Australian maritime security expert Bec Strating shares her thoughts on challenging issues and promising solutions for ASEAN nations
Maritime security remains at the centre of conversations in Southeast Asia, including at gatherings such as the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit 2024 and this year’s ASEAN East Asia Summit. Though high-profile issues such as disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea, US freedom of navigation exercises and the resulting geopolitical tensions tend to steal headlines, maritime security covers a much broader scope. For Bec Strating, a professor of international relations at La Trobe University in Melbourne and expert on maritime law, security at sea exemplifies the complex nature of our increasingly interconnected world.
During a June visit to Phnom Penh, where she met with the Cambodian senate and civil society organisations, Strating discussed security issues, social, economic and development policies, and key concerns of maritime security in the Kingdom. Wrapping up her trip, she sat down with Focus Cambodia for a wide-ranging conversation. Strating shared insights on the importance of open communication between stakeholders, the complicated nature of maritime security and why collaboration and cool heads hold the most promise for ongoing stability in the region.
In March you participated in the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit 2024, lending your expertise to the event’s maritime security track. The summit brought together government leaders, academics and experts from across the region to collaborate and celebrate 50 years of ASEAN-Australia dialogue. What was discussed and why are these types of summits so important for developing mutually beneficial solutions in the region?
The focus was on a range of economic, environmental, and legal and governance issues. While we did talk about some of the broad strategic trends, a lot of the conversations were about dealing with these day-to-day issues of governance and of being custodians of a maritime environment.
The value of these sorts of summits is giving academics, who look very closely at these sorts of issues, opportunities to provide recommendations on very specific areas. It could be things like coral reef bleaching. That’s not something that I know very much about because I am not a scientist. But we can invite scientists into the room and talk about these issues, so these are opportunities to share knowledge, share expertise and promote trust and dialogue through these mechanisms.
I don’t think we can underestimate how important getting together academics and policy makers is in terms of getting a sense of the different perspectives on issues. It is crucial for international cooperation that we are able to understand the perspectives of others and we cannot do that if we’re not meeting and talking and engaging in these sorts of dialogues.
There are a number of developments that continue to pose challenges for maritime security in the region, notably, the ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea. What are some other issues facing ASEAN nations and how are they discussed within the broader context of maritime security?
If we take something like illegal fishing – or fishing sustainability more generally – a lot of the world’s fishing takes place in Southeast Asia and we know that climate change is wreaking havoc on fisheries and the migration of fish stocks in ways that are affecting local fishing communities. So creating sustainable fisheries in the context of climate change is a really important issue. But these are issues that require coastal states to have systems or structures and information in place to be able to combat illegal fishing, prosecute illegal fishing, and deter illegal fishing.
Another crucial element is the importance of open sea lines of communication. This is a vital maritime security issue. It is of concern to a lot of states in the region that there might be actors that try to shut down some of these vital lines. We’re seeing freedom of navigation challenged in other regions, Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea for example. That is something we wouldn’t want to see in the Malacca Strait.
So, again, you see sustainability, economy, security, being very interconnected and complicated but with a maritime bent.
Cambodia doesn’t have the large coast lines or maritime assets of other ASEAN nations, such as the Philippines and Vietnam. Likewise, it is not directly involved in high-profile boundary disputes. Why is maritime security in the region important to Cambodia?
For a state like Cambodia, it is particularly important as an import and export driven economy. I’ve heard a lot about the Sihanoukville port refurbishments, but ports won’t mean very much if there aren’t free sea lines of communication that can be utilised to transfer goods and materials.
The issue, I think, is that we tend to isolate these maritime disputes and say, well the South China Sea is not so much an interest for, say Cambodia or even Thailand, because they’re not claimant states. That is a way to bracket out the issue and put it over there and not have to take a position on these critical issues. But the ocean is a connected space so the sorts of security dynamics that are occurring in the South China Sea certainly affect maritime South Asian countries.
But if you put aside the issues of sovereignty over land features and look beyond issues of maritime boundaries that preoccupy the South China Sea disputes, there are very concerning trends in terms of freedom of navigation. As an export nation, it doesn’t matter if you have a small coastline or a large coastline, if you are exporting and importing products, maintaining open and free sea lines of communication is vital for your economy.
Despite the variety and complexity of issues shaping maritime security in Southeast Asia, the China/US rivalry remains the elephant in the room. In terms of maritime security, how do you see this geopolitical competition impacting Cambodia, particularly in light of the presence of Chinese naval vessels at the Ream naval base?
On the one hand, this is Cambodia making sovereign decisions for itself. It is very important to recognise and to understand the reasons why Cambodia has decided to redevelop the Ream Naval Base and not to look at things strictly through the frame of US/China competition, but through a nation’s needs. Those needs often have to do with maritime governance and defending Cambodia’s maritime entitlements. A second narrative I’ve seen says, well there are other military bases in the region that host US forces, for example, so how is this any different from that?
However, there is also a narrative around independence and having an independent foreign policy. If Cambodia wants to stay out of the South China Sea disputes or stay neutral within them, how might China try to use the Ream naval base in order to advance its strategic interest in the South China Sea? If Ream becomes dominated by a Chinese presence, there could be questions to be asked about how that might affect Cambodia’s independence within an organisation like ASEAN.
These are important questions and I think there is a lot of attention being paid to Ream and the presence of Chinese naval vessels. But I think it is still a ways off from becoming a Chinese military base. It’s not Djibouti yet. So keeping a cool head but understanding the risks is always important.
Within this context, what role do you think nations like Australia can play in supporting maritime security and stability in Southeast Asia?
I think it is important to recognise the importance of issues like the South China Sea, but I’ve always viewed it as being about Southeast Asian actors. This is the central puzzle for me: how do smaller and middle powers in Southeast Asia protect their entitlements under international law? While a lot of Western media tends to talk about this strictly in terms of the US and China, that is an inaccurate portrayal of what is at stake in the South China Sea and the scope of players involved.
So, on one hand, it’s about building genuine partnerships. But at the same time, it is impossible to ignore some of the strategic competition dynamics. It is a fine balance, trying to ensure the relationships we build are based on mutual respect. We are trying to get away from donor-type relationships towards genuine partnerships that are locally led so that you have people within states, local civil society organisations for example, being able to play a role in determining where a country like Australia might be able to invest and support.
An example, there isn’t a huge amount of global expertise on international law of the sea. But Australia has a real strength there, particularly in terms of understanding the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). So partly, it is about identifying what countries need, and a lot of the times when I have conversations in the region about this, they need more legal expertise. We need exchanges of views on international law of the sea and training in this particular area. Since Australia has this legal expertise, we can provide some of that training and fill that gap if you like. That’s what a mutually beneficial partnership starts to look like.
