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.