Opinion The new gunboat diplomacy

The Obama administration first waded into the treacherous waters of the South China Sea last year when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared,at a tense meeting of Asian countries in Hanoi,that the United States would join Vietnam,the Philippines and other countries in resisting Beijing’s efforts to dominate the sea. China,predictably,was enraged by what it viewed as American meddling.

For all its echoes of the 1800s,not to mention the Cold War,the showdown in the South China Sea augurs a new type of maritime conflict,where fuel-hungry economic powers,newly accessible undersea energy riches and even changes in the earth’s climate are conspiring to create a 21st-century contest for the seas.

China is not alone in its maritime ambitions. Turkey has clashed with Cyprus and stoked tensions with Greece and Israel over natural-gas fields that lie under the eastern Mediterranean. Several powers,including Russia,Canada and the United States,are eagerly circling the Arctic,where melting polar ice is opening up new shipping routes and the tantalising possibility of vast oil and gas deposits beneath. “This hunt for resources is going to consume large bodies of water around the world for at least the next couple of decades,” Clinton said in a recent interview,describing a global competition that sounds like a watery Great Game.

“Underlying all of this is the recognition that an increasing share of oil resources is offshore,” said Daniel Yergin,an energy expert “When you have energy resources on land,” he said,“you know where things stand. When they’re offshore,things can get murkier.” Twenty-nine million barrels of oil a day,one-third of global production,now come from offshore fields,Yergin said,a share that will rise steadily. The South China Sea alone is estimated to have 61 billion barrels of petroleum — oil and gas — plus 54 billion yet to be discovered,while the Arctic is projected to have 238 billion barrels,with possibly twice that in undiscovered sources.

As countries race to erect drilling rigs and send oil exploration vessels to comb the seabed,conflicting maritime claims are helping to fuel a naval arms race. It is no coincidence that the countries with the fastest-growing navies are those with stakes in these energy zones.

China expanded from two Soviet-era destroyers in 1990 to 13 modern destroyers in 2010. In its drive for a blue-water navy,one that operates in the deep waters of open oceans,it is also building an aircraft carrier. Malaysia and Vietnam are beefing up their navies with frigates and submarines. India,which wants to make sure it has access to the Far East,is bulking up. And the Israeli navy is pushing for more vessels to counter Turkish warships circling Israeli drilling rigs.

With anaemic building rates and tighter maintenance budgets,analysts say,the US navy has been forced to cope with an aging fleet that some say is not up to its challenges. Even so,the Obama administration has been an active practitioner of gunboat diplomacy. Last fall,Obama sent the aircraft carrier George Washington to the Yellow Sea for joint exercises with South Korea,sending a message to both North Korea and its key backer,China. The move echoed the Clinton administration’s decision in 1996 to send the Seventh Fleet to warn China against attacking Taiwan.

For Obama,whose roots in Hawaii and Indonesia have imbued him with a strong Pacific worldview,the drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan gives him a good pretext to turn his gaze eastward. The United States has worked to shore up its ties to old Asian allies,like Japan and South Korea,as well as new giants like India. The goal,though administration officials are loath to say it publicly,is to assemble a coalition to counterbalance China’s growing power. This week,Obama is expected to announce an agreement with Australia for a permanent American military presence there.

For China,the South China Sea has long been crucial as a supply route for oil and other raw materials to fuel its economy. China’s claims have deep historical roots,dating from the 1940s,when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists drew a dotted line in the shape of a cow’s tongue extending south of China,embracing most the sea and two disputed island chains,the Paracels and the Spratlys.

Quarrels over these hunks of volcanic rock wouldn’t matter much,except that China,Vietnam and the Philippines are running into one another in the race for oil. Last spring,in two separate incidents,Vietnam accused Chinese vessels of deliberately cutting the seismic survey cables of an oil exploration ship. A former American official said his nightmare scenario would be a Chinese warship’s firing on an Exxon oil-drilling ship.

If the South China Sea is simmering,then the eastern Mediterranean is seething. There,claims to huge natural-gas reserves off the coast of Cyprus and Lebanon have raised tensions with Turkey,which occupies half of Cyprus,as well as with Israel. Cyprus and Israel are drilling for gas,angering Turkey. The militant Islamic group Hezbollah,in Lebanon,has threatened to attack Israeli gas rigs. Further complicating this is the bitter rift between Turkey and Israel after the deadly Israeli commando interception of a Turkish flotilla trying to transport aid to Palestinians in Gaza last year.