Never Surrender the Language

My entreaty to American diplomats and naval leaders is this: yield nothing to China in the South China Sea. Do not compromise on surveillance flights, underwater surveys, or any other part of the law of the sea for the sake of amity with Beijing. Freedom of the sea is indivisible. Let some of it go and the rest is apt to follow. By contrast, exercising high-seas freedoms to the maximum extent lawful represents a statement—backed by steel—that no coastal state may annul or modify basic principles underlying the liberal maritime order.

Furthermore, America and likeminded seafaring nations must grok that language constitutes a theater of combat in the struggle over what constitutes freedom of the sea. And it’s no less important a theater than the physical space crisscrossed by ships and aircraft. Surrendering the terms of debate—letting China define the words and imagery used in diplomatic exchanges—is tantamount to letting an opposing swordsman choose the ground where single combat takes place. It cedes the tactical advantage. It’s a loser as strategies go.

Exhibit A: the word “island.” Seems commonsensical, doesn’t it? We all know what an island is! But think about it. China has been trying to figure out how to enforce its claim to 80-90 percent of South China Sea waters and skies, as codified in its “nine-dashed line” enclosing those expanses. This claim has no standing in the law of the sea. But what if Beijing were to build the reefs and atolls within the nine-dashed line into serious geographic features, and convince the international community artificial islands were entitled to the same status as natural islands?

This would constitute a revolution in maritime affairs. Domestic, not international, law governs what happens within the “territorial sea,” a 12-nautical-mile belt of sea adjoining a coastal state’s shorelines. If foreign ships skirt beyond 12 nautical miles of China’s manufactured islands, they would tacitly admit that these invented features also enjoy territorial seas. By constructing islands from rocks and seamounts, and by getting others not to challenge its endeavors effectively, China would claim the surrounding waters as sovereign property.

Beijing would have redefined the word island—and in so doing amended the text of the law of the sea. Read the plain wording of that compact for yourself. An island is “a naturally formed area of land” that’s “above water at high tide.” Keywords: “naturally formed.” To qualify as islands, moreover, features must be able to “sustain human habitation or economic life of their own.” Ever try living on an island with no freshwater? That’s the case with all of the Spratlys and Paracels except Taiping Island—an outpost held not by China but by Taiwan.

What about manmade islands? Coastal states may construct installations and artificial geographic features within their exclusive economic zones (EEZs), meaning within 200 nautical miles of their coastlines (or within 350 nautical miles if the underwater conformation permits). They may declare “safety zones” around these installations to protect ships passing nearby and the installations themselves. Such a zone “shall not exceed” 500 meters from the outer edges of the feature. That’s a far cry from a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea, let alone a 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

To avoid landing any credence to claims that artificial islands rate more than a 500-meter buffer, foreign governments should make a habit of sending vessels within, say, a mile of these features while transiting the South China Sea. That’s far enough to disarm the inevitable hissy fit issuing from Beijing—about safety hazards, affronts to China’s dignity, blah blah blah—yet close enough to state, loudly and clearly, that no one concedes China any rights or privileges beyond those which every coastal state exercises in its EEZ. In other words, they will be insisting that China abide by the law to which it has explicitly consented.

Let me summon up two unlikely bedfellows for counsel on how to transact nautical diplomacy vis-à-vis China: George Orwell and Admiral Turner Joy. In his essay on “Politics and the English Language”—one of the greatest guides to writing ever to see print—Orwell takes English intellectuals to task for using words so vaguely and sloppily that they befuddled rather than enlightened. By the 1940s, for instance, repeated and cavalier use had stripped “fascism” of all meaning apart from “something not desirable.” Fascist had come to be an epithet, a label an intellectual hung on someone he didn’t like in order to discredit him.

Orwell also flays intellectuals and politicians for conscious rhetorical imprecision. Consider, he asks, “some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get results by doing so.’” Rather, the good professor tosses off some gassy, wordy euphemism to the effect that Stalin’s regime has to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Too bad, so sad if you’re one of the eggs. Such opinionmakers deploy words “in defense of the indefensible,” disguising all manner of villainy.

Nor are such tactics relics of the 1940s. Linguistic sleights-of-hand are standard fare for Beijing. Beware of efforts to drain words of their everyday meaning, substitute something altogether alien to these words’ plain meaning, and upbraid opponents for failing to subscribe to China’s bizarro interpretation.w And this is not just about redefining artificial islands as natural features and lodging legal claims. Think about other terms Chinese interlocutors employ:

“Freedom of navigation” isn’t synonymous with freedom of the sea, as per Western usage. To Beijing it means the freedom to pass from point A to point B while doing nothing else. That’s a distinction with a major difference.

“Facts” aren’t verifiable statements about the world but whatever party line the Chinese Communist Party leadership hands down. “Seek truth from facts,” Chinese emissaries like to say—except these are “facts” made in China. If you quarrel with the party line, you reject empirical truth!

Or, Beijing has made that tired boilerplate from the business world—“win-win” outcomes—its own. It’s ubiquitous. But parse the language more deeply, and you realize such a result means China wins as China defines winning. It also means you win…as China defines your winning. I.e., you gain from a deal precisely to the degree it suits China’s interests. Or not at all.

And that’s far from running the gamut of deceptive phraseology. Chinese officialdom prattles on endlessly about the “China threat theory” that purportedly obsesses Pentagon leaders, and the “Cold War mentality” that supposedly holds sway throughout Washington. And on and on. Make Orwellian skepticism your compass when navigating this torrent of Chinese linguistic misdirection.

And Turner Joy? Admiral Joy headed the U.S./UN delegation to the armistice talks ending (we hope) the Korean War. His book How Communists Negotiate is, or ought to be, required reading for the U.S. Pacific Command, State Department, or anyone entrusted with managing relations with China.

Yes, yes; I know, and agree with, the standard assessment that China is no longer a communist country per se. But Maoist and Leninist habits linger. Joy recounts how Chinese and North Korean delegates insisted that the UN agree to their demands—to give away the store—as a precondition for commencing talks. Tricksy. They manipulated the surroundings at “neutral” Kaesong, the initial venue for peace talks, to humiliate Turner’s team and harvest a propaganda windfall. For example, they cut the legs off the rangy Joy’s chair. He found himself looking up at his much shorter interlocutor. Communist-world photographers duly recorded the admiral slouching and looking defeated.

And above all, Chinese negotiators dickered on the principle that the most childish protagonist wins. The parents among you will recognize the approach instantly. Repeat your talking points over and over again, at as great a length as possible. You will eventually wear down your opposite numbers—no matter how excessive or nonsensical your demands. They capitulate just to shut you up.

Little has changed in a country that wages “three warfares” against rivals on a 24/7/365 basis. Monologuing is a way of life there. For ideologues, then, diplomacy is more a test of stamina than an effort to get to yes through a dispassionate exchange of views and reconciliation of interests. It’s warfare by other means. Grasping that reality—and heeding advice from Joy and Orwell—will help the United States and its Asian allies gird themselves for the drawn-out test of wills that awaits. Prepare for it.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of 2010. He is RCD’s new national security columnist. The views voiced here are his alone.