The US never sought a peaceful solution in the South China Sea: British scholar

LONDON: After compiling a comprehensive history of international views on Chinese sovereignty in the South China Sea, a British legal scholar stressed that the US has never sought a peaceful solution in the sea and has actively provoked conflict.

Anthony Carty, author of the recently published History and Sovereignty of South China Sea and visiting professor at Peking University’s Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, pointed to a clear trend in US policy over the past seventy years.

“I am not sure that the United States is looking for a peaceful solution to this issue. The American role here is completely negative and the Americans have formally stated in their report that their goal is to contain China, and part of containing China means keeping them off these islands,” Carty said.

“There is actually a statement by an Assistant Secretary of State, (Robert Daniel) Murphy in the 1950s, at a meeting where John Foster Dulles was also aggressively present, in which he said that the Philippines has never taken a position regarding the Philippines, but it might be a good idea to encourage the Philippines to stake a claim as part of their strategy to keep the Chinese off the islands. So they are not in the business of conflict resolution and it is a useful part of an overall strategy, a geopolitical and military strategy for containment,” he said.

The History and Sovereignty of the South China Sea is a collection of findings about the South China Sea that Carty has collected from primary source material in national archives, mainly in the United Kingdom and France, and some in the United States.