i

THESIS

Maritime Diplomacy by Indonesia:

Governing the South China Sea dispute Muhammad Dedy Yanuar MSc of International Development Studies Public Administration and Policy Group Wageningen University and Research August 2019

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Exploring the maneuvers of the Government of Indonesia with regard to the various and

overlapping claims to territorial sovereignty over the South China Sea

M.Sc. THESIS

Muhammad Dedy Yanuar

STUDY PROGRAM: M.Sc. International Development Studies (MID)

Specialization on Politics and Governance of Development Group of Public Administration and Policy (PAP)

Wageningen University and Research (WUR)

STUDENT NUMBER: 940130585030

SUPERVISOR: Dr. Otto Hospes

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Table of Contents Listofabbreviation_______________________________________________________________________________1Acknowledgements_______________________________________________________________________________3Abstract_____________________________________________________________________________________________41. INTRODUCTION_______________________________________________________________________________5

1.1ProblemStatement ____________________________________________________________________________51.2ResearchObjectives ___________________________________________________________________________81.3ResearchQuestions____________________________________________________________________________81.4StudyOutline____________________________________________________________________________________9

2. THEORETICALFRAMEWORK_____________________________________________________________10

2.1Sovereigntygames____________________________________________________________________________112.2Tracktwodiplomacy_________________________________________________________________________12

3. METHODOLOGY_____________________________________________________________________________15

3.1TypeofResearch______________________________________________________________________________153.2MethodsUsed__________________________________________________________________________________163.2.1DocumentAnalysis__________________________________________________________________________________163.2.2Semi-StructuredInterview ________________________________________________________________________18

4. FINDINGS_____________________________________________________________________________________21

4.1ResultsofDocumentAnalysis_______________________________________________________________224.1.1ActorsandmovesintheSouthChinaSeadispute______________________________________________224.1.2InterpretationofSovereignty_____________________________________________________________________304.1.3TrackOneandTrackTwoDiplomacy____________________________________________________________374.1.4Conclusion____________________________________________________________________________________________42

4.2ResultsofInterviews_________________________________________________________________________444.2.1Actors,Moves,andRulesintheSouthChinaSeaWorkshop _________________________________444.2.2ViewsonSovereigntybyInterviewees___________________________________________________________534.2.3IndonesiandiplomaticskillsintheSouthChinaSeadispute_________________________________604.2.4Conclusion____________________________________________________________________________________________66

5. DISCUSSION__________________________________________________________________________________68

5.1SouthChinaSeaWorkshopasanArenaofDialogue_____________________________________685.2SovereigntyandTrackTwoDiplomacy____________________________________________________715.3Indonesia’sroleasabrokerintheconflict________________________________________________755.4Futureresearch________________________________________________________________________________77

6. CONCLUSION________________________________________________________________________________79REFERENCES______________________________________________________________________________________80

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List of abbreviation

ARF ASEAN Regional Forum

ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations

CBM Confidence Building Measure

COC Code of Conduct

CUES Code of Unplanned Encounters at Sea

DOC Declaration on the Conduct

EEZ Exclusive Economic Zone

FMPRC Foreign Ministry of People’s Republic of China

GE Group of Expert

GMF Global Maritime Forum

ICJ International Court of Justice

ITLS International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea

JSTOR Journal Storage

MoFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NGO Non-Governmental Organization

PCA Permanent Court of Arbitration

PRC People’s Republic of China

SCS South China Sea

SCSW South China Sea Workshop

SDNT Single Draft Negotiating Text

SEA-NET South East Asia Network for Education and Training

SOM Senior Officials Meeting

T1 Track One

T2 Track Two

TAC Treaty of Amity and Cooperation

TWG Technical Working Group

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UN United Nations

UNCLCS United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf

UNCLOS United Nations Law of the Sea Convention

UNSC United Nations Security Council

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Acknowledgements

After having a quite long time, yet intensive, thesis period within 12 months, I

eventually finished my master thesis as the main requirement to graduate at the

University. During the process, I obtained a lot of invaluable academic experience

and skills. Not to mention, conducting interviews with several government officials of

Indonesia has been widening my networks, which would be an important asset for

my professional career in the future. The process of writing master thesis has also

been forging me to be not only a tough master student, but also an individual who

has a persistent and robust character, which played a pivotal role in developing my

leadership. Therefore, I would like to thank several people who were involved and

significantly contributed to the accomplishment of my thesis.

First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my family who became a

tireless supporter for me and who were always available when I needed their

support. Secondly, I am extremely thankful to my academic supervisor, Dr. Otto

Hospes, for his extraordinary support and for constantly supervising me so that I

could eventually improve the quality of my master thesis.

Thirdly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Nuffic Neso Indonesia for

rendering me the financial assistance through its StuNed (Studeren in Nederland)

scholarship program, which covered all expenses of my master’s degree program at

the Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands. Finally, I would also like

to convey my deepest appreciation to all interviewees, for their significant

contribution in providing me a lot of necessary information and knowledge as an

important data for my thesis.

Above all, praise be to Allah SWT, the Almighty God who has always been guarding

and guiding every single process of my life. Alhamdulillah!

Muhammad Dedy Yanuar

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Abstract

Since the territorial disputes over the South China Sea have been acknowledged as

a major problem in the international politics, a number of efforts have been

attempted to resolve this particular conflict. However, none of the formal,

international institutions and meetings did work effectively: the official meetings of

UNCLOS and ARF failed to directly resolve the conflict. Noticing this failure,

Indonesia offered an alternative solution to mediate the SCS dispute: informal

workshops. This thesis addresses the role of the Government of Indonesia in using

the informal workshops to mediate in the international conflict on the South China

Sea and how the Government copes with different sovereignty claims in this conflict.

As such, this thesis seeks to answer the following main research question: How has

the Government of Indonesia maneuvered among the various and overlapping

claims to territorial sovereignty of the claimants in the South China Sea dispute? In

order to answer the main research question and also to get better understanding of

the players, moves, and rules in the informal workshops, this thesis uses two

concepts: sovereignty games and track two diplomacy. Document analysis and

semi-structured interviews with several Indonesian government officials, scientists

and experts, have been conducted as research methods to generate data. My major

finding is that the most important way in which Indonesia used the informal

workshops to maneuver over the territorial and maritime disputes of the claimant

states in the South China Sea was to depoliticize the issues, to build trust and to

focus on technical discussions. Three main arguments have been addressed: Firstly,

the informal workshops as an arena of dialogue have been effective to build trust

and mutual understanding amongst the conflicting parties in the South China Sea.

Secondly, given the track two diplomacy is the backbone for any kind of progress,

the informal politics is the most important in dealing with the international dispute.

Lastly, Indonesia as a sovereign state needs to keep its independency in terms of its

sovereignty and importance, however, at the same time Indonesia as a mediator has

to keep maintaining its diplomatic relationship with the claimant states at the bilateral

level, in order to make all of them remained on board.

Keywords: South China Sea disputes, Indonesia, informal workshop, sovereignty,

track two diplomacy.

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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Problem Statement

The dispute of South China Sea (SCS) has been recognized as an endless big issue

in the international politics (Sempa, 2018). According to Sempa (2018), due to the

Chinese claims towards the territorial sovereignty over SCS identified as the so-

called the nine-dash line policy, these claims certainly overlapped several countries’

maritime sovereignty mostly situated in the South East Asia such as Philippines,

Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. Meanwhile, the United States, albeit not a claimant,

has also attempted to interfere in this regional dispute by whistleblowing the issue of

freedom of navigation with the purpose to confine the Chinese hegemony of claiming

islands mostly situated over SCS.

In 2016, the Philippines won a decisive victory on a high-tension debate against

China regarding the China’s historic rights and nine-dash line in the Permanent

Court of Arbitration (PCA) under the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention

(UNCLOS) at The Hague, the Netherlands (Almond, 2016). However, according to

Panaligan (2018), China did not accept the decision of the court as China perceived

that the court lacked the jurisdiction or legal position over the dispute. China also

argued that her territorial sovereignty in the SCS could not be intervened by any

means; only China can deal with its maritime delimitation rights, and consequently,

the outcome of arbitration will not affect China’s sovereignty over the SCS

(Chaudhury, 2018). For that matter, China eventually perceived this result as a fatal

jurisdictional flaw and would never recognize the arbitration process and the

credibility of the PCA (Almond, 2016).

The maritime and territorial dispute in the SCS has been occurring for decades

involving six countries; Brunei, China, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam

(BBC, 2016b). Since 1952, China has claimed SCS with the so-called nine-dash line

policy which occupied several islands that were included in the territorial sovereignty

of those countries (Beech, 2016). According to Gao and Jia (2013), there are three

meanings of the nine-dash line policy. First, it serves as a line which preserves both

its title to territory and its historic rights. Second, it represents the title to the island

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groups that it encloses. Within the nine-dash line, China has claimed sovereignty

and jurisdiction over the islands in SCS where China presumes that this claim is

relevant with the UNCLOS principles which are waters, seabed, and subsoil are

adjacent to those claimed islands and insular features. Third, it claims to be based

on Chinese historic rights in fishing, navigation, and other marine activities such as

oil and gas development in the waters and on the continental shelf surrounded by

the line.

Interestingly, Chen (2018) argued that while China is a legitimate member of

UNCLOS, China seemed unwilling to abide by the UNCLOS stipulations and never

defined the legal meaning of the nine-dash line policy. According to the Article 57 of

UNCLOS, every unknown object (land and water) orbiting around 200 miles from a

legitimate territorial area or Exclusive Economic Zone of a country belongs to that

particular country (UNCLOS, n.d.). However, Beijing has been constructing the

reclamation of small islands and building military settlement in the areas which are

not recognized as a sovereign territory by UNCLOS (Chellaney, 2018; France-

Presse, 2017). Accordingly, it seems that UNCLOS has not been working effectively

to halt Beijing in claiming the islands situated in the SCS, that according to UNCLOS

standards falls under the territorial sovereignty of another country.

Since UNCLOS could not serve as a podium to resolve the dispute, the claimants

turned to ASEAN as a regional platform because most of the disputants are included

as ASEAN member states such as Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei, and Vietnam.

ASEAN started to view the security situation in the SCS, and particularly the

perceived Chinese expansion southwards, as critical after the end of Cold War. The

need to be able to solve the conflicts became alarming and ASEAN jointly declared

the following in Singapore in January 1992:

ASEAN could use established fora to promote external security dialogues on

enhancing security as well as intra-ASEAN dialogues on ASEAN security

cooperation (ASEAN, 2012).

This indicates that ASEAN sees for itself the new great ambition as a security

creating body in the region. As a reaction to China’s increased presence in the

region, the Foreign Ministers met in Manila, June 1992. This led to the ASEAN

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Declaration on the South China Sea that points out the importance of peaceful

cooperation. The declaration spells out the fundament for resolving maritime

disputes with multilateral negotiations. This is the first formal declaration directed

towards the SCS dispute, and primarily towards China. This treaty is a formalization

of the multilateral negotiation process (Swanström, 1999).

Subsequently, ASEAN established an instrument in July 1994 to discuss this security

issue over SCS, namely the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) which aims to act as a

forum that includes all regional actors and the most important external actors to

handle the conflicts, prevent tension, and potential conflicts from becoming

militarized (Swanström, 1999). This particular way can be seen as the ’first track

diplomacy’ (track one diplomacy) that Diamond and McDonald (1996) described it as

an official government diplomacy whereby communication and interaction are

between governments. Likewise, Nan (2003) reiterates the implementation of the

first track diplomacy in conflict resolution is highly influenced by the interwoven web

of international relations amongst relevant governments. In this context, the

establishment of the ARF serves as a platform for ASEAN to intensely negotiate over

this maritime delimitation problem with the government of China.

Nonetheless, according to Swanström (1999), China refused to accept ARF as an

alternative solution because the issue of SCS would be internationalized by the

Philippines through promoting the objection of Spratly islands that were claimed by

China at the ARF-Intercessional Support Group on Confidence-Building Measures in

Bangkok, March 3-5 in 1999. China did not want this issue to be discussed through

ARF. Instead, China preferred to resolve this case through bilateral meetings.

Consequently, the platform of ARF within ASEAN supervision was not working

successfully to acquire Chinese commitment, let alone agreement, over disputed

islands in the SCS.

Considering the urgency of this security situation over SCS, some other ASEAN

member states such as Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand offered to mediate the

conflict. However, due to the inadequacy of the first track diplomacy, “only ‘second

track diplomacy’ (track two diplomacy) which is a diplomacy in the form of informal

consultations, conferences, and research projects facilitated by Indonesia has been

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effective in getting China around the table with other claimants” (Swanström, 1999,

p. 119).

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Indonesia has organized the informal workshop on

managing potential conflicts in the South China Sea which is globally known as the

South China Sea (SCS) Workshop. It was initiated by Indonesian former diplomat,

Prof. Dr. Hasyim Djalal, “a leading authority on ocean law and policy and one of the

most influential participants at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of

the Sea” (Song, 2010, p. 256). This workshop serves as an arena of dialogue aiming

to manage potential conflicts by exploring areas of cooperation among the littoral

states in the SCS area (Song, 2010). Considering the failure of UNCLOS and ARF to

solve the SCS dispute, it is interesting and relevant to investigate whether this

informal workshop has accommodated dialogue and been effective in addressing the

sovereignty dispute in the SCS.

1.2 Research Objectives

This thesis report is about the role of the Government of Indonesia in using

workshops to mediate in an international conflict on the South China Sea and how

the Government copes with different sovereignty claims in this conflict. The objective

is threefold: Firstly, to contribute to the debate on whether the SCS workshops as an

arena of dialogue can contribute to a lasting solution in the conflict over the SCS.

Secondly, to contribute to the debate on sovereignty and the role of track two

diplomacy in it, using the concept of sovereignty games. Thirdly and related to this,

the objective is to characterize the role and diplomatic skills of Indonesia in the SCS

conflict as a broker, mediator and/or negotiator in the conflict.

1.3 Research Questions

Based on the problem statement and objectives above, my research question is; How has the government of Indonesia maneuvered among the various and

overlapping claims to territorial sovereignty of the claimants in the South China Sea dispute?

To answer this question specifically, this research will address the following sub-

questions, as follows:

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Sub-questions: 1. How can the talks and negotiations be characterized at the SCS workshops in

terms of actors, moves, and players?

2. What different notions of sovereignty have been used by countries in the SCS

workshops? Have the workshops and particularly the role of Indonesia

changed the ways in which sovereignty has been used by the different

claimants? If so, in what way and with what result for the negotiation process

and outcome?

3. What kind of diplomatic skills have been used by the Indonesian Ministry of

Foreign Affairs before, during, and after the SCS workshops?

a. What skills have been used by the Indonesian MoFA to get different

players around the table?

b. What skills have been used by the Indonesian MoFA to set the

agenda?

c. What skills have been used by the Indonesian MoFA to reach

consensual decisions at the SCS workshops?

1.4 Study Outline

Chapter 2 will explain about the main key concepts used to answer the main

research question. The conceptual framework consists of sovereignty games by

Hansen and Nissen (2016) and track two diplomacy by Montville (1991). The

concept of sovereignty games will provide explanation about the players, moves, and

rules in the informal workshops, as the non-official arena exercised to mediate the

SCS issue. The track two diplomacy concept will help to further explain how the

informal workshops as form of the informal politics could be effective in addressing

the SCS dispute. Then, chapter 3 briefly describes about the methodology and the

research methods used in this study. Chapter 4 provides the main findings based on

the document analysis and the result of interviews. Here, the documents obtained in

the fieldwork and the interview transcripts will be processed to generate data based

on the research questions. Chapter 5 discusses about the implications of the findings

on several major issues, which are in line with the research objectives. Chapter 6

provides general conclusion regarding the essence of informal workshops in

gathering the claimant states to reduce the tension over the dispute in the SCS.

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2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

During the last decades, there has been repeated discussion on state sovereignty in

many debates in the field of international relations and politics. Most literatures on

sovereignty generically explain that sovereignty is a contested concept in which it

provides different interpretation for different situation. According to Wallach (2018),

there are two types of sovereignty; conventional and contemporary. Conventional

sovereignty is about the role of the state as a dictator because it has absolute power

over its supremacy in ruling the society. Meanwhile, Contemporary sovereignty

refuses the idea of dictatorship and supports the idea of democratic system, which is

the state legitimized society to exercise their power within state sovereignty.

However, Krasner (2004) argues that the conventional sovereignty is not only talking

about the dictatorship or hegemonic structure in the political system. Instead, it has

been turned into well-recognized structure whereby state has full authority to control

domestic domain and incorporate other powerful states to intervene in formulating

foreign policy since the nineteenth century.

Other than that, Maftei (2015) divides sovereignty based upon two scales in the

context of international politics: internal law and international law. He argues that

sovereignty within internal law makes states serve as a sovereign power and as

political authorities that control the legislative, executive, and jurisdictional powers.

Meanwhile, within the scale of international law, sovereignty is interpreted as a way

of states negotiate with other states, on the principle of sovereign equality in the

international relations. For this reason, Hansen & Nissen (2016) perceived that while

sovereignty constitutes a struggle over different claims to authority which who comes

most to the fore, states are very important actors to understand the sovereignty per

se. Therefore, the sovereignty remains an essential political tool in constituting the

functional national and international legal orders, in which power politics are played

out.

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2.1 Sovereignty games

This research is about international politics focusing on negotiations on territorial

sovereignty in the conflict over the SCS. The concept of sovereignty games will be

utilized to investigate the role of perceptions on sovereignty in understanding the

international politics. The concept of sovereignty games introduced by Thomas

Gammeltoft-Hansen and Rebecca Adler-Nissen generically aims to explain that

sovereignty fundamentally constitutes a claim to authority which means that

sovereignty is not given, but contested and constant subject of negotiations and

power struggles. This concept basically refers to the ability of different state actors to

successfully maneuver among the varying and the overlapping claims to sovereignty

(Hansen & Nissen, 2016). The concept of sovereignty remains decisive in political

and legal sphere. Therefore, Hansen and Nissen (2016) emphasized that more

attention should be given in research on international relations and politics.

There are three core elements of sovereignty games; players, rules and moves.

Firstly, according to Hansen and Nissen (2016), the players in the concept of

Sovereignty Games are the actors (state and non-state) who try to keep their

sovereignty state system and also involved in claiming the sovereignty. Secondly,

Hansen and Nissen (2016) described the rules in the state sovereignty as a

shorthand for a definite set of claims over certain territories based on stipulations of

the international law. Thirdly, Hansen and Nissen (2016) explains that the emphasis

of moves for the actors involved is placed on how it is used, or being played out, as

legal and political practices. Furthermore, there are two dimensions in the

sovereignty games: vertical dimension and horizontal dimension. “In vertical

dimension, political and administrative elites are playing on the different legal and

symbolic structures related to sovereignty to enhance their autonomy in both

domestic and international arena. Meanwhile, horizontal dimension is characterized

by the conceptual stretching of sovereignty to cover activities outside the area

traditionally reserved for exercises of ultimate authority-the national territory”

(Hansen & Nissen, 2016, p. 12).

Since each country has its own interest respectively and due to the conflict of

interests, the SCS dispute becomes problematic. Through this conceptual framework

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of seeing sovereignty as a game, I could analyze who are the actors involved in the

dispute over SCS. The concept also helps me to further analyze the role of

Indonesia as a non-claimant state and also as a broker/mediator in the SCS dispute

through the informal workshop; why Indonesia initiated the informal SCS workshop,

why all the conflicting parties are willing to assemble in the workshop, how the

workshop could make the representatives from the conflicting parties talk honestly

and openly, and how the workshop rules could reduce the situational tension

amongst the claimant states over the SCS dispute.

2.2 Track two diplomacy

Besides, when state sovereignty has been considerably acknowledged as state

negotiations among each other, it mainly requires diplomatic skills during the

negotiation process. Diplomatic skills are basically emanating from the concept of

diplomacy in the international relations. According to Bahles (2014), diplomacy is

essentially a capacity to adjust with diverse circumstances. Indeed, Akin and Brahm

(2005) said that diplomacy serves as an art in which it is basically a technique to

negotiate specific issues incorporating the elements of persuasion, empathy, and

appreciation with certain circumstances to acquire the reciprocal results among the

negotiators. Diplomacy is also commonly perceived as a means to achieve the

national interests (Zhao, 2017). Accordingly, diplomacy serves as a state’s

instrument to negotiate with other states to reach their interests.

In general, there are two different ways in conducting diplomacy, it could be formally

with the so-called the first track diplomacy or informally with the second track

diplomacy. The First Track diplomacy or widely known as Track One (T1) diplomacy

is an ‘official governmental diplomacy’ that includes several head of states to directly

conduct official meetings and communications which take place bilaterally or

multilaterally (Nan, 2003). Similarly, Mapendere (2007) emphasized that T1

diplomacy mainly features the official interactions at the level of state to state in

which the result of this formalistic discussion will be taken into consideration of

state’s foreign policy with the purpose to promote states’ interests. The themes of

agenda discussions in the T1 diplomacy are mostly associated with state policies,

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reports Salawu and Akinboye (2014). As such, the T1 diplomacy is frequently carried

out by diplomats as the official state representatives that participate in the debates

and discussions over certain issues in order to finally reach the common agreement

(Akin & Brahm, 2005). However, Mapendere (2007) argues that T1 diplomacy has

several critical weaknesses in conducting negotiation such as; powerful states tend

to undermine weaker states, lack of communication in the conflicting situation, and

inability of diplomats to speak against their own government.

Meanwhile, if the T1 diplomacy is perceived as an official diplomacy, the Track Two

(T2) diplomacy is a way more complementary in terms of covering limitation from T1

diplomacy. According to Mapendere (2007), T2 diplomacy also serves as a platform

to empowers the socially, economically, and politically disenfranchised groups by

giving them a platform from which they can air their views on how peace can be

achieved in their own communities or nations. T2 diplomacy is concentrated to be a

bridge or complement for the formal negotiation of T1 diplomacy. “T2 parties are not

inhibited by political or constitutional power; therefore, they can express their own

viewpoints on issues that directly affect their communities and families. T2 officials

do not have the fear of losing constituencies because they are the constituency”

(Mapendere, 2007, p. 68).

The T2 diplomacy is originally invented by Joseph V. Montville in which he proclaims

that; “The Track Two diplomacy is an unofficial, informal interaction amongst

members of adversary groups that aim to develop strategies, influence public

opinion, and organize human and material resources in ways that might help resolve

their conflict” (Montville, 1991, p. 162). Montville (1991) points out that there are

three important processes in the T2 diplomacy: problem-solving workshops,

influencing public opinion, and cooperative economic development. First of all, he

identifies problem-solving workshops as the first process, which consists of small,

facilitated problem-solving workshops or seminars, that include the involved actors to

conduct dialogue and discussion regarding certain issues, in order to discover a

mutual outcome through collegial endeavors.

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In the second process, Montville (1991) pinpoints that the T2 diplomacy has the duty

to alter the mainstream discourse that could drive any political leader, which is

perceived as agitators in the workshop, to make positive decisions for solving the

problem. The T2 unofficial actors, which could be scientists or experts, could give a

significant influence towards the decision-making process conducted by the

government officials. Thirdly, cooperative economic development which serves as

the third process contributes through incentives, institutional support and providing

the prospect of economic growth for communities or nations that could affect the

psychological aspect of the parties involved during negotiation process in the

workshop.

In addition, Salawu and Akinboye (2014) said that due to the informal situation in the

T2 diplomacy, it can afford the ‘freedom of interaction’ which is improbable in T1

diplomacy since the official governments are frequently undermined by certain

consideration of their domestic concern and suspicion issues of government track

records of presumably conducting corruption and oppressive behaviors in the past.

As such in this research, T2 diplomacy will be used to portray SCS workshop as an

arena of dialogue to reduce the tension of the territorial sovereignty dispute over the

SCS, using the concept of sovereignty games.

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3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 Type of Research

The methodology of this thesis can be categorized in three ways: First, the

methodology can be characterized as a case study of a specific arena, in which an

international conflict is being addressed, namely the SCS informal workshop when

the formal international arenas like UNCLOS and ARF have not been able to get the

claimants around the table.

Secondly, since I used discourse analysis for a qualitative assessment of both

interviews and written documents, I used the terms like claims and sovereignty.

These terms were frequently used by the claimant states in the government official

meetings and/or the non-official meetings to negotiate the issue of overlapping

territorial and maritime claims to sovereignty in the SCS. Besides, I also looked at

different maps and names of disputed islands to get the general idea of different

claims to water and islands in area of the SCS. The maps give an idea about the

different notions of sovereignty or different claims to sovereignty and I think it is

crucial in this matter.

Thirdly, I also implemented interpretative methodology in which I obtained data

through talking to the relevant people and observed how they interpret the

sovereignty and the strategies used by Indonesia during the negotiation process.

Since this thesis topic is extremely complexed and also related to sensitive issues,

high level politics, the things I wanted to know are clearly unwritten in books. So, I

had to have a strong emphasis on the interviews. As such, the interviews were very

important to generate data. Again, one of the reasons why I heavily relied on the

interviews was because of complexity and sensitivity. It was also not possible to do a

survey to get information on a sensitive topic like sovereignty, in which Indonesia

and participants would emphasize that if the word sovereignty would be used, the

discussion stops. By having a lot of discussion with the relevant people, it gave me

some insights over the things that I researched such as territorial sovereignty, SCS

workshops, and yet diplomatic skills used by the Government of Indonesia to

mediate the SCS dispute. Therefore, this methodology has been very qualitative and

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is about approaching people, winning their confidence, which interviewees have

been participating in the workshop themselves.

3.2 Methods Used

To answer my research questions, I collected different types of information. Firstly, I

collected the information of the overview of South China Sea (SCS) Workshop

established by the government of Indonesia and its progress in possibly resolving

the dispute. Secondly, I collected specific information about the formal and informal

rules of SCS Workshop, UNCLOS and ASEAN in dealing so far with the case.

The first strategy to gain such data within the limited time available was to find and

review data related to SCS Workshop, Nine Dash Line, UNCLOS, and ASEAN,

obtained from books, government, and or academic websites such as Chinese

government website, Indonesian government website, United Nations website,

ASEAN Website, JSTOR, Google Scholar, news websites, and et cetera.

Afterwards, I did document analysis by analyzing and extracting information from the

documents I gained during the fieldwork. My second strategy was conducting

interviews with relevant Indonesian government officials, NGOs, think tanks, and

experts in order to deeply dig the information of how Indonesia maneuvered within

this particular territorial sovereignty dispute over the South China Sea. Lastly, I went

to Indonesia to conduct interviews because all interviewees were situated in Jakarta,

Indonesia, and also to collect data through formal (procedural activity) and informal

approach (using networking or contacting my personal colleagues who worked inside

the government or NGO institutions), taking place in several related government and

NGO institutions regarding how the informal workshop and Indonesia’s role

attempted to mediate the territorial sovereignty dispute over the South China Sea.

3.2.1 Document Analysis

There are some policies of the Indonesian government that are important to

understand the role of Indonesia in possibly resolving the South China Sea dispute

such as; Indonesian diplomatic actions, Indonesian initiative of SCS Workshop,

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Indonesian foreign policy, Indonesian bilateral policy to China, Chinese

government’s policy, ASEAN policy, UN policy, and etc. It is part of qualitative

analysis where literature review will be included in the process of data collection.

This document analysis aims to gain background and an overview of the dispute on

the SCS and how it was handled in different arenas in a comprehensive way.

In the fieldwork, I obtained various documents derived from books and websites in

which I have been studied: the official document of United Nations Convention on

Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the document of ASEAN declaration regarding the issue

of SCS, and books and articles related to the South China Sea Workshop as one of

Indonesian original initiatives in dealing with this sovereignty issues. Concerning on

the informal workshop, I realized that there must be the minutes or detailed notes

stored at the office of Indonesian MoFA. However, I could not get the workshop

minutes as they are not publicly accessible. Accordingly, I made my analysis based

on journal and articles available online and trusted websites such as JSTOR, Google

Scholar, ASEAN websites, etc.

During the process of selecting relevant documents, I used the research questions

as a guidance to discover relevant information. Afterwards, I conducted document

analysis for structuring ideas that I would like to explore by quoting the materials

dealt with the same way and used discourse analysis, in which I incorporated some

words, such as overlapping claims, sovereignty, Nine-dash line, technical discussion,

to get the relevant information. I also implemented identification of key incidents to

get more insights related to the discursive dynamics in the informal workshop. The

word Nine-dash line, for instance, has been constantly debated by all the conflicting

parties of the SCS dispute. All claimant states, except China, have firmly refused this

policy as it is not based on international law. However, China constantly defended its

policy and justified the reason of historical rights principles should be acceptable

because it is related to China’s sovereignty; and China’s sovereignty is absolutely

indisputable. Accordingly, discourse analysis has been employed as a means to

further draw important information related to the thesis.

18

3.2.2 Semi-Structured Interview The interviews have been conducted with several relevant stakeholders over the

case of South China Sea dispute. Below is the list of interviewees that I interviewed:

Interviewees Affiliation Date of interview Type of

Interview

Interviewee A De La Salle University 20 October 2018 Face-to-Face

Interviewee B Indonesia CSIS 02 November 2018 Face-to-Face

Interviewee C Habibie Center 06 November 2018 Face-to-Face

Interviewee D Indonesian Coordinating

Ministry of Political, Legal,

and Security Affairs

08 November 2018 Face-to-Face

Interviewee E Indonesian Coordinating

Ministry for Maritime Affairs

11 November 2018 Face-to-Face

Interviewee F Indonesian Ministry of

Foreign Affairs

16 November 2018 Face-to-Face

Interviewee G Gadjah Mada University 20 November 2018 Skype

Interviewee H Indonesian Ministry of

Foreign Affairs

21 November 2018 Face-to-Face

Interviewee I Habibie Center 28 November 2018 Face-to-Face

Interviewee J Indonesian Ministry of

Defense

29 November 2018 Face-to-Face

Interviewee K Indonesian Ministry of

Defense

30 November 2018 Face-to-Face

Interviewee L Australian National

University

02 December 2018 Skype

Interviewee M Indonesian Ministry of

Marines Affairs and

Fisheries

07 December 2018 Face-to-Face

Interviewee N Indonesian Ministry of

Foreign Affairs

13 December 2018 Face-to-Face

All these interviews were nearly conducted in the office of interviewee in Jakarta,

Republic of Indonesia. Only two interviews were held through Skype since they were

19

not in their office at that time. Due to the confidentiality, all interviewees’ names have

been concealed and coded with a letter of the font alphabet. Of all interviewees, only

interviewee E, G, and H have been participating in the informal workshops; the

others were observers.

Besides, it was not possible to approach more workshop participants due to the lack

of accessibility and availability of their time. I already tried to contract the Professor

Hasyim Djalal as the initiator of the informal workshop. However, he did not give me

any response until the last minute of my fieldwork time. Yet, I utilized the snow ball

method to gain more information and contacts from one interviewee to other

interviewees about the observers and the other people that have been involved in

the informal workshop. The method of interviews with key player was also used to

interview scientist or observer or government official representatives in their personal

title who experienced direct participation in the informal workshop. As such, I

successfully conducted interviews with 14 relevant interviewees, in which 3 of them

were scientist (Interviewee E), expert (Interviewee G), and representative of the

Government of Indonesia as a non-claimant state, attending the informal workshop

but in his personal capacity (interviewee H).

Since the participants of the informal workshop consisting of scientists, experts, and

also representatives from the claimant states and non-claimant states in their

personal title, I was not able to contact the representatives of the claimant states as

their contacts were not publicly accessible and let alone, their location was not in

Indonesia. During the process of interviews, some were using English and others

were using ‘Bahasa’ (the official language of Indonesia). The interview questions

were made based on the main research question and sub-questions. After

conducting the interviews, I made the transcripts.

From the interview transcripts, I used the method of interpretation as a basis to

analyze and interpret the information they gave me. In structuring and analyzing my

data, I also used three specific sub-questions as a guidance. The information on

players, moves, rules, I put together. The information on sovereignty and sovereignty

claims I put together and anything emphasizing on the role of Indonesia I also put

together. These have served to structure my findings where in the findings I store

20

and provide more detailed information on players, moves, and rules, sovereignty

claims, and the role of Indonesia in brokering the issue of SCS. During the process

of analyzing the interview transcripts, if the transcript was in Bahasa, I took its

important information, analyzed it and wrote in English. Since the information I

obtained from the interviews was abundant, I also used discourse analysis, in which

the terms like SCS informal workshop, claims, territorial sovereignty were utilized as

my analytical frames to sort out the relevant information derived from the interview

transcripts and processed them to generate data. To strengthen my findings, in

particular result of interviews, I sometimes directly quoted their words to showcase

the relevance of their original thoughts with the issues that I am currently concerned,

such as China’s Nine-dash line policy, scientific projects and technical cooperation in

the informal workshop, etc.

21

4. FINDINGS

This chapter is structured as follows. Chapter 4.1 will explain about the results of

document analysis, divided into three sub-chapters. Paragraph 4.1.1 will describe

about the parties involved in the dispute and how they took part in some tables of

negotiations over the SCS, notably on SCS Informal Workshop. Afterwards, it will

showcase how the Informal workshop led all claimant states in the current

development of SCS negotiations; Declaration on the Conduct (DOC) 2002 and

Code of Conduct (COC) 2018. Paragraph 4.1.2 elaborates on how the countries

involved interpret their sovereignty over the SCS upon the debate of sovereignty in

the SCS, such as how Chinese Nine-dash line policy is argued by the other claimant

states and rejected by PCA decisions; and how China completely disagreed and

never recognized the validity of these international law decisions. Paragraph 4.1.3

will further explain about arenas in the Track-One (T1) and Track-Two (T2)

Diplomacy; how T1 as a formal way is not enough to address issues of sovereignty

in the SCS and how T2 as an informal approach could address the interests of

parties concerned in the SCS while accommodating the insufficiency of formal

platforms which have been used, such as ASEAN-China Dialogue and ASEAN

Regional Forum (ARF).

Chapter 4.2 will provide the results of interviews, comprising three sub-chapters

referring to the sub-research questions. Paragraph 4.2.1 explains about the actors,

moves, and rules in the SCS informal workshop, which aims to characterize the talks

and negotiations in the informal workshop. Afterwards, Paragraph 4.2.2 will describe

the contribution of SCS workshop in reducing the SCS tension, which portrays the

debate of territorial sovereignty, how informal workshop mediates the debate through

inviting the claimant states assembled to talk and discuss the issue on the same

table, and how the sovereignty claims are interpreted claimant after the PCA

decisions 2016. Lastly, Paragraph 4.2.3 will further elaborate on how Indonesia

through its diplomatic skills as a non-claimant state, as well as an honest broker,

contributes to manage the tension over the dispute in the SCS. It also explains how

Indonesia could invite different players around the table, set the agenda and reached

consensual decisions in the SCS workshop.

22

4.1 Results of Document Analysis

4.1.1 Actors and moves in the South China Sea dispute

Claimant States

The dispute in the South China Sea (SCS) has been occurring for decades and

involved several states claiming islands and some maritime features there.

According to a report written by Gregory B. Poling in 2013 entitled “The South China

Sea in Focus; Clarifying the Limits of Maritime Dispute”, there are six countries

involved with the so-called the claimant states in the South China Sea, comprising

China, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan (Poling, 2013). This

report emphasized that the claimant states should make their claims based on

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982 as international

law although it seemed that not all claimants followed the rules of UNCLOS. Since

SCS is a “semi-enclosed sea”, the coastal states bordering the area are obliged to

cooperate with one another in various areas, that fall under the Article 123 of

UNCLOS (Djalal, 2001). In fact, Djalal (2003) noted that there have been several

territorial disputes in the SCS; firstly, the disputes over rocks and islands in the

Spratly islands among China, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Brunei.

He also noted that there have been some cases that led to armed conflicts, such as

between China and Vietnam over the Spratly Islands in 1988 and the Paracel Islands

in 1974. Even, there has been an increasing tension over the Scarborough Reefs

and Mischief Reefs in 1995 between the Philippines and China.

China’s Nine-dash line policy

Bill Hayton in his book entitled “The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in

Asia” 2015 argued that apart of UNCLOS, the principle of historical claims to territory

or widely known as historical rights also became the factor that justified the claims

coming from one of the claimants, People’s Republic of China (PRC). China

introduced a specific policy based on the historical rights principle with the so-called

“U-shaped line” or best known as “Nine-dash line” policy overlapping almost the

23

entirety of South China Sea, officially submitted to the United Nations Commission

on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS) on 7 May 2009 (Hayton, 2015).

This action was China’s response to the Malaysia and Vietnam joint submission of

their continental shelf measurements on the southern part of the South China Sea to

the UNCLCS on 6 May 2009 and brought it in line with UNCLOS (Tonnesson, 2010).

China certainly felt geographically disadvantaged as China claimed those areas,

which both Malaysia and Vietnam claimed in their joint submission, belonging to

China. China then completely disagreed with this sort of joint submission through

officially declared a Nine-dash line map internationally and stated that, “China has

indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent

waters, and enjoys sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters as well

as the seabed and subsoil thereof” (Rajagobal, 2016). However, this Nine-dash line

policy seemed to be exacerbating China’s image in the international level as the

historical claims principle is not relevant with the provisions of UNCLOS, meanwhile

China is one of signatories of UNCLOS 1982 (Simon, 2012).

Moves of Claimant States

Although UNCLOS is often referred as the basis for the claimants to claim, the other

claimants, not only China, often ignored and even politicized one of the stipulations

of UNCLOS, notably on Economic Exclusive Zone (EEZ); an island could extend its

territory up to 200 nautical miles radius if that island can sustain human habitation

and or economic life (Hayton, 2015). Therefore, Hayton (2015) noted that there are

at least three claimant states consisting of the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan

which attempted to build civilian facilities such as houses and schools in the islands

they claimed with the purpose to compose human habitation, and also fishing depots

and tourism plans as part of economic life. China has also built new military facilities

in the Fiery Cross Reef, Mischief Reef and Subi Reef in the Spratly islands (Reuters,

2017). Even, some children are studying math in Thitu Island claimed by Philippines

and some monks are doing prayer in Spratly islands; All of these actions are aiming

to support and justify their country’s maritime claims in order to gain territorial

sovereignty situated in the SCS (Hayton, 2015).

24

Forum shopping and forum selection

Given the importance to prevent disputes escalating into the armed conflicts, there

have been some formal forums conducted such as multilateral dialogues (ASEAN-

China Dialogue, ASEAN Regional Forum), bilateral dialogues between the parties

concerned, and even the informal forum through the Indonesian-initiated Workshop

Process to manage the potential conflicts (Djalal, 2003). When Malaysia, Philippines,

Vietnam, and Brunei supported the ASEAN serving as a multilateral venue for SCS

negotiations, China firmly opposed that proposal and China always preferred

bilateral negotiations between the parties concerned (Simon, 2012). China is

absolutely reluctant to internationalize the dispute and thus China completely refused

the Philippines’s request to bring SCS issue on the table discussion in the ASEAN

Regional Forum (ARF) established in 1994 (Swanström, 1999). Swanström (1999)

argued that during the ARF, China consistently objected any ideas from the parties

to institutionalize the SCS issues, even China also denied Vietnam proposal to

declare each party’s EEZ because China was aware that disclosing EEZ to the

public would damage its historical rights principles over the islands it claimed in the

SCS. Prior to this, when ASEAN and China attended a joint summit in December

1997 to discuss SCS, China also expressed its reluctance to talk about the conflict

resolution in the multilateral platform.

The involvement of Indonesia as a non-claimant state and a neutral broker

Regarding bilateral meeting, China has been meeting with all claimant states,

including Taiwan to talk about the SCS issue. Yet, Swanström (1999) noted that

almost all bilateral negotiations conducted by China (China-Vietnam, China-

Philippines, China-Malaysia, China-Brunei, China-Taiwan) ended with failure and

produced nothing. Therefore, third party is required and Indonesia, as a leader of

ASEAN countries and as a non-claimant state, proposed to discuss this sensitive

matter in an informal way through the informal workshop since the formal fora, such

as ASEAN-China dialogue and ARF, are not sufficient to make the claimants

assembled in one place to discuss this issue (Djalal, 2003).

25

The initiator of SCS informal workshop

The Informal Workshop on Managing Potential Conflicts in the South China Sea,

widely known as the South China Sea Workshops (SCSW), was initiated by

Professor Hasyim Djalal in 1990, Indonesia’s ambassador and a leading authority on

ocean law and one of the most influential participants at the Third United Nations

Conference on the Law of the Sea (Song, 2010). Professor Hasyim Djalal was a

Director General of Treaty and Legal Affairs of Indonesian MoFA (1976-1979),

Ambassador/Deputy Permanent Representative of Indonesia to the United Nations

in New York (1981-1983), and also participated fully in the Third UN Law of the Sea

Conference (1973-1982) and in its implementation thereafter. Currently, he is a

member of Indonesian Maritime Council, Special Advisor to the Indonesian Minister

for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, and Special Advisor to Indonesian Naval Chief of

Staff (CIL, n.d.).

There are several reasons why he was concerned about SCS; First, there were

already armed clashes between China and Vietnam in 1974 and 1988 situated in the

SCS. Second, the existence of multiple territorial claims to islands as well as national

jurisdictions in the SCS. Third, a long history of confrontation among the countries

around the SCS and very little of cooperation. Fourth, the importance of the SCS

sea-lines of communications and transportations for regional. Fifth, The increasing

problems of pollution and safety of navigation as well as the protection of marine

environment and ecosystem in the SCS (Djalal, 2003). Those reasons generally

portrayed why SCS has potentials of conflicts and development. As such, Djalal

initiated the SCS Workshop that aimed to manage those potential conflicts in the

SCS. According to Djalal’s book, entitled “Preventive Diplomacy in Southeast Asia:

Lessons Learned” 2003, there have been a series of informal workshops conducted

by Indonesia in which these workshops served as an arena of dialogue and as a

platform for policy-oriented discussion.

The SCS informal workshops

The First SCS Workshop was held in Bali in 1990 and financially assisted by Canada

focusing on confidence building measure and conflict management over maritime

26

issues (Emmers, 2007). However, the main support of this Informal Workshop was

from Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the first workshop was only attended

by ASEAN countries, which means that China and Taiwan were not yet included at

that time (Djalal, 2003). Djalal (2003) noted that China was reluctant to join the

workshop because she was not in favor to make issues being internationalized; let

alone, China argued that its claims to sovereignty over the SCS islands were

undisputable. Since Djalal was aware over the difficulty to bring China on board, he

planned to invite China in the next workshop because he believed that problems

could be addressed if we are able to sit down together discussing the issue. The

Second SCS Workshop was held in Bandung in February 1991, in which he

successfully invited China and other ASEAN member states, even Taiwan to the

Workshop Process. However, all participants mostly discussed on more technical

discussions on the issues of marine scientific research, marine environmental

protection and safety of navigation instead of sovereignty claim problem over islands

in the SCS. Yet, some participants attempted to formalize the meeting through

establishing the secretariat, in which it was failed since the participants expressed

their unwillingness to institutionalize this informal process in the third workshop, held

in Yogyakarta 1992.

Nevertheless, Djalal (2003) noted that there were two important points to highlight in

the second workshop; first, all participants agreed that the use of force should be

avoided in addressing SCS dispute and thus should be settled peacefully. Second,

all participants should conduct self-restraint to reduce the tension and potential

conflicts. These two results would be the seed of fundamental principles to manage

potential conflicts in SCS through cooperation and the establishment of ASEAN

Declaration on the South China Sea in Manila in July 1992 or known as Manila

Declaration (Djalal, 2003). However, Emmers (2007) argued that that there are two

weakness in this Manila Declaration; one, the declaration only promoted an informal

code of conduct based on self-restraint, the non-use of force and the peaceful

resolution of disputes instead of promoting conflict resolution over the problem of

sovereign jurisdiction. Two, the declaration lacked external support as China still

seemed unwilling to accept this Manila declaration and did not follow its principles.

27

The connection between the informal workshop, DOC and COC

Nonetheless, Majumdar (2016) argued that the Second SCS Informal Workshop

initiated by Prof. Hasyim Djalal essentially played a pivotal role, which generated six

Bandung principles that would become the underlying foundation for the

establishment of the code of conduct in the SCS. In 2002, due to the Informal

Workshop, ASEAN-China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China

Sea (DOC) was established and it contained normative framework, albeit not binding

(Majumdar, 2016). Since the DOC did not act as final conflict resolution derived from

ASEAN-China negotiation, its values aimed to make the signatories committed to

preserving peace and stability in the SCS (Duong & Tuan, 2015). According to

Duong and Tuan (2015), the DOC has been recognized as one of the most crucial

political documents ASEAN ever generated because ten principles from the DOC

would enable ASEAN to deeply get involved to manage and observe the SCS

activities, as well as leading to a discussion to start drafting the Code of Conduct

(COC) as a legally binding agreement in 2013. Based on the official document of

DOC, there are some principles that are core to manage SCS issues (Duong &

Tuan, 2015). The Fourth Principle invited the claimant states to manage their

territorial sovereignty disputes by peaceful means instead of use of force, through

consultations and negotiations based on international law, including the 1982

UNCLOS. Meanwhile, the Fifth Principle cordially suggested the claimants to

conduct self-restraint to prevent dispute escalation and the Sixth Principle highly

recommended the parties to conduct bilateral and multilateral cooperation which are

quite technical, such as marine environmental protection, marine scientific research,

safety of navigation, and communication at sea, search and rescue operation, and

combating transnational crimes. Lastly, the Tenth Principle firmly suggested to

establish a legally binding code of conduct for the sake of peace and stability in SCS

(ASEAN Document, 2012).

However, Majumdar (2016) argued that the DOC failed and is not strong enough

because it is still a typical non-binding agreement. Whereas the 2002 DOC is not

working effectively, ASEAN started to discuss drafting COC in September 2013.

According to Duong and Tuan (2015), the first time ASEAN and China discuss COC

in formal meeting was during the 6th China-ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) in

28

September 2013 in Suzhou, China, followed by the 9th China-ASEAN Joint Working

Group meeting. Even though the meeting did not produce a concrete specific

resolution, it posed an agreement on consultation and negotiation progress. The

COC was then encouraged in the 31st ASEAN Conference in Manila in November

2017, followed with the 20th ASEAN-China Summit; these meetings made ASEAN

and China ensured the commitment of parties to abide the values of DOC and Code

of Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) aiming to prevent military incidents in the

SCS (Wicaksono, 2017). On 3 August 2018, ASEAN and China eventually

announced the agreement on a Single Draft South China Sea Code of Conduct

Negotiating Text (SDNT) serving as the fundamental basis for the adoption of a COC

in the SCS (Thayer, 2018). This announcement was conducted at the meeting

ASEAN Foreign Minister in Singapore in 2018 (Wong & Lo, 2018). According to

Thayer (2018), the SDNT document, comprising 19 pages long, reiterated the

previous Framework Code of Conduct, in which it is not orchestrated to be an

instrument to resolve territorial sovereignty and or maritime demarcation issues.

The proposal by Indonesia

Thayer (2018) noted that the SDNT document addressed five main issues;

geographic scope, dispute settlement, duty to cooperate, the role of third parties, and

the legal status of the final Code of Conduct in the SCS. Firstly, since the SDNT did

not clearly define the geographic scope of SCS, Malaysia proposed that the scope of

application/geographic scope of this Negotiating Text should be clearly defined.

Second, there were two proposals to settle the dispute; the first one is Indonesia and

the second is from Vietnam. Yet, the first option, proposed by Indonesia suggesting

that the parties concerned should settle their disputes through a proper mechanism

referred to international law and the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast

Asia at the consent of the concerned parties, gained support from almost all

participants, including Brunei, Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia and China. Third, the

SDNT document proposed duty to cooperate in five main areas; marine

environmental protection, marine scientific research, safety of navigation and

communication at sea, and combating transnational crimes. Fourth, while Brunei

proposed include third party, China proposed to limit and or exclude third party,

especially U.S involvement. Lastly, although the reference of the SDNT document is

29

international law, notably on UNCLOS, it still does not explicitly mention that the

claimants should completely comply with UNCLOS.

China’s move

Wong and Lo (2018) argued that the SDNT document essentially aimed to

considerably reduce the tension and cease the Chinese reclamation project of

building artificial islands, as well as military installations over the islands in the SCS,

containing abundant natural resource, such as gas and oil, claimed and disputed by

the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, and Malaysia. In China’s perspective, the SDNT

would serve as a way to streamline its free trade area in the SCS and China also

promised to conclude the negotiation of the SDNT document in three years’ time

(Nicolas, 2018). Besides, China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, in

his meeting with other Foreign Minister in Singapore on 2 August, 2018, stated that

he highly appreciated and encouraged the agreement of SDNT as form of significant

development of COC negotiation in the SCS; he also officially told the public that

China already sent a few ships in some islands, notably on Spratly islands, islands

disputed by China, Vietnam, Philippines, and Malaysia for the purpose of providing

international public service such as Scientific Research and Meteorology for ASEAN

member states in the upcoming days (FMPRC, 2018).

30

4.1.2 Interpretation of Sovereignty

The geographical map of SCS

Figure 1. This map shows the overlapping territorial and maritime claims to sovereignty amongst the claimant states in the South China Sea. Image from Leslie Lopez, The Straits Times: The South China Sea – Part One: Fish Wars (Lopez, 2016), downloaded from https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/south-china-sea-fish-wars in July

2019.

In the Hayton’s book entitled, ‘The South China Sea: the struggle for power in Asia’

(2015), another South China map was also drawn by I Made Andi Arsana, Professor

of Geodetic and Geomatic Engineering at Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia,

assisting to understand the complexity of disputed islands in the SCS. The map

conveyed the information that the terms South China Sea geography has different

meanings to the other claimant states; Vietnam called it East Sea, the Philippines

called it the West Philippines Sea, China and the rest of the world called it South

China Sea. The map also described about maritime features occupied by the

claimant states. Despite many other disputes in the SCS, the map delineated that

31

there are two major disputes, in which the states are fighting over in the South China

Sea; Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands. Paracels are disputed by China and

Vietnam; China called them as the Xisha while Vietnam called them as the Hoang

Sa. There are some maritime features disputed in the Paracel Islands, such as North

Reef, Prattle Island, Tree Island, Money Island, Discovery Reef, Triton Island, and

many others.

The overlapping claims in the SCS

On the other hand, China called the Spratlys as the Nansha, Vietnam called them as

the Truong Sa, and the Philippines called them as the Kalayaan Island (Hayton,

2015). Based on the map, there have been a few maritime features disputed in the

Spratly Islands, such as Thitu Island, Mischief Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, West York

Island, Subi Reef, Johnson Reef, North Danger Reef, Investigator Shoal,

Scarborough Shoal, Bombay Castle, Louisa Reef, Itu Aba Island, and many others.

The map also displayed that the dispute in the Spratlys is more complexed than in

the Paracels, which only involved Vietnam and China. For instance, Bombay Castle

is claimed by Vietnam and Brunei; Louisa Reef is disputed by Malaysia and Brunei;

Investigator Shoal is claimed by Malaysia; Scarborough Shoal is claimed by

Philippines; Itu Aba Island is claimed by Taiwan; and many others. The map then

portrayed that China’s Nine-Dash Line policy overlapped all maritime features

claimed by the involved parties; Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and even

Taiwan. Whereas Taiwan is a claimant in the Spratlys, it is not officially regarded as

an independent state (Anh & Tuan, 2016).

Maritime sovereignty disputes amongst the claimant states

Meanwhile, Anh and Tuan (2016) explained that the dispute between China and

Vietnam over the Paracel Islands has been taking place since 1954 when China for

the first time sent its armed forces into the Paracels and in 1974, China completely

conquered the whole Paracels archipelago through destroying Vietnamese naval

ships into pieces. Not to mention, in 1988 China successfully occupied 7 features in

the Spratlys and killed 70 soldiers in the Johnson Reef. One of the reasons Vietnam

maintained its claim in Paracels is because Vietnam already declared its sovereignty

32

over the Paracels archipelago in the 1951 San Francisco Conference right after the

Second World War, which was agreed by all delegation. However, China later

denied Vietnam by simply saying that that the Paracels were not part of the

conference (Anh & Tuan, 2016).

Ever since then, both countries are disputing until now. Not only with Vietnam, China

also had quarrel with Philippines over the Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands

(Marshall, 2016). On the other hand in 1988, Brunei established its EEZ of 200

nautical miles that claimed the Louisa Reef which also overlapped with the southern

part of Spratly Islands (Emmers, 2007). Since Louisa Reef is situated on 408 miles

from Vietnam and 120 miles Northwest from Brunei coastline, Brunei was granted

rights over its claim through its continental shelf based on the international law,

UNCLOS. Since China officially declared its sovereignty claim with Nine-Dash Line

policy, it also overlapped Brunei’s maritime claims. Marshall (2016) argued that the

abundance of natural resources and energy supplies in the SCS served as a driving

force for China to claim the area; and China utilized land reclamation as a method to

turn reefs in disputed territory into an island, which projected to have an EEZ.

The recognition of China to Indonesian territory

Apart from this, the China’s Nine-Dash Line policy has ever overlapped the

Indonesian territorial sovereignty, in which China officially claimed Natuna water

within Indonesian EEZ (Hayton, 2015). While there is no territorial dispute between

China and Indonesia, there have been some incidents occurred between Chinese

and maritime security forces in Indonesian EEZ derived from the Natunas (Bentley,

2013). Consequently, Marty Natalegawa, Indonesian Foreign Minister 2009-2014,

protested China’s Nine-Dash Line policy’s claim over Natuna and told the public that

China and Indonesia have no any territorial dispute (Financial Times, 2013). In 2010,

Indonesia sent its protest to the UN Commission on the limits of the Continental

Shelf in accordance with the validity of Nine-Dash Lines (Banyan, 2010). Indonesian

MoFA later obviously stated that the position of Indonesia is clear that we do not

recognized the Nine-Dash Line because it is not relevant with the international law.

33

While Indonesia kept consistently asking for clarification about the Nine-Dash Line

map, China did not give any response (Fabi & Blanchard, 2015). On 12 November

2015, for the first time China’s Foreign Ministry publicly stated that Indonesian side

has no territorial claim to China and Chinese side has no objection to Indonesia’s

sovereignty over the Natuna Island (Yu, 2015). Indonesian current Foreign Minister,

Retno Marsudi, firmly expressed that China has been acknowledging Indonesian

maritime sovereignty or authority of sea territory over Natuna and China has no

issue with that (Brummitt, 2016).

PCA decisions

Furthermore, the Philippines also protested the China’s Nine-Dash Line policy and

instituted through legal proceedings against China to the Permanent Court of

Arbitration (PCA) on 22 January 2013, under the Annex VII of the UNCLOS

regarding China’s historical rights, the source of maritime entitlements in the SCS,

the status of certain maritime features in SCS, and the lawfulness of certain actions

by China in the SCS alleged to be in violation of the Convention. However, on 1

August 2013, China made a Note Verbale to the PCA that China does not accept the

arbitration initiated by the Philippine. Three years afterwards, exactly on 12 July

2016, the PCA gave its award in the arbitration instituted by the Philippines (PCA,

2016). Hereby, the brief description over the official result of PCA Award 2016 (PCA,

2016, p. 1):

No Result Explanation

1 HistoricRightsand

the‘Nine-DashLine’

The tribunal concluded that, to the extent China had

historic rights to resources in the waters of the South

China Sea, such rights were extinguished to the extent

theywereincompatiblewiththeexclusiveeconomiczones

provided for in the Convention. The Tribunal also noted

that,although Chinesenavigatorsand fishermen,aswell

as thoseofotherStates,hadhistoricallymadeuseof the

islandsintheSouthChinaSea,therewasnoevidencethat

Chinahadhistoricallyexercisedexclusivecontroloverthe

34

waters or their resources. The Tribunal concluded that

therewasnolegalbasisforChinatoclaimhistoricrights

toresourceswithintheseaareasfallingwithinthe‘nine-

dashline’.

2 StatusofFeatures TheTribunalconcludedthatnoneoftheSpratlyIslandsis

capable of generating extended maritime zones. The

Tribunal also held that the Spratly Islands cannot

generate maritime zones collectively as a unit. Having

found that none of the features claimed by China was

capable of generating an exclusive economic zone, the

Tribunal found that it could—without delimiting a

boundary—declare thatcertainseaareasarewithin the

exclusiveeconomiczoneofthePhilippines,becausethose

areas are not overlapped by any possible entitlement of

China.

3 Lawfulnessof

ChineseActions

The Tribunal next considered the lawfulness of Chinese

actionsintheSouthChinaSea.Havingfoundthatcertain

areas are within the exclusive economic zone of the

Philippines, the Tribunal found that China had violated

thePhilippines’sovereignrightsinitsexclusiveeconomic

zone by (a) interfering with Philippine fishing and

petroleum exploration, (b) constructing artificial islands

and(c) failingtopreventChinese fishermen fromfishing

inthezone.

4 HarmtoMarine

Environment

The Tribunal considered the effect on the marine

environment of China’s recent large-scale land

reclamationandconstructionofartificialislandsatseven

features in theSpratly Islandsand found thatChinahad

caused severe harm to the coral reef environment and

violated its obligation to preserve and protect fragile

35

ecosystems and the habitat of depleted, threatened, or

endangeredspecies.

5 Aggravationof

Dispute

The Tribunal found, however, that China’s recent large-

scale land reclamation and construction of artificial

islandswas incompatiblewith theobligationsonaState

during dispute resolution proceedings, insofar as China

hasinflictedirreparableharmtothemarineenvironment,

built a largeartificial island in thePhilippines’ exclusive

economic zone, and destroyed evidence of the natural

conditionof features in theSouthChinaSeathat formed

partoftheParties’dispute.

Based on Article 11 of Annex VII Arbitration and United Nations Agreement Article

296 of the Convention, the PCA Award 2016 is final and binding. Article 11 of Annex

VII Arbitration states: “The award shall be final and without appeal, unless the parties

to the dispute have agreed in advance to an appellate procedure. It shall be

complied with by the parties to the dispute”. Article 296 states: “Any decision

rendered by a court or tribunal having jurisdiction under this section shall be final and

shall be complied with by all the parties to the dispute; Any such decision shall have

no binding force except between the parties and in respect of that particular dispute”

(United Nations Agreement, n.d.).

China’s rejection over PCA decisions

Despite China’s assertiveness in the SCS, this is the first time China has been

dealing with International Justice System over its claims in the SCS. Although the

Tribunal conclusion is legally binding, there is no specific mechanism for compelling

it. China’s government emphasized that ‘the Tribunal decision is invalid and has no

binding force; thus China does not accept or recognize it’ (Perlez, 2016). The reason

why China does not embrace The Hague Tribunal’s result denying China’s Nine-

Dash Line policy is that because China still believes over its historical right based

claims, which are inherent with China’s sovereignty; and China has been building at

least fifteen constructions, building four lighthouses, and turning reefs into the

36

artificial islands, as well as developing military installations in some maritime features

it claimed in the SCS (France24, 2016).

Prior to this in 2004, China has officially released its position paper on the matter of

jurisdiction in the SCS Arbitration initiated by the Philippines. The China’s Foreign

Ministry through its position paper officially announced that China has indisputable

sovereignty over the SCS Islands included Paracels and Spratlys and the adjacent

waters; thus the request through legal proceeding instituted by the Philippines in the

Arbitral Tribunal does not have jurisdiction to intervene China’s sovereignty (FMPRC,

2014). However, when PCA conclusion obviously stated that China’s Nine-Dash Line

policy is invalid in a way that it exceeds the limits established by UNCLOS; China’s

military and artificial construction in the maritime features over the Spratlys are also

assessed as a violation of UNCLOS provisions on artificial islands and

environmental protection (Williams, 2016).

Interestingly, on 12 July 2016 China also released its position paper and stated that

‘China stands ready to continue to resolve the relevant disputes peacefully through

negotiation and consultation with the states directly concerned on the basis of

respecting historical facts and in accordance with international law’, which means

that China is still open for bilateral negotiation and complying with the international

law, including UNCLOS, while maintaining its absolute stance over historical claims

as part of its indisputable sovereignty (FMPRC, 2016). Glaser (2016) argued that if

China is still willing to preserve the existence of its Nine-Dash Line after the PCA

Awards, China should alter its strategy into a more accommodating approach to its

rival in the SCS and abide by the stipulations of international law. Even Taiwan also

refused PCA award which concluded that all maritime features in the Spratlys are not

able to generate Exclusive Economic Zone including Itu Aba Island, an Island that

Taiwan already occupied with a military garrison (Almond, 2016).

Meanwhile, Vietnam views this PCA as an important momentum and opportunity to

strengthen its claim in the Paracels, that is also disputed China. When the Arbitration

Tribunal gave its awards to the Philippines, China perceived that the Philippines is

attempting to violate the existing agreements made through negotiations on the SCS

with China, such as bilateral agreements and the DOC 2002; and China assumed

37

the Philippines’s intentions to put political pressure to China instead of seeking

peaceful way to resolve the SCS issues (Tiezzi, 2014). China’s government firmly

stated to the public that as being the first country to discover SCS, China is later

justified to establish the territorial sovereignty and interest over its claims (BBC,

2016a).

4.1.3 Track One and Track Two Diplomacy

China’s strategy in T1 diplomacy

The first formal meeting for discussing SCS issues was within the ASEAN Regional

Forum established in 1994 attended not only by ASEAN member states, but also

China. At that time, China invited all claimant states to discuss this issue in a

peaceful way instead of using the force as a means. However, China refused to

address SCS issues when Philippines attempted to bring the issue on the table,

notably on China’s maritime sovereignty claim in the SCS (Emmers, 2007). Emmers

(2007) argued that the reason China preferred to conduct bilateral meeting instead of

multilateral meeting with the parties concerned is because China could be dominant

during the bilateral negotiation process with the claimant states who are much

weaker than her.

Djalal (2003) noted that China was not intended to discuss the SCS issues in the

ARF even though China kept encouraging the ARF participants to maintain

cooperation, peace, and stability. At that time, China seemed quite unwilling to talk

about deep substantive jurisdiction and territorial issues and the other participants

were also reluctant to conduct bilateral meeting with China. Until the Fourth meeting

of ARF Senior Officials in Malaysia on May 1997, there was no any sign for China to

address the SCS issue although the other participants felt that ARF probably could

be an appropriate platform to internationalize the issues of state’s territorial

sovereignty in the SCS. This situation is similar with UNCLOS. According to Scott

(2016), UNCLOS 1982 established as an international law regulating about state’s

maritime territorial sovereignty is also unable to resolve the territorial disputes

because it does not have any binding enforcement features.

38

The failure of T1 diplomacy

Although the International Tribunal for the law of the Sea (ITLS) was also established

as an independent body under UNCLOS, it still did not work out to mediate the

claimant states. Therefore, in March 1999 the request of initiating SCS resolution in

the formal multilateral meeting was heavily rejected by the People’s Republic of

China. Moreover, on 25 August 2006 China made a Note Verbale to the Secretary

General of United Nations regarding a statutory declaration under Article 298,

explicitly stating that China would not accept and or recognize any decision made by

international court of arbitration in disputes over territorial disputes, maritime

demarcation, and military activities. In the regional level, many meetings have been

conducted between ASEAN-China; and China is consistent with its standing point to

guard its indisputable sovereignty and not profoundly bring SCS issues on the table.

T2 diplomacy as an alternative solution

Given the formal discussion of SCS issues seemed stagnant, Indonesia initiated an

Informal Workshop on Managing Potential Conflicts in the South China Sea in 1990

by Professor Hasyim Djalal, representing as individual to help mediate and reduce

the tension of SCS dispute. It is a series of workshop, serving as T2 informal level of

negotiation. Since the Second Workshop in 1991, China and Taiwan actively

involved in the Informal Workshop. China felt comfortable in joining the workshop

process because the result of workshop is not binding in a way that participants

could refuse any agreements or resolutions, in which other participants might accept

it as well (Lai, 1999).

Lai (1999) noted China consistently insist its claim as part of its indisputable

sovereignty over the Spratlys and Paracels at the Informal Workshop. The workshop

was then annually conducted and frequently talking about the technical projects in

the SCS such as marine scientific research, marine environmental protection, safety

of navigation, legal matters, shipping and communication, and even confidence

building measure. However, Djalal (2003) argued that the SCS Informal Workshop

aimed to not only talk about technical issues, but also served as a platform for policy

oriented discussion.

39

Rules of the informal workshop

Despite the sensitivity of discussing SCS claims on the Spratly Islands and the

Paracel Islands, the workshop still provided a space to talk about it in a very limited

time; for instance, the participants were respectively given five minutes to express

view without entering into discussion, so that the stability and tension could be

managed. On the Sixth Informal Workshop established in Balikpapan in 1995, the

participants already started to talk about the security of multiple claims of maritime

features in the Spratly Islands. The workshop suggested the countries involved to

create transparency of the activities in the disputed area and profoundly discussed

over the need to establish a Code of Conduct in the SCS, in line with the Six

Principles derived from the Second Informal Workshop in Bandung 1991.

The Informal Workshop was also supported by T1 formal institutions, such as

ASEAN, European Community, Non-Aligned Movement, ASEAN Regional Forum

(ARF), and Canada International Development Agency. Even, during the 27th

ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Bangkok in July 1994, ASEAN officially appreciated

Indonesia for its initiative of establishing the Informal Workshop; ASEAN noted that

the parties concerned had already commenced bilateral dialogue, which could

elevate the spirit of cooperation and political will of the involved states so that the

regional peace and stability in the SCS could be preserved (Djalal, 2003).

Nevertheless, Lai (1999) argued that the Informal Workshop lacks strong

enforcement to legally bind the participants, in which the result of this workshop is

still non-binding and the discussion in the workshop is still difficult to be formalized

and or institutionalized. Since Taiwan also attended the workshop, China worried

that the formalization of workshop process would lead to the creation of two Chinas,

which infringed its sovereignty and One China policy. Yet, Swanstrom (1999) viewed

this informal workshop initiated by Indonesia is the most successful negotiations in

the second track diplomacy; the informal rules and procedures in the workshop are

key points which made the claimants able to have a dialogue and talk honestly about

the overlapping claims in the SCS. The SCS Informal workshop also served as a

regional mechanism where scholars and Government officials from China, Taiwan,

and ASEAN member states could meet to exchange views on SCS issues in their

40

personal capacity (Song, 2010). In addition, Djalal (2003) kept the workshop informal

to ensure the people could talk anything openly, otherwise the participants would be

constrained by their government’s policies in a formal meeting.

According to Song (2010), the Informal workshop is not aiming to directly resolve the

prolonged jurisdictional and territorial disputes in the SCS, instead, it attempted to

manage the potential conflicts, develop confidence building measure, and to

exchange views through dialogue on the SCS issues in order to build trust and

mutual understanding among the parties involved, as well as supporting them to

overcome the sovereignty disputes among themselves. Apart from this, Song (2010)

also noted that there are two major challenges in the SCS Workshop; Firstly, the

SCS Workshop lacks strong willingness to discuss non-traditional security issues,

which are relevant in the context of maintaining the stability in SCS, such as sea-

lanes of communication management, institutional mechanism for cooperation, etc.

Secondly, the SCS Workshop lacks intensive discussion over political issues and

current ocean law in order to seek a resolution to resolve the SCS issues.

The essence of technical discussions in the workshop

Nonetheless, Satyawan (2018) noted that since 1990 until 2015 the Informal

workshop has been composing Group of Expert (GE) and five Technical Working

Groups (TWG), consisting of experts responsible to organize joint activities after

gaining approval from their government, namely: TWG on Marine Scientific

Research, TWG on Resource Assessment and Ways of Development, TWG on

Legal Matters, TWG on Marine Environment Protection and TWG on Safety

Navigation, Shipping and Communication. These technical projects initiated by the

Informal Workshop succeeded to maintain stability in the SCS area and even a few

outcomes from the Workshop were transformed into track one diplomacy, DOC and

COC. Djalal (2003) depicted that the technical working groups were firstly

established during the Third Workshop which was conducted in Yogyakarta in 1992,

in which workshop participants put more attention on technical discussions on the

issues of marine scientific research, marine environmental protection and safety of

navigation instead of sovereignty claim problem over islands in the SCS. This is

41

Djalal’s strategy to depoliticize the situation and somehow depoliticization could be

important to reduce the situational tension over the disputes in the SCS.

Besides, Song (2010) highlighted 2 workshops, the 18th workshop and the 19th

workshop, as these showed a moment for the first time China and Taiwan agreed to

work together in managing the potential conflicts in the SCS. Over the past 18 years,

Taiwan’s participation in the SCS Workshop process has been limited mainly China’s

continuing adherence to the One-China principle. The Chinese participants

consistently expressed their opposition whenever they found a written statement, or

a remark made by other participants that implied the recognition of Taiwan as a

country (Song, 2010)

Song (2010) portrayed that there was still no consensus reached on either Taiwan’s

proposal or Chinese proposal at the 17th SCS Workshop. However, the 18th SCS

Workshop, which was conducted in Manado, Indonesia in November 2008,

showcased an unprecedented event, in which China and Taiwan for the first time

agreed to hold a strong cooperation during the workshop’s intersessional period and

later produced a joint proposal, which would be adopted as the China-Taiwan South-

East Asia Network for Education and Training (SEA-NET) joint project at the 19th

SCS Workshop in November 2009. The reasons behind the Chinese willingness to

cooperate with Taiwan was due to the return of the Nationalist Party (KMT) to the

Government in Taiwan in the March 2008 presidential election. Afterwards, the 19th

SCS Workshop, held in Makassar in November 2009, strengthened the willingness

of this cooperation in the workshop process. The SEA-NET project was adopted and

constituted on scientific programs, notably marine sciences, ocean and coastal

management, would be implemented within 2 years, one year in Taiwan (2010) and

the rest in China (2011). As a result, all participants in the workshop acknowledged

this adoption as a concrete result and a milestone in the workshop process. Song

(2010) believed that the adoption of the China-Taiwan SEA-NET joint project at the

nineteenth SCS Workshop could be considered as a big leap towards Taiwan’s

participation in the workshop process.

The latest workshop was the 28th informal SCS workshop conducted in Manado,

North Sulawesi, Indonesia, on 9 – 10 September 2018 (MIMA, 2018). It was

42

attended by 64 participants from ASEAN, China and Taiwan, assisted by the

Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Centre for Southeast Asia Studies,

Indonesia. It focused on the importance to compose confidence building measure

through projects and technical cooperation to build trust amongst the parties involved

so that peace in the South China Sea region could be maintained. Interestingly, the

latest workshop was not funded by the Government of Indonesia solely, but it was

also funded by the Government of China, Vietnam, and Taiwan. This portrayed that

the informal workshop has been recognized by the claimant states as a trusted

platform to assemble and discuss about the SCS issues.

4.1.4 Conclusion

Based on the document analysis, I can draw the following conclusions with regard to

the sub-questions: Firstly, talks and negotiation can be characterized as the players

in the informal workshops are participants from the claimant states, consisting of

China, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. Regarding the moves,

China as one of the participants in the informal workshop made its moves by

rejecting the Philippines proposal to internationalize the SCS issues. Meanwhile,

some participants denied the moves initiated by the other participants to formalize

the informal meeting through establishing the secretariat. However, outside the

workshop, China also made its moves by sending a few ships on Spratly Islands with

the reason of conducting scientific research. Related to the rules, the informal

workshop has rules to avoid the use of force in addressing the SCS issue and thus

should be settled peacefully.

Secondly, regarding notions of sovereignty, there is major distinction between sea

and territory. There are also different references to the notions of sovereignty, some

emphasize Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), China’s Nine-dash line. The EEZ is

about water territory, the Nine-dash line policy is about China’s basis to claim

disputed islands in the SCS in a way that is using its historical rights principles. That

is the first issue. The other is the reference to the normative framework and this has

been expressed by also giving different names to the region of South China and its

disputed islands. For instance, Vietnam called the South China Sea as East Sea in

43

Vietnam and the Philippines called it as the West Philippines Sea. China called the

Paracel Islands the ‘Xisha’ and Vietnam called them the ‘Hoang Sa’. China named

the Spratly Islands the ‘Nansha’, Vietnam named them the ‘Truoang Sa’ and the

Philippines named them the ‘Kalayaan Island Group’. From the aforementioned

above, there are two things related to the notions of sovereignty: one, water and

territory. Two, EEZ vs Nine-dash line. And related to that there are different ways to

call islands. That is a strategy from the claimant states in a way that they used their

own language to name the islands. These are the different claims and notions of

sovereignty.

Thirdly, talking about talk and negotiation, it is very difficult to see them apart from

the role of Indonesia. Because at the end of the day, the actor who established or

the initiator of the informal workshop was from Indonesia, Professor Hasyim Djalal.

Besides, the way Indonesia gathering different players around table was to persuade

them that the informal workshop would focus on more technical discussion and

scientific projects, especially China whereby it was absent in the first informal

workshop. Besides, it is also interesting to see how T1 and T2 diplomacy combined

at the informal workshop. At the workshop, the role of Indonesian MoFA was bigger

than the workshop as the discussion of the workshop was frequently led by the

representative of the Government of Indonesia. In addition, in political reality, when

there was a sovereignty problem between Indonesia and China, Indonesia simply

denied the problem or framed it like a minor problem. This is Indonesia’s strategy to

deal with the big problem.

44

4.2 Results of Interviews

4.2.1 Actors, Moves, and Rules in the South China Sea Workshop

The dispute in the SCS has been occurring for decades. In 1980s, the tension SCS

of dispute was increasing and people were silent to talk about it as it was a sensitive

topic, notably on sovereignty and territorial dispute (Interviewee E; Interviewee H).

According to Interviewee H, around 1970s and 1980s, nobody knew about the

territorial disputes in the SCS, in which there was no clear information about what

Malaysia claimed, what Philippines claimed, what China claimed, etc. Due to Asian

Culture, every state tried to put the claim under the carpet. The involved states

worried about the implication if they talked about that issue to the public; open

confrontation and open conflict would be occurred. Accordingly, the government

officials were silent and there was no any information regarding states’ maritime

delimitation and or maritime claims in the SCS.

Indonesian interests

Since the SCS dispute is situated in the region of Southeast Asia, it affected the

countries near the region, including Indonesia. Indonesia has interest to maintain the

stability in the region and thus offering the space for the claimant states to gather

and meet regularly to discuss something less controversial, yet still related to the

SCS (Interviewee E). Indonesia was the first country that put the issue of SCS on the

table through the establishment of the Managing Potential Conflict in the SCS

Workshop or widely known as the SCS Informal Workshop, initiated by Professor

Hasyim Djalal in 1990 (Interviewee H).

The informal workshops

Interviewee G noted that the reason of the workshop establishment was because

Prof. Hasyim Djalal believed that the workshop could be used as a platform for the

parties concerned to keep talking and communicating so that the tension could be

reduced. The workshop was financially assisted by CIDA (Canada’s Official

Development Assistance) (Interviewee B; Interviewee H). However, Interviewee B

45

noted that since 2000s Canada stop its funding because Canada changed its

interest to help NATO combating terrorism with the issue of post 9/11; and Canada

also felt that the informal workshop had been working well. Interviewee H also

argued that the informal workshop was not only funded by Canada, but also aided by

the Government of Indonesia, in particular Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

(Interviewee H).

Actors and their moves in the workshop

Nevertheless, Interviewee I stated that the SCS Workshop was a form of Track-Two

(T2) diplomacy, in which the workshop was attended by purely academics, scientists,

scholars, and experts discussing about the technical issues in the SCS. However,

now the SCS Informal Workshop is not purely T2 diplomacy anymore, instead it

slightly changed into Track-One and Half diplomacy, in which it indirectly involved

the government because the scientists who are attending the meeting, some of them

are also government officials (Interviewee C; Interviewee E; Interviewee G;

Interviewee H; Interviewee N).

Interviewee G reported that although the workshop he joined was certainly indicating

the T2 diplomacy comprising academics or expert or NGOs, he also found officials

within the same forum, in which these officials coming to the workshop declared

themselves not behalf of their country, but behalf of themselves or personal capacity.

Interviewee E emphasized that although the government were representing

themselves as personal individual, the government could not just take off their suit

and position. Therefore, the participants in the workshop still recognized some

participants as government officials.

Since the workshop is a Track One and Half diplomacy, it involves the government

and non-government participants from scholars, researchers, and experts

(Interviewee N). Interviewee N assumed that the workshop does not talk about the

political negotiation and delimitation issues. Instead, the workshop is more about

research and scientific oriented, in which the issues discussing are very technical,

such as marine desalination, marine environmental protections, etc. The workshop

helps people to share their knowledge, ideas, and discussion, as well as to serve as

46

Confidence Building Measure and Practical Maritime Cooperation in the areas of

SCS. However, the China’s academic says that the view of personal individual does

not reflect the position of Beijing (Interviewee I).

Interviewee I assumed that the scholars attending the workshop must have good

relationships with the government so the scholars have a good understanding of the

government position which enabled them to provide influence to the policymakers

and vice versa; the government is also heavily depended on the advice of academics

since this issue is too sensitive to be discussed on the Track One (T1) diplomacy or

government officials. Indeed, the selected group of people involved in the informal

talks is coming from different stakeholders.

However, Interviewee G felt that it was very hard to distinguish between officials and

non-officials because they cannot just open their attribute and declared that they are

in the workshop on behalf of themselves. So, the parties of the workshop are people

from all countries involved, but in their personal capacity, usually scholars and

NGOs. However, Interviewee B assumed that Track Two and Track One and Half

diplomacy are quite similar in terms of purpose because the outcomes of the

discussion would be meant to be provided to the stakeholders, notably on the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of each and every stakeholder.

Indeed, they represent as individual capacity, but I understand that they are also

from the office. For example, at that time, I remember someone from the

Embassy of Brunei in Jakarta was there. I remember that. He actually introduced

himself as a diplomat even though once again, he always mentioned that I am

from the Embassy of Brunei, but I am here on my personal capacity.

(Interviewee G).

Rules of the workshop

Besides, Interviewee H noted that it was in the Informal workshop that people

eventually knew who claimed what and people started to clarify everything. China

suddenly endorsed the nine-dash line. It was in the workshop. Before, China never

exposed it. And then everybody knew about the nine-dash line. And people also

finally knew that Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, and Brunei were part of claimant

47

states. This is very important because if they sit together here and then talk, it would

be, at least they have already solved one problem, that is distrust and miscalculation.

If there is no meeting at that time, people cannot manage underground which is very

hot and vulnerable due to the distrust and miscalculation. The workshop participants

sit down together around the table to talk in very informal and peaceful way. There is

no legal consequence to them for saying anything. People in the workshop are free

to say anything.

In the workshop, they normally have reports which are distributed to all participants

and also other parties. The reports are not binding but certainly they will be very

important documents for everybody to refer to when it comes to the issue

(Interviewee G). The workshop starts the discussion from the non-sensitive issues,

technical issues, and then it becomes scientific. And then, during the workshop

process, there is a sort of ice breaking to stimulate the representative of the claimant

to talk (Interviewee H). Ever since then, Djalal kept trying to invite the claimants on

the table although China was reluctant to join at the first time; China preferred to use

the bilateral negotiation instead of multilateral meeting. Thus, China did not

participate in the first SCS workshop. Afterwards, Indonesia tried to convince China,

notably when Prof. Hasyim Djalal went to China to say that this is informal, and it

does not prejudice your claim, and finally China is willing to participate in the Second

SCS Workshop until now.

The maneuvering of the workshop

Interviewee B noted that currently, the SCS Workshop is managed by Indonesian

MoFA under the auspices of the Policy Research division, which actively invited the

different stakeholders discussing the issue of SCS. The stakeholders are invited to

set up join cooperation and or join exploration on natural resources in the SCS

among the claimant states in order to reduce the tension. Given that the government

officials were involved in the workshop, the issue of sovereignty is totally sensitive to

be discussed. However, when the sovereignty and territorial maritime topics were

being addressed, the workshop did not continue the discussion and changed into

another topic of discussion due to its sensitivity and volatility (Interviewee B).

Interviewee C noted that the Informal Workshop played an active role in influencing

48

the foreign policy of claimant states. However, it is acknowledged that there are a

few issues that are unlikely to be discussed in the forum. Interestingly, the Informal

Workshop is able to invite Taiwan as one of interested parties, but not as a state.

Interviewee H noted that Taiwan is not recognized as a state and invited to be one of

the participants which concerned over the issue of SCS.

During the workshop, Prof. Hasyim Djalal did not attach the official protocols which

enabled the participants to speak frankly and openly regarding the maritime features,

islands, and anything in the SCS (Interviewee C). Interviewee L noted that the

workshop was successful to make scientists and academics assembled in one place,

which generated some meaningful and positive outcomes such as the establishment

of fisheries and environmental management in 2000s, which was crucial in

influencing in the state cooperation in the SCS. It is aware that there are some

limitations such as military and bureaucracy interests that came took place in

managing the SCS disputes, but eventually the workshop played pivotal role in

providing the advice to the policymakers, which also made the scholars and experts

being respected. Although the workshop is not aiming to directly solve the dispute, it

is aiming to make its recommendations being considered in formal settings

(Interviewee E). Interviewee E reiterated that there is no sort of obligation for the

participants to implement the recommendations from the workshop. Nonetheless, the

gathering of participants in workshop is already a good sign as they still can

communicate and talk over the issues of SCS.

Interviewee G reported that when he joined one of series of workshops, he

discussed technical and scientific issues, such as maritime and marine scientific

research, and there was no any political issue discussed in the workshop. Not to

mention, the involvement of Indonesian MoFA is quite clear in the workshop, not on

behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but as a committee. Besides, China also

participated in the informal talks and it was in the workshop when China for the first

time revealed its historical rights as the basis of its claims in the SCS. However,

there was no clarity whether China claims the entire water inside the nine-dash line

or it claims the features inside the nine-dash line and the surrounding waters which

eventually would make China as an archipelagic state (Interviewee C, 2018).

49

Interviewee C noted that China’s claims on nine-dash line are not made in reference

to the law of the sea UNCLOS 1982. Besides, he assumed that Declaration on Code

of Conduct (DOC) 2002 was one of the achievements of workshop because the

parties concerned brought home the outcomes generated from the workshop and

communicated these outcomes with their respective Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Interviewee H noted that from the information gained the workshop, the parties could

make mapping over the positions of claimant states in the workshop. As solving the

territorial sovereignty dispute is beyond the mandate of the workshop, DOC was then

established to identify the root cause of problem. DOC is currently attempting to

promote self-restraint, confidence building measure, and preventive diplomacy. DOC

obtained lots of information from the workshop. Due to the workshop, DOC is able to

limit the scope of the problem. Most importantly, DOC tried to convince the claimant

states to resolve the dispute in a peaceful manner instead of using the force.

Indonesia’s strategy

Besides, when the Informal Workshop was conducted, Indonesia ensured that all

parties were involved and invited in their capacity, either as personal individual or

government officials. Afterwards, the report was made based on the activities

occurred in the workshop and then distributed to all parties (Interviewee G). The

workshop then served to build the same understanding and the Confidence Building

Measure among the claimant states so that they could work together to resolve the

dispute in the SCS since the SCS dispute was not only about territorial conflict, but

also containing crime and maritime security (Interviewee D). Interviewee C noted

that given that there were no direct consequences from the workshop, the parties felt

comfortable to express their view honestly regarding the SCS and the decisions

made in the workshop was based on consensus among all parties involved. In

addition, the workshop served as a platform of dialogue or a venue whereby people

could speak openly so that the issues in the SCS could be addressed and the

information in the workshop could be formulated as policy recommendations

although there was no any guarantee that those recommendation would be

completely adopted by their respective governments (Interviewee E).

50

The workshop as an arena of dialogue

According to Interviewee G, the objective of workshop is dealing with potential

conflict meaning that Indonesia or another participant does not want the conflict

emerged into bad interaction such as in war. Therefore, the workshop consistently

reaffirms that the parties concerned should treat this dispute and interact in a

peaceful way during the informal talks in the SCS workshop. Interviewee E described

that the technical agenda in the workshop could attract the claimant states to talk by

framing the technical issues relevant with claimants’ interests. For instance, the

issue of sea-level rise. Since all claimants were claiming small maritime features

either rocks or just small islands and believed that sea-level rise was happening,

those features could be literally drowning due to the sea-level rise. If those features

drowned, then the claimants would have no such claim. Therefore, they came to the

workshop to discuss about the sea-level rise, as well as marine protected areas in

the SCS. Since the workshop served as the informal talks, there was no any specific

rules. The workshop was dedicated to be a venue to make the parties concerned

meeting and discussing less controversial issues (Interviewee E). The reason why

Prof. Hasyim Djalal invited academics into the workshop was to hope that the

workshop could produce positive outcomes which provided benefits not only for the

claimants states, but also for all countries in the region of Southeast Asia

(Interviewee K).

However, Interviewee I noted that since the workshop served as an avenue for

testing ideas, it also served as an avenue for asking difficult questions. In the SCS

Informal Workshop, there is a formal area of discussion and an informal area of

discussion. During the informal area of discussion, such as during coffee break or

during dinners, the parties used that moment to ask those difficult questions. Yet, the

participants are already aware that there are some lines that they cannot trespass,

including sovereignty issues. According to Interviewee H and Interviewee I, the best

outcome of this workshop is able to gather all parties involved together and sit

around the table to discuss the SCS issues, in which this was considerably unlikely

to be conducted through government meeting or T1 diplomacy due to the resistance

derived from claimant states. When Prof. Hasyim Djalal moderated the workshop, he

started the discussion from the non-sensitive issue and gave opportunity to all

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participants to talk freely without touching the sovereignty issue. However, the

people in the workshop preferred to be silent at the very beginning and Prof. Djalal

took initiative to break the ice and or to make the situation liquid and relaxed so that

it could be effective to stimulate the representative of claimant states to talk, albeit on

behalf of personal capacity (Interviewee H).

Nevertheless, Interviewee G felt that since the workshop is not a form of official

negotiation, there is neither such an agreement nor consensus in the workshop.

After scientists and experts presented their view, the other participants addressed

some questions to them; this question and answer session was then recorded and

documented. However, Interviewee H depicted that the decision-making process in

the workshop is based on consensus, if one disagrees then it cannot be decided. In

addition, when another participant unintentionally touches the issue of sovereignty

during the workshop, the moderator would try to skip the issue. Since it is very

informal talk, there is sort of self-restraint for delegates not too much talking about

the issue (Interviewee H). If disagreement happens in the workshop, it does not

become a problem because the parties concerned have already established

personal connections among each other and they could just talk to each other

directly in the informal session of discussion of the workshop (Interviewee I).

Interviewee I noted that the weakness of workshops is that the participants are not

decision-makers and or policy-makers, instead, they are just academics, experts

coming from think tanks, meaning that it is not legally binding. The involvement of

the navy, coast guards, local leaders in the coastal communities is necessary

because those affected by the dispute are those that would be able to make changes

over the SCS dispute.

Activities before, during and after the workshop

According to Interviewee E, there is a preparation before the workshop is being

conducted. The preparation is similar with another normal workshop. A team from

Indonesia is established to prepare what kind of topics to be incorporated in the

discussion. If one of participants has a new fact related to the SCS issues, such as

research on sea level rise, this person is then preparing the presentations for the

workshop. During the discussion, the participants present their research, followed

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with questions and answer sessions. Afterwards, the participants prepare a resume

or short conclusion of the workshop and they make sort of arrangement to meet

regularly in the next year.

After the workshop, the committee holds a small review on the result of workshop.

The review is very technical. For example, what is the activity to be done prior to

next workshop? As the workshop is going to be convened regularly, the committee is

preparing the substance for the next meeting and what kind of issues that should be

brought to support the discussion on the next meeting. Accordingly, the workshop is

very informal; it is a common second track workshop. Through the establishment of

informal workshop, Indonesia aimed to get participants from claimant states

assembled and then talk among themselves and tried to get information as much as

possible from one to the other (Interviewee E). Based on well-informed information

and data from the workshop, the parties could interpret what happened on the

ground. The informal talk process is conducted in a peaceful and conducive way.

This is the way on how the workshop can reduce the tension in the SCS dispute.

Trust building in the workshop

In addition, when Interviewee H joined one of the workshops, he found some

confusing lines in the map of SCS, such as a line claimed by Vietnam, Philippines.

When he directly checked the line with Vietnam and Philippines in the SCS

Workshop, both countries denied it and say that only this area is part of their claims,

meaning that the workshop gave opportunity for participants to identify and clarify

claims made by the claimant states. The best part of workshop is that the parties are

not discussing either territoriality or sovereignty. Instead, they are discussing

something that is correlated to every claimant but not the territoriality (Interviewee E).

Because once the sovereignty issue is addressed, the topic becomes controversial

and people will retreat. If participants leave the room, then there is no discussion in

the workshop. If there is no discussion, then there is no a trust building venue.

The trust should be constantly developed among the parties involved through having

less controversial discussions. Interviewee I noted that the lessons learned from the

workshop is that even though there are unresolved territorial waters and or disputed

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waters on the ground, the Informal workshop can still take place, meaning that trust

is the biggest achievement of the workshop. Therefore, the parties concerned

representing claimant states are still willing to sit around the table and meet regularly

to discuss the SCS issues, as well as to work together with the purpose to maintain

the regional stability, safety of the waters and freedom of trade routes (Interviewee

E; Interviewee I).

4.2.2 Views on Sovereignty by Interviewees

Distinction between maritime features and maritime boundaries

To understand the complexity of territorial sovereignty dispute in the SCS,

Interviewee H distinguished the problem into two categories; maritime features and

maritime boundaries. Maritime features are basically referring to islands or rocks or

any features, in which the problem constituted which countries owned which islands

or rocks or any features in the area of SCS. The notion of maritime features is well-

known as title to islands or title to rocks. Meanwhile, maritime boundaries are

attributing to waters and zones. For instance, if one claimant state claims a Spratly

Island or Paracel Island, the claimant will also claim how far the maritime zone of its

claim.

Interviewee B delineated that based on the convention of the law of the sea, there

are four areas of maritime sovereignty; 12 nautical miles boundary, 24 nautical miles,

200 Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), and High Seas. Firstly, 12 nautical miles

boundary is an area where states have jurisdiction and full control over their

territorial water. Small islands or rocks or low tide elevation in the SCS will have at

least 12 nautical miles of territorial sea (Interviewee G). Secondly, 24 nautical miles

boundary is an extension of zone where jurisdiction goes until customs, however,

states sometimes do not have full legal jurisdiction over that case. Thirdly, 200

Exclusive Economic Zone is a maritime zone in which states are permitted to exploit

and explore that natural resources there. Lastly, High Seas or known as international

waters are maritime zone determined by international regulations and not by national

jurisdiction.

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Difficulty of solving maritime sovereignty

Nevertheless, Interviewee H emphasized that the root cause of dispute lied in the

maritime features, who owned the islands or rocks or any features in the SCS. The

problem is getting more complexed when the maritime features are not solved yet,

but claimant states already projected the maritime zone from the title that they

claimed. The dispute in the SCS can only be resolved if the claimant states are

willing to settle the dispute amongst themselves. Before the establishment of United

Nations (UN), the territorial dispute was solved through conquering or occupation,

such as in the first world war or second world war. However, after the UN Charter,

the UN forbids the use of force for territorial acquisitions; thus, the use of force is no

longer valid. Currently, the UN regulates that the territorial disputes should be settled

through negotiations. Yet, territorial dispute is utterly hard to negotiate. Even, it is

completely impossible to compromise as the territorial dispute is about the absolute

position.

When a country attempts to compromise its national territory, its home parliament

will heavily reject that proposal since territory has been part of national sovereignty

(Interviewee H). Interviewee H argued that after the UN Charter is established, there

is no single territorial dispute in the world which is successfully resolved by bilateral

negotiation and hence, country always needs third party to get involved, such as

Timor Leste dispute (settled with third party, UN), Peda Branka dispute (settled with

third party, ICJ). However, no claimant state is willing to go to the third party until

now; therefore, if claimant states are still relied on having direct negotiation or

bilateral negotiation, then they will probably not acquire any progress over the

dispute settlement in the SCS.

Exclusion of Taiwan as a claimant state

According to Interviewee E, the maritime dispute in the SCS is not possible to be

overcome in the near future since there is no clarity over the dispute itself, which

countries claim which islands. Although there have been lots of articles and rumors,

there is no official statement from claimant states to clearly clarify their claims in the

SCS. Interviewee B and Interviewee M noted that there have been several countries

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involved in the dispute of SCS, such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei,

and China. However, Taiwan should also be included as a party to the SCS dispute

since Taiwan has claimed some maritime features and conducted military operation

with their navy in the SCS (Interviewee I; Interviewee K). Interviewee I reported that

claimant states cannot just ignore Taiwan since a few years ago there was a fishing

dispute situated in the SCS between Taiwan and the Philippines, whereby Taiwan’s

navy eventually arrested and shot some Filipino fishermen.

This occurrence clearly led those two disputed countries to be party in the SCS

dispute. Interviewee I and Interviewee F contended that Taiwan is not recognized as

an independent state by United Nations and other claimants states due to the One

China policy. One China policy constitutes a policy which is only recognizing one

China in the world, the People’s Republic of China (Interviewee G). Accordingly, the

problem is getting more complexed when Taiwan is not included in the Track One

(T1) Negotiation regarding Code of Conduct (COC) whereas Taiwan has claimed a

few islands, which are disputed in the SCS (Interviewee I).

The implications of China’s Nine-dash line

Besides, while the other claimant states are only claiming some maritime features,

China claimed all maritime features in the whole SCS with its Nine-Dash Line policy

based on historical rights, overlapping with all claimant states. For instance,

Malaysia claimed some features which are also claimed by Brunei, and Philippines.

The Philippines could overlap with Malaysia and Vietnam. However, China’s claims

overlapped with all claimant states instead of one or two parties involved

(Interviewee H). The so-called Nine-Dash Line policy has been submitted for the first

time to the United Nations in 2009 (Interviewee G). Since China’s Nine-Dash Line

policy overlapped all maritime features in the SCS, it also overlapped Indonesian

sovereignty, Natuna Islands (Interviewee A).

When China submitted its Nine-Dash Line to the United Nations, Indonesia also

submitted a letter asking for clarification to the UN and China did not give any

respond over the letter (Interviewee I). Yet, Interviewee G assumed that there is a

potential overlapping claim or overlapping entitlement between China and Indonesia

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as a non-claimant state. While entitlement is defined as a space that a country is

entitled to, which is based on the law of the sea convention, claim means a country’s

unilateral action drawing the line up based on its entitlement. Although Indonesia has

no problem in terms of territory or land, Indonesia seems to have potential dispute

with Malaysia and China in the SCS. China perceived that its Nine-Dash Line EEZ

overlapped with Indonesia’s EEZ based on its historical claim (Interviewee G).

However, based on the international law, Indonesia has a clear position as a non-

claimant state and does not have any disputes with any claimant states in the area of

SCS (Interviewee C; Interviewee D; Interviewee E; Interviewee F; Interviewee H;

Interviewee J; Interviewee K). Interviewee C also noted that Indonesia does not

recognize China’s Nine-Dash Line policy as Indonesian territorial sovereignty is

based on the international law of the sea; and the law of the sea does not

acknowledge the China’s policy (Interviewee C).

Interviewee D emphasized that concerning territorial sovereignty, Indonesia based

its sovereignty to the UNCLOS as part of the international recognition of the law of

the sea; thus, Indonesia is firm that its sovereignty is non-negotiable. Meanwhile,

China’s claims with historical rights based are not acknowledged by the international

law, UNCLOS. Therefore, there is no overlapping claims between China and

Indonesia since China’s claims are not legitimate and rejected by the international

law (Interviewee E). Interviewee K reported that after Indonesian President Joko

Widodo conducted bilateral visit to China in 2015, a few days afterwards Chinese

Prime Minister Xi Jinping stated that China fully acknowledged that Natuna Islands

belong to Indonesian sovereignty.

Sovereignty claims by other claimant states

Apart from this, there have been some maritime features claimed by the claimant

states, including Scarborough reef claimed by the Philippines. Since the

Scarborough reef is situated within the territory of the Philippines, the Philippines

gained full control over its territory up to 12 nautical miles as part its territorial

sovereignty (Interviewee B). Due to the China’s Nine-Dash Line policy, China also

claimed Scarborough reef, in which it is clearly within the territory of the Philippines

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mainland. Hence, the Philippines put its military operation such as Naval vessel and

the Sierra vessel to maintain control over the Scarborough reef.

Meanwhile, Interviewee B noted that Vietnam also generated a counter policy to

China by deploying its oil rigs to conduct energy exploration in its claimed features

as Vietnam believed that those maritime features still belong to Vietnam. China then

protested Vietnam for that action as China perceived that Vietnam encroached

Chinese territorial waters. Interviewee K argued that China is getting more

aggressive through its action of conducting reclamation and military building in its

islands which are claimed in the SCS. China has been aware that SCS contained

enormous natural resources, notably mineral and gas as China needs those to

maintain its industrial and mining development. Interviewee L also noted that the

reason why China secured the sea lines of communication in the SCS is because

China is a country heavily relied on the energy, in which there are around 1.3 billion

people living in China; and thus, China requires more gas and oil to support its

industrial development to maintain its welfare.

UNCLOS and ARF

Since most of claimant of states are part of ASEAN, they are heavily relied to

ASEAN to resolve the dispute. Interviewee F and Interviewee K contended that

ASEAN is a multilateral organization which aimed to preserve the peace and stability

in the region and thus, it prevailed to prevent the conflict occurred in the region while

attempting to build the trust through consensus amongst the member states. ASEAN

has constantly been upholding the existing international order, notably UNCLOS

1982 and is actively involved in promoting SCS as ASEAN water with the purpose to

provide free, open, and safe access in the SCS (Interviewee B). Regarding the SCS

dispute, ASEAN has been established ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) to help

overcome the dispute (Interviewee F). Still, ASEAN is not able to settle the dispute

as ASEAN is not built to be a dispute settlement body (Interviewee F; Interviewee H).

Interviewee G argued that the SCS conflict should be addressed by bilateral

negotiation between the parties involved.

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However, ASEAN is not strong enough to interfere the dispute and make a

resolution. ASEAN lacked power and influence to enforce the parties involved with a

binding agreement (Interviewee I). Interviewee A noted that although ASEAN has

recently generated Declaration on the Conduct (DOC) and Code of Conduct (COC),

there is still no any single concrete dispute settlement produced from the COC

negotiation. However, DOC and COC negotiation have successfully made the

claimant states conducting self-restraint and continuing negotiation among

themselves in order to maintain the regional stability (Interviewee C; Interviewee H).

DOC and COC

Interviewee J also portrayed that the COC agreement signed in August 2017 aimed

to make all parties concerned preserve the security and stability as it could also

possibly affect the economic stability for the states in the region of SCS. Since the

COC is one of the goals of DOC and has generated Single Draft Negotiating Text

(SDNT) in ASEAN Summit in November 2018, it needs to be well-implemented

through consensus at the Ministerial level meeting or at the working group level

(Interviewee K; Interviewee N). Interviewee L argued that China’s promise to

conclude the SDNT in 2021 is only a camouflage, in which President Xi Jinping could

claim that agreement as his diplomatic victory for China related to the dispute in the

SCS, so that he could have a great opportunity to be reelected as the China’s

President for the second term.

Nonetheless, ASEAN seems incapable to manage the dispute even though it is

already equipped with the SDNT from COC negotiation; and thus, External powers,

could possibly be involved in handling the dispute since ASEAN has completely

failed to deal with the maritime delimitation dispute in the SCS (Interviewee L).

However, Interviewee H argued that there is no any single claimant state willing to

involve third party since the dispute itself is fundamentally related to the national

sovereignty, and the claimant states never have an intention to compromise their

national jurisdiction and maritime territorial sovereignty.

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PCA Awards 2016

Nevertheless in 2016, the Philippines went to the Permanent Court of Arbitration

(PCA) in the Hague reporting its protest of overlapping claims with China in the SCS.

Interviewee A noted that after the Philippines gained the arbitration award by the

PCA against China, Malaysia and Vietnam could use the arbitration to negotiate their

maritime and delimitation claims against China policy. However, the PCA result

cannot be used to resolve the problem since it is addressing issues arising from

UNCLOS; and UNCLOS is not the convention that determines which island belonged

to which country.

While the issue of island ownership (which island belonged to which country) is

under the international law, UNCLOS is only addressing how long the nautical miles

a country can claim in terms of territorial sea, maritime zone, continental shelf, and

EEZ if that country owned an island or land that could sustain human habitation

(Interviewee H). Interviewee H argued that UNCLOS is not a body deciding which

islands belonged to which states, instead, it is only addressing maritime waters or

zones deriving from maritime features the claimant states claimed in the SCS.

Besides, Interviewee G reported that based on the valid decision of PCA, there are

no features over the SCS that are entitled to more than 12 nautical miles of territorial

sea, meaning that features claimed by the claimants are not considered as a full

island, and only considered as a merely rock or low tide elevation. One of the PCA

decisions is that the availability of natural resources within the island and external

support from the mainland should be able to support human habitation. Although the

claimants have built artificial islands and military buildings, those are not

acknowledged by the PCA decisions as an island having 200 nautical miles

Exclusive Economic Zone.

After the result of PCA, people started to talk about the disputes in the SCS more

intensively (Interviewee C). The PCA result postulated that it becomes a clear

message for China that its claims are not referring to the law of the sea, territorial

claims in the SCS should be solved immediately, and all conflicting parties should

respect the law of the sea. Even though the Philippines won the PCA arbitration

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awards, the Philippines has not taken any initiative to take advantage of its victory,

which is there has yet response from the Philippines related to the PCA conclusion

(Interviewee I). The PCA result also invalidated China’s Nine-Dash Line policy and

thus, China lowered its assertiveness to promote its policy (Interviewee H;

Interviewee I).

4.2.3 Indonesian diplomatic skills in the South China Sea dispute

According to Interviewee H, there are two ways to understand Indonesian position in

the South China Sea (SCS) dispute. In the first way, Indonesia is not a claimant

state, meaning that it does not claim any feature in the SCS. Indonesian features are

also not claimed by the other states. It is different with the other claimants who

competed to claim the Spratly or Paracel Islands in the SCS. The term claimant can

only be relevant if whether or not a state is claiming a feature in the SCS.

Accordingly, in the first cluster to territory or question of sovereignty, Indonesia is

officially not a claimant state.

Indonesia’s interests

However, in the second way, Indonesia is certainly an interested party. Based on the

preamble of the Indonesia’s constitution, Indonesia should create a peaceful

international order, in which Indonesia has responsibility to maintain the regional

stability in the South East Asia region. Therefore, Indonesia is willing to participate

and playing role as a mediator in the dispute over the SCS. Since the claimant states

acknowledged Indonesia as a country that has no interest on the question of

sovereignty, Indonesia played its role as an honest broker to reduce the tension in

the SCS dispute (Interviewee B; Interviewee C; Interviewee D; Interviewee E;

Interviewee G; Interviewee H; Interviewee K; Interviewee L). Interviewee C argued

the way Indonesia reducing the tension is through setting up the norms and rules in

the informal workshop of managing potential conflict in the SCS in the early 1990s,

followed with joint working group on the implementation of Declaration on Code of

Conduct (DOC). Although the territorial dispute is still difficult to be resolved,

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Indonesia attempted to exercise this diplomatic approach within the agreed norms

and rules, as a platform to engage China diplomatically.

As Indonesia also respects international rules and norms, Indonesia followed the

decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in 2016 that the Chinese nine-

dash line policy is invalid the SCS (Interviewee B; Interviewee G). Since there is no

legality of the nine-dash line policy, Indonesia government thus does not recognize

it, in which it is also not in accordance with the law of the sea. Interviewee E believed

that Indonesia perceived the dispute as a threat to the stability of the region. That is

why, Indonesia has interest to ensure that the dispute will not be turning into

something bad. Therefore, Indonesia constantly encourages the parties of the

dispute to always sit down together, to talk regularly, and then to discuss something

less controversial or less disputable in the informal workshop (Interviewee E).

However, Interviewee A assumed that Indonesia must have an interest in the conflict

prevention over the dispute in the SCS. He further suggested that Indonesia should

maintain its neutrality by taking one side, not based on partisanship, but based on

the principle of international law, in which China essentially violated, such as Treaty

of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), DOC, the Reclamation and Militarization in the

SCS, etc. However, Interviewee B assumed that the interest of Indonesia to mediate

the dispute is not only about maintaining the stability of the region per se, Indonesia

also concerns the SCS as a principal of sea line of trade of communication and also

mobility of goods arriving in Indonesia.

If there is a disruption of sea line in the SCS, there will be an increase in prices and

scarcity of goods, in which it could affect the Indonesian economic indirectly. Since

the SCS has also been an important artery for the air travel, it could slow down the

movement of people if there is a blocking in the SCS due to the territorial dispute

amongst the claimant states. Interviewee B also criticized the current Indonesian

Minister of Foreign Affairs that her current focus is about the conflict in Palestine and

the Indonesian role in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) instead of the

dispute in the SCS.

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Indonesia as a broker

However, Interviewee D rejected the assumption by saying that the SCS is still

Indonesian top priority concern as it is related to the Indonesian national interest.

Interviewee C emphasized that Indonesia has been very active in attempting to

reduce the tension of SCS dispute to maintain the regional stability. Being a non-

claimant state makes Indonesia obtaining both limitation and opportunity to resolve

the dispute. He further explained that since Indonesia is not a party to the dispute, it

limits Indonesia’s involvement in trying to resolve the territorial dispute itself as it

should be solved by the parties themselves. As Indonesia realized that there is no

dispute solved bilaterally, Indonesia takes position as a third party, in which it gives

Indonesia an opportunity to be a peace broker in trying to reduce the tension. As a

non-claimant state, Indonesia has more diplomatic space to gather all conflicting

parties to socialize norms, to set up rules, so that the conflicting parties in the SCS

would behave according to the agreed international law and norms.

Besides, Interviewee D asserted that Indonesia has been considered as an

important player by the claimants even though it is not a conflicting party in the SCS.

It was proven during the announcement of PCA decisions in 2016 in Den Haag.

Before the PCA awards were announced in the court, all countries participating the

PCA looked at Indonesia and were curious about Indonesian position. After the PCA

results were announced, all claimant states were waiting for the Indonesian

response over the PCA awards 2016. Afterwards, Indonesia responded the PCA

awards by uttering a statement that Indonesia is still neutral in responding to the

PCA decisions and still being a non-claimant state. This condition portrayed that

Indonesia played a pivotal role over the SCS dispute, in the perspective of claimant

states.

He further emphasized that there have been five points whereby Indonesia conveyed

those as a concrete form of its standing position in responding towards the PCA

awards 2016 in Den Haag; Being self-restraint, continue the negotiation among the

claimant states, implementation of DOC, continue the negotiation of COC, and

respect to the international law. He pointed out that self-restraint is very important

and should be applied for all the conflicting parties who have interests over the SCS.

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Indonesia has also conducted some programs and workshops as part of contribution

to the implementation of DOC. Indonesia has also ensured that the COC process is

running smoothly by proposing some ideas this year and it worked, as few years ago

the COC progress was quite stagnant.

Apart from this, there have been some assumptions that China has overlapping

claim with Indonesia. Interviewee H heavily rejected those claims by saying that

Indonesian position is clearly based on the international law, UNCLOS. Meanwhile,

China has made a unilateral claim which is based on the history. The China’s

historical claim, unfortunately, has no basis and is not related to the international law.

Even, the PCA decisions have announced that the China’s nine-dash line is invalid

policy in the SCS. When China officially declared its nine-dash line for the first time

in 2009, Indonesia sent a diplomatic note to United Nations in 2009, asking the

China’s clarification over the claim.

However, China never replied it, which eventually made Indonesia never recognized

the nine-dash line policy. Indonesia also applied the rules-based behavior, which

means that Indonesia based its policy based on the international law, while historical

claims were not in accordance with the international good order (Interviewee F).

Interviewee G also underpinned that according to the law of the sea convention,

China’s entitlement has no entitlement that is overlapped with Indonesian

entitlement. Therefore, it seemed that there is no maritime dispute and or maritime

boundary delimitation between Indonesia and China.

The maneuvers of Indonesia through the informal workshops

Since Indonesia has been entrusted to be an honest broker in SCS dispute,

Indonesia attempted to reduce the tension by building trust amongst the claimant

states through the establishment of informal workshop (Interviewee E). Interviewee

C highlighted that Indonesia exercised the informal workshop as a track two

diplomacy to deal with SCS dispute. He claimed that DOC is a concrete product of

the informal workshop. The way informal workshop worked was by involving not only

scholars and experts, but also senior officials or influential leaders from respective

countries during the discussion in the workshop. During the workshop, Indonesia

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along with other ASEAN member states set up the norms and the rules, so that the

participants attending the workshop could have a dialogue under the same agreed

norms and rules. The results of the workshop became more effective when they

brought the results to their home countries, communicating with their respective

Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

However, Interviewee G emphasized that although it is not allowed to talk about

sensitive issues in the workshop, participants sometimes cannot avoid talking about

sensitive issue, as the party involved in the workshop is from different countries with

different opinion. He further described that there was a moment where one or two

speakers touched upon the spot or sensitive issue even though they did not mean to

do it. The reaction coming from the other parties was that they raised a question or

clarification about their ownership in the SCS and some of them did not talk much

about that particular topic.

Afterwards, Indonesia as the moderator of the informal workshop would amicably

alter the direction of the conversation. Indonesia realized that the topic of ownership

or island is certainly about the sovereignty issue. Thus, Indonesia does not want the

conversation continued. Indonesia restrained itself from commenting the sovereignty

and reminded the participants that based on the agreed rules, it is not allowed to

further discuss the issue of sovereignty. That is how Indonesia dealt with the

sensitivities and substantive views on sovereignty. Indonesia also depoliticized the

informal workshop by allowing the parties to talk about scientific matters (Interviewee

G). If a participant tried to provoke the others by touching the sovereignty topic,

Indonesia would wisely remind them about the workshop rules, which do not allow

the parties to discuss sensitive and controversial issue, and kindly suggested the

participants to talk about technical issues and/or scientific issues. That is how

Indonesia conducted the preventive action. Apart of sovereignty topic, all parties

could have discussion about any topic related to the SCS issue during the informal

workshop. Therefore, Interviewee H assumed that Indonesia exerted a sort of

cocktail diplomacy, in which people could talk anything with anybody without any

restraint in the informal workshop of SCS.

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Besides, Indonesia has also played its track one diplomacy through the Indonesian

Policy of Global Maritime Fulcrum (GMF) (Interviewee E). The GMF was introduced

by the Indonesian President Joko Widodo during the presidential debate in 2014.

The GMF contained five pillars and was commenced with development of White

Paper on Indonesian Maritime diplomacy. Until now, the government is still finalizing

the document. He generally described that the document has a few main principles,

such as independent and proactive, development oriented, and rules-based

approach. It also contained substantive information related to Indonesian free and

active foreign policy, geographical situation of Indonesia, and challenges on maritime

issues.

There are four plans of Indonesia’s maritime diplomacy, such as; the protection of

Indonesian sovereignty and sovereign rights, ensuring the welfare of Indonesian

citizens and interconnection between regions in Indonesia, maintaining stability in

the region based on the international law, and increasing national capacity and

providing capacity building for the Indonesian partners and counterparts in the pacific

and Africa in maritime issues. The issue of SCS is related to one of these action

plans, maintaining the regional stability based on the international law. Therefore,

Indonesia is very active in encouraging the parties involved in the SCS dispute to

abide by the international law (Interviewee E).

Indonesia also further suggested that all parties to exercise self-restraint to refrain

from any action that could escalate the tension. The informal workshop aimed to

build the trust among the conflicting parties to cooperate together to resolve the

territorial dispute. The trust could make them realized that the instability will not

benefit any party. The trust that will lead them working together on the same page,

through the implementation of DOC and COC even though one of the parties, China,

preferred bilateral way to solve the dispute. Regarding the COC, Indonesia

highlighted the COC single draft negotiating text (SDNT) with the international

principles, UNCLOS principles, rules based and the peaceful settlement of the

dispute (Interviewee H). The COC should be amicable to all the conflicting parties in

the SCS and Indonesia thus promoted the COC to be designed as a platform to

accommodate and create a good atmosphere for the claimant states to negotiate

dispute between themselves.

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Besides, Indonesia has also established the CUSE (Counter for the Unplanned and

Encounter at Sea), in which it is a navy agreement among the ASEAN member

states and it serves as a platform for communicating each other for everything

happened in the SCS (Interviewee D). Since some claimant states have been

conducting reclamation and militarization in the SCS, it could create the instability in

the region if the claimants use military power in the SCS. Interviewee H assumed

that when an incident takes place on the ground, sometimes Indonesia and other

claimants are blank in information. When they have no information about what

happened, it could create more tension, more distrust and more misunderstanding.

As the CUSE served as submarine cables of hotline communication among MOFAs

in ASEAN member states including China which is a new initiative under ASEAN-

China agreement to communicate everything happened in the SCS, it could deprive

the unnecessary incident occurred in the SCS. CUSE is an agreement that makes

the claimant states talk and communicate if there is an incident occurred

unintentionally; and through these submarine cables, miscalculations could

eventually be avoided.

4.2.4 Conclusion

Based on the result of interviews, I can draw the following conclusions with regard to

the sub-questions: Firstly, the talks and negotiations can be characterized as the

players at the informal workshops consisted of the scientists, experts and the

representatives from the claimant states but in their personal capacity. As the

workshop was attended by the participants from the claimants, the results of the

informal workshop could potentially influence the claimants’ foreign policy related to

the SCS. The informal workshops focused on more technical cooperation and

scientific projects to depoliticize the issues and to build trust amongst the conflicting

parties. The results of the workshop were also not binding to the claimants, so that

they could express their views honestly and openly. That is the rule of the game of

the workshop. Yet China’s action of introducing its Nine-dash line policy to the

claimants in the informal workshop was also part of the moves of the claimant states,

which occurred in the informal politics.

67

Secondly, regarding the questions of notions of sovereignty, the parties involved in

the informal workshop mostly unwilling to discuss the sensitive topic like sovereignty.

The word sovereignty has been sort of forbidden to discuss in the workshop.

However, in the political reality outside the workshop, China, Vietnam, Philippines,

they continue with their sovereignty claims by constructing some infrastructures in

the disputed islands over the SCS. Even so, the informal workshop has been a place

where trust building is the main thing. The workshop has not changed the way

sovereignty being used, but it has led to a trust building and it is an arena in which

people from different countries are around the table. The answer to the question on

sovereignty is pretty clear that there are different notions of sovereignty or

presumably different claims to sovereignty being used by the claimant states in the

SCS dispute.

Thirdly, concerning the role of Indonesia, Indonesia played its T1 diplomacy as the

non-claimant state, but at the same time Indonesia put more focus on exercising its

T2 diplomacy as an honest broker with its informal workshop. At the workshop, the

way Indonesia gathered different players around the table was through directly

inviting them. At one occasion, Indonesian official representative went directly to the

Beijing to invite China in joining the informal workshop. Not to mention, the informal

workshop restrained the participants to discuss sensitive issues like sovereignty and

territoriality, in order to make all parties involved talk openly about their views related

to the SCS issues. If one party in the workshop intentionally or unintentionally

touched the sensitive issue, Indonesia would swiftly shift the conversation into

another topic. That is one of the reasons why Indonesia has been entrusted to be an

honest broker by the claimant states and only through this informal politics initiated

by Indonesia, the claimants felt more comfortable to conduct dialogue and exchange

of ideas among each other. As such, Indonesia was also succeeded in winning the

other participants’ confidence to actively get involved in the informal workshop.

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5. DISCUSSION In this chapter, I am going to reflect on the implications of my findings for three major

issues, which have also been mentioned in my research objectives: The first section

will focus to reflect the contribution to the debate on whether the SCS workshops as

an arena of dialogue can contribute to a lasting solution in the conflict over the SCS.

The second section reflects the contribution to the debate on sovereignty and the

role of T2 diplomacy in it, using the concept of sovereignty games. The third section

reflects the characterization on the role and diplomatic skills of Indonesia in the SCS

conflict as a broker, mediator and/or negotiator in the conflict. Lastly, this chapter is

concluded with the paragraph of future research, comprising the implications of bias

to my thesis findings and the other issues which are interesting to investigate in the

future.

5.1 South China Sea Workshop as an Arena of Dialogue

The main reason to establish the informal SCS workshop has been to reduce the

tension of the dispute over the SCS. Professor Djalal, the initiator of the workshop,

worried that this dispute would immediately turn into a war since there has been an

armed clash between China and Vietnam in 1974 and 1988 regarding the

overlapping claims in the SCS (Djalal, 2003). Not to mention, due to the ‘Asian

Culture’, the official governments of countries in the Southeast Asia tend to put the

problem under the carpet. Consequently, the serious problem like SCS dispute has

almost never been discussed or has a little discussion in the official meetings.

Therefore, the tension of the dispute over the conflicting parties (China, Philippines,

Brunei, Malaysia, and Vietnam) remained high until the informal SCS workshop was

established in 1990s by an Indonesian former leading authority, Professor Hasyim

Djalal.

Nevertheless, at that time, there had also been an official meeting established by

ASEAN with the so called ‘ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)’, which attempted to

resolve the SCS dispute at the high-level meeting. However, ARF has been failed

since China refused Philippines’ proposal to internationalize the issue of overlapping

claims during the ARF meeting, which could potentially damage its historical

69

principle. As Swanström (1999) argued, China was unwilling to discuss the issue of

SCS in the multilateral forum and refused to acknowledge the ARF as an alternative

solution. Thus, ARF did not succeed in obtaining Chinese commitment to deal with

the SCS issue. China consistently uttered to the public that it preferred bilateral

meeting discussion to talk about sensitive issues like the claim to territoriality over

the SCS. However, there has been no single successful bilateral meeting conducted

by China to end this dispute so far.

Since China is also a signatory of UNCLOS, China had to abide by its stipulations.

However, China seemed unwilling to obey the UNCLOS regulations and its Nine-

dash line policy is a manifestation of its intention. The China’s Nine-dash line policy

is a policy which based on the historical rights principle instead of international law

principle. Consequently, its policy is not in line with the UNCLOS principles and has

overlapped all islands in the entirety of SCS. Not to mention, China has been

building military facilities and conducting reclamation of small islands in the areas

which are not recognized as a sovereign territory by UNCLOS (Chellaney, 2018;

France-Presse, 2017). Therefore, UNCLOS has not been effective to resolve the

SCS dispute.

Since those two arenas did not work effectively to overcome the conflict in the SCS, I

argue that the series of informal SCS workshops had been a successful arena and

effective in gathering all the conflicting parties to talk informally over the issue of

SCS. I think the informal workshop has become a trusted platform of dialogue

because it has been attended by many participants, consisting of scientists, experts

and or representatives from claimant states but in their personal capacity, to

exchange ideas and share their views towards the common problem they

encountered, in particular the SCS dispute. Also, the result of the workshop has

been made to be not legally binding for the parties involved so that they could speak

honestly and openly during the workshop. Therefore, trust building through this

intensive dialogue amongst the conflicting parties in the informal SCS workshop is a

concrete achievement of this particular platform.

Based on the findings, I comprehend that when one party of the informal workshop

started to talk about the SCS issue, the moderator and the other parties frequently

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deprive to discuss about sensitive issues, such as sovereignty and territoriality. I

think that is the weakness of the workshop, yet at the same time it becomes an

important thing for the informal workshop per se to make all the conflicting parties

remained on board, in which the parties involved feel more comfortable to discuss

about technical issues instead of controversial ones, such as overlapping claims,

maritime sovereignty, etc. In my view, this is also part of Indonesian maneuver in

depoliticizing the SCS issue through putting more attention over the technical

discussions and depoliticization sometimes could be effective to reduce the tension

of SCS dispute amongst the claimant states.

Since the informal workshop has a certain regulation that forbids the claimant states

to discuss over the territoriality or sovereignty issues, it prevents other participants

who tried to raise the queries over the sovereignty claims conducted by other

claimants. Consequently, the workshop is somehow not able to directly touch upon

the conflict of maritime claims, which are claimed based on a unilateral action

conducted by a country to claim a certain territory over the sea without following the

regulations of international order. For instance, China’s Nine dash line policy has

been recognized as a maritime claim because it is based on historical principle

instead of international law. However, Song (2010) argued that the informal

workshop never aimed to directly resolve the territorial disputes in the SCS, but it

tried to build trust and mutual understanding among the conflicting parties. I think

technical issues in the workshop are about trust building, everything is here towards

getting the conversation going, which is absolutely important to compose mutual

recognition among the parties involved.

Coming back to the question on whether the informal workshops can be a lasting

solution, I can say that the answer is presumably ‘no’ in a straight forward sense to a

lasting solution. However, the trust building derived from the informal workshops can

potentially be a stepping stone or some basis to a lasting solution and presumably

can be recognized as the best alternative solution so far in dealing with the

complexity and sensitivity of the SCS disputes, given the official meetings have failed

to address the issues.

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5.2 Sovereignty and Track Two Diplomacy

As Hansen and Nissen (2016) defined sovereignty in terms of games and a

contested and constant subject of negotiations and power struggles, the issue of

overlapping claims to territoriality over the SCS has been constantly negotiated in

the official meetings and/or unofficial meetings by the so-called ‘claimant states’,

consisting of China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei. However, some

arenas in the track one (T1) diplomacy or government official meetings such as

UNCLOS and ARF have failed to solve the conflict. The track two diplomacy,

conversely, in terms of the series of informal SCS workshops have significantly

contributed to reduce the tension amongst the claimants over the SCS dispute.

Since the actor in the sovereignty games consists of state and non-state actor, I

think the non-state actor like scientists and experts have played important roles in

addressing the SCS dispute. Professor Hasyim Djalal, the initiator of the informal

workshop, was not a government official by the time he established the SCS

workshop and had succeeded in making the representatives from the conflicting

parties sitting around the table to discuss the SCS issue. This workshop has been

successful in composing trust building among the parties involved. Besides, all

claimant states know about the China’s Nine-dash line policy for the first time was

through the informal workshop. That is China’s move during the workshop meeting.

Consequently, rejection and asking for clarification by other parties appeared as a

reaction over the China’s action. Indonesia as a moderator always tried to remind

about the rules of the workshop not to continue the discussion over the sensitive

topic like sovereignty and claims to territoriality in the SCS. The workshop kept

reminding the participants to restrain themselves in proceeding the conversation.

Therefore, the SCS Informal workshop sometimes tries to keep the sovereignty issue

out of the game. Paradoxically, the sovereignty game was not to discuss

sovereignty.

Nevertheless, China, Philippines, and Vietnam have made their moves, such as

building military, schools, and place for worship in some disputed islands in the SCS.

As such, by building these things, they put a claim to territory. I think even though

within the workshop there was a depoliticization, but at the same in political reality,

72

outside the SCS workshops, these claims still exist. So, the notions with these

countries’ claims on sovereignty have not changed, in which there are still different

claims on territorial, water, historical basis, etc. and they are still clashing even more.

They continue with these claims. However, at the same time, there has been track

two diplomacy, where the informal workshop has led to a trust building and it is an

arena, in which people from different countries are around the table to discuss the

issues of SCS.

Regarding these actions of building military, schools, etc., I think they want to send a

message that they are willing to materialize their sovereignty claims, meaning that

they are planning to gain the recognition from international law over their territorial

and maritime claims to be an island because the status quo of their claims over

islands are now just as rocks, according to the result of the PCA 2016. In

accordance with the stipulation of UNCLOS, rocks are not able to have an extended

200 nautical miles of Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Accordingly, the claimant

states are planning to fulfil the requirement to make their claims acknowledged by

the international law as an island, which enables the provision of human habitation

and external support. However, they still failed to actualize their plans since the

result of government official meetings seemed stagnant and did not support their

desire to claim the islands in the SCS. Therefore, the informal workshop established

by Indonesia seemed a quite promising avenue for the claimants to make their

moves in the T2 diplomacy.

As Montville (1991) noted that the process in T2 diplomacy constitutes a workshop

that includes the involved actors to conduct dialogue to discover mutual outcome,

the informal SCS workshop has fulfilled the criteria and been effective in addressing

the issue of SCS dispute. Given the T2 diplomacy is the backbone for any kind of

progress, the informal politics is the most important in dealing with the international

dispute. These informal workshops, they are the oil, they smoothen the negotiation,

and they have to remain like that. While the government has the role to formalize

and relationship with Indonesian authority, Professor Hasyim Djalal and other

scholars played the informal politics to mediate the SCS issues. As such, that

perfectly fits with the workshop and the track two diplomacy.

73

Here is the overview of sovereignty games in track two diplomacy.

Track two diplomacy

Actors § Scientists / scholars / academics

§ Experts

§ Representatives from claimant states in their personal capacity.

Rules § Rules of participation: The government officials from the claimant

states attended the workshop in their personal title.

§ Rules of discussion: There are no official protocols in the workshop.

The workshop restrained the participants to discuss sensitive issues

like sovereignty and territoriality; and the workshop discussion

focused on technical projects to build trust amongst the parties

involved, such as marine scientific research, marine environmental

protection and safety of navigation, etc.

§ Rules of framing issues: The workshop suggested the participants

to create transparency of the activities in the disputed area and to

profoundly discuss the need to establish a Code of Conduct (COC)

in the SCS, in line with the Six Principles derived from the Second

Informal Workshop in Bandung 1991. The workshop is also framing

the technical issues relevant with claimants’ interests.

§ Rules of procedures: During the informal workshop, the participants

were respectively given five minutes to express their view without

entering into discussion. In the workshop, they normally have

reports which are distributed to all participants and also other

parties.

§ Normative rules: The workshop participants agreed to avoid the use

of force in addressing the SCS dispute and thus should be settled

peacefully. Secondly, all participants should conduct self-restraint to

reduce the tension and potential conflicts. Thirdly, there are no legal

consequences for the participants which means that the workshop

results are not legally binding. Lastly, the workshop also served as a

platform for policy-oriented discussion although there is no

guarantee that the policy recommendations from the workshop

would be adopted by the participants’ respective governments.

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Moves § Some participants attempted to formalize the workshop meeting

through proposing to establish an official secretariat.

§ Some other participants rejected that proposal as the others

showed their unwillingness to institutionalize this informal process.

§ China unofficially introduced its Nine-dash line policy for the first

time at the informal workshop.

§ China consistently insisted its claim as part of its indisputable

sovereignty over the Spratlys and Paracels at the informal

workshop.

§ During the workshop meeting, China’s representatives consistently

expressed their opposition whenever they found a written

statement, or a remark made by other participants that implied the

recognition of Taiwan as a country.

§ Indonesia through Professor Hasyim Djalal kept the workshop

informal to ensure that the people could talk anything openly,

otherwise the participants would be constrained by their government

policies in a formal meeting.

§ The latest informal workshop was not only funded the Government

of Indonesia, but also funded by the Government of China, Vietnam,

and Taiwan.

§ Indonesia gathered all players around the table by persuading them

that the workshop would focus on more technical discussion and

scientific projects.

§ Indonesia frequently became the moderator of the workshop.

§ When Indonesia moderated the workshop, Indonesia led the

discussion from non-sensitive issues to technical cooperation and

gave opportunity to all participants to talk freely without touching the

sovereignty issue.

§ If some participants intentionally or unintentionally touched the

sovereignty issues, Indonesia as the moderator would amicably

alter the direction of the conversation. Indonesia does not want the

conversation continued.

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The table above is about sovereignty games, but focusing on the workshop and

specifying actors, moves, and rules in T2 diplomacy, which means that I left out all

kinds of moves in bilateral relationships. The table provided information about actors,

rules, and moves in the informal workshop: actors constitute the participants of the

informal workshop, rules are referred to the rules of the workshop themselves and

moves are actions conducted by the participants in the informal workshop.

5.3 Indonesia’s role as a broker in the conflict

In discussing the role of Indonesia, I would like to make a distinction between T2 and

T1 diplomacy: how the Government of Indonesia operates this informal workshop as

a broker working together with scientist, but at the same time, Indonesia needs to

keep its identity as a sovereign state in T1 diplomacy. First of all, when Professor

Hasyim Djalal initiated the informal SCS workshop, it gives the impression that he is

an academic. The thing is that he was also an Indonesian Ambassador to the United

Nations until 1983. Afterwards, he started this informal workshop in kind of personal

capacity and with the financial support from Canada and Indonesian MoFA. So, the

role of Indonesia in this informal workshop is basically him. This is a strategy of

Indonesia, whereby the Indonesian MoFA allows him to maneuver with the informal

workshop.

Since the parties in the informal workshop consisted of non-state actors such as

scientists and experts, Indonesia worked together along with the scientists from the

claimant states to discuss about the SCS issue. Yet there were also official

representatives from the claimant states attended the workshop but in their personal

capacity. Although the claimant states are there, in the workshop on their personal

title, but of course in practice, it is more diffused, T1 or T2 diplomacy. It means that

some participants are actually government officials, but they are probably attending

the workshop in the optic look like individual. This is also rule of the game of the

workshop and this can be admitted as a technique to make the people talk in their

personal title. Otherwise, there would be no discussion in the workshop. Personal

title makes the parties able to talk honestly and openly in the workshop, as they

76

represented themselves as individuals and are not bound by the policy and rules

from their domestic government.

Whereas it is not allowed to talk about sensitive issues in the workshop, the

participants sometimes cannot avoid talking about the sensitive issue like

sovereignty. However, Indonesia does not want to proceed the conversation and

altered the focus of discussion into more technical discussion. This is also a quite

good technique to focus on technical discussion as a way to depoliticize the SCS

issue, which is somehow quite effective to reduce the situational tension amongst

the claimants over the issue of overlapping claims in the SCS.

Besides, I also argue that one of the main reasons why Indonesia is simply accepted

as a broker was because Indonesia is officially a non-claimant state. Indonesia has a

clear position as a non-claimant state and does not have any dispute with any

claimant state in the area of SCS. Indonesia benefits from this status to gain the

recognition to be a neutral party or honest broker from the claimants, and I think

Indonesia did pretty well in brokering the SCS dispute through its informal workshop.

Indonesia was successful in gathering all the claimant states altogether to sit around

the table to conduct dialogue and discussion, so that trust building could be

established amongst the conflicting parties through its T2 diplomacy in terms of the

informal workshop, which is unlikely to do it in the T1 diplomacy or government

official meetings. This sort of trust building is nonetheless an important asset to

smoothen the negotiation in the T1 diplomacy or government official meeting, as well

as to deprive misunderstanding and reduce the tension among the conflicting

parties.

Secondly, in the international relations or T1 diplomacy, Indonesia is a sovereign

state. As a broker, Indonesia did very well. However, at the same time, Indonesia as

a sovereign state in a sense of the government of Indonesia, needs to keep its

independency in terms of its sovereignty and importance. Indonesia is firm that its

sovereignty is non-negotiable. At the bilateral level, Indonesia did very well. When

Indonesia had a ‘minor’ problem with China, for instance; regarding the Natuna

island or the arresting of China’s illegal fishermen, Indonesian President directly

went to Beijing to negotiate; and after coming back from Beijing, everything was

77

clear. Indonesia and China solved the problem themselves. As an observer, I have

no idea what is being discussed, but the problem was solved. The result was great,

and I presume that something must have happened. I think Indonesia realized that if

they would become run into a conflict with China, the whole idea of this informal

workshop could go down the drain. In addition, when T1 diplomacy is problematic or

Indonesia has problem with China, it is time to activate T2 diplomacy. This is again

the maneuvering at the high-level, they were all kinds of tactics at the workshop

level, kind of T2 diplomacy, but Indonesia also had to remain its reputation as a non-

claimant and not have a conflict with China, and it did it very well. Accordingly, when

Indonesia had a problem with China, for instance, Indonesia simply denied that there

was a problem with China at the bilateral level. That was a mobilization of T1

diplomacy, very high level, which also saved the reputation of its informal workshop.

Therefore, Indonesia keeps maintaining its diplomatic relationship with all claimant

states at the bilateral level, in order to make all of them remained on board,

especially China. This is a very clever way of how Indonesia played its maneuvering

in the SCS dispute.

5.4 Future research

During the fieldwork, I have interviewed Indonesian officials or scholars, except one

which is from the Philippines. Of all interviewees, there were three main workshop

participants that I interviewed, and they were all from Indonesia. As such, this bias

has some implications to my thesis findings. In the findings, I obtained more positive

stories about Indonesia, portrayed as an honest broker. The interpretation could be

different if I interviewed China and other workshop participants, in which presumably

there would be more negative stories about Indonesia. The stories could be more

negatively critical. For instance, maybe the Philippines said that look, whereas

Indonesia was clearly a claimant around the island issues in the SCS, Indonesia still

tried to present itself as a non-claimant.

However, the implication could also be more appreciative. For example, perhaps the

Vietnam said that Indonesia is so clever that all participants could feel so freed to

express their views in the informal workshop. Indonesia would become qualified as a

78

claimant state as it has high potential to be overlapped with Malaysia claims and or

China’s Nine-dash line policy, but all the things would go down the drain. So, I do not

know, and I can go to both sides. Both are critical in a sense of critics could be made

to the role of Indonesia but could also be more appreciative ones that comment

could be based on the role of Indonesia.

Nevertheless, it would certainly be fantastic to have interviewed with Chinese

diplomats for further research. It is an effort to have a discussion with the Embassy

of China in Indonesia on this issue. As such, this requires so much effort to trace

these persons (Chinese diplomats participating the workshop), and on top of that I

also have to trace the diplomats from the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia. I need

paper work to get acquainted. Since data collection was done in 2 months, I was

also facing difficulty to access data as some were not publicly accessible, or they

were not found in written documents. If I would have more time for further research,

there are a few issues that are interesting to investigate, such as how China has

maintained its Nine-dash line policy with its historical rights principles after PCA

decisions 2016, how the Philippines and other claimants have taken benefit of PCA

decisions to negotiate with China in the informal workshop, and how the workshop

has dealt with the claimant states’ assertiveness to build more infrastructures, in

particular reclamation and military facilities in the area of SCS. In addition, if I would

have more time, it would also be interested to get insights from none Indonesian

participants or actors, and I could have interviewed China’s Embassy in Jakarta for

further research. For time reason, it was not possible but of course it could have let

to new insights, both critical ones and maybe appreciative ones.

79

6. CONCLUSION

This thesis explored how the Government of Indonesia maneuvered in the SCS

dispute in a way that the informal SCS workshop provided a significant contribution

to reduce the tension among the claimant states regarding the issue of sovereignty

claims in the area of SCS. Basically, there are three major things why the informal

workshop successfully gathered all the conflicting parties to sit around the table to

discuss the issue of SCS:

Firstly, the workshop focused on trust building. As the initiator of the informal SCS

workshop, Indonesia realized that the root cause of the SCS dispute is

misunderstanding and miscalculation, which means that the value of distrust among

the claimants is very high. However, T1 diplomacy through government official

meetings have failed to create confidence building measure to the claimants. As

such, Indonesia established the informal SCS workshop with the purpose to make it

as a trust building platform oriented.

Secondly, the workshop emphasized that the results are not binding. As a concrete

product of T2 diplomacy, the workshop at first tried to gain the trust from the

participants. Afterwards, the workshop attempted to make the participants speak

honestly and openly so that the root cause of the problem could be clear; and the

way to do that is to make the results of the workshop itself not binding.

Thirdly, the workshop put more attention on technical discussion. Indonesia has

been aware that the issue of sovereignty is a sensitive topic. If the workshop keeps

discussing about this such sensitive topic, the discussion will stop, and the

participants will leave the room. As such, there will be no trust among the parties

involved and of course it is certainly contradictory with the nature of the informal

workshop per se, which aimed to build the trust. Therefore, as a moderator of the

workshop, Indonesia frequently drove the participants of the workshop, mostly

consisting of scientists and experts, to discuss more about scientific issues and

technical cooperation instead of sovereignty issues, with the purpose to depoliticize

the issues and eventually reduce the situational tension amongst the claimant states

over the sovereignty dispute in the SCS.

80

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