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INTERNATIONAL

The trust deficit is international

  • 20 May 2014

China’s recent decision to lob a billion dollar oil rig into the disputed South China Sea, some 220 km off the coast of Vietnam, seemingly embodies the old maxim that possession is nine-tenths of the law.  

The rig is located near the Paracel Islands, which the Chinese Communist Party won part of (the Amphitrite group) during their civil war with the Nationalists in 1950 and the remaining islands (the Crescent group) from US backed South Vietnam in 1974.  After the collapse of South Vietnam two years later the newly unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam inherited South Vietnam’s claim. 

Until recently the islands were just one more piece of disputed territory in the South China Sea. No less than seven sovereign nations – Brunei, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam – push their claims for the expanses of water, submerged minerals and islands that make up one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. 

As such any action that might tip the balance to one claimant over another is recorded with the precision of a seismometer’s needle.  An operational deep sea-drilling rig is analogous to a sizeable geopolitical quake.  And Vietnam has responded in kind.

Flotillas have been launched, ships have allegedly rammed each other like angrily jousting knights, an anti-Chinese protest has lurched into pogrom-like violence and businesses have been burned to the ground for even using Chinese characters.  China is now evacuating its citizens from potential danger as Vietnam’s leaders seek to reign in the anti-Chinese sentiment they are accused of stoking. 

Much commentary has focused on the turbulent and intertwined history of Vietnam and China. The great nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh illustrated Vietnam’s longstanding ambivalence towards their on-again, off-again ally when he declared in the midst of First Indochina War: 

You fools! Don't you remember your history? The last time the Chinese came, they stayed a thousand years. The French are foreigners. They are weak. Colonialism is dying. …  But if the Chinese stay now, they will never go. As for me, I prefer to sniff French s--t for five years than to eat Chinese s--t for the rest of my life.

However there is a deeper, structural cause to the current conflict that can be explained outside of the unique history of these two nations. It is also an explanation that raises worrying questions for the future of peace in the region.

Despite all pretences of civilisation, modern international relations remain
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