VietNamNet Bridge - Power shifts, interstate competition, military modernisation, transnational challenges, institutional pressures and political choices to exploit differences over territory and nationalism: together, these factors are making Asia's waterways more contested, crowded and at risk of armed strife.

Part 1: Incidents, confrontation and crisis in Indo-Pacific Asia

Part 2: Naval nationalism

Part 3: Ideals of confidence 1

Part 4: Ideals of confidence (part 2)

Part 5: Perspectives of Chinese national security community 1

The analysis in this paper suggests that differences of interests among major powers in Indo-Pacific maritime Asia - in particular China's frictions with the United States, Japan and India - are likely to persist and intensify. This will continue to manifest in so-called incidents at sea: close-range encounters involving vessels and aircraft from competing powers, typically in sensitive or contested zones, and with accompanying possibilities of miscalculation, casualties, crisis and even conflict.

The probability that any particular incident will lead to military clashes is relatively small, and the possibility that this might escalate to major war is smaller still. Many incidents have occurred in the past decade, and there is little evidence in the public domain that these have prompted elevated alert levels, wider mobilisation, or escalating threats of force.

But the dynamics of strategic competition suggest that the number and tempo of incidents is likely to increase, the probability that any particular incident will get out of hand is well above zero, and the consequences of such a breakdown could be profound.

Moreover, an accumulation of incidents could play negatively into a wider deterioration of security relations among major powers, raising the likelihood that any particular future incident might become a spark for conflict. Serious efforts to minimise these risks are therefore critically important to the region's future peace and stability.

For the foreseeable future, hopes for comprehensive cooperation at sea among major powers in the Indo-Pacific region - something approaching a maritime concert of powers - are forlorn. There is also a need to be realistic about the prospects even for more modest CBMs to eliminate the risks of incidents or of their escalation. Yet the alternative is grim: a vast region, increasingly central to global prosperity and order, in which powerful maritime states competitively seek to advance and safeguard their interests, in the absence of agreed rules of restraint or habits of cooperation. Such a situation will involve frequent friction points with a constant need for diplomatic attention to prevent or manage crises, and no guarantee that conflict can be avoided.

In this concluding chapter, we first offer some generalised analytical conclusions derived from the analysis and research set out in the preceding chapters. Drawing upon these conclusions, we then present some brief recommendations on how states might most effectively reduce or at least manage the risks that Asian maritime competition might lead to dangerous armed encounters.

Analytical conclusions

The most active maritime security differences in Asia involving major countries revolve ultimately around the rise of China. That rising power's maritime security relations with the United States, Japan, India and some Southeast Asian states all involve elements of competition and mistrust, and carry the latent risk of conflict. Even the maritime relationship between China and South Korea is overshadowed by Beijing's support for North Korea. The priority for diplomatic efforts to reduce risks of conflict at sea in Asia should therefore be addressing the dangers in China's main maritime power relationships.

It is unrealistic to expect that these challenges can be resolved through an inclusive regional forum, and bilateral efforts to address them in recent years have also met with disappointment. Between 2007 and 2009, in particular, there was a flurry of activity, publications and enthusiasm around the idea of US-China engagement, even partnership, in securing the maritime commons. The United States even made cooperation the organising principle of its 2007 maritime strategy.

The ideas promoted at this time included working together on 'non-traditional' or transnational security issues, like piracy and disaster relief, in the hope that this would lead to broader improvements in mutual understanding and trust in interstate security relations. Since then there have been efforts to persuade Beijing that continuous channels of military dialogue are in China's interests. These overtures have been rejected, even if some parts of China's security community acknowledge that they make sense.

To be sure, Beijing is becoming more comfortable with some kinds of security engagement with potential strategic competitors, but - at least when it comes to the maritime domain - this focuses on measures remote from or indirectly related to the main issues, zones or capabilities of contention and concern. These indirect CBMs have only a marginal impact on issues of trust, stability and crisis management.

For instance, defence policy dialogues, while obviously better than nothing, are often venues for formulaic exchanges of rehearsed national perspectives: a fate of the Sino-US MMCA.133 Ship visits - an area where the PLA-N is increasingly active134 - remain largely symbolic gestures of normal diplomatic engagement, shot through with wariness and sprinkled with intelligence-gathering attempts on both sides. Naval officers understand the nuances of these activities. They know that occasional goodwill interactions with navies they mistrust are not of themselves going to make a fundamental difference in eliminating the possibility that some future exchange will be one of fire rather than personnel.

China's involvement in combined maritime exercises with nations it mistrusts tends to be modest in scale and complexity, and to focus on 'non-traditional' or transnational issues like search and rescue, disaster relief or counter-terrorism. The reassurance these activities can offer about the other side's capabilities and intent is limited. They can, however, generate a small degree of predictability in understanding how and why the other side operates and reacts - for example, in assessing each other's levels of seamanship. Such activities can also play a role in developing communications procedures that might allow ships from different nations to avoid accidents when operating in proximity. And these modest gains can be enhanced through operating together on 'non-traditional' security missions, such as disaster relief or against piracy.

Nonetheless, even extensive cooperation on such activities cannot erase fundamental differences of national interest. This is attested by the fact that a limited US-China partnership against piracy in the Gulf of Aden has coincided with a prolonged downturn in their maritime security relations in waters close to China, where Beijing appears to have decided its interests are non-negotiably engaged.

Meanwhile, China's willingness to engage seriously in more direct kinds of CBMs remains very limited. In particular, there is little prospect of major progress in formal mechanisms to prevent or manage incidents at sea between Chinese forces and American, Japanese or Indian counterparts. And while Beijing may be willing to experiment in coordinated patrolling with much weaker states like Vietnam and Indonesia, there is no sign of Chinese interest in a similar arrangement with Japan.

For the time being, China and Washington remain largely opposed on the basic question of whether the purpose of military engagement is to build trust or reflect it. Should direct CBMs be put in place before political trust is pursued? This is the view of Washington in particular; CBMs are most necessary when trust is most lacking. Thus there are those in the United States who support the creation of one or more bilateral INCSEA agreements with China based on the US-Soviet model of the 1970s, grounded in decades of US experience in managing great- power competition in its most intense form.

Or should, as China tends to argue, agreement and trust on key political issues be established before serious military dialogue, confidence-building and cooperation can be attempted at sea? This approach becomes especially problematic when Beijing chooses to define 'trust' as US accommodation of what China chooses to define as its core interests - especially those interests that are directly at odds with those of other stakeholders in regional security. At this stage it would seem that even the accumulation of dangers and risks in 2010 has not fundamentally shifted Beijing's position.

Not all the nervousness about the mixed impacts of CBMs is on the Chinese side. Some countries, notably Japan, might see a mixed blessing in progress on others' maritime CBMs with China. Japan might see any future sudden advances in US- China maritime CBMs or engagement as increasing the risk of Tokyo's interests being sidelined in some US-China rapprochement or 'G2' condominium. In the Indian Ocean, meanwhile, any moves towards substantial maritime cooperation with China by either the United States or India - hypothetical as it may seem at present - could cause discomfort to the other democratic power unless it was closely consulted along the way.

In a climate of nationalism and major-power rivalry, processes to negotiate formalised or binding CBMs with China, such as an INCSEA agreement, could easily descend in contests for influence, prestige or legalistic point-scoring; Japan, for instance, is not convinced China would be willing to treat it as an equal in negotiations. In the case of China-US negotiations, China could be expected to use any such talks to push for acceptance of its interpretation of the Law of the Sea, and for an end to US surveillance in its EEZ. And in China-India relations, an INCSEA or other negotiation of direct maritime CBMs would be a test of Beijing's willingness to treat New Delhi as a peer. It would probably also require New Delhi to accept a legitimate and enduring Chinese maritime security role - including sustained naval activity - in the Indian Ocean.

As for any effort to multilateralise an INCSEA regime involving China, this would seem highly likely to fail in the absence of bilateral agreements as building blocks. Such a multilateral approach might also provide Beijing with the opportunity to seek to divide the United States and its allies or partners. More broadly, the possible roles of third parties in reinforcing the peaceful management of the key major-power disputes in the Indo-Pacific are limited.

As argued in Power and Choice, small and middle powers such as Singapore and Australia, or institutions such as those centred on ASEAN, have little prospect of mediating between major powers on issues critical to their national security; otherwise, the major powers would already be willing to vest mechanisms such as the ASEAN Regional Forum with a genuine preventive diplomacy mandate and resources to match.137 This is admittedly an unpleasant situation for middle powers such as Australia to accept, given their major stakes in regional stability and the security of sea lanes.

The more time that passes without movement towards a direct CBMs regime at sea in the Indo-Pacific, the more that tensions between a rising China and other powers are likely to accumulate. This is a circumstance in which the maritime security dilemma in the region is set to worsen, with competitive capability accumulation, especially of destabilising capabilities such as submarines and missiles.

That said, time itself might also bestow some improvements - an informal confidence-building and crisis-management regime might evolve out of hard- earned experience. Assuming that high levels of economic interdependence persist, this will sustain pressure on governments to prioritise peace over zero-sum security goals.

Rory Medcalf, Raoul Heinrichs and Justin Jones
Lowy Institute

Next part: Marine disputes: choosing war or peace?