There will continue to be territorial skirmishes in the South China Sea, but short of a major accident, the real crisis in 2022 may occur with a Russian incursion into Ukraine. The climate crisis may render all these South China Sea island claims null and void as all new construction could be under threat. US policy will be implicated whether NATO or ASEAN.
As tensions mount between Washington and Moscow over a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. intelligence has found the Kremlin is planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops, according to U.S. officials and an intelligence document obtained by The Washington Post.
The Kremlin has been moving troops toward the border with Ukraine while demanding Washington guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO and that the alliance will refrain from certain military activities in and around Ukrainian territory. The crisis has provoked fears of a renewed war on European soil and comes ahead of a planned virtual meeting next week between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The Russian plans call for a military offensive against Ukraine as soon as early 2022 with a scale of forces twice what we saw this past spring during Russia’s snap exercise near Ukraine’s borders,” said an administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. “The plans involve extensive movement of 100 battalion tactical groups with an estimated 175,000 personnel, along with armor, artillery and equipment.”
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The U.S. analysis of Russia’s plans is based in part on satellite images that “show newly arrived units at various locations along the Ukrainian border over the last month,” the official said.
One may ask why States choose to delimit if they have their own exclusive economic zone, surely States are happy to explore within this area? However, the idea of delimitation is to provide jurisdictional clarity to states concerning but not limited to marine resources. This is particularly important as once the rights have been declared it reduces the possibility of disputes. There is also inevitable need for transboundary cooperation once the borders have been made. This is because arguably creating a boundary is just the beginning. There is a need to regulate the activities of the State within this area and reconcile conflicting activities. Another vital point to highlight is the global need for offshore resources. Such resources include carbons, oil, fish and gas hydrates. Although there is a move away from the global use of plastic this material is still widely used. The high use of plastic confirms the fact that as a global community we still need offshore resources. Hence why the lack of boundaries would cause more harm than good especially with the future in mind.
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Beijing’s approach encountered resistance in 2016 with the landmark ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which declared that China’s “historical rights” had no legal basis.
The ruling also said that the rocks and the partly submerged features on which China had built its naval and aerial facilities, were within the 200 nautical-mile (370.4km) Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines, as defined by the UN. An EEZ is an area where only the country it belongs to can fish and explore natural resources, although safe passage is granted to foreign vessels.
The court also established the EEZs of Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Vietnam, boosting their positions in relation to China.
Furthermore, the court said China’s reclaimed areas and artificial islands were not entitled to a 12-nautical-mile (22.2km) territorial sea, because they were not habitable in their original form. As such, freedom of navigation and overflight are allowed in those areas.
China refused to participate in the arbitration case, dismissing the ruling as “null and void”.
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The increasing risk of conflict in the South China Sea (SCS) poses a significant threat to stability in the region and to U.S. interests. Not only do Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines have competing territorial and jurisdictional claims over the physical features of the SCS, but U.S. Freedom of Navigation (FON) operations have also elicited an increasingly hostile tone from Beijing. See Chapter Three: Freedom of Navigation, for additional information about this topic. Additionally, Beijing’s insistence that it has “indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands and the adjacent waters” within the so-called “nine-dash line” as well as its accelerated industrial scale “island building” for military purposes have increased the overall international tension in this region. China’s militarization of the SCS is of great concern to the U.S. and its regional allies because China’s aggressive assertions serve to destabilize the region and weaken important international agreements such as the LOSC. Additional concerns include China’s refusal to arbitrate legitimate disputes concerning the law of the sea, an aversion to multilateral negotiations, and the refusal to enter into bilateral negotiations on the basis of equality.
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The geographical extent of the claimed area has variously been represented by 9, 10,and 11-dashed lines indicating the area China considers it has sovereignty over. The most recent version of these maps was circulated by China as a set of notes verbale to the United Nations in 2009 (see appendix, map 1).4 Although the exact number and distribution of dashes has varied, the 9-dash map is largely seen to follow an 11-dashline map published by the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China in 1947 (see appendix, map 2). This map, in turn, is understood to reflect a map published by the Republic of China Land and Water Maps Inspection Committee of 1935. Indeed, as successors to pre-1947 China, both Taiwan and Mainland China exert highly similar claims in the South China Sea.
Despite these maps’ apparent focus on maritime delineation, it should be noted that what China’s claims actually emphasize is sovereignty over territorial features (i.e. islands) within the area demarcated by the dashed lines. As noted by a U.S. State Department document, the nature of maritime claims is as such of a comparatively lower priority and has been less precisely articulated. In fact, in 1996 China provided geographic coordinates which can serve as baseline for a formal maritime claim, but only did so for the Xisha (Paracels) and Diaoyu Islands5 (in the East China Sea) – other South China Sea maritime claims remain as of yet unclarified. The importance attributed to territorial sovereignty, as opposed to maritime delineation, is reiterated in among other, the 2014 “Position Paper of the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the Matter of Jurisdiction in the South China Sea Arbitration Initiated by the Republic of the Philippines.”
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The second interpretation of the nine-dash line would also be supported by the approach that Taiwan has taken in recent years. The map of the nine-dash line is based on a map originally issued by a department of the Republic of China that showed 11 lines forming a U-shape in the South China Sea. In 1948, the ROC government declared its sovereignty and the right to maritime resources over the islands and reefs within the lines. When the PRC was established it recognized that line. Since 2005 Taiwan has slightly adjusted its claim to focus on the islands, their surrounding waters, and continental shelf rather than the whole body of water in the U-shaped line. In particular the ROC “suspended its claim to the entire waters” within the line in December 2005. It continues to claim sovereignty over land features within the line.
It is possible that The Hague arbitral tribunal could “read down” the nine-dash line in the above manner so as to make it not inconsistent with UNCLOS.
The eve of the anticipated arbitral ruling and high level regional summits present an opportunity for China to clarify what it means by the nine-dash line. Were China to expressly clarify that the second interpretation of the nine-dash line is what it intends it would lose nothing in terms of its long-maintained claims to territorial sovereignty (and corresponding maritime jurisdictions) in the South China Sea. But it would create a higher degree of certainty for non-claimant states operating in the area. It would also provide more certainty for the claimants.
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Sansha was created on 24 July 2012,[4] and administers a group of 260 islands, reefs and beaches located in the Spratlys (Nansha), Paracel, Xisha Islands and Zhongsha Islands (Macclesfield Bank).[5] Reports in the China Daily stated that the establishment of Sansha was simply an upgrade of its administrative status from the previous county-level administration to prefecture-level.[3] Subsequent developments have turned Sansha City (located on Xisha District's Yongxing Island) into a small town with over 1,400 residents, with a dual-use airport that has a 2,700 metres (3,000 yd) runway and two artificial harbors capable of docking sea vessels up to 5,000 tonnes.[6][7]
Due to territorial disputes in the South China Sea,[8][9] foreign reaction to the city's establishment was not positive. The United States Department of State called the change in the administrative status "unilateral", and the move has received criticism from nations engaged in the South China Sea dispute, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam.[10]