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Few American diplomats can match the years of experience in multiple Southeast Asian countries that Marciel has accumulated during his career in the U.S. Foreign Service. In addition to his assignments as U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar and Indonesia, Mr. Marciel was the first U.S. Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asia and served at U.S. missions in the Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Brazil, and Turkey, among other roles.

Marciel addressed various policy questions from the manuscript, including what priority ends and means should inform U.S. engagement with Southeast Asia, how the Myanmar crisis is challenging U.S. foreign policy, what drives the prosperous U.S.-Vietnam relationship, and what the prospects are for America’s relations with Thailand and Indonesia.

In exploring these and other questions, Marciel was joined by a second distinguished speaker, Catharin Dalpino, professor emeritus at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, whose expertise on Southeast Asia spans academe, government, and NGOs. She is the co-editor and co-writer of a recent Asia Foundation report, “Urgent Issues in U.S.-Southeast Asian Relations for 2021.”

A Southeast Asia Pivot

It has been challenging for U.S. policymakers to understand Southeast Asia, Marciel notes, because its nations are immensely diverse and, with the likely exception of Vietnam and Singapore, they do not work Washington particularly well. Adding the absence of a dominant institution in the region with which Washington can easily engage, these factors help explain the tendency of U.S. policymakers to see Southeast Asia somewhat as a sideshow, despite the region’s growing importance.

Granted, at various times the United States was heavily engaged and invested in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines. But with the end of the Vietnam War and certainly with the end of the Cold War, Marciel argues, the United States lost the prism through which it previously looked at the region. In the lack of a strategic regional focus, there has been a tendency in Washington to calibrate the relationships with particular Southeast Asian nations based on its assessment of their progress on issues such as human rights, democracy, or trade, but the overall engagement with the region as a whole has been neglected.

“The U.S. partnership or rather series of partnerships with Southeast Asia have underperformed and disappointed to some extent, and hence the question going forward, given the growing importance of the region and given the rise of China, is what can be done to improve that partnership with the region in the coming years,” Marciel says.

A Balancing Act in the Era of Great-Power Competition

Dalpino, in response, emphasizes that engagement is not a silver bullet, as is the case with Myanmar. “Engagement will get us perhaps a more sympathetic hearing but it will not necessarily deliver to us the interests that we are seeking, and I think that we need to be clear with ourselves and with our Southeast Asian interlocutors about how those interests can diverge.”

Another paradigm shaping Washington’s perception of Southeast Asia is the U.S.-China rivalry. We must not force Southeast Asian countries to choose between the United States and China, “but if we want to sell Southeast Asia to the power structure in Washington as being more important, then we're going to have to play the China card to some extent,” Dalpino notes.

“The key for us is to bring our game to Southeast Asia policy,” argues Marciel, by which he means to build confidence in the region by engaging with it as a consistent, reliable partner with shared interests. In his view, the best way to advance these shared interests is to give Southeast Asian nations as much freedom of maneuver as possible vis-a-vis China.

“Rather than going there and talking to them about why China is a problem and why they should be tougher on China,” Marciel claims, “it is more useful to build a strong partnership with the different countries in Southeast Asia and with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which, by itself, is not an anti-China policy at all.” It is a delicate balance between not making the U.S.-Southeast Asia relationship all about China, on the one hand, while being aware of China and the impact of U.S. policy on the relationship between Southeast Asia and China, on the other hand.

The China Program at Shorenstein APARC had the privilege of hosting Jude Blanchette, the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies​ (CSIS). The program, entitled "What’s ‘Communist’ about the Communist Party of China?," explored the goals and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as well as what they might mean for the future of China in the global community. Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the goals of the CCP became less clear. As the country began to adopt market reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, CCP theorists were forced into contortions providing ideological justifications for policies that appeared overtly capitalist. Deng Xiaoping’s concept of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” came to be seen as a theoretical fig leaf rather than a description of an egalitarian economic system, and by the 2000s, a consensus emerged that the CCP had completely abandoned any pretense of pursuing the Marxist vision it purported to hold. With the rise of Xi Jinping, however, the Party talks with renewed vigor about Marxism-Leninism and the goal of achieving actual, existing socialism. Has the CCP re-discovered communism?  In his talk, Blanchette discussed the abandoned and existing legacies of Mao Zedong, Marxism-Leninism, and the CCP’s vision of socialism. Watch now: 

This article by Oriana Skylar Mastro was originally published in The Interpreter, a publication by the Lowy Institute.

When China began three days of military exercises in the South China Sea’s Gulf of Tonkin back in January, some observers speculated that Beijing was testing the new Biden administration. Harsh words from Beijing accompanied the exercises, with China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin declaring the drills were “necessary measures to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and security”.

Even against this backdrop, China’s official position is that it remains committed to a peaceful resolution of the South China Sea issue. And the rhetoric China employs at different times does make for a fascinating contrast. For example, China’s Foreign Ministry asserted in July 2020 that “China is not seeking to become a maritime empire” and that it “treats its neighboring nations on an equal basis and exercises the greatest restraint.”

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How then should we make sense of the mixed messages coming from Beijing? Most China experts find discourse to be informative – if not about China’s intentions, then at least about its aspirations. But which statements are indicative of China’s true position?

I argued recently in research for the Wilson Center that scholars need to evaluate the content and specificity of Chinese national discourse in addition to the position of the author or speaker involved. To that end, I analyzed all public speeches made by members of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party from 2013 to 2018. Xi Jinping led both of the Politburos I studied, and each had 25 members. Since some members served in both, this yields speeches by 39 unique individuals.

The speeches related to the South China Sea could be separated into those that mentioned cooperative themes and those with competitive themes. Cooperative themes have two subcategories, cooperation, and political solutions. Competitive themes have five subcategories: sovereignty, military, freedom, tension, and non-regional countries/the United States.

In what might appear good news for regional stability, China’s leaders used more cooperative discourse in public statements about the South China Sea than competitive themes. This might be taken to indicate a willingness to compromise with other claimants – a feature that is especially evident during the first year of each new Party Congress, namely 2013 and 2018.

However, one of the tenets of deriving intentions from discourse is that not all leadership statements are created equal. We need to consider personal power, accountability, and reputation for honesty. This means that statements by Xi, who is described as having “more power and more personal authority than any post-Mao leader”, take precedent.

So here is the bad news. My analysis showed that Xi’s statements accounted for 42.7% of the competitive themes mentioned, even though he is only one of 39 leaders during this period.

There are additional reasons to discount Xi’s cooperative statements: his reputation for dishonesty.

In September 2015, Xi made a public statement at the White House promising not to “militarise” the artificial islands China had been building in the South China Sea. Xi stated that “relevant construction activities that China is undertaking … do not target or impact any country, and China does not intend to pursue militarisation”. While the language at the time was deemed “new”, the pledge remained unclear. Then and subsequently, Xi did not promise to freeze dredging, island-building or activities in the region, nor did he offer any clarity about what “militarisation” meant. In May 2019, then–Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford said that China had “clearly … walked away from that commitment” given the “10,000-foot runways, ammunition storage facilities, routine deployment of missile defence capabilities, aviation capabilities and so forth” on the islands. My analysis in a previous Interpreter article shows that China has indeed militarised these islands to establish control over the islands and the surrounding waters.

Interestingly, China’s foreign ministry also makes more competitive statements than cooperative statements, contrary to what might be the expectation that professional diplomats would lean towards negotiations and reassurance. If soothing language was supposed to mask China’s intentions, ministry statements would be the most likely source. But instead, China seems to prioritise articulating its position on sovereignty and issuing threats to those who violate it over reassurance.

None of this means China will use force in the South China Sea. Xi’s statements calling for a tough stance to protect China’s perceived sovereignty in the South China sea lack specificity – there are no allusions to a timeline or preferred methods. Such ambiguity suggests the leadership wants to have maximum flexibility and avoid being boxed in by its aggressive rhetoric, even if it is popular with the Chinese public. And the Chinese leadership undoubtedly prefers to use diplomatic, legal and economic tools to establish sovereignty over these waters.

But my analysis suggests that China will be unlikely to make the compromises necessary on its expansive territorial claims in these waters to facilitate a viable diplomatic resolution. Instead, China’s leaders hope that political, economic and military power will convince other countries to accommodate China’s position without a fight. And if the other claimants concede to Beijing, it will be harder for the United States or Australia to push back on China’s position.

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.

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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.

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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.

On February 10, 2021, the China Program at Shorenstein APARC hosted Professor Oriana Skylar Mastro, Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies​ for the virtual program "Military Competition with China: Harder to Win Than During the Cold War?" Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

As US-China competition intensifies, experts debate the degree to which the current strategic environment resembles that of the Cold War. Those that argue against the analogy often highlight how China is deeply integrated into the US-led world order. They also point out that, while tense, US-China relations have not turned overtly adversarial. But there is another, less optimistic reason the comparison is unhelpful: deterring and defeating Chinese aggression is harder now than it was against the Soviet Union. In her talk, Dr. Mastro analyzed how technology, geography, relative resources and the alliance system complicate U.S. efforts to enhance the credibility of its deterrence posture and, in a crisis, form any sort of coalition. Mastro and Oi's thought-provoking discussion ranged from the topic of why even US allies are hesitant to take a strong stance against China to whether or not Taiwan could be a catalyst for military conflict. Watch now: 

This op-ed by Donald K. Emmerson first appeared in The Jakarta Post.

Above all, Trump wanted to be a winner. History granted his wish. He is the first president in the 245-year life of his country to have been impeached twice. By that standard, he won the title of America’s Worst President (AWP)—worse than any of the 44 presidents who preceded him.

AWP rhymes with 'gawp,' and that’s what he also wanted: to be stared at, talked about, catered to, the center of fawning attention, unforgettably present, dominating the news, astride the world in which the news is made. He wanted applause. His ravenous insecurity—narcissism—inflated his ego to continental size. In effect, in his authoritarian imagination, the “extremely stable genius” that he called himself deserved to be the indispensable “me” in “America,” without which the country’s name and the country itself would crumble.

The roars and chants of Trump’s crowds slaked his thirst for veneration. But they imprisoned him in his “base.” By satisfying his craving to be idolized, they gave him no reason to convince the unimpressed. How much more gratifying it must have been for him to bask in mass flattery at rallies than to engage in the difficult business of persuading the uncommitted. That would have taken assets he lacked: empathy, knowledge, intelligence, and a willingness not to lie.

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So how could Americans have elected such a demagogue? Trump was corrupt but charismatic. He broke the rules. He said whatever was on his mind. He appealed to the streak of individualism in American culture. He ran his campaign and his presidency as a mass entertainment featuring a lone patriot fighting a “deep state” controlled by globalist elites. Especially in rural areas between Silicon Valley and the Boston-to-Washington corridor, millions of white Americans felt threatened by the transfer of jobs from physical toward mental labor in a computerized society whose racial make-up was increasingly non-white. Globalization fed those anxieties. Trump stoked them. He promised to end them and “make America great again.”

Joe Biden defeated Trump in both the popular vote and the Electoral College—respectively by 4.4 and 13.7 percent. Biden’s margins were narrower than one might have wished, given the blatant flaws in Trump’s character, including the 30,573 false or misleading claims that he made during his presidency as tracked and noted by The Washington Post . The egregiousness of his behavior is, however, a double testament to America’s democratic system: to its failure to select a less despicable leader, yes, but also to its success in providing the lawful framework within which his desperate effort to stage what in Latin America would be called an autogolpe or “self-coup” could be and was overcome.

On 1 February 2021, watching television at his 126-room estate in Palm Beach, Florida, ex-president Trump would have learned of the coup in Myanmar and might have envied Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. Both men had been banned by Facebook for inciting violence in their respective countries—Trump in 2021, the general in 2018. Both had suffered defeats in elections held just five days apart in 2020—3 November in the US, 8 November in Myanmar. Both had rejected the voters’ verdict, claiming fraud. But whereas Trump’s frantic and deadly effort to subvert the US election and retain power failed, Min Aung Hlaing’s self-coup has succeeded, at least for now. The general quickly seized full power despite his party’s massive embarrassment at the polls in November, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party having won 83 percent of the available seats. In contrast, Trump could not reverse his exit from power despite a far slimmer margin of electoral defeat. To the extent that the ex-president was even aware of the difference, it could have fanned what angry envy of the general he may have felt.

Trump failed mainly due to the checks and balances that generally call government to account in America. Min Aung Hlaing succeeded in no small part thanks to the checks and balances in the bank accounts of the generals who have compromised Myanmar’s transition to democracy and helped make it the second most corrupted country in Southeast Asia (after Cambodia) as measured by the Corruption Perceptions Index.

Among the many reactions to the Burmese coup, several stand out for their courage and creativity. UN Secretary General António Guterres was unequivocal. "It's absolutely unacceptable,” he said, “to reverse the result of the elections and the will of the people.” Presumably speaking on behalf of the UN, its secretariat, or himself, or all three, he went further: "We'll do everything we can to mobilize all the key actors of the international community to put enough pressure on Myanmar to make sure that this coup fails." 

This notable response came from Indonesia’s former foreign minister Marty Natalegawa: “Deafening silence in the face of assaults against democratic principles [has] increasingly become the norm,” he said. He urged ASEAN to “demonstrate its relevance: It must speak urgently for the respect of constitutional process and rule of law in Myanmar, and call for the immediate release of those unlawfully detained.”

In the days immediately following the coup, ASEAN’s Bruneian secretary general said nothing about it, preferring to remain, in the Indonesian expression, “silent in a thousand tongues.” Speaking for ASEAN as its current chair, however, Brunei’s government did at least encourage a “return to normalcy in accordance with the will and interests of the people of Myanmar,” noting that the group charter’s called for adherence to “democracy, the rule of law” and “human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

As for ASEAN’s next chair, Cambodia, its strongman Hun Sen did speak, but only to say that "Cambodia does not comment on the internal affairs of any country at all.” Hun Sen’s restraint made historical sense. Had Cambodia’s old despot chosen to criticize Myanmar’s new despot, observers could have noted that Min Aung Hlaing had only done what Hun Sen himself had bloodily accomplished in 1997 by seizing full control over Cambodia in a self-coup of his own that had enabled him to become the longest-serving prime minister in the world.

Critical Southeast Asian voices, unconstrained by look-the-other-way diplomacy, have been heard. The chairman of the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, Charles Santiago, has urged ASEAN to send a high-level delegation to Myanmar to tell Min Aung Hlaing that his coup “violates ASEAN principles and the ASEAN charter” and is “not acceptable.” “If Myanmar does not turn around,” he added, “there should be proceedings to expel Myanmar out of ASEAN.”

Who is better positioned to deal with this crisis than ASEAN’s largest and debatably least authoritarian member country? It was Indonesia’s Natalegawa who patched up ASEAN’s consensus after Hun Sen damaged it on China’s behalf in 2012. And it is Natalagewa who believes, with the Myanmar coup in mind, that “at this critical juncture for the region, Indonesia must demonstrate its leadership within ASEAN.”

Indonesia’s president Jokowi, rather than trying to rally the region against the coup, will likely continue to focus on domestic economic growth. Not to mention the existential priority that COVID-19 also warrants on his agenda.

So why not task Natalegawa with a damage-control trip around the region comparable the one he took with some success in 2012? He could start with fact-finding in Myanmar. He could then explore an intra-ASEAN understanding that would reassert the core democratic values in the ASEAN Charter while lessening, if possible, the chance that Myanmar will revert to entrenched and fully authoritarian rule. That may be a lost cause. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Although Donald Trump is no longer in office, America is still not safe from Trumpism. But America’s system—democracy—is working as it should. Is ASEAN really a dictators’ club? Or does it, too, when threatened from within, have a system that can at least manage and minimize the damage that is, in Myanmar as I write this, being done?