Ten years on, we live in a very different world: one in which Russia has invaded and occupied parts of a major European nation, and one in which China has built a string of heavily militarized islets, bristling with weapons, across one of the world’s most consequential maritime corridors — a corridor that carries roughly one-third of all global shipping.
The rules-based order is increasingly fractured, and as the July 12 joint statement from 14 nations showed, its defense is piecemeal by “coalitions of the willing.” But the statement’s signatory list is the more telling story here: of the 14 governments that commemorated the ruling, only one—the Philippines—is actually an ASEAN member state—something that Chinese trolls trumpeted on social media.