Southeast Asia (Page 167)

Asia’s leading defense conference, the Shangri-La Dialogue, is set to take place in Singapore from June 2 to 4. The event provides a semi-formal discussion space in the context of the recent gap in multilateral dialogue on defense and security.

The gathering is also a great opportunity for the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to reaffirm their role in resolving emerging interwoven crises. ASEAN will also need to consider what else it can do to continue maintaining its central role in the regional security structure.

Resolving interwoven crises

The 42nd ASEAN Summit, held in May, ended impressively with the image of regional leaders clasping hands on a boat on the shores of the Indonesian island of Labuan Bajo, as a reminder that ASEAN countries are standing together on the same boat and facing common challenges. 

At that conference, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh emphasized that after more than half a century of establishment and development, ASEAN has never been in such a good position, even while facing many challenges as it does now. ASEAN is the focus of a series of regional connectivity initiatives and at the same time, it is the focus of intense strategic competition among major powers.

The results of the top-level discussions show the focus on strengthening intra-ASEAN solidarity and enforcement measures. If ASEAN has become more introspective, it is the result of concerns about the unpredictable spiral of geopolitical competition between great powers. The defensiveness in ASEAN’s policy is becoming more and more obvious as regional countries prioritize economic cooperation with one another.

Southeast Asian have responded in various ways to challenges presented by the global energy, food, and semiconductor crises, the risk of deflation, and slow recoveries after the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Indonesia and other Southeast Asian nations are focusing on internal consolidation, promoting the development and sharing of green energy, building the ASEAN electricity network, and connecting the intra-regional payment network.

Singapore appears enthusiastic about this initiative, while Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is also lobbying Vietnam to support the construction of an undersea transmission line to supply Singapore.

In addition, Malaysia and Vietnam support the modernization and connection of Southeast Asia’s seaport network, the electric-vehicle ecosystem, and other initiative to create new impetus for intra-regional trade and investment.

These efforts show how ASEAN member states are joining hands to deal with challenges and become an important factor to join the world in solving today’s intertwined crises.

Easing tension in South China Sea

If years-long tension between Ukraine and Russia directly sparked the ongoing war there, many experts believe that the situation in the South China Sea and Taiwan is a powder keg that can explode at any time.

This year’s Shangri-La Dialogue is an opportunity for the US and China to have high-level contact to reduce tensions, but it may be missed amid the deterioration of relations between Beijing and Washington. Some observers think that China may send a military delegation to the Dialogue.

China is becoming more and more aggressive with such activities as illegally encroaching on the waters of neighboring countries, increasing militarization of rocky islands, and rapidly increasing its naval power.

There are reports that China is deploying nuclear submarines in the South China Sea, or East Sea as it is designated by Vietnam, causing deep concern to countries in the region. China is also the party promoting confrontations that reach extremely dangerous thresholds with the US Air Force and Navy in the South China Sea. Any mistake could spark a conflict between the two superpowers.

Recently, for various reasons, the leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized countries, having just met in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, said they hoped to have a “constructive and stable relationship” with Beijing. This leads optimists to believe that the East-West confrontation will cool down so that Europe can focus on Russia.

However, it should be noted that the G7 also warned China about its “militarization activities” in the Asia-Pacific region. Therefore, conflicts between the parties in the military field will be difficult to cool down in a short time.

Therefore, in order for this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue to make a substantial contribution to the process of resolving the East Sea issue, ASEAN countries need to affirm the bloc’s stance on handling disputes through negotiation on the basis of compliance with international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), contributing to building peace, stability and development in the region.

Through multilateral dialogue as well as promoting the completion of a Code of Conduct (COC), ASEAN and its member states must play a central role in resolving the South China Sea issue, rather than as a third party.

Given that the South China Sea issue is subject to major-power involvement and overlapping calculations among the parties, ASEAN needs more than statements about the bloc’s central role in resolving the issue.

Vietnam is said to be a textbook example of successful hedging, balancing relations with China and the US as well as with Russia, without angering any country. Even as the US is eager to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership with Hanoi, Vietnamese leaders still have a delicate way of handling it while not making its giant neighbor China uncomfortable. 

An interesting detail to supplement this point of view is that Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh affirmed that he “did not choose sides and only chose peace and justice” during his brief meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Japan recently.

This also would have been noted by Dmitry Medvedev, vice-chairman of the Russian Security Council during his visit from May 22-23 to Hanoi shortly afterward.

It should be noted that not every country in the region has been able to hedge as successfully as Vietnam. The rapid foreign-policy reversal of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s administration in the Philippines in cooperating with the US has caused some concern both at home and abroad.

By contrast, the G7 Summit agreed to put Vietnam on the list of priority countries for cooperation, though the G7 member countries were its former enemies.

This weekend’s Shangri-La Dialogue will still revolve around geopolitical competition between the US and China. At the same time, this event is also where the superpowers attempt to gather forces by listening to and responding to calls from stakeholders.

This means a lot to ASEAN member countries after the 42nd ASEAN Summit in May focused deeply on internal issues, to be able to give voice, perspective, and solutions to global and regional problems.

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JAKARTA – The recent death of the sole survivor of the World War II sinking of the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait has brought home renewed attention to hundreds of wartime shipwrecks and the remains of their crewmen lying at the bottom of Southeast Asian seas.

After years of effort, it was only in 2018 that the Australian and Indonesian governments reached agreement on declaring the area around the 7,100-ton Perth and the nearby wreck of the American cruiser USS Houston as a maritime memorial park.

It was nearly too late. Australian Maritime Museum archeologists found that, between 2015 and 2016, about 60% of the Perth’s starboard hull plating was removed in an industrial-scale operation that disturbed the graves of the 357 Australian sailors in the process.

Salvage vessels have reportedly looted as many as 40 other wrecks, the last resting place for thousands of American, British, Australian, Dutch and Japanese sailors in the Java and South China seas and around the fringes of the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Only last month, the Chinese grab dredger Chuan Hoon 68 was reported picking over the wrecks of the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, sunk by Japanese bombers off Malaysia’s east coast in December 1941 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Royal Navy Museum director-general Dominic Tweddle said in a May 24 statement that the illegal salvage operation has thrown into sharp relief how vulnerable 5,000 similar historic underwater naval sites around the world are to wholesale plundering.

“We are distressed and concerned at the apparent vandalism for personal profit (of the two vessels),” he complained. “They are designated war graves. We are upset at the loss of naval heritage and the impact on the understanding of our Royal Navy history.”

Tweddle said there is a need for a management strategy for the Royal Navy’s underwater heritage to better protect or commemorate the wrecks “including the targeted retrieval of objects.”

“A strategy is vital to determine how to assess and manage these wrecks in the most efficient and effective manner,” he said. “Above all, we must remember the crews who served on these lost ships, and all too often gave their lives in the service of their country.”

Retired Royal Navy Captain Roger Turner, who led the recent successful search for the Japanese ship Montevideo Maru which carried 1,000 Australian prisoners of war to their deaths in 1942, told the Asia Times: “It is quite despicable that the Chinese should be pillaging war graves.”

Reflecting on the value of the scrap, the former nuclear submarine engineer points out that in one application the 200mm thick steel contains a very low level of absorbed radiation suitable for ultra-sensitive nuclear-monitoring devices.

“Post-nuclear-age steel, since about 1940, carries its own radiation signal derived from above-ground nuclear weapons testing, which leads to global fallout being imparted into the steel during the smelting process,” he explains.

As a result, steel from the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, launched in 1916 and 1939 respectively, is more valuable than normal scrap, particularly the 400mm-thick, high-quality armor plating covering parts of the 43,700-ton battleship.

Turner notes that although the anthropogenic element of background radiation has now fallen back to what it was before the 1963 nuclear weapons test ban treaty, diminishing the value of pre-nuclear age scrap, it still carries a premium.

“In comparatively shallow water of about 68 meters, even without the nuclear premium, 40,000 tons of steel at $100 per ton is a fair return,” he says. “Probably getting just half of it would be profitable.”

Malaysian authorities say they are investigating the movements of the 8,300-ton Chuan Hong 68, which has been in Malaysian waters since February and is known for earlier salvaging operations in the Java Sea.

The vessel is suspected of also pillaging the wrecks of the Dutch light cruisers HNLMS de Ruyter and HNLMS Java and the destroyer HNLMS Kortenaer, sunk in the Battle of the Java Sea in early 1942, shortly before the Perth and Houston met the same fate.

In 2017, responding to protests from the Netherlands government, Indonesia declared the area around the three hulks a historic site, using rarely applied 2010 legislation to forbid any anchoring, fishing or diving.

It was too late, however, to prevent the almost total removal of the wrecks of the British heavy cruiser HMS Exeter, and the destroyers HMS Encounter and HMS Electra, which were sunk in the same encounter with the loss of 2,300 lives.

Little is known about the wrecks of other allied warships, including the corvette HMAS Armidale and the destroyer HMAS Voyager, both sunk off the south coast of Timor Leste, the carrier USS Langley (Cilacap) and the destroyers USS Edsall (eastern Indian Ocean), HMS Jupiter (Java Sea) and the HNLMS Van Nes (Bangka).

Among the other hulks are three US submarines and two German U-boats, which had been operating out of Japanese bases in occupied Dutch East Indies and British Malaya and were sunk in the Java Sea in November 1944 and April 1945.

Known Japanese wrecks include the heavy cruiser Ashigura, torpedoed off the Bangka-Belitung islands in June 1945, a light cruiser, eight destroyers and three submarines, one of which lies close to the Krakatoa volcano in the Sunda Strait.

British naval historian Geoffrey Till believes the ultimate solution is for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to draft a common protection policy that can be implemented by individual countries.

“But since countries don’t protect such sites of historic importance, and in many cases don’t have the resources to do so even if they cared, it’s hard not to be despairingly pessimistic about this,” he said. 

It is not clear how many commercial salvagers may be involved in the grave robbing, but naval experts place part of the blame on complacent Western governments allowing China’s progressive encroachment on international norms and conventions.

The plundering of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales in 50-meter-deep water off Kuantan isn’t new. In 2013, divers noticed one of the Repulse’s bus-sized brass propellors was missing, something that could only have been done using a heavyweight crane.

Reports a year later claimed explosives were being used to break up both wrecks, the grave of 840 sailors. But the Malaysian government has done little to stop the destruction despite the site being well within the country’s economic exclusion zone (EEZ). 

Britain’s Protection of Military Remains Act makes it an offense to interfere with a protected place or to disturb or remove anything from the site. Divers are permitted to visit, but the rule is don’t touch and don’t penetrate.

There is no international law forbidding the practice, however, and outside of the United Kingdom, the sanctions can only be enforced in practice against British citizens, British-flagged ships or vessels landing in Britain.

Sunk by enemy gunfire and torpedoes on March 1, 1942, the Perth and the 9,000-ton Houston were victims of the Japanese invasion force which had completed the conquest of Southeast Asia and was then in the process of occupying the Dutch East Indies.

Able Seaman Frank McGovern, who died last week at 103, was the Perth’s last survivor. But that was only the start of his wartime ordeal, which Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described as “amazing” and McGovern as “an extraordinary Australian.”

In the years following the sinking of the Perth, he endured two years on the notorious Burma Railway, then was aboard a Japanese ship torpedoed by a US submarine in the Philippine Sea while carrying 1,000 prisoners of war to slave factories in Japan.

More than 540 Australians perished, but McGovern and 30 other prisoners escaped and spent three days in a lifeboat before being picked up by another Japanese ship, which delivered them to Japan.

There, McGovern was put to work in a factory, where his spine was fractured during the second of two American air raids in which incendiary bombs devastated large swathes of Tokyo.

Forced to work or face summary execution, the fate that awaited the incapacitated after they were drained of their blood, he managed to survive until the Japanese surrendered on September 2, 1945.

McGovern was one of the first Australians repatriated home, but it took years for him to adjust, confronted with many sad memories – including the death of his elder brother aboard the ill-fated Perth.

The general location of the Perth and the Houston, which lost 700 crewmen in the sinking and during subsequent Japanese internment, has long been known, lying four kilometers apart close to the mouth of the strait separating Java and Sumatra. 

Retired Australian navy diver Clive Carlin and compatriot Jack Hammett spent many weekends searching for the two wrecks in 35-meter-deep water, but say they only discovered their exact location from a local fisherman using his own GPS in 1999.

“For me, the Perth is as memorial to the men who sailed in her, in defense of Australia and the Australian way of life,” says Carlin, a long-time Indonesia resident who helped lay an ensign on the wreck during an underwater ceremony on the 60^th anniversary of the one-sided battle.

For the Australians, the issue of protecting the wrecks has surfaced again since the discovery of the Montevideo Maru, a converted passenger/cargo ship sunk by the US submarine Sturgeon off the northwest Philippines in July 1942.

Nearly 1,000 Japan-bound Australian PoWs who had been captured in fighting around lightly defended Rabaul on the northern tip of New Britain in Papua New Guinea died in what is still Australia’s worst maritime disaster.

The wreck lies about 100 kilometers west of Luzon’s Cape Bodjeodor on a direct line to its plotted destination on China’s Hainan island. But at a depth of 4,000 meters – the same as the ill-fated Titanic in the North Atlantic – that is unlikely to attract the attention of pillagers.

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NATO’s incursion into the Indo-Pacific region is a move that will exacerbate regional conflicts and tensions. That’s because NATO cannot be separated from the history of European colonialism and imperialism that shaped modern Asia — and plays a major role in Chinese nationalism today.

In 2022, NATO declared that China was a “challenge” to the alliance’s “interests, security and values.” Recently, NATO has argued that possible Chinese assistance to Russia in its war against Ukraine makes China a military threat to Europe.

NATO is opening a liaison office in Japan and is partners with Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. This may be a first step to deeper European involvement in Asia’s security architecture.

Japan argues that the war in Ukraine has destabilized the world, and has invited NATO into the Indo-Pacific to deter China. However, NATO is widely distrusted in the non-Western world.

NATO: An American puppet?

Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has acted as an extension of American power. NATO’s bombing of Kosovo and Serbia in 1999 violated the United Nations Charter.

NATO’s intervention in Afghanistan was authorized by the UN, but it assisted the illegal and devastating US invasion of Iraq by freeing American military resources.

The UN Security Council also gave the green light to NATO’s intervention in Libya, but NATO states violated the terms of that resolution to pursue their own political and economic objectives in the North African country. The result was the destruction of Libya and the spread of instability across North Africa. There are no states in Africa that would call NATO “a defensive alliance.”

Very few countries support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, the non-Western world — including most of Southeast Asia — generally accepts Russia’s claim that it invaded Ukraine to protect itself against the expansion of NATO. To much of the world, the reality of Western militarism makes Russia’s arguments entirely plausible.

China fuels regional prosperity

Most Southeast Asian states have set aside their historical grievances with the West. They are committed to an international system that — somewhat accidentally — has served them well.

Regional states are concerned about the rise of China and its acts of intimidation. Yet China is the No 1 trading partner of most Asian states. Regional prosperity depends on China’s success.

Asians are cautious about western provocations over issues like Taiwan. Asians want the US present to balance China’s power, but that doesn’t mean they want a European military alliance operating in their region.

In particular, states that are part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) want to manage regional security without outside interference.

Southeast Asians’ perception of a predatory international system is based on their experiences with European colonialism. Their focus on protecting state sovereignty is directly linked to this history. Their stated preference is to build economic and diplomatic connections to manage regional conflict.

China has also prospered under the existing system and has a stake in its continuation. But it’s considered a threat because it will not be subservient to western power, especially American.

Consequently, it’s been encircled by more than 300 American military bases and subjected to intense US economic and technological sanctions.

Century of humiliation

Chinese nationalism has been stoked by what’s known as the “century of humiliation” from 1839 to 1949, when European powers, the US and Japan took part in seizing Chinese territory, imposing unequal treaties and brutalizing the Chinese people.

NATO is a European military alliance that is establishing a strong working relationship with Japan. This plays directly into China’s concerns that the same powers that humiliated it in the past are lining up for a second attempt.

Asian states that find the Russian explanation for the war in Ukraine plausible will clearly be concerned that NATO’s move into the region is duplicating the same hostile dynamic of backing an adversary into a corner.

For the past several centuries, world politics have been defined by Western colonialism and violence. That era never really ended.

After the Second World War, Europe passed the torch of global Western imperialism to the US Since the end of the Cold War, the US — often assisted by NATO states — has frequently engaged in illegal violence around the world, most notably with its invasion of Iraq.

Therefore, it’s not surprising NATO claims that it’s merely a “defensive alliance” are viewed skeptically in the non-Western world. What is surprising is that Western powers seemingly cannot understand why their insistence that they represent a “rules-based international order” fails to resonate with much of the globe.

NATO’s growing presence in the Pacific evokes a painful history that the western world has never confronted or fully acknowledged. NATO ignores how its recent actions affect how it’s perceived in the larger world and how those actions lend credence to states that see NATO as a threat.

Its presence in the Indo-Pacific can easily be construed as a new attempt to reassert Western military domination of the region.

Shaun Narine is Professor of International Relations and Political Science, St. Thomas University (Canada)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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