Stein Tønnesson

Sino-Vietnamese Rapprochement and the South China Sea Irritant

On 4 November 2002, China and ASEAN signed a Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (ASEAN, 2002). Incidents related to occupation of islands, ‘illegal’ fishing and oil exploration had been major irritants in the relationship between China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam during the 1990s. The declaration on a code of conduct reflects the complexity of the South China Sea dispute: it is a multilateral agreement between one major power and an association of ten states. However, China remains adamant that it will resolve the South China Sea dispute only through bilateral negotiations. For this policy to produce results, bilateral talks with Vietnam will be essential. On 25 December 2000, China and Vietnam signed bilateral agreements on maritime delimitation and fishery cooperation in the Gulf of Tonkin, and experts from the two countries also discussed the larger disputes in the South China Sea. However, two years later, the bilateral agreements had still not entered into force and negotiations over supplementary protocols had stalled. This article describes the Sino-Vietnamese rapprochement in the 1990s, analyses the South China Sea ‘irritant’, presents the Gulf of Tonkin agreements and discusses the prospects for a Sino-Vietnamese initiative to resolve the South China Sea dispute.

The South China Sea in the Age of European Decline

The history of the disputed Paracel and Spratly Islands in the period 1930–56 will be analysed here within a context of regional political and strategic developments. The focus will be on how French and British authorities estimated the economic and strategic value of the two island groups in various periods. The Paracels and Spratlys are studied the way one would examine the pawns in a game of chess. In themselves they are unimportant, but in certain situations they gain significance, and mediocre players may pay inordinate attention to their protection. There is also the faint possibility that a pawn can be changed into a queen, for instance if oil is discovered. In order to understand the constellations that push simple pawns into the limelight, they must be seen in relation to the general balance of forces on the chessboard, and the strategies of all players.

Vietnam's Objective in the South China Sea: National or Regional Security?

Vietnams interests in the South China Sea may be divided into traditional national security interests, and interests linked to the broader category of human security. This article examines Vietnams policy in the South China Sea and its use of the Law of the Sea. Vietnam has doggedly upheld its claim to the whole of the Paracel and Spratly areas (Hoang Sa and Truong Sa) and has spent considerable resources in modernizing its naval and air forces. However, there seems to be a move away from a narrow focus on national security to a more broad-based concern for human security. This is connected with a trend towards a greater regional, less nationalist approach, which may give Vietnam a key role in resolving the multiple disputes in the South China Sea. Introduction The disputes in the South China Sea form a permanent threat to Vietnams national security, to its full integration with the rest of ASEAN, and to farther improvement of its relationship with China. [1] The disputes also threaten regional security and the interests of the populations around the South China Sea, who need to be protected against typhoons, floods, pollution, depletion of fish stocks, piracy, and war. The manner in which Hanoi handles the situation in the South China Sea may have a significant impact on the living conditions of the Vietnamese, and for their countrys regional role. Vietnams aims in the South China Sea may be divided into traditional national security concerns, and aims linked to the broader category of human and regional security. Under the first category are aims such as defending the long S-shaped coast against invasion, defending the sovereignty of the Paracels (Hoang Sa) and the Spratlys (Truong Sa), gaining exclusive control of resources on and under Vietnams continental shelf, as well as living resources in the sea out to 200 nautical miles, collecting customs duties, and suppressing smuggling, piracy and other illegal activities within Vietnams 12-nautical mile territorial waters. [2] As long as no formal agreements have been reached on the delimitation of maritime boundaries, attempts to pursue these aims tend to generate conflict between Vietnam and the other nations around the South China Sea. Under the second category are aims such as defending the population against typhoons, protecting mangrove swamps, securing fish stocks for future generations, halting the destruction of coral reefs, preventing pollution, facing the eventuality of major oil spills, building modern and secure ports, maintaining open communications securing regional peace, attracting serious oil companies to explore for oil and gas, and facilitating international trade and investments. These aims entail a need for regional and international co-operation. The means in pursuit of the traditional national security interests are not necessarily effective in achieving human and regional security. National security may be pursued by maintaining considerable military capabilities, entering into alliances with other powers, and conducting nationalistic propaganda domestically and internationally. These means are costly and can lead to a deterioration in relations with neighbouring states, thus endangering human security. In pursuing human security for its population, the Vietnamese Government is finding other means more useful, such as bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, international co-operation in resource management and environmental protection, and activities to further develop an internationally recognized legal regime, on the basis of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS was signed in 1982 and entered into force in November 1994, one year after the sixtieth state had ratified it. This article will test the hypothesis that there is a gradual movement in Vietnamese policy away from a narrow focus on national security to a more broad-based concern for human security. …

Can Russia keep its special ties with Vietnam while moving closer and closer to China

While entering into a deep confrontation with the West in the context of the Ukrainian crisis, Russia has sought to uphold its international profile by upgrading its strategic partnership with China and adding new economic content to it, first of all in energy deals. At the same time, Moscow is aware of the risks related to becoming a minor partner to powerful China and to diminishing its ability to make its own contributions to forming the global agenda. One way of avoiding too much dependence on Chinese patronage would be to retain and cultivate the traditional ties with Vietnam and perhaps even play a pacifying role in the oscillating Chinese-Vietnamese tensions. Russian energy companies are exploring opportunities for further advancing offshore oil and gas projects in the South China Sea, although the profitability of these projects remains rather low. Russia has delivered two out of six contracted Kilo class submarines to Vietnam, but its role as the main provider of weapons may now be challenged by the USA and Japan. The prospects for maintaining or expanding Russia’s security and energy connections with Vietnam is thus a demanding topic for analysis, which may throw light also on the all-important trilateral relationship between China, the USA and Japan.

The Impact of the Law of the Sea Convention on Conflict and Conflict Management in the South China Sea

This article examines the impact of the UN Law of the Sea Convention on conflict behavior and management in the South China Sea during four periods: during its negotiation (1973–1982); from its signing to the entry into force (1982–1994); from then until the China-ASEAN Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (1995–2002); and from the setting of a timeline for outer limits of continental shelf submissions to the events following the 2009 submissions (2003–2013). Ambiguous effects were found. On the one hand, the Convention has generated or exacerbated conflict by raising the stakes, failing to resolve key legal issues, and encouraging overlapping zone claims. On the other hand, it has provided obligations, language, and techniques for conflict management and resolution. The conflict-enhancing impact was found to have been more substantial than the peace-promoting effects. Nevertheless, the balance has shifted toward more emphasis on conflict management and also some utilization of the Conventions peacemaking potential. If this long-term trend continues and the Convention is more rigorously respected and applied, the Convention may in the end be found to have contributed to regional peace.

Active citation through hyperlinks: The retarded replication revolution

The hyperlink revolution in academic referencing is long overdue. Why is the potential offered by the internet for providing hyperlinks to sources so little utilized by scholars? The article discusses the most likely reasons and suggests that the revolution will happen only when it is promoted from above through mandatory hyperlinks in term papers, dissertations, journal articles and scholarly monographs. This will make it possible for readers to replicate, test and evaluate not just statistical analyses of quantifiable data, but any argument based on qualitative or quantitative analysis of any kind of source, be it an object, text, speech act, image, or film.

The Longest Wars: Indochina 1945-75

In 1981-82, as a graduate student of history, Stein Tønnesson was lucky enough to be admitted to the Indochina files of the French archives, where secret cables and reports had been conserved since the outbreak of the first Indochinese war in late 1946. In the first part of this article he presents a new version of the process that led to the Franco-Vietnamese war, based on this previously unpublished material. New light is thrown on French actions and motives and also on the Indochina policy of the United States at that time. The French sources show how the high commissioner in Saigon, with backing from the French premier and foreign minister Georges Bidault, deliberately provoked war. This was done at the same time as Bidaults government was replaced by a Socialist government under the veteran Léon Blum. Once taking office, Blum sent a peace proposal to Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh and ordered the French troops to negotiate a cease-fire. His order was ignored by the French army, however, and in the face of vigorous nationalist sentiments in France, Blum had to give in. In the second part of the article Stein Tønnesson compares the first and second Indochinese wars and finds notable parallels in the ways they escalated and in the reasons why they lasted so long.

Deterrence, interdependence and Sino-US peace

Nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence are key factors in cost calculations underpinning decisions on war or peace between states. This paper combines deterrence and interdependence in a proposed theory of major power peace, with reference to a number of insightful works on the ongoing transition of power from the US to a rising China. The paper explores the hypothesis that as long as the US and China can deter each other with a combination of conventional and nuclear forces, and refrain from actions to drastically reduce their economic dependence on each other, there is little risk of war between them. Peace will be further secured if important third party countries, notably Japan, remain covered by US extended deterrence and integrated economically with both China and the USA through trade and transnational production chains. Only if the US, Chinese or Japanese governments take politically motivated actions to radically reduce their economic dependence on one another are they likely to engage in a security competition of sufficient intensity to generate an arms race and a substantial risk of war. This does not just hold for all-out war but for limited war as well, given the risk of escalation.

Vietnam in the Asian Crisis

Because of the legacy from Vietnam’s epic struggles against Chinese, French and American domination, and the country’s close alliance with the Soviet Union in the years 1976–91, its remarkable transition from central planning to a more market-oriented economy in the years 1986–97 drew much attention from scholars and commentators all over the world.1 During the Asian crisis of 1997–99, the Vietnamese experience became strongly contested. Virtually every commentator claimed Vietnam as support for his or her ideological position, and three highly different stories were told about ‘Vietnam in the Asian crisis’.

Why are the Disputes in the South China Sea So Intractable? A Historical Approach

There are at least three ways of writing the history of a sovereignty dis pute. The first applies a national perspective, goes as far back in history as possible in order to find evidence that the territory in question is an inviolable part of the national patrimony, and demonstrates how sover eignty has been continuously upheld through prescription, occupation and utilization. The second composes a non-partisan legal treatise, presents the chronology of conflicting claims to sovereignty, and evaluates their relative merits on the basis of international law (cf. Austin, 1998; Valencia, Dyke, and Ludwig, 1997). The third makes the dispute a part of general inter national history, analysing events and trends on the basis of changes in the international system and in the balance of power (cf. Renouvin, 1946; Joyaux, 1985, 1988; Yahuda, 1996). In this article, we shall follow the third approach and let changes in international power relations underpin the structure of the analysis. Each section starts with a characterization of the international system and power relations within the period under scrutiny, and then examines the territorial disputes within this context. The historical record has a major role to play in any resolution of a sovereignty dispute. It is normal practice to select some critical dates when treaties, decrees or other actions provided all interested parties a chance to present and sustain their claims. For the dispute over sovereignty to islands in the South China Sea (the Spratlys and the Paracels), the can didates that may serve as critical dates are 1877, 1909, 1933, 1946-1947, 1951-1952, 1956, 1971, 1974, 1982-1983 and 1988. No attempt will be made in the analysis below to point out the dates that ought to underpin the resolution of the sovereignty disputes, but this paper will describe what happened in those years.