By all possible measures, 2014 was a roller-coaster year for East Asia, particularly for the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which have anxiously watched Beijing’s widening shadow of influence and territorial assertiveness across the region. China kicked off the year with a bang, introducing a second amendment to its fisheries law […]
The Russian Military Observation website published an article titled “China’s Nuclear Potential” on December 30, 2014. It says that China is upgrading and improving its strategic bombers, but the H-6K, the upgraded version of the H-6 bomber imported from Russia has a range of only 3,000km, and does not constitute nuclear deterrence against the US. […]
Usually countries fight for gains or to prevent losses, but US experts are quite different. Michael Pillsbury, the director of the Centre on Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute, holds quite different views. In his recent article “China and the United States Are Preparing for War” he holds that war is inevitable because China is […]
China’s shift away from muscle-flexing and a confluence of interests with a US-led order offer hope it will not continue to engender large-scale regional instability next year, says Yoon Young-kwan CHINA spent much of 2014 seeking to revive a concept that Japan proclaimed seven decades ago, when it was an imperial power seeking to impose […]
The U.S. State Department’s legal study addresses this Chinese argument. “Had the drafters of the LOS (law of the sea) Convention intended to permit historic claims of one State to override the expressly stated rights of other States, the Convention would have reflected this intention in its text,” the study, called “Limits in the Seas,” […]
A prominent global security scholar has unmasked China’s “grand strategy” of gaining control of the Asia Pacific Region by “creeping expansion” rather than waging major battles. Dr. Alexander L. Vuving, an associate professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies based in Honolulu, Hawaii, writes in an essay posted by Commentators.com that China is creating […]
Government lawyers on Tuesday maintained that the country’s Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the United States is a valid executive agreement that does not need Senate concurrence. In a final effort to defend the EDCA before the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Florin Hilbay, in a 42-page memorandum, said referring the EDCA to the Senate, […]
MANILA, Philippines – China missed the deadline to respond to the Philippines’ historic arbitration case on the South China Sea, reaffirming that it rejects the legal process. On the December 15 deadline, China’s foreign ministry reiterated that Beijing “will neither accept nor participate” in the proceedings before The Hague-based arbitral tribunal. China had only until […]
The perfect storm for geopolitical instability: high emotions, high levels of resolve, and low levels of communication and coordination. This characterisation applies to crises such as in eastern Ukraine and Syria. It may also describe a long-simmering dispute in the South China Sea which has the potential to escalate dramatically. Linda Jakobson’s latest paper explains […]
They have names like Pigeon Reef, West Sand, Taisho-To, and Scarborough Shoal. Most are no more than outcrops of rock poking out of the sea. Most have never been inhabited. Few have any direct economic value. If not for the perceived fish and oil wealth in the waters around them, the spat over these specks […]