EURASIA REVIEW

APLN member Rajaram Panda highlights that the South China Sea has become a focal point of geopolitical tensions and emphasises the importance of international collaboration among major powers to secure maritime routes and maintain regional stability.

The South China Sea has emerged as a theatre for great power contestation as several countries in Asia make contesting claims to the areas that fall within their Exclusive Economic Zones as per international laws governing maritime commerce. In contrast, China makes claims almost in its entirety to this strategically important maritime space. As trillions of dollars of cargo transit through this critical sea area, the issue of securing safe transport by major sea faring nations are drawn into the picture.

Philippines is one of the claimants that approached the international tribunal at The Hague for adjudication as China violated its sovereignty by encroaching into its EEZ and secured a verdict in its favour in July 2016. China rejected the ruling, being aware that the tribunal has no law enforcing authority and thus found the ruling not binding to observe. Since then the situation and activities of China in the South China Sea has increased. In particular, it is involved in a series of spat with the Philippines including firing water cannons and deploying coast guard ships to islands that have remained strategic strongholds for the Philippines for a long time. Such activities have drawn other major maritime powers not having claims but have maritime interests so that international maritime traffic is secured from potential disruptions.

Some major powers have chosen two-fold approach: to engage China by holding duelling military drills in the South China Sea and holding separate drills with their partner countries with twin objectives – to deter any unilateral actions by any single power and be ready to meet any contingency.

In the latest initiative on this, Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) warship transited for the first time the Taiwan Strait and then joined naval and air forces from Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and the US for joint military exercises in the disputed South China Sea. In view of the ramped-up tensions in the area, the joint show of force came in response to Chinese military’s Southern Theatre Command’s claim that it had organised its air and sea forces to carry out drills and patrols of the sea and airspace around the flash point Scarborough Shoal in the strategic waterway.

Read the full article here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons