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Showing posts with the label Maritime Dispute

Fighting the Middle Kingdom in the Maritime Domain ( Source- The Diplomat / Author- Col Michael W. “Starbaby” Pietrucha)

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / United States Navy Source- The Diplomat Author- Col Michael W. “Starbaby” Pietrucha The Maritime Domain is “all areas and things of, on, under, relating to, adjacent to, or bordering on a sea, ocean, or other navigable waterway, including all maritime-related activities, infrastructure, people, cargo, vessels, and other conveyances.” -US Navy In the past decade and a half, American airpower has been heavily involved in fighting irregular wars. Often unacknowledged even by Department of Defense leadership, the Air Force and Naval aviation have been continuously involved in combat operations starting with Desert Storm and continuing without a break since then. For almost a quarter century, there has not been a single day where traditional combat air forces (CAF) have not been involved in a combat operation. In that timeframe, the application of airpower has been very land-centric, against adversaries who have no significant seapowe

Revealed: China's Forgotten Maritime Compromise ( Source- National Interest / Author- Issac B. Cardon)

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / NASA) Source- The National Interest Author- Issac B. Cardon China has nine maritime neighbors (including Taiwan) but no settled maritime boundaries, due in part to Beijing’s unwillingness to specify its maritime claims. Only one partial exception to this imprecision exists: a boundary agreement with Vietnam to delimit the northern part of the Gulf of Tonkin and a fishery agreement establishing a joint fishing regime in that area, both reached in 2000. The agreements offer both positive and negative lessons. At a minimum, they provide important precedents that should be more widely appreciated – foremost among them that it is possible for China to come to the bargaining table on maritime disputes. Meanwhile specific lessons can be applied to China’s bilateral maritime disputes with Japan, Vietnam, and the Koreas. Unfortunately the Tonkin agreements support only modest expectations for resolution of the complex, multilateral Spratly Is

The Battle for Maritime Asia Heats Up ( Source- The National Interest/ Author- Richard Javad Heydarian)

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Author- Mike Russia) Source- The National Interest Author- Richard Javad Heydarian Despite earlier hopes for a sustained de-escalation in maritime tensions in the Western Pacific, China has once again kicked off the year with a bang. In 2014, China reaffirmed its commitment to securing its territorial claims in the South China Sea by imposing new maritime regulations off of the coast of Hainan, which imperiled the fishing rights of other claimant states such as Vietnam. This was followed by a series of increasingly aggressive maneuvers in the Second Thomas Shoal, culminating with the Chinese Coast Guard vessels’ decision to effectively lay siege to the Filipino marine forces stationed in the area. Over the past few weeks of this year, China has continued to up the ante by allegedly ramming three Filipino fishing boats navigating close to the Scarborough Shoal, which is located 123 miles west of Subic Bay in the Philippines and 560 mi