A respected British academic once took note of an ASEAN trait in the face of Chinese assertiveness ― it tended to back off.

Operating on the principle that “discretion was the better part of valor,” the ASEAN way was to go silent rather than upset Beijing, Gerald Segal observed.

Segal could well have been referring to ASEAN’s recent embarrassing failure to issue a joint communique after stumbling over how to deal with the South China Sea maritime disputes.

But he was not. He was writing in 1996 about Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, claimed by both the Philippines and China.

In 1994, China built structures on the reef. Manila protested, to little avail. The following year, ASEAN officials “were furious that they had been humiliated by China,” but there was a palpable lack of any formal complaint.

This is not to say that ASEAN has not done anything about the long-running territorial disputes over the tiny islands and waters of the South China Sea.

Parties to the tussles include not only China and the Philippines but also Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.

In 2002, ASEAN signed a Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) with China, in which both sides pledged to resolve the disputes in a peaceful manner and exercise self-restraint. Last July, both parties agreed on guidelines to implement the DOC, a critical step towards a legally binding Code of Conduct (COC).

And Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa managed to paper over the damage done by the disunity on show at the ASEAN meeting in Cambodia earlier this month by getting its members to issue a joint statement outlining the bloc’s common position on the dispute.

Even so, ASEAN’s lack of unity will continue to bedevil its handling of the dispute and hobble its efforts to forge a code of conduct that will be respected by China. And without it, the potential for flare-ups over maritime claims remains.

What the South China Sea tussle has come down to is a game of chicken.

Despite all its talk about talks, China’s stance has remained essentially the same ― it has stuck to its guns with regard to its claim based on its controversial nine-dotted line map.

History also shows that Beijing is not averse to using force. In 1988, for example, more than 70 Vietnamese sailors died after an armed clash with Chinese forces over Johnson Reef in the Spratlys Islands.

ASEAN, on the other hand, is riven by differences over the South China Sea and finds it hard to come up with a more dynamic response.

The result is that the push-back against China’s claims is left to two of its members, the Philippines and Vietnam, both of which have the biggest claims and the most to lose.

Professor Tommy Koh, chairman of the Center for International Law at the National University of Singapore, has pointed out that Vietnam claims sovereignty over all the maritime features in the Paracel and Spratly Islands. The Philippines claims 53 of those in the Spratlys, he added.

Maritime features include islands, reefs and cays.

Both the Philippines and Vietnam have also used their growing ties with the United States ― long the Asia-Pacific’s guarantor of security ― as leverage.

Manila looks to its mutual defence treaty and military links with the U.S. Vietnam has now embraced the U.S., its former Cold War enemy, with open arms. It has even hosted U.S. Navy ships.

It was in Vietnam ― at the 2010 ASEAN Regional Forum ― that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for multilateral talks on the South China Sea ― a move that riled the Chinese.

The other two ASEAN disputants ― Malaysia and Brunei ― have smaller territorial claims and are less assertive as a result.

Both countries also have good relations with Beijing and do not want such ties to be affected the same way China-Vietnam and China-Philippines links have been affected, says Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

“Basically I think they are content to let the Philippines and Vietnam take the lead, and the heat... Geographical separation from China gives them a sense of security. At least for the moment,” he said.

Professor Carl Thayer of the University of New South Wales said the reportage on the ASEAN fallout at Phnom Penh obscured the fact that the grouping had two meetings with China on the COC.

He believes there will be progress on the diplomatic front between now and November, when the East Asia Summit will be held, because ASEAN is now committed to intensifying consultation on the COC and China will want to deflect any U.S. intervention in the discussions.

Similarly, Datuk Zainal Abidin Ahmad, director-general of ASEAN-Malaysia National Secretariat, said in an interview that ASEAN will deal with the matter with “quiet diplomacy,” as it has always done.

One irony about the South China Sea dispute is that the parties involved cannot even agree on whether there is a dispute in the first place. China regards the Spratly Islands to be an area of contention, but it does not regard Scarborough Shoal and the Paracels to be in dispute.

ASEAN foreign ministers who will tackle the issue as they gather for the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September will have their job cut out for them.

(Additional reporting by Zubaidah Nazeer and Yong Yen Nie)

By William Choong

William Choong is a senior writer of the Straits Times in Singapore. ― Ed.

(The Straits Times/Asia News Network)