Letter to the Editor.
According to a recent media report, Malaysia will deploy its two newly acquired submarines, the KD Tunku Abdul Rahman and the KD Tun Abdul Razak to protect the Straits of Malacca. Protecting the Straits is a crucial dimension of our national defence and security policy. It is a vital prerequisite for safeguarding our independence and sovereignty.
As a littoral state, Malaysia has the sovereign right to protect the Straits— a right that is based upon international law. This is why Malaysia has for some time now insisted that non-littoral states should not seek to control either directly or indirectly the management of the Straits of Malacca. The Indonesian government has adopted a similar stand. Of the littoral states, it is only Singapore that would like the Unites States to play a more important and interventionist role.
US officials have argued that an enhanced role for the superpower would help in fighting piracy and terrorism in the Straits of Malacca. Though piracy is a problem, the littoral states have done a fairly good job in curbing it. If US involvement is directed at warding off Al Qaeda type terrorist attacks, it is quite conceivable— given the situation in various countries— that the US’s presence itself will attract Al Qaeda militants to the Straits.
The real reasons that motivate the US to push for a bigger role in the Straits are linked to its larger hegemonic agenda. The Straits of Malacca is one of the world’s five top global straits. 30 percent of world trade passes through the Straits. One quarter of the oil shipped around the world is in supertankers that ply the narrow, 800 kilometre long sea lane. More specifically, 80 percent of oil transported to both Japan and China depends upon the Straits. In the light of the rapid economic growth of countries such as China, India and Vietnam, it is estimated that by 2030, two-thirds of oil consumed in the continent will pass through the Straits.
It is only too apparent why the Straits of Malacca is important in itself to the US which is making a desperate bid to sustain the Washington helmed unipolar global system that emerged after the end of the cold war. If anything, its desire to contain the rise of China has increased the strategic significance of the Straits. Containing China, needless to say, is central to the US’s strategy for dominance and control of the Asia-Pacific region. Through control of the Straits—figuratively, one of the most vital arteries for China’s development— the US will be in a position to influence the tone and temper of China’s ascendancy. Besides, US control will also help its close ally, Japan, to check China’s expanding influence in the region. This is why the Washington elite is so keen on Japan amending Article 9 of its Constitution which prohibits the nation from engaging in warfare and instead wants Japan to assume the role of a regional military power under the aegis of the US.
Though it has become imperative in terms of its own hegemonic agenda to control the Straits of Malacca, even if indirectly, Washington knows that this goal is only attainable if the governments in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta are prepared to play ball with it. It explains to some extent why it has been extraordinarily supportive of a particular politician in Malaysia for some years now. The politician in turn has assiduously cultivated individuals and groups within the elite stratum in Washington for more than a decade. Both sides are hoping that recent political developments in Malaysia will somehow work to their favour.
But it will not be in the interest of the security of the Straits of Malacca, or the sovereignty of the Malaysian nation, or the peaceful rise of China, or the emergence of a multi-polar world.
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar,
President,
International Movement for a Just World (JUST).
8 September 2008.