Several Chinese military and civilian officials dismissed international concern over their nation’s policy of constructing and building on South China Sea islands at a forum hosted in Beijing this weekend (Oct. 17-18). China’s vice-foreign minister Liu Zhenmin told an audience of regional and international military chiefs, defense ministers, and scholars that not only would […]
BEIJING: The delay in resolving territorial disputes in the South China Sea region is worrying, said Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein. Solid trust between leaders and the military of respective nations is therefore crucial in preventing the differences from snowballing into unmanageable conflicts, he said. Hishammuddin was referring to the South China Sea issue, […]
While China’s unilateral declaration of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over disputed waters in the East China Sea (ECS) caught many by surprise, today’s debate circles around the likelihood that Beijing might take the same action over the South China Sea (SCS). In its pursuit of maritime primacy in Northeast Asia, China has strayed […]
President Ronald Reagan, the only U.S. president to reject the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS), still has the most enduring U.S. oceans law legacy. A glance back at Reagan’s approach to oceans governance provides some insight into how he might act if he were confronted with China’s serial violations of the law of […]
Mines are the ninjas of warfare: silent, deadly and a bit unsavory. Sneaky weapons that are extremely effective not just for the damage they cause, but also for the fear and uncertainty they sow. Naval mines are especially potent. American air-dropped mines in Japanese waters in 1945–chillingly but accurately code-named Operation Starvation–sank more ships than […]
BEIJING—China on Saturday sought to soothe tensions over its South China Sea claims, saying it will avoid the use of force in the region as the United States ponders sending warships close to territory claimed by the Asian giant. Speaking at the Xiangshan regional defense forum in Beijing, Fan Changlong, vice chair of China’s Central […]
China’s relations with several Southeast Asian countries, especially the Philippines and Vietnam who have competing claims in the South China Sea, have been strained by Beijing’s increasingly assertive tone in an area through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes annually. Beijing’s move last year to step up the creation of artificial islands, which it […]
A Chinese naval patrol around an outpost in the Spratly islands, Jan. 25, 2014. (File photo/Xinhua) China’s navy and air force should prepare to respond to a potential US operation to send warships within 12 nautical miles around the outposts China has built on disputed islands in the South China Sea, says a saber-rattling piece […]
Thucydides loomed large over last month’s summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. Both noted the ancient Greek historian’s insight about the potential for conflict between rising and ruling nations in the context of managing U.S.-China relations. Their remarks, however, suggest a misunderstanding of the very point Thucydides made that could most help avoid […]
Subject to competing claims by China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan and Vietnam, more than half the world’s merchant tonnage plies back and forth through this navigable chokehold between the Western Pacific and Indian oceans, as Robert Kaplan, a former member of the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board, writes in his book, Asia’s Cauldron, The South […]