Tribunal jolt to Beijing a shot in arm for the weak

The landmark verdict by an international tribunal against China in a high-profile maritime dispute is a vindication of the truth. By upholding minnow Philippines’ plea and shaming the giant, the tribunal reminded us that principles and ideals ought to govern the conduct of world politics.

Exploitation, intimidation and browbeating of the meek by the mighty are assumed to be routine in global affairs. Greek thinker Thucydides encapsulated this maxim of the jungle in his classic History of the Peloponnesian War, saying: “Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

The notion that weak states have no rights and no choice but to submit to the powerful is profoundly oppressive. The advancement of international law, specially as an emancipatory tool giving succour to marginalised underdogs, is a counter to this long-held Darwinian belief that the world is a terribly unequal arena where the big fish naturally gobble up puny ones with no one to protect the victims.

The UN tribunal’s award in the South China Sea case is a template for appreciating the profoundly egalitarian and uplifting aspects of international law. Neutral judges from Ghana, France, Poland, Holland and Germany decided China’s maximal claim of “historic rights” to resources in 90 per cent of the South China Sea was illegal and that it infringed upon the Philippines’ sovereign rights.

By declaring China’s expansionist “nine-dash line” or “cow’s tongue” demarcation zone of maritime territory untenable under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the tribunal dealt an embarrassing blow to Beijing’s narrative that it’s a peace-loving and law-abiding nation promoting respectful friendship and cooperation with developing countries.

Rejecting China’s attempts to monopolise the South China Sea and exclude neighbouring states from accessing it, the tribunal challenged the realpolitik logic that legitimises the quest for dominance by militarily superior countries. With a rusty navy that is no match to the global superpower to its north, the Philippines had already been routed and shooed away from Scarborough Shoal, Mischief Reef, Fiery Cross Reef and other rocky features in the SCS by a rising China that has little patience with its Southeast Asian neighbours’ claims.

China nonchalantly dredged artificial islands, militarised them and used these as beachheads to illegally extend its exclusive economic zone in a brazen territorial grab that has sown fear and resentment in the entire region. China has been aggressively establishing one fait accompli after another in the SCS in recent years and forcing nations like the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan to eat humble pie. The dismay and frustration in these parties over hegemonic China’s coercion is palpable and tragic.

Though these nations seek military assistance and security coordination with the United States, Japan, India, Australia, and are also trying to forge a unified front against Chinese strong-arming through regional bodies like Asean, Beijing has repeatedly come up trumps by dividing them and using a combination of military, economic and diplomatic pressure tactics.

China’s insistence that the Philippines and others engage in asymmetric one-on-one negotiations, and its arrogant behaviour that demands obeisance to its ever-enlarging sphere of influence in Asia, fly in the face of its self-proclaimed “peaceful rise”. For almost all its neighbours, China’s rise, as shown in its SCS encroachment policies, is a threat with no easy solution.

It’s amid this air of hopelessness and helplessness that The Hague tribunal stepped in with its accurate, courageous findings. By backing those unfortunates who have been thrown to the wolves, this impartial body has won the admiration of global public opinion and raised the salience of law as a weapon of the weak.

China is technically obligated to abide by the tribunal’s order as it is a UNCLOS signatory. But China being China, it boycotted tribunal proceedings and predictably denounced it as a “farce” and a “ridiculous” entity that was allegedly a conspiracy by Japan and the West to tarnish Beijing’s reputation.

The Chinese government’s retort after the much-awaited tribunal award that it is “null and void and has no binding force” just shows how much this superpower has brashly transcended the confines and restraints of international law. There is even talk of China quitting UNCLOS.

China’s petulant response is based on an authoritarian mindset that is contemptuous of international institutions (usually dismissed as biased Western instruments), and hell-bent on rewriting the world order to suit Chinese global supremacy designs. The way it reacted peevishly towards Norway in 2010 after jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo got the Nobel Peace Prize also demonstrated its paranoid siege mentality.

China’s angry and defiant rejoinders to The Hague tribunal reconfirm it is no angel vis-à-vis the US, that is infamous for mocking the International Court of Justice when it deemed its 1983 invasion of Nicaragua illegal. Beijing’s propaganda that it’s a “different kind of great power” in contrast with the US just won’t wash.

If superpowers are devoid of responsibility to the common good, what kind of new world order awaits weak nations English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ horrifying vision of a world where there is “continual fear and danger of violent death” and the prospect of “nasty, brutish and short” lives appears headed for an extended tenure in the 21st century if only China and the United States keep bossing over the planet.

Still, thank heavens that there is international law to at least symbolically expose and intangibly defeat these goons. Pushback against the arbitrary and unfair exercise of power can only materialise through moral leadership from the portals of justice.

The writer is a professor and dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs