Peiyi Yuby Peiyi Yu
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Photo Credit: US Secretary of Defense/Flickr/CC BY 2.0
CHINA CHALLENGES the legitimacy of international law while the US bends international law to its interest. In the Shangri-La Dialogue, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) politely voiced their concerns regarding the deteriorating international rules-based order between the two superpowers.
Global defense officials gathered in Singapore from May 30th to June 2nd, 2024 for the 21st Shangri-La Dialogue. The Dialogue offered a rare opportunity for high-ranking defense officials to talk face-to-face with each other aiming to substitute conflicts with dialogue. High-profile participants included US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and China Minister of Defense Dong Jun.
“We convene at the Shangri-La Dialogue this year bearing witness to and having to cope with a rule-broken international order,” remarked the Executive Chairman of the International Institute of Strategic Study John Chipman, kicking off the summit. The three-day event brought under focus all three of the global tension points–Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, and the Taiwan Strait. War has already broken out in two of the three tension points.
“Together with partners, we are defending life and rules-based world order.” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s surprise appearance, harkened applause from the attendances and reverberated the importance of the rule-based international order. Zelensky later alleged China, “With China’s support to Russia the war will last longer.” A China military officer later fires back at the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin for NATO’s provocative expansion. Austin argued, “[The] Ukraine crisis is caused obviously because Mr. Putin decided to unlawfully invade his neighbor.”
The United States and China’s quarrels in the summit spill far and wide beyond the war in Ukraine. Lloyd Austin’s lengthy call to a “convergence” on a “shared vision” of “rule of law”, was met with Dong Jun‘s equally lengthy but not so-discrete callouts of “some countries’” “hegemonism” of the “so-called rules-based international order” that “never tells you what the rules are and who made these rules.”
Photo credit: US Secretary of Defense/Flickr/CC BY 2.0
The points of contention between the US and China collided on China’s illegal expansion in South China Sea, China’s increasing aggressions in the Taiwan Strait, the establishment of the US-led AUKUS defense alliance, and US bilateral defense treaties in the region. Among the points of contentions, Taiwan was mentioned 17 times in Dong Jun’s speech, during which he quoted the lyrics of a “well known Chinese song” that goes “when jackals or wolves come, we will face them with shotguns.”
Between the US and China’s altercations, ASEAN members echoed the call for a rules-based international order with varying tunes. The President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, delivered the keynote speech that stressed, ”the continued stability of this region requires China and the United States to manage that rivalry in a responsible manner.”
Framing the foundation of the United Nations, the independence of the Philippines from the US, and peace between ASEAN members as the triumphant story of international law, Marcos emphasized the importance of “rule-based international order” against “major-country dynamic which seeks to impose a hierarchy amongst nations.” Marcos’s speech was coupled with a clear stance against China’s illegal expansions in the South China Sea and China Coast Guard’s harassment against Filipino fishermens.
Since Marcos took office in 2022, Manila opened four more US military bases, some of which are located proximate to Taiwan, and strengthened Philippines’ military cooperation with Australia, Japan and the US.
In terms of the status of international law, Muslim-majority countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, alluded to the elephant in the room–US subverting international authorities for genocide charges against Israel in Gaza.
Just short of pronouncing Washington’s equivocation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Indonesia’s President-elect Prabowo Subianto affirmed, “the heartbreaking incidents in Gaza and Rafah compel us to urgently call for comprehensive investigation into this humanitarian disaster,” in his otherwise courteous speech. The Indonesia-funded Indonesian Hospital in Gaza was attacked by Israel and rendered inoperational last November. According to a CNN in-depth report, Israel’s attack on the Indonesian Hospital was part of the bloody Israeli operation in the early phase of the invasion that attacked or destroyed 20 out of 22 hospitals in Northern Gaza. Israel has not provided sufficient evidence to justify the hospitals as targets.
Prabowo Subianto went on to affirm that, “We are prepared to do whatever we can to provide humanitarian assistance”, and offered to send a peacekeeping force if UN requests. In a previous China diplomatic visit to Indonesia, Indonesia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs expressed confidence in China to mitigate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, despite China’s ongoing ethnic cleansing against the Uyghurs.
To date, the Gaza Health Administration has confirmed that 37,900 Palestinians were killed in the invasion of Gaza after Hamas’ terrorist attack on October 7th. Since the start of the Gaza invasion, Israel has been blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza which inflicted a “man-made famine”.
Under increasing pressure from civil society, domestic protests, and international dissent, the United States abstained from a UN Gaza ceasefire resolution on March 25th. However, Washington claimed that the ceasefire resolution passed with a vote count of 14 to 0 was “non-binding”, despite the definitive language of the resolution which “demands” a ceasefire.
On May 20th, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor, Karim Khan, applied for war crime warrants for the Israeli state officials and Hamas leaders. The President of the United States Joe Biden vehemently denounced ICC’s jurisdiction over Israeli state officials while supporting Karim Khan’s war crime warrant for Vladimir Putin in 2022.
The highest UN court (ICJ) has also motioned to accept South Africa’s case that explicated Israel’s genocidal intent and action, and ordered Israel to halt its invasion on May 24th, which Israel has ignored.
“This conflict has challenged our very conscience as human beings and tested our courage to confront and condemn acts of genocide,” said Defense Minister of Malaysia Dato Seri Mohamed Khaled Bin Nordin after Zelenskyy’s speech, without naming Israel as the perpetrator. Outside of the convention hall, on May 19th, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Anwar Ibrahim appeared on a thirty minute interview with Al-Jazeera, affirming that US is “complicit” in Israel’s genocide.
Despite the exchanges on the main podium, some progress was made between the US and China in the side room where both defense chiefs sat across a conference table with their display of entourage. The side meeting resulted in the agreement to resume military-to-military communication that was terminated soon after Nancy Pelocy’s visit to Taiwan in 2022. While military-to-military communication is not going to dissolve strategic tensions between the US and China, the communication channel proves an effective mechanism to avoid accidental conflicts between the US and China. What comes next then, is still to be seen.