A Review of Gregory B. Poling’s On Dangerous Ground: America’s Century in the South China Sea

Gregory B. Poling’s 2022 work explores the history of a hotly contested waterway.

U.S. Navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ships in the South China Sea.[1]

There is a struggle for control of the South China Sea, and China is winning. Every country whose shores touch the waterway has been caught in a decades-long tangle of disputed sovereignty claims, international dialogues, and diplomatic confusion. The United States has been woven into the web since long ago, seeking to protect its international interests. But pursuing the country’s objectives in the region is growing increasingly difficult, particularly now that China has become so aggressive in asserting its claims. On Dangerous Ground: America’s Century in the South China Sea by Gregory B. Poling unravels the historical knots, guiding the reader through a densely detailed account of the twentieth century in the titular waterway. Poling describes competing claims, expansions of those claims, and American responses to regional tensions, shedding light on the past and present of the South China Sea. However, some of Poling’s proposed solutions to the difficulties facing the U.S. and its allies appear flawed.

Poling first identifies two key interests which America has sought to protect through its activities in the South China Sea. One interest is freedom of the seas. Since the early nineteenth century, the United States has been a staunch proponent of the freedom of the seas. Freedom of navigation specifically has been very important for American merchant and naval vessels in their expansion of the country’s influence. The other interest Poling pinpoints is the maintenance of America’s network of alliance commitments. In the decades following World War II, the United States engaged in a careful balancing act, seeking to retain its credibility as a military ally while trying to avoid entanglement in its allies’ sovereignty disputes.

Having established its focus, the book then traces developments in the region and their implications for U.S. interests in roughly chronological order. Beginning in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Poling notes the origins of many countries’ modern claims to features in the South China Sea, such as claims by Vietnam, the Philippines, and China. Later, in the 1950s, tensions over maritime claims worldwide led to international negotiations which ultimately spawned the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an extensive international treaty on the maritime rights of nations. Around the same time, countries bordering the South China Sea began to occupy the disputed islands within it. In the following decades, a number of skirmishes and standoffs flared up around disputed features, frequently catching the United States off guard. This unpreparedness, in turn, hampered its ability to act in protection of its interests.

Throughout this period, Chinese claims in the region became increasingly expansive. China claimed some underwater features in addition to islands by mistake in the 1930s.[2] These claims later became part of an intentional assertion of sovereignty over all islands and waters within an area known as the “nine-dash line.” This claimed boundary encompasses a vast portion of the South China Sea and contradicts many territorial rights guaranteed to other coastal nations by UNCLOS, even though China itself has ratified the treaty. China continues to conduct itself aggressively in the South China Sea, militarizing its occupied islands and harassing foreign ships and aircraft within the waters that the country claims. China’s neighbors, possessing less advanced naval capabilities than Beijing, struggle to resist China’s activities even in their own waters.

Poling acknowledges that the United States and its allies are at a disadvantage in the region. But he argues that their defeat is not assured, and that they should not allow themselves to be defeated. Poling contends that several valuable interests are at stake. First are the two abiding U.S. interests in the South China Sea. China seeks to limit freedom of the seas within the nine-dash line. America’s credibility as a defense partner is also at risk, which deteriorates as China suppresses coastal nations’ access to their own waters. A final concern is that Chinese success in enforcing its claims in the South China Sea – claims which contravene UNCLOS and an international arbitration resolved against China in 2016[3] – will embolden China in other areas, encouraging the nation to destabilize or disregard other aspects of the international order.

Generally, Poling’s proposed solutions are logical, geared towards a larger, straightforward end goal: raise the costs of aggressive Chinese activity in the South China Sea and compel Beijing to engage in compromise rather than coercion. One recommendation Poling makes is for the United States to ratify UNCLOS. He is probably right that this step is long overdue; the fact that America has not yet ratified the treaty opens the country up to accusations of hypocrisy from China when the U.S. argues for freedom of the seas. However, some of the other policy measures suggested in the book may prove difficult to implement. For example, another of Poling’s propositions is for the United States to rally an international coalition for the purpose of providing China with the same treatment given to “other bad actors” like Russia.[4] While this would likely prove an effective strategy, potential foreign partners may be more susceptible to China’s economic influence than they are to that of Russia or North Korea. Poling notes that many Southeast Asian countries are too economically dependent on China to directly aid in this effort. He does not consider how China’s economic power may impact the amenability of countries outside the region to this plan.[5]

Another recommendation that Poling makes is for the United States to negotiate an agreement with China which voluntarily limits some military activities. The viability of this suggestion seems dubious. Poling acknowledges that China and the U.S. are already parties to the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea, an agreement regulating the behavior of military vessels to prevent naval encounters from escalating. It is common for Chinese ships to ignore the terms of this agreement, drawing into question whether China would abide by the terms of another agreement like the one Poling suggests.

Even so, On Dangerous Ground is an illuminating read packed with valuable and precise information about the history of the South China Sea. It provides clarity about events in a region where confusion has often hampered the United States’ ability to maneuver, such as when incomplete intelligence prevented the U.S. from acting after China forcibly took control of the Paracel Islands in 1974. Poling’s account of the waterway’s past offers important insights into the realities of the present and the range of possibilities for the future.

[1] Photograph of U.S. Navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ships in the South China Sea, in Competing Visions of International Order in the South China Sea, International Crisis Group (Nov. 29, 2021), https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/north-east-asia/china/315-competing-visions-international-order-south-china-sea.

[2] Poling explains that Chinese authorities seeking to record Chinese claims to land features in the South China Sea had neither documented historical claims nor the capacity to conduct surveys of the area; instead, they relied on foreign maps for information on regional features. Gregory B. Poling, On Dangerous Ground: America’s Century in the South China Sea 17 (2022). Mistranslations of English words like “shoal,” which refers to an elevated portion of seabed, caused Chinese authorities to claim a number of underwater features as Chinese territory. Id.

[3] Id. at 2, 198-99, 230-31.

[4] Id. at 251.

[5] It is worth noting that historical allies of the United States, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and France, have proven willing to send naval assets to the South China Sea in defense of the international order. Jamie Seidel, British and Canadian Warships Invade South China Sea as Tensions Escalate with Beijing, news.com.au (Feb. 27, 2021, 3:51 PM), https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/british-and-canadian-warships-invade-south-china-sea-as-tensions-escalate-with-beijing/news-story/41cc91af2af8b5ec3126712d09fef454.