US has never sought peaceful solution in South China Sea: UK scholar

LONDON: After compiling a comprehensive history of international views on China’s sovereignty in the South China Sea, a British legal scholar emphasized that the U.S. 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 the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences of Peking University, pointed to a clear trend in U.S. policy over the past 70 years.

“I’m not sure that the United States is looking to find a peaceful solution to this issue. The American role here is entirely negative and it is formally stated by the Americans in their record that their objective is to contain China and part of containing China means keeping them off these islands,” said Carty.

“There is actually a statement by an undersecretary of state, [Robert Daniel] Murphy in the 1950s, in a meeting at which John Foster Dulles has also aggressively present, saying that the Philippines, they’ve never taken a position with respect to the Philippines, but it would be perhaps a good idea to encourage the Philippines to make a claim as part of their strategy to keep the Chinese off the islands. So they are not in the business of resolving any conflicts and it’s a useful part of an overall strategy, geopolitical and military strategy for containment,” he said.

The History and Sovereignty of South China Sea is a collection of findings on the South China Sea that Carty gathered from primary source materials in national archives, mostly in the United Kingdom and France, and some in the United States.