As part of an effort to manage the South China Sea disputes, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has set up and begun convening a newly-launched South China Sea Expert Working Group that brings together prominent experts on maritime law, international relations, and the marine environment. The objective is for the group to […]

  How can regularized FONOPs benefit U.S. interests in the South China Sea? Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Defense, for the first time under the Trump administration, had decided to set up a schedule of regular freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea under […]

  Last Saturday, I wrote about and extensively quoted from Associate Justice Antonio Carpio’s commencement speech to the 2 PHD in Leadership and 32 Masters in Public Management graduates of the Ateneo School of Government. The speech is entitled “My Journey in Public Service” and it is full of lessons for public servants and for […]

Vietnam’s capitulation shows China’s neighbors fear the U.S. no longer has their backs. The Week Donald Trump Lost the South China Sea Vietnam’s history is full of heroic tales of resistance to China. But this month Hanoi bent the knee to Beijing, humiliated in a contest over who controls the South China Sea, the most […]

Taipei, Sept. 8 (CNA) The Republic of China (Taiwan) could play an important role in resolving the South China Sea dispute as it was the ROC that first claimed sovereignty over the region and it still has many historic documents on the issue, a visiting UK expert said on Friday. “I think Taiwan could play […]

JAKARTA (NYTIMES) – When Indonesia recently – and quite publicly – renamed the northernmost waters of its exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea despite China’s claims to the area, Beijing quickly dismissed the move as “meaningless.” It is proving to be anything but. Indonesia’s increasingly aggressive posture in the region – including a […]

MARIANAS — Representatives of National Youth Movement for the West Philippine Sea (NYMWPS) recently met with Magdalo Partylist Representative Gary Alejano to encourage him to challenge China’s incursions in the West Philippine Sea and the “lackadaisical stance” of the Duterte administration government in defending Philippine sovereignty. In that meeting, members of the group has expressed […]

Routine FONOPS in the South China Sea are long overdue — as are Taiwan Strait passages. Despite its recent tragic incidents, the United States Navy has adopted a cool-headed new approach to Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS) in the South China Sea. Long overdue, it is a clear, firm, enforcement of the international maritime order […]

As The People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues its historically unprecedented economic expansion, with its accompanying prestige, she has accordingly sought to expand her hegemony on the world stage. The centerpiece of this incrementalist program has been an ambitious and destabilizing program of building up airstrips and bases atop disputed reefs within the South China […]

  Beijing’s rebuke of Jakarta’s decision to rename its natural gas-rich Natuna Island region has agitated what had been a quiescent territorial dispute   What’s in a name? Quite a lot it seems, particularly when it comes to China’s expansive claims to the South China Sea, which Beijing has increasingly come to regard as its […]