Today’s ruling is a fundamental rebuke to Beijing.
Today’s ruling of the UNCLOS Arbitral Tribunal on the territorial disputes between the Philippines and China offers two paths forward for China, and the Asia-Pacific region more broadly. How China chooses to respond to the tribunal’s judgement, which sided against Beijing’s claims on key counts, will do much to determine the course of Asian security and the post-1945 international order in the decades to come.
Since World War II, the United States and its global partners have sought to cement an international framework that prizes peaceful resolution of disputes, adherence to international laws and norms, and rejects the use of coercive force to achieve national objectives. This order, built out of the ashes of two devastating world wars, has contributed mightily to the growing prosperity of China and the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the absence of open warfare between Great Powers over the past seventy years.