This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, August 28th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Is the disputed territory of the South China Sea really worth a war. A new paper from the Cato

Institute provides a threat assessment of the Chinese policy regarding the

South China Sea. Cato's John Glazer and Eric Gomez comment on the risks of war in the South China Sea.

So there are overlapping territorial maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea between China, the Philippines, Vietnam,

a few other claimants, and the United States is allies with one of the claimants, the Philippines

seeks a better relationship with Vietnam, and is worried about China's

influence in the region in general.

So the United States wants to maintain order in the region that benefits itself and the Chinese want to not upend it but to adjust it in a way that benefits them and that's causing most of the friction.

All right to you, John Glazer, then does the United States have any sort of fuzzy promise of

protection for any of the countries that are involved in this dispute?

Yeah, so we have a very hard, not fuzzy, clear, in fact, commitment to the Philippines to defend their territory if they come under attack.

So we do in fact have commitments in the region and we promise to uphold the security

of and the defense of a lot of the claimants that oppose China.

The problem with that is that those promises can tend to incentivize reckless

behavior on the part of the allies.

So they feel lots of motivation to stand up to a much stronger China if they feel the United

States has their back and that can create a kind of moral hazard problem in the South

China Sea.

In 2012 we saw the Philippines kind of stand up to China and a naval standoff and that

was potentially destabilizing.

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