中国を国際司法機関に提訴、ベトナムが検討
2014年05月30日 19時21分
中国に対してはフィリピンが昨年、南シナ海の領有権問題で仲裁裁判所に提訴しているが、中国は裁判所の仲裁を拒否している。今後ベトナムが提訴しても応じる可能性はほとんどないとみられる。
Both Vietnam and the Philippines have strong claims, and so it might seem reasonable for them to seek arbitration. But a tribunal can’t stop China from bullying its neighbors. The countries can halt Chinese expansion into the South China Sea only if the United States backs them up, and it is unlikely that the United States will. Over the long run, it can’t.
China has never offered an official legal justification for the nine-dash line. Robert Kaplan, in his new book Asia’s Cauldron, quotes a high-level official of one of the neighboring states: “The Chinese never give any legal justifications for their claims. They have a real Middle Kingdom mentality, and are dead set against taking these disputes to court.”
When a bully threatens the cowpokes, it’s time to call in the sheriff. The Philippines and Vietnam hope to use the arbitration procedure established under the Law of the Sea Treaty to force China’s hand. If the arbitrators rule against China, this might dampen China’s argument that the legal disagreements are too complicated to resolve anytime soon. But China has refused to participate in the arbitration and will disregard any judgment against it. And that will be that. The judges can no more compel China to yield the Spratlys or Paracels than they could detach those islands from the seabed and tow them away.
China’s neighbors hope that if they build a strong legal case, the United States will use force to repel a China takeover. But that won’t happen. The U.S. navy is bigger than China’s, but it patrols the globe, while China’s can focus on the swimming pool in its backyard. Do we really care whether a Vietnamese oil company or a Chinese oil company extracts oil from the seabed around the Paracels and sells it on the global market? Or whether poor Philippine fishermen or poor Chinese fisherman get to catch fish off Scarborough Shoal? Not nearly enough to go to fight with China over a rock or reef in the middle of the ocean―as China seems to be betting.
Just as we are learning that we can live with a Ukraine that lies within the orbit of Russia, we will need to learn that we can live with a Chinese sphere of influence in the South China Sea. This may seem to be hard on the countries that are being bullied. Some commentators warn of “Finlandization”: Finland accommodated itself to the Russian bear during the Cold War by turning inward and adopting foreign policies that the superpower could live with. Now it’s the South China Sea countries that must yield to the Chinese dragon. But the fact is that most countries are Finlandized. Canada and Mexico, in the sense that they must accommodate themselves to U.S. foreign policy.
スプラトリー諸島、パラセル諸島などベトナム、フィリピンと中国と領土問題について非常に現実的な論考。
中国はスプラトリー諸島、パラセル諸島を侵略する。
ベトナム、フィリピンは国際法に基づき、領有問題を解決したい。
ベトナム、フィリピンが勝訴しても、中国は無視し、領有権は戻ってこない。
アメリカにとっても、その地域で、ベトナム、中国のどっちが油を掘削しようが、フィリピン、中国のどっちが漁をしようがどうでもよく、そんなことで中国とことを荒立てたくない。
ここらへんの議論は、尖閣問題と重なるところか多いのではないでしょうか？
常日頃国際正義を標榜しておきながらいざとなるとずるいな、ということはありますけど、国家・国民の存亡、繁栄のためにはアメリカとしても不合理でない。
記事はそこで、フィンランドがロシアに、メキシコやカナダがアメリカに屈従したように、近隣の小国は大国のわがままな外交政策に適応していくしかないんだ、と。
集団自衛権云々がまったく無意味というつもりはないですが、それよりも、個別自衛権の強化を主張する所以であります。
