This article by Oriana Skylar Mastro was originally published by the Lowy Institute.

Chinese exercises in the South China Sea last month, and the strong US response, show these disputed waters will not soon be calm. While the focus has largely been on military maneuvers, competition in legal positions has also been heating up. Last year, both the United States and Australia risked China’s wrath by officially stating that China’s claims in the South China Sea are unlawful. Other claimants were pleased by this change of policy, but none voiced it prominently.

The issue, however, is not that China flagrantly violates international law – it is that it does so while simultaneously creating a veneer of legal legitimacy for its position.

The conventional wisdom is that China claims sovereignty over “virtually all South China Sea islands and their adjacent waters.” Its claims are “sweeping” and more expansive than those of any other rival claimant. In 2009, Dai Bingguo, then a top Chinese official, first referred to the South China Sea as a “core interest”, a term often used for Taiwan, Xinjiang, and Tibet. While China has not been specific about the extent of its claims, it uses a “nine-dash line” which “swoops down past Vietnam and the Philippines, and towards Indonesia, encompassing virtually all of the South China Sea”, to delineate its claims.

[Subscribe to APARC's newsletters to stay current on our scholars' research.]

On the surface, it appears that Chinese leaders are relying on a historical argument to buttress their claims – China traces its interaction with the South China Sea back to the Western Han Dynasty. Thus, Beijing’s narrative about its claims begins as early as the 2nd century BCE, when Chinese people sailed in the South China Sea and discovered some of the region’s land features.

Scholars have meticulously cataloged the dubious nature of this history. And besides, the UN Convention for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) does not grant signatories the right make claims based on historical legacy, and the concept of “historic claims” lacks a clear basis in international law.

But this is not actually how China lays claim to 90% of the South China Sea. China’s abuse and misapplication of international law is a bit more complex. There are four levels that build on one another.

First, China claims it has the same rights as archipelagic states, those countries mainly made up of islands. One of the benefits of archipelagic status is that the waters between islands are considered internal waters, like rivers inside a country. Other countries have no right to transit these waters without permission. This archipelagic status is conferred through the UN, and only 22 nations claim it.

Spoiler alert: China is not one of them.

China is undeniably a continental country, but nevertheless, it drew straight baselines around the Paracel Islands and claimed the waters between the islands to be internal waters. Beijing has not done this explicitly for the Spratly islands area, but its reaction to the activities of other countries suggests that is its interpretation. My discussions with Chinese strategists reveal that China will likely explicitly draw baselines to claim internal waters between the Spratly Islands once it has the military capabilities in place to enforce it. (This is not an easy task, as the Spratlys’ sea zone is 12 times that of the Paracels, covering 160,000 to 180,000 square kilometers of water.)

China then claims a 12 nautical mile (nm) territorial sea from the Paracel baseline, not from the individual islands, and in the Spratlys from many features that under international law are not awarded this right, such as artificial islands. Moreover, China’s interpretation of the territorial sea is that the state has the exclusive right to make, apply and execute its own laws in that space without foreign interference. But according to UNCLOS, all ships, civilian or military, enjoy the right of innocent passage through other states’ territorial seas. Moreover, the contiguous zone is considered part of international waters, and states do not have the right to limit navigation or exercise any control for security purposes.

Lastly, China claims 200 nm from the end of the territorial sea as its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), where it claims to have the right to regulate military activity. The US insists that freedom of navigation of military vessels is a universally established and accepted practice enshrined in international law – in other words, states do not have the right to limit navigation or exercise any control for security purposes in EEZs. Australia shares this view, but not all countries accept this interpretation. Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, the Maldives, Oman, and Vietnam agree with China that warships have no automatic right of innocent passage in their territorial seas. Twenty other developing countries (including Brazil, India, Malaysia, and Vietnam) insist that military activities such as close-in surveillance and reconnaissance by a country in another country’s EEZ infringe on coastal states’ security interests and therefore are not protected under freedom of navigation.

In other words, while international law may support the position of the US and Australia on legal behavior within the EEZs, countries need to work harder to solidify this norm more broadly.

Through these three positions alone on internal waters, territorial seas and EEZs, China lays claim to approximately 80% of the South China Sea. Then China uses the nine-dash line to cover the remaining territory and provide redundancy by claiming “historic waters” – i.e., that China has historically controlled this maritime environment – again, a view that has no basis in international law.

Image

The US has taken steps to challenge the false legal basis of China’s claims. This is the main purpose behind freedom-of-navigation operations, or FONOPS – to demonstrate through action that the US does not accept China’s position that areas are not international waters but internal or territorial waters. In other instances, the US is signaling that it does not accept an area to be in China’s EEZ, although China would not have the right to regulate military activity there anyway.

But undermining China’s false legal claims will take more than military operations and harsh statements. In 2016, the Hague Tribunal ruled that China’s claims of historic rights in the South China Sea lacked legal foundation, China’s actions in the region infringed on the rights of the Philippines, and features in the Spratlys are not entitled to EEZs or territorial zones. Yet Washington’s ongoing refusal itself to ratify UNCLOS undermines the general effectiveness of pushing back against Beijing with legal tools of statecraft. Additionally, Washington squandered an opportunity to support the Philippines in enforcing the international legal tribunal’s 2016 ruling in its favor, further reducing the attractiveness for other claimants to challenge Beijing on legal grounds.

The US should not make the same mistake twice. It should support other claimants that may want to pursue legal action against China (Vietnam is currently considering this course of action). Then, when the tribunal rules once more against China, the US should lead the charge to enforce the ruling.

China is using all the tools of statecraft at its disposal to gain control over this vital strategic waterway. The US and its allies should do the same.

This piece was originally published by the Lowy Institute's The Interpreter. 

To break the border stand-off between India and China in the Himalayas, some Indian analysts have advocated going on the offensive against China in the Indian Ocean. But that would be vague, illogical and imprudent, with little chance of success and significant risk of blowback. Instead, India and its partners should prioritize a more effective denial strategy in the Indian Ocean, to deter and counter any potential future coercion there.

Strategies of denial seek to reinforce defensive bulwarks so that potential aggressors are dissuaded from launching an attack – or, failing that, thwarted from succeeding. They are generally considered more effective and reliable than strategies of punishment, which rely instead on the threat of retaliation after the aggressor launches its attack. Punishment was the cornerstone of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War and since, but that strategy is considerably less reliable in the conventional and sub-conventional conflicts which India now faces.

[Subscribe to APARC's newsletters to get the latest commentary and analysis by our scholars.]

The False Promise of Punishment

Since May 2020, Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a tense – and, at times, violent – stand-off in the Himalayas, after Chinese incursions into the Indian-controlled territory of Ladakh. This scenario looks likely to last for months, if not years, to come. Some Indian analyses have called for bold action hundreds of kilometers away, in the Indian Ocean. They argue that horizontal escalation would broaden the Himalayas confrontation to an arena where India enjoys clear strategic advantages, allowing it to counter Chinese coercion more effectively.

The idea of taking the fight to the oceans has superficial appeal. India sits astride some of the world’s most vital sea lines of communication in the northern Indian Ocean – on which China, like all of East Asia, depends critically for trade and energy flows. India’s Navy dominates the Indian Ocean and could, the argument goes, apply excruciating pressure on the Chinese economy. This leverage could be applied in times of crisis, such as the ongoing border stand-off, or even in peacetime as a deterrent against Chinese coercion. Surely this would be less bloody than a war between the two largest armies in the world.

But the concept is unclear. It is often framed as a vague statement of Indian power, without elucidating exactly how force should be used. Should India impose a blockade of all oil tankers bound for East Asia? Board and inspect some Chinese trading vessels? Intimidate a Chinese survey ship in the Bay of Bengal, or sink a Chinese navy ship conducting anti-piracy patrols? Some of these moves would be seen as acts of war – and most would be dramatically escalatory, especially for an Indian government that has been at pains to downplay the current crisis.

More fundamentally, such moves would have no “theory of success”. How would such pressure create the desired political effect in countering Chinese coercion? A blockade would be tantamount to an act of war – but a painfully slow war that would likely require months of stringent application and be unlikely to decisively strangle the Chinese economy. Short of a long blockade, in any realistic contingency, incremental Indian pressure in the Indian Ocean is unlikely to compel a Chinese regime that has staked its legitimacy on national rejuvenation and regional hegemony.

On the other hand, history suggests that even minor Indian naval offensives against China would invite an escalating retaliation. China would not only unleash its rapidly expanding surface and sub-surface fleet against India’s navy, but it could also impose pain elsewhere. China’s options against the Indian homeland – from long-range missile strikes to cyberattacks to more land grabs on the border – would be militarily feasible and politically devastating to New Delhi. Going on the offensive in the Indian Ocean, therefore, is likely to backfire, probably very badly.

Building “Strategic Leverage” in the Indian Ocean

While the Indian Ocean may not offer a magic bullet to resolve the border crisis, it is intrinsically important for India-China competition. China’s military expansion into the Indian Ocean poses multiple risks for India and its partners such as Australia and the United States. These like-minded partners should build their strategic leverage – political relationships and military capability – to manage these risks.

India enjoys unique advantages in the Indian Ocean, due to its geography and informal networks across the region. But rather than using its advantages to start a war it would lose, a denial strategy would be mindful of India’s limitations and focus on erecting political and military obstacles to Chinese coercion in the region.

India could focus on more actively binding itself to smaller regional states – as it already does by sharing maritime domain awareness and space-based surveillance data. Building strategic interdependence would cultivate smaller states’ desire for continued cooperation with India, and institutional resistance to Chinese attempts to coerce or bribe their political leadership.

India could also enhance its sea denial capabilities. Improving its anti-submarine warfare capabilities and expanding its stock of long-range precision missiles, for example, would help to deter the prospect of Chinese direct military intervention. This could be done at a fraction of the cost of building a small number of large capital ships. The Indian Navy is doctrinally committed to pursuing sea control, which like-minded partners such as Australia should welcome. But rapidly expanding its capabilities for sea denial would serve as a stopgap and hedge against China’s ballooning naval power, which will soon be able to contest India’s dominance in the ocean.

A denial strategy in the Indian Ocean will not resolve the current border crisis in Ladakh. But it would offer a realistic roadmap for building political influence and military power in the region. It would provide the strategic leverage necessary to deter or counter future acts of coercion in the Indian Ocean.

While U.S. policymakers and military planners have been heavily focused on China’s maritime expansion in the western rim of the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea, Beijing has been steadily growing its capacity in the Indian Ocean region. The United States and its partners should take realistic and effective steps that address the strategic risks they face in the region and realize their vision of a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” writes APARC’s South Asia Research Scholar Arzan Tarapore in the latest issue of The Washington Quarterly.

[Subscribe to our newsletters to stay up-to-date on the latest from our scholars.]

The United States’ strategic competition with China now extends to the Indian Ocean region, albeit it takes a different form compared with the heavily militarized territorial disputes of the western rim of the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fleet is increasingly designed for oceanic deployments beyond China’s near seas and is rapidly expanding its amphibious capability. The PLAN conducts frequent oceanographic survey and submarine deployments, maintaining a constant presence of at least seven or eight navy ships in the Indian Ocean at any time. Having established its first-ever overseas military base on the western edge of the ocean, in Djibouti in 2017, China continues to develop other ports from Tanzania to Indonesia under the banner of the Belt and Road Initiative. It is also expanding security cooperation with regional states.

“This military expansion poses strategic risks for the United States and its allies and partners,” argues Tarapore. “It gives China rapidly increasing capacity to use military coercion in the Indian Ocean region, both directly, through military intervention, and indirectly, by compelling changes in regional states’ security policies.” It also gives China advantages in case of a potential war in the region.

The United States and its partners have proclaimed their commitment to the “free and open Indo-Pacific” vision. However, the four powers with the greatest interest and capacity to push back on China’s inroads —namely, the United States, India, Japan, and Australia, which banded together as the “Quad” — have failed to mitigate Beijing’s challenge. Their haphazard response “does little to curtail China’s capacity to coerce small states or posture for war,” says Tarapore.

He then offers a strategic assessment and a conceptual framework by which the United States and its partners can more effectively mitigate the risks of Chinese military expansion. Their most urgent task, he claims, is to build “strategic leverage,” that is, develop their political relationships and military capabilities in ways that consolidate their advantages. By doing so, they would ideally convince Beijing that coercive policies are unworkable or prohibitively costly, which would then impede China’s capacity to coerce regional states or posture for wartime. Tarapore is convinced that India has a key role to play within this framework if the latter also accounts for India’s particular resource and policy constraints.

India is facing a mounting burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, cancers, and cardiovascular diseases. NCDs affect more than 20 percent of the Indian population and their prevalence is projected to expand substantially as the population aged 60 and over increases. Left unchecked, the costs of managing chronically ill and aging sectors of the population grow exponentially.

To control costs and address the growing chronic disease burden, India’s public programs must integrate curative hospital services with the most cost-effective preventive and primary interventions, argue Karen Eggleston, APARC’s deputy director and the director of the Asia Health Policy Program (AHPP), and Radhika Jain, a postdoctoral research fellow with AHPP. India must also urgently expand and improve the evidence base on economic evaluations of both preventive and curative health interventions in the country.

[Sign up for our newsletters to get the latest updates from our scholars.]

In a correspondence piece published by BMC Medicine, Eggleston and Jain examine the features and limitations of a study that takes an important first step in that direction: a cost-effectiveness study of the Kerala Diabetes Prevention program (K-DPP) that adds such evidence on how to prevent diabetes cost-effectively in India and other low- and middle-income countries.

The study’s authors present a cost-effectiveness analysis of 1007 participants in the K-DPP, and their estimates indicate that K-DPP was cost-effective. Indeed, Eggleston and Jain determine that the analysis shows potential cost-effectiveness in “nudging” the participants towards a healthier lifestyle through suggestive reductions in tobacco and alcohol use and waist circumference. The results of the cost-effectiveness analysis of the K-DPP “highlight the importance of continued research on community-based promotion of healthy lifestyles,” say Eggleston and Jain.

Evidence-based approaches to chronic noncommunicable disease intervention are essential for providing cost-effective care and creating models for future programs like the K-DPP. Eggleston and Jain conclude that future studies advancing evidence-based approaches to chronic noncommunicable disease intervention — ones that cover larger and more representative populations over longer time periods — remain important for more generalizable assessments to inform policy decisions.

This op-ed by Arzan Tarapore originally appeared in The Hindu.

Over four months ago, the Chinese army entered territory that India has long considered its own, and never left. In effect, the multiple incursions have changed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and India has lost territory, at least for the time being. How could this happen?

In part, it was a failure of the warning-intelligence system. Either Indian intelligence services did not collect sufficient data of Chinese intentions and early moves, or they did not interpret it correctly, or their policy and military customers failed to take the warning seriously. Wherever the fault lay, the system apparently failed.

In part, however, the problem also lay in the Army’s concepts for defending the country’s borders. It is, as the current crisis shows, simply not postured or prepared for the type of security threat China presents. (Continue reading the full article in The Hindu.)

[Subscribe to our newsletters to get the latest commentary from APARC scholars.]

Amid the intensifying security rivalry between the United States and China and the rapidly changing power balances in the Indo-Pacific, India has emerged as an increasingly important partner for U.S. interests in the region. What factors will shape India’s relationships with the world’s two largest superpowers? How should Washington interpret New Delhi’s evolving understanding of strategic autonomy? And is Indian defense policy equipped to meet today’s security threats?  

These are some of the questions that occupy Arzan Tarapore, our new research scholar on South Asia effective September 1. At APARC, Tarapore will continue his research on Indo-Pacific security and military effectiveness. He will also be at the forefront of advancing the Center’s South Asia research and engagement effort – a role to which he brings his experience that combines academic scholarship with over a decade of government service. Before his appointment at Stanford, Tarapore was an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University. He continues to serve as a nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research and an adjunct researcher at the RAND Corporation.

Here, Tarapore explains how “internal balancing” may shape India’s relationships with China and the United States, considers what’s at stake for India’s military strategy, and shares some of his plans for APARC’s South Asia initiative.

[To receive stories like this directly in your inbox sign up for APARC’s newsletters]

How is India’s own tense relationship with China, which burst into view in the recent border clash in the Himalayas, poised to affect its ties with the United States and its approach to strategic partnerships with other countries, such as Japan and Australia?

Tarapore: In the last two decades, Washington has latched on to India as a strategic partner in large part because it recognizes that India is a natural competitor to China. This is rooted in structural reasons – because of India and China’s geography, history, and strategic interests. So India has pursued its own brand of strategic competition with China for over half a century – it’s just that its tactics may sometimes appear desultory to some American (and Indian!) observers. Those tactics, which in the recent past have included back-slapping summitry and avoidance of provocations, are largely rooted, at bottom, in India’s relatively modest power.

Now, some observers have asserted (or hoped) that the current border crisis in Ladakh may shake New Delhi out of this posture and catalyze a closer relationship – even an alliance – with the United States. As I’ve argued elsewhere, an alliance with the U.S. is neither plausible nor necessary. India has forged a much closer defense relationship with the United States and other like-minded regional states like Japan and Australia. The current crisis may accelerate some of that alignment a little, but this trend was already well underway. To be sure, the crisis – and especially the Indian fatalities – has hardened popular opinion against China. But Indian officialdom did not need to be convinced of the China threat, or the merits of cooperation with the United States. Their inhibitions to an alliance – just like their threat perceptions of China – are structural and not likely to be dispelled anytime soon.

Rather than focusing just on India’s alignments – what scholars call “external balancing” – we should watch closely for changes in India’s defense policy and military modernization – or “internal balancing.” There is a chance this crisis will prompt India to correct some of the long-standing distortions in defense policy. If it does, those changes – rather than any outward displays of alignment – will have a far greater impact on India’s competition with China, and on its partnership with the United States.

One of your research areas is focused on strategic effectiveness, particularly Indian military strategy-making. In your recent Carnegie India paper, The Army in Indian Military Strategy, you argue that the Indian army must rethink its use of force to meet today’s new challenges. What is the problem with its prevailing doctrine and what are your specific recommendations for it and Indian defense policy?   

Tarapore: I’ve argued that Indian military strategy over at least the past half-century has been dominated by an army doctrine that is designed to fight large conventional wars. This doctrine drives the Indian military’s force structure and its ideas about how to use force. The problem is, the doctrine is unsuited to the more-common security challenges that India currently faces – challenges exemplified perfectly by China’s borderland grab in Ladakh this past summer.

The Indian Army should certainly still prepare for major wars, but I argue in this paper that it also needs to develop new concepts for dealing with threats below the threshold of war. If it does not rethink its doctrine, it risks becoming less and less relevant as a tool of statecraft. Specifically, I argue that the Indian Army should consider new “theories of victory” that focus on denying the enemy’s goals rather than threatening to punish it; consider how to better support the air force and navy; and consider emphasizing certain niche capabilities of modern warfighting.

What are some of the projects and activities you plan to focus on at APARC, both in your research and as part of the effort to revitalize the Center’s research and education initiative on South Asia?

Tarapore: As mentioned at the outset, Washington sees India as a central partner in the Indo-Pacific. I want to position APARC and Stanford to effectively support that policy. My research, at least for now, focuses on Indian defense issues. For example, I have a book project that looks at how India has historically approached the use of force – our policymakers need to understand India’s particular constraints and patterns. Second, I will continue to engage in a stream of research on how the United States, India, and their like-minded partners can manage security risks in the Indian Ocean region.

Beyond my own research, I want to take advantage of Stanford’s community of scholars, and build on my network in the region, to work on issues that are often overlooked by Washington-based policy tribes. For example, I am keen to explore the effects of climate change across South Asia – the challenges it poses to security and governance, and how it may force regional states to respond. These issues are critically important but often overshadowed by more urgent crises.

Your career combines both academic scholarship and government experience. Tell us more about your government service, what drew you to it, and how you became interested in Indo-Pacific security issues.

Tarapore: My government work completely shaped my scholarship. I served for 13 years in the Australian Defence Department, as an analyst, leader, and liaison officer. My time there was dominated by the post-9/11 wars and security crises – so even as a civilian, I deployed on operations and worked closely with the military. This has left me with an abiding dedication to being task-oriented – ensuring that my scholarship has direct utility for decision makers – and an abiding preference for working among teams of people smarter than I am. With my professional background in Australia, my academic interest in India, and my new home in the United States, I’m entirely comfortable with the concept and the region of the “Indo-Pacific.” This is why Stanford and APARC, with policy focus and community of scholars working on Asia, are so exciting.

What is it like to begin a new academic post remotely in a COVID-19 world? How has the pandemic affected your work?

Tarapore: I’ve often thought about how fortunate I am to work in a field where I can keep working, with some adjustments, even amid a global pandemic. If we’re honest, I suspect some people even thrive on the enforced solitude. For me, it’s a nuisance and it requires adjustments – none more so than rethinking childcare arrangements. From a professional perspective, one of the biggest obstacles it creates is the inability to travel to India for fieldwork, or around the region to build our professional networks. The other, more quotidian difficulty is the obstacle to in-person teamwork. Obviously, something is lost when we have to stare at each other through screens, so I can’t wait to walk the halls of Encina Hall.