happy to have you say something to start, but I'll add on to that. And I think this goes back to my earlier comments about countries like Malaysia deliberately trying to keep the South China Sea dispute out of the domestic media, precisely because in general doesn't want to box itself in into difficult decisions and tighten the noose on backdoor diplomacy with a country like China. I think obviously, as I mentioned, the Philippines and Vietnam have taken a different tact and you've seen that sort of painted them in a corner and on some occasions. So nationalism is a huge factor. The only reason the dispute made its way into the media in Malaysia was because fishermen were affected by continuous Chinese presence in South Luconia shoals. And so it became an issue because fishermen were not able to fish and they complained to the local politicians which then became a domestic political issue. And then it had to be discussed in the national media. Next, we have a question from Jared Rosen and he asks, Professor Weitz mentioned expanding the US Coast Guard's role in the South China Sea but perhaps engaging a more liberal viewpoint like ones that Professor Aaron put forward, is there a way of pursuing a non-military route that wouldn't exacerbate tensions in the region? Could Quad allies play a bigger role when joining CPTPP be a possibility? I'll quickly weigh in and then open it up for others. So yes and yes and yes. I mean, I think that the importance of the Quad country, so by that for audience members who are new to this, the Quad countries are Japan, Australia, India and the United States and are increasingly cooperating together on Indo-Pacific issues and vaccines even now. And so I think that, so a couple of points to Mr. Rosen's question here, comment is that the, how do you affect, so how do you make a freedom of navigation operation effective? Well, it requires a whole of government coordination and particularly a coordination between the military defense ministry and foreign ministry but also aid agencies, it's a really good point in that if you're trying to think, if you take a step back and say, as I look at global affairs, international affairs, how can I as a policymaker try to influence the behavior of other nation-states? Well, you have a number of different means to do that. You have diplomacy, you have military affairs, you have trade and private sector collaboration and economic power. And so yes, all of that is on the table. I think the challenge is that, and this is where you can't separate, I thought this was a really good point onto the last question that Ms. Nora mentioned, that you can't separate domestic politics from international politics, especially on these sovereignty issues. So the fact that the domestic fishing industry was concerned that all of a sudden politicians are like, okay, I need to care about this and I have to then understand what it means and what my position is. Similarly, you can't divorce the TPP conversation from the domestic US conversation of a increasing reluctance of true free trade and a strong higher preference for fair trade or reciprocal trade. And that conversation, they can't be divorced. And it also can't be divorced from immigration issues. Like fundamentally, like there's a conversation happening in the United States thinking about how do we have a more balanced, more equitable economy here? And if you look towards, say, the European Union, which is not really a free trade organized, they are a fair trade externally or a reciprocal trade and they have a pretty tight set of secure borders. There's conversations in Washington DC and the country saying, well, we want a more equitable path to development rather than an unfettered free trade, unfettered immigration perspective. And so those conversations can't be divorced. And so when I'm talking to policymakers in ASEAN countries, they're all often like, oh, well, you didn't do TPP, it's a complicated issue. Like TPP is really important to them. Most Americans haven't even heard of TPP. It's not a top 10 issue for them. And so trade is, and fair trade is a top 10 issue probably for most Americans. And I would say that the other piece of this, and I will do a plug for Professor Aaron, I support also a ratification of the UN Conventional Law of the Sea. It would be a real help because it does cost us diplomatically, even though the military will correctly make the point every time that we abide by it. We view it as customary international law. We abide by the UN Conventional Law of the Sea. But because it's not ratified, it's a problem. And I actually think the kind of bipartisan concern and discomfort with China's rise and what it means for the US overall, both economically and militarily, might provide a window to do that because very clearly articulating, like Professor Aaron did of like, well, the previous concerns I've already been taken care of. In fact, they were taken care of in the 90s. So like Republicans and Democrats have pushed for this. So let's just do it. And I think that that is, it's an interesting angle to this. I'd also like to agree in, but I wanted to refer to Professor Aaron if he has anything to add. I'm good. And I think we're almost out of time too. So I'm fine. I just wanted to maybe be a little contrarian and say that, you know, whenever the Quad is mentioned, ASEAN member countries get into a bout of allergic sneezes. And so I would be maybe a little cautious about pushing for the Quad to be involved because of this risk of miscalculation and escalation when you involve more major powers into a hotly disputed territory area like the South China Sea. So again, I would urge for better communication among all parties involved. And the other thing is I'm also sure about the CPTPP. Honestly, I had the misfortune of working on the TPP national interest assessment for Malaysia and there was tremendous domestic resistance in Malaysia and also in other countries, other negotiating countries because there were so many onerous demands on structural reform that politicians had to basically bulldoze through. And I'm not sure essentially what the connection would be to reducing tensions in the South China Sea because the US is known as a strong armed negotiator in many of these trade agreements because of the different ways it negotiates. So I'm not quite sure what the link to that would be. And this will be our last question of the panel and it comes from Alexander Gannon. And they ask, what investments has China made in nations along the South China Sea and what advantage does this give them in the area? What investments are being made by the United States? Does anyone wanna take that? All right, so yeah, I confess I was reading the chat. So maybe can you restate the question for me quickly? I'm sorry about that Ben. Yep, what investments has China made in nations along the South China Sea and what advantage does this give them in the area and what investments are gonna be made by the United States? Okay, great question. And sorry for, I'm terrible at multitasking. I should have not done that. So it's a good question. And I would say this comes back to the Belt and Road Initiative, China's commercial diplomacy strategy. And it's an interesting question. So there's a lot of scholarship and thinking written on this and really China as a major country, second largest economy in the world that runs a trade surplus and therefore stacks up a lot of other currencies, it has the ability to then spend those doing infrastructure investment with partner countries. And so it's been doing that for certainly the last 10 years and increasingly so. I think that how the US should respond, this is just my own personal take on it, is that the Asian Development Bank based in the Philippines, I think is a great underutilized international organization that the US with other countries that would be interested in supporting Asian development particularly in Southeast Asia, ASEAN countries, places like Japan, South Korea, others, European Union as well, could partner more with the Asian Development Bank and do more infrastructure investments, things that would build support for those countries around the South China Sea to have a more sort of brighter future, more like engage more economic development, address all the issues that we deal with with sustainable development, can even be related to green energy, like the clean energy transition, all those sorts of things could be done in a more cohesive way. I think if the US decided we're gonna partner with the Asian Development Bank, bring others like the Japanese on board and do it in a more coordinated way because China is doing it at a scale that the United States is not doing in part because we run a big trade deficit and they run a big trade surplus so they just have more tools available. Well, on that note, I will conclude turbulent tides of the South China Sea. Thank you to our panelists, Professor Weitz, Professor Arendt and Ms. Noor for sharing your insights with us and thank you to all those in the audience for attending today. I hope you all took away something from this discussion and up next at noon, Boston time will be China and the global order international institutions. Following that panel will be our expert led small group discussions, the future of Taiwan beyond the Gawan Valley, the future of India-China relations, Hong Kong and China and the Global South. Those will begin at 1.30 Boston time and their Zoom links can be found in the program. I hope to see you there and thank you again for attending today. Thank you Ben, thank everybody. Great, thank you Ben and everybody at IGL.