THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 16 June 2020 (How the South China Sea situation plays out will be critical for India’s security (Indian Express))

How the South China Sea situation plays out will be critical for India’s security (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: International
Prelims level: South China Sea
Mains level: South China Sea situation plays out will be critical for our security and well-being

Context:

• The Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s perceptive essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs cogently spells out the dilemma that confronts Singapore.
• Indeed the rest of us in the Indo-Pacific, as the two most consequential powers of the world, the United States, which PM Lee calls the “resident power”, and China, which he says is “the reality on the doorstep”, are engaged in a fundamental transformation of their relationship.
• Almost nobody any longer thinks that China will conform to the US worldview, or that China’s rise from hereon will be unchallenged.

Rise of prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region:

• The Indo-Pacific has prospered under American hegemony for the previous 40 years not just because of their huge investments — $328.8 billion in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) alone and a further $107 billion in China — but also because of the security blanket that it provides.
• China might have replaced the US as the primary engine of growth in the last decade, but it has come with a cost — the assertion of Chinese power.

Concern for Chinese military postures:

• Chinese military postures, on the other hand, give cause for concern ever since they unilaterally put forward the Nine-Dash Line in 2009 to declare the South China Sea as territorial waters.
• Their territorial claim itself is tenuous, neither treaty-based nor legally sound. They act in ways that are neither benign nor helpful for long-term peace and stability.
• In the first half of 2020 alone,..............................

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Facing fundamental choices:

• PM Lee is absolutely correct in that going forward, the US and China face fundamental choices. But then, so do the rest of us living in the Indo-Pacific.
• America’s role in the preservation of the region’s peace and security should not be taken for granted.
• As COVID imposes crushing costs on all economies, the US may also be weighing its options. Finding justification for Chinese actions in the South China Sea, even as countries in the region help themselves to Chinese economic opportunities while sheltering under the US security blanket, is also fraught with risk.
• Accommodation may have worked thus far but regional prosperity has come at a mounting cost in geo-strategic terms.
• The South China Sea is effectively militarised. In the post-COVID age, enjoying the best of both worlds may no longer be an option.

ASEAN overtook the European Union:

• ASEAN will suddenly reverse course when faced with possibly heightened Sino-US competition.
• China is a major power that will continue to receive the respect of ASEAN and, for that matter, many others in the Indo-Pacific, especially in a post-COVID world where they are struggling to revive their economies.
• ASEAN overtook the European Union to become China’s largest trading partner in the first quarter of 2020, and China is the third-largest investor ($150 billion) in ASEAN.
• The South East Asians are skilled at finding the wiggle room to accommodate competing hegemons while advancing their interests.

Not concerned over Chinese behaviour:

• They are not concerned over Chinese behaviour in the South China Sea. They need others to help them in managing the situation.
• A robust US military presence is one guarantee. A stronger validation by the littoral states of the South China Sea helps the US Administration in justifying their presence to the American tax-payer.
• Others who have stakes in the region also need to collectively encourage an increasingly powerful China to pursue strategic interests in a legitimate way, and on the basis of respect for international law, in the South China Sea.
• The real choice is not between China and America — it is between keeping the global commons open for all or surrendering the right to choose one’s partners for the foreseeable future.

How the South China Sea situation plays out will be critical for our security and well-being?

• In the first place, the South China Sea is not China’s sea but a global common.
• Second, it has been an important sea-lane of communication since the very beginning, and passage has been unimpeded over the centuries.
• Third, Indians have sailed these waters for well over 1,500 years — there is ample historical and archaeological proof of a continuous Indian trading presence from Kedah in Malaysia to Quanzhou .................................

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Way forward:

• Regional arrangements will become even more important for our economic recovery and rejuvenation. If we intend to heed the clarion call of “Think Global Act Local”, India has to be part of the global supply chains in the world’s leading growth region for the next half-century.
• It is worth paying heed to the words from Singapore’s prime minister, who writes that something significant is lost in an RCEP without India, and urges us to recognise that the value of such agreements goes beyond the economic gains they generate.
• Singapore is playing the long game. Are we willing to do so, even if it imposes some costs in the short-term?

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Prelims Questions:

Q1.  With reference to the Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), consider the following statements:
1. It is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth.
2. Airplanes and helicopters are the most commonly used platforms for acquiring lidar data over broad areas.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer: ........................................

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Mains Questions:
Q1.  How the South China Sea situation plays .....................................