Vietnam intends to solve border disputes peacefully

Vietnam intends to solve border disputes peacefully

How will Vietnam's membership in ASEAN affect its border disputes
with neighboring countries? Ramses Amer tries to answer that
question.

With Vietnam becoming a member of ASEAN, integration in
Southeast Asia can be expected to be strengthened in the
economic, political and security fields. However, could this
process be hampered by current territorial disputes? Vietnam's
membership in ASEAN brings to the forefront a number of such
disputes.

Currently Vietnam has border disputes with Cambodia, China,
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand. The
disputes between Vietnam and Cambodia relate to the land and the
sea borders with overlapping claims to so-called "historical
waters" and to continental shelf areas in the Gulf of Thailand.
Vietnam's border disputes with China encompass the land border,
the Tonkin Gulf and overlapping claims of sovereignty to the
Paracel and Spratly archipelagos in the South China Sea.

Taiwan has sovereignty claims to the same archipelagos which
overlap Vietnam's claims. The territorial dispute between Vietnam
and the Philippines involve conflicting claims of sovereignty
over almost the entire Spratly archipelago. Vietnam's claim to
the Spratlys also overlaps a Malaysian claim to some islands.
Both countries have overlapping claims to continental shelf areas
in the South China Sea. There are similar disputes between
Vietnam and Indonesia in the South China Sea, and between Vietnam
and Thailand in the Gulf of Thailand.

Vietnam is pursuing a fairly consistent policy on how to
settle the various bilateral disputes. Hanoi favors formal
negotiations with the goal of resolving these disputes. It also
emphasizes the fact that the border disputes must be handled
through peaceful measures and that the concerned countries must
refrain from the use of force. All negotiations currently
underway are bilateral ones which implies that multilateral
disputes are not subject to formal negotiations. The multilateral
dispute over the whole or parts of the Spratly archipelago is
potentially the most dangerous conflict from a regional
perspective since it involves six parties: Brunei Darussalam,
China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Joint development agreements, pending the achievement of a
proper delimitation of the disputed areas, have been reached
between Malaysia and Vietnam, as well as between Thailand and
Vietnam. These examples show that Vietnam is amenable to such
arrangements.

The recent military conflicts between Vietnam and Cambodia, as
well as between Vietnam and China, could probably explain the
more cautious approach to joint development projects in disputed
areas due to residual feelings of uncertainty regarding the other
party's long-term intentions. Another explanatory factor could be
that Vietnam's land border disputes with Cambodia and China do
not hold the potential for commercially viable joint ventures due
to the lack of raw materials in those areas.

As for the border dispute with Indonesia, there has been no
military conflict and the dispute involves only sea areas.
Judging from Vietnam's willingness to engage in joint-development
schemes with Malaysia and Thailand respectively, the opposition
or reluctance to such schemes in the Indonesia-Vietnam case
probably stems from the Indonesian side.

Vietnam's ASEAN membership raises the question of how its
policy on border conflicts will affect the handling of such
conflicts. Its membership will most certainly make the conflicts
with its fellow ASEAN members more manageable but it will not
necessarily make formal resolution of the conflicts more likely.
After all, ASEAN has been successful in ensuring that disputes
between its members have not evolved into open military conflicts
but several border disputes still remain unresolved.

With respect to multilateral disputes, the ASEAN countries
have not been able to formulate a full-fledged policy on how to
resolve the disputed issues in the South China Sea. Nevertheless,
the 1992 ASEAN Declaration provides some basic principles for the
management of the disputes by calling for the peaceful settlement
of the Spratlys dispute and urging the concerned parties to
exercise restraint in the area. The ASEAN position looks like a
compromise formulated in such a way so as to accommodate those
ASEAN members with a direct stake in the conflict.

Vietnam is advocating that all its border disputes be settled
peacefully through negotiations. Furthermore, it acceded to the
Bali Treaty in 1992 and is a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum.
These highlight Vietnam's desire to become more formally
incorporated in the ongoing process of integration in Southeast
Asia and in the process of multilateral confidence-building in
the wider Asia-Pacific region. From this perspective, it can be
argued that Vietnam's membership in ASEAN will strengthen the
organization's policy of promoting regional integration and co-
operation and enhance stability in Southeast Asia.

As to the Spratlys conflict, Vietnam's membership will hardly
bring about the formulation of a more formal ASEAN policy, and
compromise will not be easier when having to take into
consideration the strategic interests of yet another ASEAN member
with sovereignty claims to the archipelago.

Nevertheless, with regard to the ongoing process of dialogue
relating to the Spratlys conflict and other disputed issues in
the South China Sea, Vietnam's membership will not alter the
current ASEAN policy but rather give it additional clout.

Dr. Ramses Amer is a Research Associate with the Department of
Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Sweden.