That plan has been eclipsed in part, officials at high-level talks in Malaysia this weekend acknowledged, in favor of a blunter strategy for dealing with China: strengthening alliances between countries anxious about Beijing’s increasingly assertive behavior.
“People aren’t giving up on Asean,” said one diplomat involved in the negotiations, referring to the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. “But some of the countries are looking at other options to stop the situation from getting worse.”
Though China has been involved in talks to establish a “code of conduct” to curb the rival claimants in the South China Sea, Beijing has been steadily expanding the territory it controls, even building artificial islands around reefs and semi-submerged atolls in waters claimed by rivals. As a result, countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam are now breaking off to forge a new patchwork of alliances which they hope will slow China’s advance into some of the most politically and economically strategic waters in the world.
“The code of conduct had become like a beauty contest—everyone talking about world peace, but with substance totally lacking,” said William Choong, a regional security expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore.
This shift in strategy has played into the hands of U.S. President Barack Obama. He signed a new U.S.-Asean strategic partnership before attending Sunday’s East Asia Summit—the region’s top geopolitical forum—in Kuala Lumpur, furthering his hallmark policy of “rebalancing” America’s longer-term interests to the Asia-Pacific region. The minting of the pact closely followed U.S. moves to intervene more forcefully in the South China Sea through so-called freedom of navigation operations which have been applauded by some Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia and the Philippines—and condemned by China.
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