It was meant to be a sunny summit. Welcoming ASEAN’s leaders at the Sunnylands estate, President Obama said he had invited them to southern California, not cold and snowy Washington, to reciprocate the warm welcomes he had received in their own countries on his seven presidential trips to Southeast Asia. Appreciative laughter ensued.

Naturally Obama ignored the futility implied by the name of the city where Sunnylands sits: Rancho Mirage. But as a metaphor for ASEAN’s hopes of moderating China’s behavior in the South China Sea, and the summit’s efficacy in that regard, the name of the city is more apt than that of the estate. Rancho Mirage lies in the northern tip of the Sonoran Desert. In the driver’s seat on a desert road in the shimmering heat, ASEAN might be fooled into seeing a geopolitical oasis – a meaningful agreement with China on the South China Sea – finally near and achievable with continuing patience and faith in the “ASEAN Way” of regional diplomacy by consensus and declaration.

The Sunnylands Declaration, released on 16 February at the end of the two-day summit, lays out 17 principles to guide US-ASEAN cooperation going forward. The fifth of these reaffirms “respect and support for ASEAN Centrality and ASEAN-led mechanisms in the evolving regional architecture of the Asia-Pacific.”

On the day the declaration was announced, news broke that China had just deployed surface-to-air missile batteries on a land feature in the South China Sea controlled by China but also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan – Woody Island in the Paracels. So much for the efficacy of the declaration’s eighth principle of “shared commitment” to “non-militarization and self-restraint in the conduct of activities.”

After “activities,” the Sunnyland drafters could not even agree to add “in the South China Sea,” let alone mention China, its encompassing “nine-dash line,” or the dredging, up-building, and runway-laying that Beijing has being doing at a breakneck, unilateral, mind-your-own-business pace on the contested features that it controls. Missile launchers on Woody? Score another point for the “PRC Way” of creating lethal facts while the “ASEAN Way” drafts wishful norms.

To its credit, the summit did convey “shared commitment” to “freedom of navigation and overflight” in and above the South China Sea, and twice endorsed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. But those phrases will not soften China’s refusal to allow international rules to restrain its maritime ambitions.

The notion that announcing principles will change behavior is the main mirage that gained false credibility in Rancho Mirage, at least among Southeast Asians who are disposed to value lowest-common-denominator diplomacy. They hope that China will be influenced by ASEAN-propagated norms to moderate its maritime ambition and behavior.

More than a few of Obama’s guests at Sunnylands retain faith in a single should-be, will-be solution: a Code of Conduct, or COC, in the South China Sea. The declaration does not refer to this illusion. But allegiance to such a code was evident in conversations among participants at the summit and in interviews afterwards.

For well over a decade in Southeast Asia and beyond, diplomats have been discussing the need for a – still non-existent – COC. In 2002 China and the ASEAN governments did sign a Document on Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, or DOC  But its hortatory spirit and provisions were violated almost from the outset by nearly all six claimants – Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. China’s placement of missile launchers on Woody Island, cheekily on the eve of the Sunnylands summit, was but the latest nail in the DOC’s coffin.

China and the ASEAN states undertook in the DOC “to exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability” in the South China Sea. China’s leaders could have observed this principle. Instead they chose to bully Manila and Hanoi, respectively, by seizing Scarborough Shoal and stationing a huge oil rig in waters claimed by Vietnam. They chose to harass and expel Southeast Asians from a vast nine-sided fishing zone unilaterally drawn and appropriated for China’s own priority use. They chose to complicate and escalate disputes, damage peace, and cause instability by unilaterally enlarging, outfitting, and militarizing land features under Beijing’s contested control in a manner that dwarfs in scale and lethality the up-building efforts of other claimants.

It is not in China’s expansionist interest to implement a mere declaration, the DOC. Still less attractive in Beijing’s eyes is a code with teeth – a COC whose enforcing mechanism might actually punish violations. To encourage delay, Beijing insists that the DOC must be implemented first, before a COC can be drawn up and signed. To avoid commitment and to maximize the divide et impera asymmetry of separate bilateral talks between China and each Southeast Asian claimant, Beijing calls the discussions with ASEAN “consultations,” not “negotiations.”

In 2004 China did agree with the ASEAN states to establish a Joint Working Group on the Implementation of the DOC. In October 2015 in Chengdu, China, the group met for the 15th time. Afterwards, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman assured listeners that the participants had reaffirmed “their commitment to fully and effectively implementing the DOC” and their readiness “to “work toward the early conclusion of a COC on the basis of consensus” [emphasis added].

In Southeast Asia, views of China’s behavior range from acquiescence (Cambodia, Laos) to antipathy (the Philippines, Vietnam). Manipulating this dissensus helps China ensure that the mirage of a COC remains in sight, motivating ASEAN, but continues to recede, protecting China.

ASEAN’s faith in its own centrality and the validation of that credence in Rancho Mirage reinforce passivity and complacence in Southeast Asia, including the idea that because ASEAN is indispensable, it need not be united, proactive, or original.

Southeast Asian officials and analysts who excuse ASEAN’s inertia argue that the grouping isn’t a government; China’s not that much of a threat; and geography has, after all, put China permanently next door. Coaxing the four Southeast Asian claimants to settle their own overlapping claims, some say, is just too hard to do. Brainstorming alleviations and ameliorations, let alone solutions, for the South China Sea? That’s too daunting as well. Isn’t the problem really a Sino-American struggle for power? Why get involved? Why not prolong the happy combination of American ships for deterrence and Chinese markets for profit? China’s leaders at least say that they want an eventual COC. Why not keep believing in that and them and avoid rocking the boat?

By its actions, China is signaling its intent to dominate some, most, or all of the South China Sea – the heartwater of Southeast Asia. If and when China manages to coopt and cow the ASEAN states into deference and resignation, Beijing will likely “disinvite” the US Navy from accessing what China controls. If this happens, the “Centrality” of ASEAN that was lauded in Rancho Mirage will have merited that city’s name, and China’s centrality will be all too real.

Donald Emmerson is director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

This article was originally carried by YaleGlobal Online on Feb. 23, 2016, and reposted with permission.

A research team led by FSE director Rosamond Naylor has won a $400,000 multi-year grant to study how to create sustainable palm oil supply chains that promote economic growth and environmental sustainability in Indonesia and West Africa. 

Palm oil has become one of the world’s fastest growing and most valuable agricultural commodities. Global production of palm oil doubled in both volume and area each decade between 1970 and 2010, and is expected to double again by 2025. The windfall profits from this rapid expansion have come at a cost of tropical deforestation, biodiversity loss and rising greenhouse gas emissions, and in many cases the economic benefits have bypassed local smallholder farmers. 

Naylor and her team of Stanford faculty, scholars and students will undertake the three-year project with funding from the Stanford Global Development and Poverty Initiative (GDP), launched in Spring 2014. GDP aims to transform Stanford’s capacity to speak to the challenges of poverty and development. This year, GDP awarded more than $2 million to 13 faculty research teams from across the university. 

The new project marks the first venture that connects Stanford’s expertise in sustainability with the Graduate School of Business’ experience in value chain innovations. The team will conduct an evaluation of value chain opportunities for sustainable palm oil production, build corporate partnerships to improve smallholder incomes, and engage in policy advising. 

GDP is a joint initiative of the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (SEED) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). SEED is housed within the Stanford Graduate School of Business. 

Rosamond Naylor is William Wrigley Professor of Earth System Science and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and at FSI.

Lauren Wedekind is a Stanford undergraduate studying Human Biology and Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Her research focuses on social medicine and the potential for telemedicine to mitigate health care coverage gaps. Lauren believes that human rights advocacy requires a two-way street of listening and communication within and across national and cultural borders—which she explores with Stanford CDDRL, UNA-USA, and WFUNA on projects involving the right to health. Wedekind received funding from CDDRL's Program on Human Rights to travel and participate in the WFUNA Human Rights Youth Training Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

By age seventeen, Nam had been forced into marrying a stranger, bearing his child, and risking her life to be a refugee on a remote island.  In April 1975, the North Vietnamese Communist Party took over the Republic of South Vietnam, and violently threatened residents of Saigon, South Vietnam’s then-capital and Nam’s hometown.  Like thousands of other residents, Nam’s family desperately uprooted from their relatively comfortable living situation, only to cram like sardines into an over-capacity boat headed toward international waters, hoping to be rescued by the United Nations.  With their lives in very real danger, the to-be refugees who boarded that boat did so without any guarantee that they would safely cross the passage across the Pacific Ocean.  In fact, these “boat people” were held hostage, robbed, raped, and beaten on three separate occasions by pirates in the Sea of China.  After the attacks, they floated aimlessly on the ocean for days, and were finally rescued by a UNHCR vessel, which guided them to refugee camps in Indonesia.  One year later, Nam and her boat’s survivors—those who were not killed by violence or disease—reached the United States.  The survivors who finally reached peacekeeping nations accepting refugees had often endured poverty, abuse, and posttraumatic mental and physical health issues.

Wedekind with her cohort of training attendees in Geneva.

This summer, I was honored to be nominated by UNA-USA to attend the WFUNA High Commissioner of Human Rights Training in Geneva, in which 30 young human rights advocates representing 25 countries learned about international human rights instruments and the UN Human Rights Council.  Through WFUNA’s training curriculum, and even more, through interactions with our peers, our cohort agreed on concepts of fundamental human rights—that people of all ages and backgrounds should be guaranteed: (1) Fundamental human rights and (2) The right to defend these rights.  Point (2) necessitates governments exercising structural competence to guarantee the protection of human rights for all members of society.  As part of Point (2), listening to many different viewpoints within society has been humbled me: As a human rights advocate, I am responsible for ensuring that I also understand the stories of the marginalized so that I can best voice collective advocacy points to others – advocacy is a two-way street. 

When watching the UN Human Rights Council Emergency Session on Gaza with the Human Rights Training in July, I was first awestruck that I was able to watch a history-making decision before my eyes.  As I held the wired translator earpiece to my ear for the last hour of the Session in which NGOs were stating their own perceptions of human rights violations on-the-ground, though, I realized that many stakeholders were actually leaving the assembly hall.  I wondered: “How can multilateral, international organizations realistically ensure that they respect the human dignity of all members of society without each ambassador engaging with community members who directly experience conflicts on-the-ground?”  I respect the major responsibilities of Ambassadors to the UN Human Rights council: (1) Developing realistic pictures of events he/she has often not directly perceived, (2) Communicating these pictures to members of his/her society, and (3) Voicing the collective opinions of his/her constituency on human rights issues in international engagements.  These three actions are not simple, but when put into practice, they enable action over apathy.

Since returning to the U.S., I have asked: “How can I be most useful to my society?”  After witnessing both multinational cooperation as well as largely unheard voices of NGOs in international human 

Wedekind at one of the training sessions at the UN.

In partnership with the Program on Human Rights at Stanford's Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Afia Khan (Economics ’16) and I are developing a student-initiated course on health and human rights advocacy, which we will launch in 2015, for intermediate school through university-level students.  We hope to provide young people with a knowledge base and advocacy toolkit for young people on health and human rights, and to let them know what I have learned from UN Human Rights Council and Nam: Every single person can advocate for human rights – we must start small by exercising compassion to understand others’ experiences, and then share with others what we have learned.

Nam’s name changed to respect confidentiality.

Also see Wededkind's blog posted on the WFUNA website and on FSI Global Student Fellows' 'In The World' Blog. 

The rise of China as a global and regional power has created areas where the interests of China and the United States overlap in competition, the senior U.S. military commander in the Pacific told a Stanford audience. But Admiral Samuel Locklear III, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), rejected the traditional realpolitik argument, which predicts inevitable confrontation between the United States, a status quo power, and China, a rising power.

“Historians will say this will lead to conflict,” Locklear said, during an address at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center last Friday. “I don’t believe it has to.”

The United States and China have a “mutual skepticism of each other,” the Pacific Commander acknowledged, but he characterized the relationship as “collaborative, generally.”

He said the dangers of direct military confrontation between the two powers is low, but warned against Chinese tendencies to perceive the United States as engaged in an effort to ‘contain’ the expansion of China’s influence. Instead, Locklear urged China to work with the United States to build new security and economic structures in the region.

Economic interdependence between the countries makes it impossible for the two countries to avoid working together, he told the seminar, co-sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

He said that China has also benefited from the security environment that the United States has helped shape and maintain in the region.

Locklear reminded the audience of the central importance of the vast area under his command, which stretches from the Indian subcontinent across the vast Pacific Ocean. More than nine out of 10 of the largest ports in the world are in the Asia-Pacific region, and over 70 percent of global trade passes through its waters. The U.S. rebalance to Asia, a policy pursued by the Obama administration as early as year 2009, largely happened because of the economic and political importance of that area.

The mutual interest in economic prosperity depends, however, on a stable security environment. Washington has an interest in maintaining the structure of security that has ensured peace for the last few decades. Beijing seeks to change the status quo, to build a regional system that reflects its growth as a power.

Locklear called on China to work with the United States and other nations in the region, such as Japan and Australia, as well as the countries of Southeast Asia, to take the current “patchwork quilt” of bilateral and multilateral alliances and build a basis to maintain economic interdependence and security. He pointed to the U.S.-led effort to form a Trans-Pacific Partnership as a 12-nation economic structure, which could eventually include China.

“We want China to be a net security contributor,” he said, “And my sense is that both the United States and the nations on the periphery of China are willing to allow China to do that – but with circumstances.” He said conditions for the United States included open access to shared domains in sea, air, space and cyberspace.

The Pacific Commander cautioned against the danger, however, of unintended conflict, fueled by territorial disputes and Chinese assertiveness that worries its neighbors. Locklear stressed the need for more dialogue, including among the militaries in the region, an effort that the U.S. Pacific Command is currently carrying out.

“There’s a trust deficit in Asia among the nations, as it relates in particular to China,” he said.

Relations have been so icy that the top political leaders of Japan and China didn’t meet for nearly two years, only breaking the divide for a 20-minute meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit (APEC) in Beijing last month.

Refusing to engage at the highest level has made it difficult for countries to work on solutions to shared problems. The region now sees a confluence of old and new challenges that could threaten global stability if ill-managed, said Locklear, who has led the U.S. military command in the Pacific since 2012.                 

For decades, China and Japan have been at odds about sovereignty claims over islands in the East China Sea. In the past, during the time of Deng Xiaoping’s rule in China, the two countries agreed to, as Deng reportedly put it, ‘kick the issue into the tall grass’ for future generations to deal with it. These disputes have resurfaced in recent years, threatening to trigger armed conflict between the air and naval forces of the two countries.

Locklear said he believed that China and Japan would avoid inadvertent escalation, thanks to improved communications and tight command and control over their forces. But he also warned  that at least seven nations have conflicting claims in the South China Sea, which could easily escalate into direct conflict.

These situations, paired with an upsurge in Chinese military spending and the growing belief that the United States is a declining power, raise doubts about China’s intentions in the region. China’s Asian neighbors increasingly question the intensions of the world’s most populous nation, and second largest economy.

“Is it a return to the old days where you had basic tributary states? Is that the model that China is looking for? Or is it a 21^st century model?”

Locklear said China and other nations in the Asia-Pacific, as well as the United States, need to work harder to form shared views and consensus, particularly among those who “own the guns.”

Dialogue and interactions among the militaries are crucial, especially those who are called upon to make quick decisions during a possible flashpoint, for instance an accidental clash of boats or planes.

“Trust really does fall in many ways to military leaders to get it right and to lead, to some degree, the politicians and the diplomats,” he said. Locklear spoke of a tangible example of collaboration in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, also known as RIMPAC, hosted by USPACOM. Twenty-two countries participate in the world’s largest maritime warfare exercise in Hawaii, which this year included naval forces from China.

“Does it fix those friction points? No, it doesn’t.” But, Locklear concluded, “We hope that this kind of thing opens the door for future interaction.”

The audio file and transcript from the event can be accessed by clicking here.