The Starting Power of Water: Decision processes in the

Escalation of Maritime Territorial Disputes

Meredith Shaw
University of Southern California

Abstract

Even as the territorial peace literature celebrates the seemingly global norm of respect for stable
land borders, maritime disputes are growing increasingly contentious and militarized. While
many sources associate this trend with resource competition, I posit that an important
consideration for policymakers is the higher costs (both financial and reputational) associated
with land-based territorial challenges, which redirects expansionary impulses to the next
vulnerable space. The first section reviews the growing literature on territorial disputes and
discusses how maritime disputes do not fit easily into the standard theoretical frameworks. The
second section builds a new model of territorial disputes that incorporates the different decision-
making logics involved in the choice to pursue maritime versus land disputes. The third section
demonstrates the trend of increasing state preference to pursue maritime versus land disputes
through an examination of two influential cases: an expanding economic power with multiple
potential disputes involving both land and sea territories (China), and a rivalry dyad that has
historically disputed both land and sea borders (North and South Korea). A final section outlines
the implications for existing models of territorial conflict and proposes scenarios for falsification
or confirmation through future research.
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I. Introduction
Maritime clashes and disputes over small islets are an increasingly disruptive feature of
international relations in East Asia. Japan alone has been locked in seemingly intractable disputes
with four of its neighbors — Russia, South Korea, Taiwan and China — over small islands on its
periphery. China has been pressing increasingly controversial claims to ocean territory, and now
has island territorial disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Japan, and
(recently) South Korea. Some of these territories involve substantial material concerns (oil near
the Paracels and the Spratleys); others are barren, resource-poor and of little strategic or material
value (Takeshima/Dokdo). Long limited to rhetorical and legal struggles, in recent years these
disputes have increasingly taken on a military tone, with clashes involving coast guard, navy,
research and fishing vessels, the extension of China’s Air Defense Zone, and military jet
flyovers.
What are the sources of territorial conflict/peace, and are these equally applicable to sea
and land territories? Might there be some connection between increased stability of land borders
and increased contention of sea borders? And more specifically, why is East Asia particularly
prone to increasing levels of maritime conflict? This paper seeks to address each of these
questions through a comparative look at the patterns of territorial dispute initiation, escalation
and resolution concerning land and maritime territories. In the process it seeks to model the
decision to pursue maritime versus land territorial disputes, evaluating how the relative
attractiveness and difficulty of different dispute types may have changed in recent decades.
Much of the existing theoretical work on maritime conflict has spun off from models
originally developed to explain land territorial conflict, and shows a strong tendency to explain
the pursuit of minor islets and shoals in terms of demand-side factors: the competition for oil and
mineral wealth (Klare 2001), the need for expanded fisheries to feed growing populations (Klare
2001, Diehl and Goertz 2002), military posturing and status rivalry (Friedberg 1993, Diehl and
Goertz 2002), the need to secure defensive perimeters and strategic sea lanes (Graham 2005,
Hensel 2008, Blazevic 2009), etc. In this paper I propose a supply and demand model of
territorial conflict, in which the decision to pursue a given territorial claim lies at the intersection
of what the state wants and what it thinks it can get away with. In this view, maritime territory is
 3

contentious not only because of its inherent material value but because it is perceived as
relatively more obtainable than land territory. While land targets have become off-limits by tacit
agreement due to the certainty of reprisals and the collective benefit of stability (Simmons 2005),
low-value maritime targets (small islands, submerged reefs, oil platforms, or the ocean itself)
may be fair game.
The result is a situation in which military targets are selected not only for their inherent
strategic or material value, but also for their perceived isolation and insignificance, providing an
arena in which rival navies can engage in limited battles without provoking an economically
crippling war or trade embargo. This produces a dangerous situation in which expansionary
states base their naval strategies on their own perceptions of how much loss neighboring states
are willing to accept before engaging in strong retaliatory action. Complicating this issue, non-
governmental actors such as civic groups and fishing vessels have actively become involved in
these maritime disputes in unpredictable ways, raising questions about the extent
of governmental responsibility and control of the rate of escalation.
In the first section, I review the existing literature on borders as institutions, the norms of
territorial integrity, and patterns of territorial conflict. I then lay out a theoretical framework for
interpreting maritime territorial conflict, identifying institutional and normative differences
between sea and land territory. For theoretical simplicity, I limit my discussion to two ideal type
scenarios for territorial challenges: a growing economic and military power in need of resources,
and a rivalry dyad seeking to test each others’ resolve and capabilities. The first type is tested
using the example of China, a rising economic power with growing resource needs and a diverse
set of land and maritime borders featuring many potential points of contestation. The second type
is tested by using the North-South Korea rivalry dyad, a pairing with a long history of territorial
contestation which shares both land and sea borders. Exploratory analysis of these cases suggests
a pattern of increasing contestation of maritime borders and a corresponding stabilization of land
borders.
This paper does not seek to answer the still-contentious questions of whether China is a
revisionist power and whether its rise is destined to set it on a collision course with the US for
regional hegemony. It simply argues that, as a result of changing institutional incentives and
 4

norms associated with land and maritime borders in the 21st Century, if China does seek to
challenge the territorial status quo, it will be far more likely to do so via maritime rather than
land territory, and that this represents a significant shift in preferences from the last time the
world saw the emergence of a new great power, over a century ago.
Before proceeding, a few definitions are in order. This paper frequently distinguishes
between “maritime” and “land” territory, two categories that are somewhat ill-defined in the
existing literature. For the purposes of this paper, I have chosen to define maritime territory
somewhat arbitrarily to incorporate any part of an ocean or sea claimed as part of a state’s
territorial waters or its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), as well as small islets, reefs, man-made
islands, oil wells, etc. Here, the distinction between small and large islands is somewhat
problematic. For instance, the small cluster of islets in the Sea of Japan known as Dokdo/
Takeshima is rightly treated as a maritime dispute in most of the literature. But suppose a dispute
were to emerge over a larger, populated island like Japan’s Taemado or Sadogashima, or South
Korea’s Ulleungdo; would these also be considered maritime disputes? For a country like Japan,
which is comprised entirely of islands, where does one draw the line? To resolve this problem, I
have made a somewhat arbitrary distinction that islands that did not support any permanent
human settlements prior to the modern era shall be considered part of a state’s “maritime
territory,” while any other islands shall be considered “land territory.” Still, the definition
remains problematic in some cases. For instance, some of the disputed islands near the Northern
Limit Line between the two Koreas may be large enough to support human settlements, but they
are still relatively more “maritime” in character than the dispute over the disposition of the DMZ
(the land border between the two Koreas). It may be even better to think of this as a continuous
variable, with some islands being relatively more “maritime” than others. The importance of this
distinction will become clear in the theoretical section, which examines the different logics at
work behind the pursuit of small, sparsely populated island territories.
A “territorial dispute” is any situation in which two or more states disagree over the legal
jurisdiction of an area of land or maritime territory. Territorial disputes may also include
disagreements over the right to extract natural resources or to deploy military forces in a region. I
 5

define “territorial conflict” as any situation in which at least one side takes military action in
pursuit or defense of a territorial claim, either against a rival state’s military or civiliians.
The purpose of this paper is threefold:
1) To present an argument that a new theoretical model is needed to specifically address
the logic of maritime territorial conflict, distinct from the logic of land territorial conflict.
2) To demonstrate through historical evidence that there is a clear trend of maritime
territory becoming more contentious over time, while land territory is becoming less contentious,
and that these two trends are connected.
3) To explore some of the specific legal, economic, social and geopolitical developments
that may have led to this change.
II. Theories on Water, Territory, and Conflict
In The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, John Mearsheimer lays out his theory of “the
stopping power of water,” by which the obstacle of a large body of water makes amphibious
invasion against any well-armed opponent’s territory prohibitively expensive. In the detailed
exposition of this theory, it becomes clear that Mearsheimer has in mind a particular kind of
conflict that has largely become obsolete in the 21st century, namely armed invasion by a great
power against mainland territory held by another great power. This focus can be seen in the
following representative sample:
“A territorial state is essentially a huge aircraft carrier that can accommodate
endless numbers of airplanes, whereas an actual carrier can accommodate only a
small number of airplanes. Therefore, other things being equal, the territorial state
should be able to control the air and use that advantage to pound the amphibious
forces on the beaches... Land-based air forces also have the ability to sink a rival
navy. It is actually dangerous to place naval forces near the coast of a great power
that has a formidable air force.”1

As can be seen from the above text, Mearsheimer’s theory of the stopping power of water
is not really intended to apply to small island territories far removed from the mainlands of the
countries that claim them. Mearsheimer would likely defend himself by arguing that such
isolated islets are not significant to great power military strategy and the global balance of power.

1 Mearsheimer, John J. The tragedy of great power politics. WW Norton & Company, 2001. p 117.
 6

However, in regions like East Asia where national borders are often delineated in terms of
maritime territory, the takeover of a small Pacific islet can greatly expand a country’s maritime
territory and affect control of strategic sea lanes.
A more Asia-specific version of this geographical argument comes from Robert Kaplan
(2014), who argues that East Asian maritime competition will remain non-violent primarily
because “East Asia’s maritime geography argues in favor of naval competition but militates
against amphibious landings in heavily populated areas.” This observation is true as far as it
goes, but conveniently overlooks the fact that most of the hottest disputes in the region at present
concern sparsely populated or unpopulated islets far removed from mainland territories. In such
cases, I contend that the isolation and insignificance of such small islets actually increases the
temptation for rival powers to engage in maritime conflict (rather than land conflict), for reasons
related to the lack of any significant civilian population, the logistically difficulty of stationing
defensive forces there, and the peculiar way in which maritime territory is delineated. In other
words, in the modern era when land territories are largely fixed and great power rivalry
increasingly plays out over control of undersea resources and strategic sea lanes, it might make
more sense to speak of “the starting power of water”; that is, the increasing tendency for low-
value maritime targets to serve as proving grounds for confrontation between regional powers.
Much work has already been done on the institutionalization of land borders and their
correlation with both peace and democracy. Simmons proposes thinking of borders as mutually
beneficial institutions, since "Settled borders help to secure property rights, signal much greater
jurisdictional and policy certainty, and thereby reduce the transactions costs associated with
international economic transactions.” (Simmons 2005 p824) This argument indeed seems to hold
for land borders in most parts of the world today, with the exception of relatively new states in
recently war-torn regions such as the Sudan, the Congo and the Balkans. Even highly autocratic
states have come to understand the consequences of transgressing established borders, especially
after witnessing the global reaction to Saddam Hussein’s 1992 invasion of Kuwait and Russia’s
incursions into Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, such that the strong expectation of global
condemnation and punishment has effectively discouraged overt border incursions by all but the
most powerful states. The decline in military incursions across land borders may indeed be cause
 7

for celebration, but it raises a new concern: if borders have become immutable institutions,
where does that aggressive impulse go? Another question worth exploring is, does Simmons’
institutionalist view of land borders apply equally well to maritime borders?
To understand these new dynamics better, we must explore the theoretical question of
why states fight over territory in the first place. The standard offensive realist view is that “the
principal objective of states has been the conquest of territory in order to advance economic,
security, and other interests" (Gilpin 1981, 23). In their work on interstate rivalry and conflict,
Diehl and Goertz (2002) find that territorial issues are the most frequent sources of war.
Furthermore, they find that governments are least likely to negotiate with rivals when the
territory at stake has material value or is critical to national identity. In the classical realist view,
territorial disputes are seen as a zero-sum game and are thus more likely to erupt into violence
than disputes over other matters, particularly when the dispute involves sacred space or has some
other indivisible property (Hassner 2003). Kocs (1995) uses quantitative data analysis to prove
that inter-state war is more likely when states have a shared boundary that lacks standing under
international law. This has clear implications for maritime disputes, where jurisdictional laws and
norms remain notoriously vague.
Huth (2009) takes an essentially rationalist view of territorial disputes, focusing on the
calculus of inter-state bargaining, but he also incorporates domestic influences on dispute
negotiation. His study examines 129 different territorial disputes in the period 1950-1990; this
incorporates both maritime and land disputes, yet many of his core variables only apply to
historically populated land territories. For instance, Huth finds that relative strength has little to
do with initiation of territorial disputes; rather, domestic pressures inspired by linguistic and
cultural ties to people in the disputed territory are key to the militarization of territorial disputes.
How, then, do we explain the increasing militarization of disputes over unpopulated islets and
shoals in the seas of the Asia Pacific? Also problematic is Huth’s classification of dispute dyads
in terms of “challengers” and “targets.” These terms assume a clearly defined prior ownership by
one party or another, generally determined by the nationality of the inhabitants or historical
jurisdiction. In the case of a tiny, historically uninhabited islet like Takeshima/Dokdo, to simply
classify Japan or South Korea as the “challenger” is to make a political statement that requires
 8

defending. It is more difficult to establish historical ownership of a territory that has never paid
taxes, issued permits for entry/exit, or housed permanent settlers with linguistic and cultural ties
to any nation. The problem grows still more complicated when one attempts to identify
challengers and targets in such cases as recent man-made islands, naturally occurring new islands
resulting from volcanic eruptions, submerged reefs and continental shelves, air defense zones, oil
platforms, and the open sea.
Ruggie (1993) offers a possible constructivist explanation for why territory has grown so
contentious. He argues that territory has grown in importance since the pre-modern era, when
borders used to be more diffuse and non-exclusionary. Although Ruggie was theorizing with
regard to land borders, this observation seems to apply even more to maritime borders, which
were a vague and indefensible concept just a century ago. Indeed, the concept of an exclusive
economic zone — the delineation of which has preoccupied so much of recent maritime conflict
— was only legally formulated after WWII.
Another constructivist view comes from Murphy (1990), who examines how justificatory
discourse within a nation influences the extent and location of territorial claims as well as the
modes of conflict and resolution that are considered. In the process he identifies a new trend in
the justification of territorial claims, namely that “Historical arguments have come into
ascendancy as claims based strictly on ethnic, strategic, and economic considerations have
become less acceptable” (Murphy 1990 p531). While Murphy’s case studies focus exclusively on
contiguous land-based territorial conflict (Ecuador-Peru, India-Pakistan, Togo-Ghana), his
discovery about the ascendancy of historical justifications at the expense of other (geographical,
legal, economic) justifications can be observed in several of East Asia’s maritime disputes as
well, as we shall see in the empirical section.
The liberal institutionalist school expects to see less territorial conflict among democratic
rivals, as public opinion and economic inter-dependence will dissuade governments from
militarizing territorial conflict (Gartzke et al 2001, Koo 2009). As most of the states in the Asia
Pacific region are democratic and all of them are economically interlinked, the growing
contention over maritime territory in the region poses a challenge to liberalist theory. My theory
might provide an avenue to save this line of thought, by arguing that the same economic
 9

interdependence that dissuades states from attacking land territory compels them to fight instead
over less economically impactful targets far out in the ocean.
In his work on the territorial peace, Douglas Gibler (2012) posits that the causality of this
relationship may be reversed. Gibler finds that instances of territorial threat and centralized
governance tend to covary. On this basis he theorizes that territorial threats empower leaders by
creating a favorable environment for the centralization of their power, for instance by
rationalizing the increase in military manpower necessary to defend or conquer the threatened
territory. Thus, he argues that democracy and peace are both symptoms — not causes — of the
removal of territorial threats. If this is true, and if the same mechanism works in reverse, then the
growing contention over maritime boundaries might have deleterious effects on East Asian
democracies and further shore up the central authority of the CCP in China. A key question is,
will domestic politics be radicalized in the same way by the perception of a foreign threat to a
distant rocky outcropping that most of the domestic public is only dimly aware of? Do maritime
territorial challenges produce the same shift towards authoritarian centralization that land
challenges do, according to Gibler? If so, we should expect to see a trend of increasingly
centralized authority in East Asian maritime powers. If not, as maritime territory becomes more
contentious we may find that decentralized liberal democracies are not as immune from issuing
territorial challenges as was previously thought.
One of the central puzzles of territorial conflict is the apparent divisibility of any
contentious territory. Rational states, in theory, should not come to war over territory so long as
there exists a potential settlement that both sides to a dispute prefer to war. Since even the
smallest land territory is by definition divisible, unless it involves some sort of sacred space
(Hassner 2003), the rational choice perspective predicts that actual conflict over territory should
be rare and should only occur when there is imperfect information or failure to signal one’s
commitment level (Fearon 1995). As the following analysis will show, however, maritime
territory may be a special exception to this rule, particularly when a large swath of territory can
be gained through control of a small, isolated islet. This complicates our picture of rational
bargaining and suggests that sea territory might not always be divisible, or that the calculation of
relative gains from division may be different from that of land territory.
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A more promising variation on the rational cost-benefit view of territorial conflict comes
from Walter (2003). Using historical examples, Walter systematically demonstrates cases in
which strategic, material, and identity-based incentives all fail to explain the decision to escalate
or de-escalate a territorial dispute. She proposes instead that the reason such disputes are so
pernicious and difficult to resolve is because states confront a reputational problem if they
concede land to challengers. A state that concedes and gives up territory in order to avoid a fight
is likely to find itself confronted by more and more challengers to its territory. This raises the
question, why is territory more prone to such reputational problems than other issues? The
answer, for Walter, is “supply and demand”: states have a limited supply of territory and face an
almost unlimited supply of potential challengers. A state that gives away too much of its territory
soon ceases to exist. This argument resonates with me as one who has observed how tenaciously
Japan has held its position in the face of territorial challenges from Russia, South Korea and
China. Each of these disputes involves small, uninhabited or sparsely inhabited islands of
questionable material value; in each case, Japan has probably already taken on more losses in
expended resources or opportunity costs defending these claims than whatever it could gain from
victory. However, as a nation of islands, it is easy to see how it might fear starting a trend of
shedding islands one by one. The reputational explanation also might help explain why Japan is
so plagued by territorial challenges in the first place; at the end of WWII it was in no position to
defend its claims and consequently lost a great deal of territory; neighboring states may still
subconsciously view it as a vulnerable player.
Ocean territorial borders add several layers of complexity to the traditional view of
territorial conflict, as the object being fought over is defined in different dimensions and
incorporates different strategic gains. Graham (2005) explains Japan’s maritime border disputes
in terms of its need to control strategic sea lanes to supply its material resource needs. In this
interpretation, unlike in disputes over land territory, the gain being fought over is not limited to
the islet itself but rather incorporates all resources and strategic destinations that are accessible
solely via the associated navigational route. Granted, in special cases land territory may have this
strategic importance as well, as in the case when vital transit routes are only passable via a
narrow strip of land (e.g. the Khyber Pass). However, such situations are relatively rare in land
 11

geography. Because of the way a state’s maritime territory is defined in terms of nautical miles
radiating from the nearest land possession, once states begin to fight over ocean territory every
isolated small island has the potential to become a sort of Khyber Pass of the sea.
International institutions for delimiting state borders and defining acceptable behavior
around them have become a source of stability across land borders in the last century, as
Simmons (2005) has theorized and Gibler (2012) has verified. However, the institutions defining
water territory remain weak and contradictory, leaving openings for countries to exploit those
institutions that favor their claims while ignoring those that do not. The ICJ, for instance, offers a
resolution mechanism for territorial disputes, but only when both sides agree to put their case up
for judgement. Naturally, a rational country will selectively choose to put their case before the
ICJ (the “rule of law” approach) only when they do not already have effective control of the
territory in question, while the country with effective control rationally chooses to avoid
judgement by refusing to acknowledge that there is a dispute (the "might makes right" approach).
For instance, Japan is trying to appeal for ICJ judgement on the ownership of Takeshima/Dokdo,
while South Korea (which has effective control and a military base on the island) refuses to
acknowledge the dispute; by contrast, on the Senkaku Islands, where Japan does have effective
control, its official position is that there is no dispute.2 Such ambiguities are less frequent with
land borders because the relative ease of transit across them requires clear border protocols to be
put in place, making the existence of any dispute obvious to both parties.
Countries have rationalized their claims to small islets on a variety of grounds:
geographic (distance from mainland, distance from nearest territory, or position on continental
shelf), historical (taken from old maps, ancient texts or diaries), legal (international treaty,
private property rights, or UNCLOS), and de facto (boots on the ground). In the various disputes
in East Asia’s waters, countries have employed whichever rationale serves their purpose best,
ignoring others, on a case-by-case basis. For instance, in a report filed to the UN in December
2012, China rationalized its claim to the Senkakus on the grounds that they lie on the Chinese

2Interestingly, China has not yet appealed for institutional intervention on Senkaku/Diaoyutai.
Indonesia and Malaysia sent an island dispute before ICJ in 2002, which ruled in favor of
Malaysia.
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continental shelf: “Physiognomy and geological characteristics show that the continental shelf in
the East China Sea is the natural prolongation of China’s land territory,” the report said.3 But in
the case of the disputed Scarborough Shoal, which is far removed from the Chinese continental
shelf and geographically much closer to the Philippines, Beijing claims sovereignty on the basis
of ancient records showing that the territory was explored and charted in 1279 by the Chinese
astronomer Guo Shoujing.4 These rationales seem to be growing more flimsy and more diverse
as the relative power competition intensifies in the region.
Another source of confusion stems from the way that maritime borders are defined.
Unlike land borders, which are defined in terms of natural or artificial lines on a map, maritime
territory is delimited in terms of areas radiating out from land territory, i.e. in terms of points
rather than lines. This invites trouble when treaties fail to identify every single rock in a disputed
area or when new “points” (reefs, rocks, and small islets) are identified. In addition, this system
increases the temptation of naval powers to acquire small, isolated islands, by force if necessary,
since whoever owns the island can legally claim up to 200 nautical miles of area around it as an
exclusive economic zone under the terms of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
(UNCLOS). This introduces the problem of indivisibility; unlike adjacent land territories, small
islets are effectively indivisible in that their value derives from the right to claim control of the
surrounding seas for up to 200 nautical miles. Imagine if land barriers were delimited in such a
way — for instance, whichever country gains control of the highest peak in an area can legally
claim everything in a 200 mile radius around it. A lot of wars would be fought over
mountaintops!
With this background, we can now turn to the more specific question: why is East Asia in
particular plagued by increasingly antagonistic levels of maritime conflict? Robert Kaplan
suggests that the answer may lie in the current state of political evolution in the region: “The
composite picture is of a cluster of states that, with problems of domestic legitimacy and state

3"China takes Senkakus row to U.N.: Report filed with world body bid to boost claim," The Japan Times,
Dec. 22, 2013. ([Link]
n-2/#.UpLQ8Ragzx4)
4"In a disputed reef, Philippines sees face of Chinese domination," Barbara Demick, The Los Angeles
Times, May 14, 2013. ([Link]
shoal-20130514)
 13

building mostly behind them, are ready to advance their perceived territorial rights beyond their
own shores.” (Kaplan p9) This is representative of the offensive realist view that strong states
will push for territorial expansion simply because they can.
Liberal institutionalists who focus on this region argue that the growing economic
interdependence in East Asia is responsible for ensuring that countries will refrain from
escalating crises over maritime territory. For instance, Koo Min Gyo (2009) paints a convincing
picture of how China’s dependence on Japanese loans, investment and market access forced it to
back down from disputes over the Senkaku Islands in the past. Richard Katz (2013) agrees,
arguing that the need for “mutually assured production” will keep Japan and China from
allowing the island conflict to escalate too far. The problem is that, while government loans may
be withheld for political reasons, it is unclear how strongly private investors and free markets
might react to more distant events such as the seizure of remote, uninhabited islands. In other
words, nobody knows when or how free market economic punishment might be applied in the
case of maritime disputes. Aggressive moves around the Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands and the
Scarborough Shoal have inspired mass protests and calls for boycotts, but even the most
aggressive boycotting has yet to have a substantial impact on overall China-Japan trade. Katz
(2013) argues governments will choose de-escalation in the face of looming boycotts, since
“China needs to buy Japanese products as much as Japan needs to sell them.” However, this
argument cuts both ways: since consumers and vendors depend on trade, hawks in the respective
governments may eventually call protesters’ bluff and gamble that boycotts will be limited by
market forces. While the dampening effect of complex economic interdependence effect on war
among democracies has been long established (Keohane and Nye 1977), it is less clear if
economic interdependence would restrain a single-party autocracy like China in the same way.
In the East Asian region, the contention over maritime territory is particularly aggravated
by the vague terms of the various territorial dispositions delimited at the conclusion of WWII.
From the Japanese perspective, outlined by Hara,
The San Francisco Peace Treaty concerns the origins of various regional conflicts.
The treaty did not specify to which countries Japan renounced its former
territories, nor did it define the precise limits of these territories; this has created
various ‘unresolved problems’ in the region... These disputes did not exist before
 14

the World War II [sic], i.e., these islands had been Japanese territories. The
problems were seeded in 1951 when the Japanese Peace Treaty, which contains
the controversial territorial disposition, was signed in San Francisco. (Hara 2001
p362-3).

Indeed, as will be demonstrated in the empirical section, most of the heated territorial disputes
now heating up in the East Asian region today have their origins in the vague terms of the treaties
outlining Japan’s surrender and the disposition of its former possessions among the victorious
powers.
East Asia is a region where peace has been maintained largely through the strength of
U.S. alliance commitments, and these commitments have been increasingly called into question
in recent years. Under the terms of the San Francisco Treaty, the U.S. is committed to come to
Japan’s defense if its territory is threatened by another country. However, as decades have passed
without U.S. forces being called upon to fulfill these obligations, non-allies like Russia, North
Korea, and rising China may reasonably begin to question how far U.S. protection extends. In
particular, skepticism is directed at whether the U.S. would step in to defend Japan’s rights to
small, uninhabited, and disputed islands like Takeshima/Dokdo and the Senkakus. As one U.S.
military analyst warned, “However sincere Washington's assurances about helping defend the
archipelago, Tokyo should not bank on its doing so with any real enthusiasm. U.S. leaders will
not attach the same value to the Senkakus that Japan does.”5 Japanese scholar Sato Manabu
expresses his own skepticism in an article bluntly titled, “The Marines Will Not Defend the
Senkakus,” which cites U.S.-China economic interdependence as the key reason Japan cannot
rely on U.S. intervention.6
III Theory formation
For theoretical simplicity I separate factors influencing the likelihood of territorial
conflict into two categories: those affecting a state's demand for territory, and those affecting the
supply of potentially obtainable territory. This formulation is intended to aid theoretical

5Holmes, James. "Rock Fight.” Foreign Policy, Sept. 28, 2012. ([Link]
2012/09/28/rock_fight)
6Sato Manabu, "The Marines Will Not Defend the Senkakus," tr. Michiko Hayase. The Asia-Pacific
Journal, Vol 11, Issue 27, No. 2, July 8, 2013.
 15

development by enabling us to model changes to the supply of potential territory while holding
demand constant, and vice versa.
On the supply side, the territory any given state could potentially seek to claim, in theory,
encompasses the entire surface of the earth that does not already belong to that state. However,
clearly some territories have higher “supply” value than others; i.e., they are more easily
obtainable than others for various reasons, including proximity, defensibility, legitimacy of
claim, etc. All of these factors are considered to affect the “supply-side” of the equation. A state’s
supply of potential territorial claims is the sum of the supply values for each territory outside of
its dominion. Alternatively, we could come up with a way of estimating a given state’s supply of
potential territorial claims by adding up various measurable supply-related factors: (amount of
territory occupied by a related ethnic group) + (amount of territory it previously held and lost) +
(amount of nearby external territory whose jurisdiction is unclear) + …
On the demand side, each state has different levels of demand for each of the different
swaths of potential territory beyond its borders. Demand-side factors may include the territory’s
resource wealth, strategic position, symbolic significance to state identity, suffering of people of
a related ethnic group who live there, etc. I argue that each state also has an inherent generalized
demand for territory unrelated to the specific features of any particular potential claim. Factors
influencing a state’s general demand for territory include rate of economic growth, existing
supply of material resources necessary to sustain that growth, size and political influence of
military, domestic satisfaction with the state’s current status in the international hierarchy, etc.
Visualizing territorial disputes in terms of supply and demand helps us to reframe recent
puzzling patterns. For instance, many authors have pointed to “salience” of a territory as an
important factor determining both the outbreak and escalation of a dispute (Huth 2009, Hensel
and Mitchell 2005, Saideman and Ayres 2008). Huth writes that he chooses not to address
maritime territorial disputes in part because “if territorial issues are involved but only extend to
underseas territory, the political salience of the dispute is generally limited, in contrast with the
importance and attention often given to land-based disputes.” (Huth p26) This is essentially a
demand-side view which expects states to only go after the most valuable land, regardless of the
cost. By incorporating the supply-side view, however, it becomes clear that the salience argument
 16

can cut both ways: if a state A perceives that a territory is of relatively low salience to rival state
B, then that territory presents a more tempting target for A, as it seems less likely that B will
defend its claim and thus its acquisition will be less costly for A.
In this model, we imagine that every piece of territory in the world has variable supply
and demand values for every state that does not already possess it. This allows us to incorporate
various existing models into one side of the equation or the other. For instance, Simmons’ theory
concerning the institutionalization of land borders would fit on the supply side, since it makes the
land territory status quo more difficult to challenge. Koo’s argument about economic
interdependence would also fit on the supply side, since it implies that the cost of escalating
territorial conflict is now higher than it was before. Arguments related to the increasing
competition for mineral wealth or fisheries, however, would affect the demand side.
With this conceptualization in mind, my theoretical model builds upon the following
three assumptions:
Assumption 1) All states have an innate demand for territory, separate from their demand for a
particular territory; the degree of this demand varies from state to state, but is nonzero in all
cases.
The implication of this assumption is that all states, no matter how large and wealthy,
would prefer to obtain more territory than they currently have, if it could be obtained without
cost. “Costs,” in this conceptualization, connote any losses to state power resulting from pursuit
of a territorial claim, including but not limited to:
• Loss of soft power and damage to reputation (this is proportional to the perceived
legitimacy of the claim)
• Material damages and loss of life in the case of an armed invasion
• Economic losses as a result of embargoes, boycotts and other sanctions incurred as
punishment for territorial challenges.
• Longer-term expense of pacifying the territory and establishing legal jurisdiction
Assumption 2) Changes to a state’s supply of possible territorial claims do not significantly affect
its demand for territory, and vice versa.
 17

In other words, if a territory becomes more or less difficult to obtain for some reason, it
does not make the state desire that territory more or less than it did before; it only makes it less
likely to act on that desire. Of course, in the real world, a single development may affect both the
supply and demand sides of territorial conflict; however, for theoretical purposes, this conception
will prove useful because it allows us to model “pure types” from the various theories of
territorial conflict in terms of whether they represent shifts in the supply or demand curves, using
the classic model familiar from microeconomics.
For instance, if international laws or norms become more explicit regarding the
inviolability of borders, this represents a leftward shift of the supply curve; it raises the cost,
making a state less likely to pursue territory if doing so requires making a border incursion, but it
does not change the state’s fundamental desire to acquire more territory at each cost level (i.e.,
the demand curve stays where it is. Similarly, economic interdependence shifts the supply side
left by making it more costly for a state to pursue territory of another state with which it has
strong trade dependence, but it does not dampen whatever desire the state had for that territory at
the previous cost level. On the other hand, if a state becomes able to extract the resources it
needs from a territory through trade or other means short of claiming ownership, this affects the
demand side of the equation and not the supply side. If state A develops an economic
interdependence with state B and this relationship enables it to extract the resources it needed
from a part of state B’s territory, this might be represented as a leftward shift of the supply curve
and a leftward shift of the demand curve.
 18

Assumption 3) If a state’s demand for a given territory is frustrated due to high costs, some
portion of that demand may shift to other potential territorial claims.
This is perhaps the trickiest assumption to defend. It depends on the principle that states
have some inherent demand for territory in general, and that a state’s desire for any one
particular territory is at least partially fungible. With due respect to Hassner’s notion of sacred
spaces — the idea that some territories have special significance to national identity and cannot
be traded for any territory of equivalent value — nevertheless I posit that there are many other
legitimate reasons why a state may pursue territory in the 21st century that are not tied to the
specific features of any one territory. A state that desires a territory for its oil wealth, for
example, might turn its attention to another oil-rich territory if the first territory becomes
unattainable. The truth of this assumption was abundantly clear a century ago; for instance,
imperial Japan turned its sights on pursuit of Pacific territory only after it was turned back from
its attempt to invade Mongolia at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939; in both cases, its
expansionist impulses were driven by a generalized need for energy resources. This assumption
is harder to prove today, due to the effects of globalization and stronger norms against territorial
expansion for purely material purposes; however, I maintain that at least some aspects of
territorial demand remain transferable.
Assumption 4) Since states have limited resources, and pursuing territorial claims consumes
resources, states must prioritize which territorial claims to actively pursue at a given time.
In other words, the pursuit of any one territorial claim weakens the state’s capacity to
effectively prosecute other territorial claims. Thus, even the wealthiest states must exercise some
discretion in choosing which part of the territorial status quo to challenge at any given moment.
This decision calculus will involve consideration of both supply-side and demand-side factors for
the state in question and the range of potential territories it might plausibly claim.
With these three assumptions in mind, we can now proceed to consider how the costs and
benefits of pursuing maritime territory might differ from that of land territory.
This paper posits that, in the 21st Century, territorial conflict will increasingly take place
over maritime rather than land territory. Maritime borders increasingly invite conflict more than
land borders do, for both supply- and demand-related reasons. On the supply side, increasingly
 19

strong international norms and institutions have made challenges to the land border status quo
much more costly in reputational terms, while modern weaponry has made them more costly in
military terms. By contrast, the existing institutions for delimiting maritime territory and
establishing appropriate behavior around maritime borders are extremely “fuzzy,” ill-defined and
conflict-prone, inviting challenges and deliberate or accidental misinterpretations relatively free
of the consequences that come with land border violations. Industrialization and capital market
integration have made land wars much more costly in economic terms, particularly for developed
nations, and economic interdependence has further added to this economic cost. These economic
factors come into play with maritime territory as well, but as I will argue, the anticipated cost is
not as severe, particularly if the territory in question is far removed from mainland territory.
Finally, the anticipated military cost of a maritime challenge is lower than that of a land territory
challenge, because states are more skeptical of whether their neighbors will be willing to go to
war to defend small, isolated islets and shoals devoid of human habitation. This skepticism is
particularly acute when the neighboring state is a democracy.
On the demand side, maritime property is become increasingly contested as land-based
resources are exhausted, as new technologies enable extraction of previously untapped
underwater resources, and as population booms demand more productive fisheries and fossil fuel
extraction.
Collectively, these factors build an expectation that maritime territory will increasingly
become the focus of great power rivalry and that this rivalry will play out in increasingly heated
confrontations over sea territory. In a nod to Mearsheimer’s famous theory, I refer to this
phenomenon as “the starting power of water.” This theoretical model leads to the following
expectations:
1) In situations where a rival dyad shares both land and sea borders, both sides will
show an increasing preference to confront each other along the maritime border, while
accepting the land border status quo.
2) When a state with both maritime and land borders has a high demand for territory
(due to rapid economic growth, resource shortages, military restlessness, or other demand-
 20

side reasons), it will demonstrate an increasing preference to expand via maritime rather
than land territory.
3) States with only maritime borders will increasingly find themselves facing more
territorial challenges than ever before, while landlocked states will become increasingly
peaceful.
In the following empirical section, I will present the evidence for the first two trends. I
have chosen to illustrate trend #1 with the North-South Korean territorial conflict. This case is
ideal in that it provides over sixty years of highly contentious, at times violent, border conflict
between two rivals who share both land and sea borders. Also, since these borders were initially
drawn rather arbitrarily through the intervention of foreign powers just 70 years ago, and later
reformed through the crucible of an extremely violent conflict, there is sufficient reason to expect
that both land and sea borders would be equally contentious. If it can be shown that there is a
growing preference to dispute the maritime borders rather than land borders, this would provide
strong empirical support for trend #1. To illustrate trend #2, I have chosen the example of the
People’s Republic of China (PRC). This is an ideal case because China is a vast country that with
many historical points of contention along its extensive land and sea borders, so it has the
potential to expand in any number of different directions. Also, while there is considerable
debate over whether its rise will be peaceful or not, few would argue that it is in fact “rising” in
terms of both economic and military power, and that this rise has produced a prodigious demand
for resources. This paper does not seek to argue that China will continue to expand or that it is on
a collision course with US interests in the Pacific; rather, it simply seeks to demonstrate that, to
the extent that China has been pushing outward against its existing borders, it has shown a clear
preference to do so via maritime rather than land territory.

IV Concepts applied through analysis of two types of territorial expansion

1. Shift of focus in China’s territorial disputes
China has 22,000 km of land borders adjoining 14 different nation-states (North Korea,
Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal,
Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam). In addition, it has 14,500 km of coastline and, through
 21

the designation of its nine-dash line, has laid claim to vast swaths of the East and South China
Seas. Interestingly, even though China’s growing power advantage relative to its land neighbors
in recent years would presumably give it an advantage in any land disputes, it seems far more
reluctant to press for revisions to the land border status quo than it was several decades ago. By
contrast, China has shown an increasing tendency to stake ever broader claims to maritime
territory in the Asia Pacific, despite the fact that such claims inevitably bring it up against its
strongest relative power competitors — Japan and the United States.
Historically, since the founding of the PRC in 1949 China has fought border wars with
Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and India. It has at various points had border disputes with all 14 of
its land neighbors. At the height of the Qing Empire, China’s borders extended into parts of
present-day India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia, and encompassed
all of Mongolia. If it were to choose to pursue territorial expansion on historical grounds, it
would have a wealth of options along its land border. Ethnic Chinese settlements exist in
significant numbers in Russia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Nepal and Mongolia. By Huth’s standards,
therefore, China should have some motivation to pursue territorial claims across its land borders
on the grounds of either irredentism or protection of co-ethnics.
The Sino-Russian border has seen a long history of conflict, providing ample historical
grounds for issuing challenges on both sides. Premodern China and Russia had border disputes
since the seventeenth century when tsarist forces occupied Nerchinsk and Yakasa in the Amur
region. Following a series of border incursions, by the beginning of the nineteenth century
Russians had seized a total 1.5 million square kilometers of Chinese territory, and proceeded to
codify these gains through a series of 'unequal treaties,' as current Chinese histories call them.7
China did not begin to challenge the USSR on territorial issues until after the Sino-Soviet split in
1963. Growing mistrust led to troop buildups on both sides of the border, and in 1969, China and
the USSR fought violent border clashes over Zhenbao/Demansky Island in the East and the
Uighur Autonomous Zone in the West.8 Border disputes recurred periodically throughout the

7 [Link]
8“China and its Neighbours: troubled relations,” by Wenwen Shen, March 1, 2012. [Link]
[Link]/pub_details.php?pub_id=46
 22

Cold War era. In July 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev announced the Soviet Union's "...willingness to
improve relations with mainland China," and settle the border dispute. In April 1990, both
countries also signed an agreement providing for a mutual reduction of troops along the border
and limits military activities to defense. Outstanding Russo-Chinese border disputes over a
serious of small islands on the Usuri, Amur and Argun Rivers were finally settled peacefully
through bilateral treaties in 1995 and 2004, and the demarcation of the western border was
completed in 2008. Thus it is no exaggeration to say that China’s land borders with Russia are
more stable today than at any point in the last 300 years, even though neither of them has been a
quiescent power lately. To the extent that Russia and China have territorial issues these days,
they take place over energy and shipping rights in the remote Arctic.9

9“Arctic Issues and China’s Stance,” Tang Guoqiang, CIIS, March 4, 2013 ([Link]
2013-03/04/content_5772842.htm); “China’s Arctic Powerplay,” Isabella Mroczkowski, The Diplomat,
February 15, 2012 ([Link]
 23

China's active border disputes, 1949-2001

13

11

0
49

55

61

67

73

79

85

91

97
19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19
(Source: ICOW territorial disputes dataset)
China’s border with India has also historically been a scene of conflict, partly stemming
from geopolitical circumstances such as the Tibet issue, and partly due to the arbitrary way in
which some parts of the border were originally drawn by the British. Chinese and Indian troops
clashed along the MacMahon line several times in the summer of 1959. Subsequently the two
sides fought a border war in 1962, and had major border skirmishes at Nathu Lu in 1967 and at
Samdurung Chu in 1986.10 In recent decades the Sino-Indian border has stabilized considerably,
and the prospect of any future armed conflict seems remote given the premium both states now
place on economic growth and stability. Nevertheless, two outstanding territorial disputes remain
unresolved: Aksai Chin, which is administered by China but claimed by India, and Arunachal
Pradesh, which is administered by India but claimed by China. While neither side seems in any
hurry to resolve these outstanding disputes, they have taken no concrete steps to press their
claims, and both sides have been careful to avoid inflaming the issue.
In addition, China settled its border disputes with both Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1963,
and has had no disputes since. China settled a longstanding border dispute with Tajikstan in

10 Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, p197.

 24

1999, accepting less than 5.5% of what it had originally claimed.11 China’s substantial
concession in this border settlement was believed to reflect its recent struggles with unrest in
Xinjiang province, and its need for support from Central Asian governments to crackdown on
Islamic fundamentalism and Uighur separatism.
By contrast, long-simmering territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas have
heated up recently. These include the Diaoyutai island dispute involving Japan, Taiwan and
China; the Spratly Islands dispute involving China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan,
and Vietnam; the Paracel Islands dispute involving China and Vietnam, and the Scarborough
Shoal dispute involving China and the Philippines. In addition to turning up the heat on these
longstanding disputes, China has also recently shown considerable innovation in challenging
other aspects of the maritime status quo: declaring an expanded Air Defense Zone that overlaps
with those of several rivals, laying claim to a submerged reef near South Korea, and creating new
islands from reclaimed land near the Philippines. The following chart shows the progressive
increase in incidents of clashes involving China or Taiwan in the East and South China Seas.
“Incidents” here include collisions between military or civilian vessels, military occupation of
disputed islands, border violations by military or civilian vessels, and exchange of fire between
vessels.

11 [Link]
 25

Incidents)in)East)and)South)China)Seas,)
19555present)
16"

14"

12"

10"

8"

6"

4"

2"

0"
1955"
1957"
1959"
1961"
1963"
1965"
1967"
1969"
1971"
1973"
1975"
1977"
1979"
1981"
1983"
1985"
1987"
1989"
1991"
1993"
1995"
1997"
1999"
2001"
2003"
2005"
2007"
2009"
2011"
(Src: CNAS)
The “nine-dashed line” which demarcates China’s formal maritime claims is nothing
new; it is a modified version of the original 11-dashed line developed by the Nationalist
government and inherited by the PRC. However, it did not seek to enforce the line as a matter of
international law until recently. In 2009 China submitted its nine-dashed line map to the UN
Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), in response to two separate and
earlier submissions by Vietnam and Malaysia. China’s submission was promptly protested by the
Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Complicating matters, Taiwan claims all of the
maritime territory within the nine-dashed line for itself. In March 2010, PRC officials told U.S.
officials that they had officially upgraded the South China Sea to a “core national interest,”
putting it on par with Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang.12 The announcement was promptly met with
opprobrium by the various other states with interests in the South China Sea, and considerably
raised tensions in the region, even though the remarks were never formally codified in any
official statement. Together, the formal submission of the nine-dashed line and the extension of

12“China Hedges Over Whether South China Sea Is a ‘Core Interest’ Worth War,” by Edward Wong, The
New York Times, March 30, 2011. ([Link]
 26

China’s core interests have set off a series of intensified disputes over maritime rights in the
South and East China Seas.

For our analytical purposes, the China-Vietnam dispute is the most interesting, as the two
parties share both maritime and land borders with high potential for dispute. China and Vietnam
fought a naval battle over the Paracel Islands in 1974 and a war over their land border in 1978.
The Vietnamese land border also suffered intense artillery and mortar shelling from China
throughout 1985 and into the early months of 1986, ostensibly in punishment for Vietnam’s
actions in Cambodia. In more recent times, the land border has stabilized while the maritime
dispute has heated up. China and Vietnam normalized relations in 1991 and signed a Land
Border Treaty in 1999, apparently resolving a longstanding source of tension. However, China
 27

and Vietnam continue to engage in active disputes over the delineation of the maritime border in
Gulf of Tonkin as well as ownership of the Paracel Islands. In May 2014, China moved one of its
oil rigs into Vietnamese waters near the Paracels, provoking a fierce Vietnamese response.13
Vietnam has recently taken steps to align with other ASEAN partners to balance China,
particularly reaching out to the Philippines.14
On the surface, this pattern seems to support my expected trend #2: two rivals sharing
land and sea borders, showing a preference to shift their conflict to the sea border over time.
However, it must be acknowledged that the land border conflict in the 1980s had little to do with
territorial demand and was mostly a product of Sino-Soviet rivalry. China’s moves on the
Paracels, by contrast, seem largely connected to its growing demand for oil — something it could
not get in the highlands across the Vietnamese border.
The small island grouping known in Japan as Senkaku and in China and Taiwan as
Diaoyutai has long been disputed among the three nations. The origin of this dispute can be
traced back to the end of World War II; however, the issue did not become contentious until the
U.S. returned Okinawa to Japan in 1972.15 In addition to rich fisheries and some strategic value,
the main value of the islands lies in the untapped oil fields believed to exist in the surrounding
area. In the early postwar years the dispute was limited to Japan and Taiwan; China became
interested in 1969, after a UN geological research survey found “a high probability exists that the
continental shelf between Taiwan and Japan may be one of the most prolific oil reservoirs in the
world, with potential estimated at between 10 to 100 billion barrels.”16 Since then, the dispute
has run hot and cold with the changing relations of China, Japan and Taiwan.

13 “Vietnam's next move: sue CNOOC” by James Manicom, PacNet #38 Tuesday, May 13, 2014.
14“A Budding Alliance: Vietnam and the Philippines Confront China,” by Walden Bello, Foreign Policy In
Focus, March 18, 2014.
15 Hara 2001.
16United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East [UNECAFE] (1968) Geological
Structure and Some Water Characteristics of the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea, Technical Bulletin,
Vol. 2, Technical Advisory Group Report. pp 39-40.
 28

Koo Min Gyo identifies six distinct episodes of escalation and backing down in the
period 1968-1996 between Japan and China alone. Koo believes that the de-escalation of each
cycle is evidence supporting the liberalist theory of peace through economic interdependence:
The initial impetuses of the island dispute tend to come from ultranationalist
activities either in Japan or China, or both. At first, both Beijing and Tokyo used
them to mobilize political support for their regime or particular policy goals.
Eventually, however, both governments sought to minimize diplomatic damage,
fearing that contending Sino-Japanese nationalisms could snowball into a larger,
possibly destabilizing movement that would undermine bilateral economic ties.
(Koo p106)

Previous flare-ups were indeed sparked by the actions of various nationalist groups, and
each episode in the past was always defused at the hands of the respective governments after a
period of tension. Koo’s account ends in 2005, however, before the latest round of escalation
begins. Subsequent developments show a much higher degree of government involvement in
both initiation and escalation, with a far higher level of military involvement on both sides than
at any time in the past.
For instance, in September 2010 a Chinese fishing trawler collided with patrol vessels of
the Japan Coast Guard in the vicinity of the Senkaku Islands. This was followed in March-April
2011 by several incidents of Chinese helicopters that appeared to belong to the State Oceanic
Administration flying close to Japanese destroyers engaged in vigilance monitoring in the East
China Sea.17 These incidents can be though of as the early tremors forewarning of a larger quake;
the current standoff began in earnest in the fall of 2012, when the Japanese government
announced its decision to purchase three of the main Senkaku islets from the private Japanese
citizen who owned them.18 The US government reportedly warned Japan against the purchase.19
Up to this point, official U.S. policy had been that it will not take sides on the Diaoyutai/Senkaku

17Japan Ministry of Defense White Paper, 2011, p. 83. ([Link]

2011/12Part1_Chapter2_Sec3.pdf)
18
“Noda, Chungguk ui yeongt’o bunjeng taeeung bangshik-i hanguk-gwa kat-eul geo-ra ch’ak-gak” (노다,
중국의 영토분쟁 대응 방식이 한국과 같을 거라 착각) Choseon Ilbo, Sept 20, 2012.

19"U.S. warned government against buying Senkaku Islands: Campbell" [Link]

news/2013/04/10/national/u-s-warned-government-against-buying-senkaku-islands-campbell/
#.UpLVZRagzx4
 29

dispute. However, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was visiting Beijing at the time,
reportedly indicated to Chinese defense officials that the security treaty obligating the United
States to come to the defense of Japan would be applied to the Senkakus.20
The situation deteriorated further on September 14, when China's State Oceanic
Administration (SOA) dispatched six patrol vessels to waters around the Senkaku Islands as a
"legitimate act" of law enforcement.21 That September also saw the spectacle of a flotilla
Taiwanese fishing vessels battling their way past the Japanese Coast Guard, which deployed of
water cannons to deter them.22 Then on December 13 a Chinese marine surveillance plane
violated Japanese airspace above the Senkakus, to which Japan responded by dispatching eight
F-15 fighter jets to the area. China claimed the flight constituted normal activity in its own
airspace. On December 14, Beijing submitted an 11-page report to the U.N. making its case for
ownership of the islands.23 The escalating situation took on a more menacing dimension on
January 30th, when a Chinese frigate operating near the Senkaku Islands directed a fire-control
radar at a Japanese MSDF destroyer situated approximately 120 km north of the Senkaku
Islands. Senior Chinese military officials later admitted that weapons-targeting rather than
monitoring radar was used, but claimed the incident was unplanned, the result of an “emergency
decision” by the commander of the frigate.24
This sequence of events shows a progressive escalation in the level of formal military
involvement, from fishing trawlers to helicopters to patrol vessels to surveillance planes, which
stands in stark contrast to Koo’s earlier depiction of the CCP stepping in quickly to calm tensions

20“Panetta tells China that Senkakus under Japan-U.S. Security Treaty,” The Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 21,
2012. [Link]
21“China willing to risk 'conflict' as it claims waters around Senkakus,” The Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 15,
2012. ([Link]
22
“Tokyo fires water cannons against Taipei in Diaoyu / Senkaku ‘war’”, AsiaNews, Sept. 25, 2012. (http://
[Link]/news-en/Tokyo-fires-water-cannons-against-Taipei-in-Diaoyu-/-[Link])
23"China takes Senkakus row to U.N.: Report filed with world body bid to boost claim," The Japan Times,
Dec. 22, 2013. ([Link]
n-2/#.UpLQ8Ragzx4)
24"Chinese officials admit to MSDF radar lock allegations" The Japan Times, March 18, 2013, http://
[Link]/news/2013/03/18/national/chinese-officials-admit-to-msdf-radar-lock-allegations/
#.UpLIwxagzx4
 30

brought on by overly nationalistic private citizens. If China was growing concerned by the
increasingly violent nature of the maritime confrontations, its public statements did not reveal
this. On May 26, 2013, new Premier Li Keqiang delivered a momentous speech at Potsdam,
Germany invoking the city’s eponymous declaration from 1945:
The site of the Potsdam meeting is a place of historic significance. The Potsdam
Proclamation clearly states that Japan must return China's territories of Northeast
China, Taiwan and other islands after surrendering. The victory and international
order had been achieved at the cost of sacrifices of tens of millions of lives...
What I want to emphasize is that the Proclamation also reiterated the principles of
the Cairo Declaration that is Japan must return all occupied territories to China,
including parts of China's Northeast territory, Taiwan, and other islands.25

The actual text of the Potsdam Declaration stipulated “Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to
the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine.”
Here is a clear example of the problem that arises when delineating maritime borders in
international treaties: unless the treaty text specifies every single rock, shoal, and reef by name, it
leaves the door open to endless future disputes. Li’s Potsdam speech was viewed with anxiety by
many foreign observers, who saw disturbing parallels with pre-WWII Germany — continued
self-identification as a victim nation even amidst increasing power and military expansionism.26
In addition to increasing activity in the seas around Senkaku/Diaoyutai, the Japan-China
confrontation has now spread to the airspace around the islands. In September Japanese fighter
jets were scrambled in response to an unmanned Chinese military drone incursion in the air
around the islands. On October 20, Japan announced new rules of engagement enabling its Self
Defense Forces to shoot down “any unauthorized unmanned aircraft that entered Japanese
airspace and ignored warnings to leave.”27 Outraged, China made a shocking announcement of
its own on November 23, declaring a new Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) which
extended to include the airspace over the Senkakus. China claimed the ADIZ was legitimate

25 “Japan urged to face history,” China Daily, May 27, 2013.

26"Li makes his Potsdam Declaration," Brendan O'Reilly, Asia Times Online, May 28, 2013.
([Link]
27 “Japan to shoot down foreign drones that invade its airspace,” Kyodo News Service, Oct. 20, 2013.
([Link]
its-airspace/#.UqJfBRagzx7)
 31

under international law and a necessary step to "guard against potential air threats.” An ADIZ is
defined as “a declaration of a perimeter within which unidentified aircraft can be intercepted and
prevented from illegally proceeding to enter national airspace. It serves essentially as a national
defense boundary for aerial incursions... ADIZs typically are much more extensive then a
country's territorial airspace.”28 The new Chinese ADIZ overlaps with significant portions of
Japan’s own ADIZ, as well as those of Taiwan and South Korea. China wasted no time in
demonstrating its will to defend the new ADIZ. The day after the announcement, China
conducted two aerial patrols over the area, which were intercepted by Japan Air Self Defense
Force (ASDF) fighter jets. On November 29, China again scrambled fighter jets to monitor
American and Japanese planes flying over the Senkakus.29
Japan’s Prime Minister Abe promptly objected to China’s ADIZ move, warning that
overlapping airspace zones “can invite an unexpected occurrence.”30 The U.S. formally
expressed its concern as well.31 China defended its move by citing the precedents of ADIZ
establishment by other countries. As Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang remarked,
“China’s measures conform to the Charter of the United Nations and international laws and
practices and are thoroughly legitimate. The irresponsible remarks from the Japanese side are
groundless and utterly wrong, and China firmly opposes them.” An editorial in the Global Times
boldly claimed that the new ADIZ would actually contribute to regional peace and security
eliminating uncertainty:
The establishment of an ADIZ is not to cause a crisis, but to prevent crises by
supplying a system of precautions. It should be noted that the basic principle of
crisis prevention is to clarify the margins of interests, which can inform both sides
about the limitations of certain actions. It provides an early warning mechanism
for unexpected visitors, especially provocative intruders. It will buy the defenders

28
“China's ADIZ undermines regional stability,” Bonnie S Glaser, Asia Times Online, Nov 16, 2013. (http://
[Link]/atimes/China/[Link])
29
“China scrambles jets in air zone to monitor US and Japanese planes,” BBC, Nov 29, 2013. (http://
[Link]/news/world-asia-25155605)
30
“Japan demands China revoke new air defense zone,” CBS/AP, Nov. 25, 2013. (http://
[Link]/news/japan-demands-china-revoke-new-air-defense-zone/)
31 U.S. Department of Defense News Release, Nov. 23, 2013. ([Link]
[Link]?releaseid=16392)
 32

enough time to deal with the warning and get prepared for any possible
scenarios... China's establishment of an ADIZ in the East China Sea is a forced
response to the aggressiveness of Japan which has threatened to fire warning shots
against Chinese planes in its ADIZ, and deploy shore-to-ship missiles near the
Miyako Strait, through which the Chinese navy enters the West Pacific.32

The CCP appears to have interpreted the Japanese PM’s statement as a veiled threat.
Another editorial in the Global Times commented, "Now that Abe uttered 'an unexpected
situation' in response to the new ADIZ, it is fair enough for the Chinese to believe that Japan will
probably wage calamitous maneuvers as the ‘unexpected situation’ its prime minister claimed.
We wonder whether the Japanese are warning us that a war is likely to break out on the East
China Sea…. The Japanese are too naïve if it believes China is a nation that can be easily
frightened or deterred."33
What stands out from this exchange is the remarkable gap in perceptions apparent in
statements issued by both sides. What the Japanese perceive as a rather minimal defensive
response to a foreign territorial incursion, Chinese media and public figures portray Japanese as
signs of resurgent Japanese militarism and an naked land-grab with U.S. backing. Japanese
statements portray China as a hungry new power in the region recklessly threatening to disrupt
the peaceful status quo, reopening 68-year-old wounds from Japan’s militaristic past as an excuse
to expand its own wealth and strategic position. It is also noteworthy that the latest round of
tensions the public-private actor dynamic has reversed; it appears that events are now being
driven predominantly by government and military players, with the media and nationalist private
citizens in a more reactive role. Where in the past incidents were initiated by private fishermen or
activists trespassing in the disputed territory, the latest round from the beginning has been stoked
by military jet incursions and official policy moves such as the ADIZ announcement.

The Scarborough Shoal is a mostly underwater reef rich in fisheries positioned 130 miles
off the coast of the Philippines' largest island, Luzon, and more than 500 miles from the southern

32 "ADIZ will reduce East China Sea tension," by Luo Yuan, Global Times, Nov. 27, 2013.
[Link]
33 “Tokyo’s menace won’t intimidate China,” Global Times, Nov. 26, 2013.
 33

tip of China's southernmost island, Hainan. Unlike the long-standing dispute over the Senkaku/
Diaoyutai, which cycled through several rounds of on-again off--again hostility, the Scarborough
Shoal standoff only began on April 8, 2012, when eight Chinese fishing vessels were
apprehended by the Philippines navy. The Chinese responded by deploying several patrol ships
and refusing to permit Philippine vessels access to the shoal. The resulting two-month standoff
prompted mass protests in Manila and boycotting of Chinese goods. Subsequently, China has
taken an increasingly aggressive stance in pressing its claim to the islands, sending in heavily
armed “Maritime Surveillance” vessels to scare away fishermen and seriously endangering the
livelihoods of all Filipinos who have for generations depended on the rich fishing beds in the
shoal. Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario calls the Chinese patrols "a de facto
occupation” of Philippines territory.34
China’s increasing boldness has led the Philippines to warm to the idea of reintroducing a
U.S. navy presence, make tentative moves to bring back in 1992. The withdrawal was initially
demanded by the Philippines senate, which saw the base as a last vestige of colonialism and
complained that Navy’s frequent firing exercises at Scarborough Shoal harmed the marine
environment and disrupted the lucrative fishing in the area. But last year, a few U.S. vessels were
readmitted on a rotating basis, presumably in response to the growing Chinese threat.
In January 2013, the Philippine government asked a United Nations tribunal to determine
the status of the reef. However, China has already indicated it will not abide by the decision.
Beijing says its claim is supported by ancient records indicating that the area was mapped by
Qing dynasty explorers, and asserts that the Philippines did not actively assert its claim to the
shoal until 1992, although Filipinos had been fishing the area for centuries. Professor Shen
Dingli of Fudan University says China has claimed “most of the South China Sea” for decades:
"We are not asking for more; we are defending what we claimed since 1947.”35 China’s latest
innovation in the standoff has been to use its technology to dredge sand from the seabed and

34“Philippines accuses China of 'de facto occupation',” AFP, Apr 26, 2013. ([Link]
hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hwfydgnijakLEA12vGALzuttvPTw?docId=CNG.
4eb30a18e947a67727e124ad79ec9350.b1)
35
“China, Philippines Face Off Over Remote Islands,” by Frank Langfit, NPR, May 29, 2012. (http://
[Link]/2012/05/29/153921020/china-philippines-faceoff-over-remote-islands)
 34

create an artificial island in the Johnston South Reef, which observers believe will be used as an
airstrip.36 The ability to create artificial islands has the potential to dramatically alter the
dynamics of territorial disputes as they are traditionally understood; in theory, a powerful state
could construct an island in any location where the seabed is sufficiently shallow, including in
the middle of strategically vital straits or just off the shore of a rival state.
The Scarborough Shoal conflict is useful to our theory-building because it provides the
most overt example of Chinese territorial ambitions expanding to fill the gap left by U.S. naval
withdrawal. China’s legal and geographical grounds for claiming the Scarborough Shoal are far
weaker than its grounds for claiming the Senkaku/Diaoyutai, and its current blockade of the
Shoal has had a profound effect on the livelihoods of Filipino fishermen in Luzon. The return of
the U.S. navy to the region at the behest of the Philippines sets the stage for a potential naval
showdown between the two rival powers. Again, the encroaching power (China) seems to be
gambling that the territory’s de facto owner (the Philippines) will not care about the loss of ocean
territory enough to risk a destructive military showdown, or more importantly that its most
powerful alliance partner (the U.S.) will not care enough to commit troops to defend a minor
shoal on behalf of its ally.
A pattern that emerges from the South China Sea disputes is an increasing degree of
innovation, particularly on the part of China, designed to test the limits of existing institutions
and norms. The ADIZ dispute, for instance, takes a well-established internationally accepted
institution and creates new ambiguities by introducing the possibility of overlapping claims.
China’s behavior does not suggest aggression so much as curious experimentation, pushing at the
fringes of what is institutionally acceptable and then waiting to see how regional powers will
respond. Even more innovative is China’s latest practice of creating artificial islands in several
strategic locations. The possibility of creating new islands and using them to establish strategic
footholds in disputed waters significantly alters the legal dynamics of maritime disputes and may
require a radical rethinking of the challenger-target dynamic modeled by Huth and others.

36“China's island factory”, by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, BBC, Sept. 9, 2014. ([Link]

special/2014/newsspec_8701/[Link])
 35

2. Northern Limit Line clashes, 1973-2010

A second way of capturing the relative preference for land versus maritime territory is by
taking two rival states which share both land and sea borders and testing which borders face
more challenges (including incursions, conflicting legal claims, troop movements and outright
battles) over time. There are several rivalry dyads that qualify on these grounds: Greece-Turkey,
Russia-Finland, India-Pakistan, Ecuador-Peru, etc. Here I have chosen to focus on the rivalry
dyad of North and South Korea, for the simple reason that the continuously high level of
contention between the two states over nearly 70 years provides a relatively steady rate of overall
territorial challenges, and the high level of border surveillance makes it easy to keep track of
when incursions occur.
At the conclusion of the Korean War, the division of Korea was cemented along a land
border that followed the frozen battle lines from coast to coast. In the seas to the east and west of
the peninsula, the UN Command drew up the “Northern Limit Line” delimiting the bounds of
North Korea’s ocean territory as part of the armistice agreement signed in August 1953. North
Korea made no indications of displeasure with the arrangement until December 1973, when it
asserted a claim of 12 nautical miles for its territorial waters, putting several populated islands in
dispute (Roehrig 2008). North Korea currently asserts that the NLL is illegal and claims its own
maritime demarcation along a southward-slanting line.
 36

Like the Senkaku/Diaoyutai dispute, clashes in this area have run hot and cold with
changes in bilateral relations and relative power capabilities; however, in recent decades the
 37

situation seems to be heating up considerably. Once unheard of, maritime clashes between the

Inter&Korean*border*incursions*by*territory*type,*
1967&2011*
6"

5"

4"

3" Sea"

Land"
2"

1"

0"
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
19 "
20 "
20 "
20 "
20 "
20 "
20 "
"
67
69
71
73
75
77
79
81
83
85
87
89
91
93
95
97
99
01
03
05
07
09
11
19

two Koreas have become a recurrent phenomenon in the disputed area.

(Src: [Link])
The above chart shows incursions across both land and sea borders between the two
Koreas over time. Not included are incidents in which North Korean spies were caught operating
in the South, since espionage missions are not strictly aimed at challenging border delineations.
Although the pattern is not completely clear, there appears to be a general trend of increasing
challenges to the maritime border, particularly in the last decade. The land border has not seen an
incursion since 2003.
The trend becomes more stark when one takes into account the severity of an incident,
measured in terms of human casualties, property damage, and number of shots fired. The worst
year for land incursions since the end of war hostilities came in 1968, when cross-border
incursions and infiltrations claimed a total of 162 casualties. The last of the famous DMZ tunnels
was constructed in 1978. In the 1980s and 1990s most overland incursions appeared to be the
rogue actions of individuals, and the last overland incursion to claim any casualties occurred in
 38

1997. On the maritime border, however, the incursions have grown increasingly more serious.
North Korean naval vessels have begun periodically crossing south of the NLL, provoking a
series of progressively more deadly firefights with South Korean naval vessels in June 1999,
June 2002, and November 2009. The situation grew more dramatic with two incidents in 2010;
first in March when the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan was sunk by a North Korean
submarine, resulting in the deaths of 46 South Korean soldiers, and then in November when
North Korean artillery fired shells on the populated South Korean island of Yeonpyeondo, killing
two marines and two civilians.
Several theories have been raised to explain this recent increase in aggressive behavior
around the NLL. David Kang has suggested that the Cheonan sinking was intended as revenge
for the November 2009 battle off Daecheongdo in which a North Korean vessel that had crossed
south of the NLL was seriously damaged in a firefight with the South Korean navy, sustaining an
unknown number of casualties.37 Indeed, the North Korean press warned of such retaliation
immediately after the 2009 battle, declaring “A group of several South Korean vessels, which
were on standby in battle array, provoked our naval vessel which was patrolling as normal... We
can never forgive those warlike factions who invade our Republic (North Korea)’s dignity and
autonomy, and our unchangeable countermeasure is merciless punishment.”38
Victor Cha sees North Korea’s limited acts of violence as a deliberate strategy to sway
stymied negotiations in its favor, a phenomenon he calls “coercive bargaining.” Cha sees this
strategy playing out vividly in the limited clashes between the two Koreas over the NLL:
The ROK-DPRK naval altercation on the west coat of the peninsula in June 1999
offers an ominous precedent. Several North Korean patrol boats violated South
Korean waters, prompting the ROK navy to ram the trespassers and initiate a
firefight that left 20 to 30 North Koreans dead... This otherwise puzzling behavior is
fully consonant with the logic of coercive bargaining....the DPRK provocation was
designed to extort concessions from a fearful ROK and its foreign patrons on the
validity of the Northern Limitation Line, the maritime boundary between South and
North Korea. In effect, the calculation was to initiate a military act — albeit an

37“Naval Ship Sinks North-South Korean Relations” ([Link]

south-korean-relations/)
38"Naval Battle Was South Korean Plan!" The Daily NK, Nov. 12, 2009. ([Link]
[Link]?cataId=nk01700&num=5647)
 39

unwinnable one — the ultimate purpose of which was to make the NLL an issue for
negotiation, which had not previously been the case.39

In this view, North Korea will repeat the cycle of provocations over West Sea territory
whenever the negotiations with the U.S. appear stagnated. South Korean researcher Cho Han
Bum (2010) agrees: “North Korea is using a strategy of military provocations to move the
negotiating process along in its favor, and the Yeonpyeong attack may be interpreted along the
same lines.”
Several South Korean analysts agree that the primary objective is to create a controversy
over the NLL as a way of putting pressure on the U.S. and force a renegotiation of the current
armistice agreement. As South Korean analyst Cho Min (2010) explains, “By turning the
Northern Limit Line (NLL) into a conflict zone and raising tensions on the peninsula, the North
Korean regime hopes to successfully achieve their demands in negotiations with the US.” In
addition, Cheon Seong Whun (2010) suggests domestic factors at work as well, claiming “Their
intention was to create an outlet for the public’s frustration by redirecting it towards South
Korea.”
North Korea’s state-run media has cited the annual US-South Korea joint military drills
in the West Sea as justification for the attack on Yeonpyeong. The North has always expressed
outrage at these annual exercises, which include practice runs firing thousands of artillery shells
into the disputed waters south of the NLL. A North Korean news report, picked up and translated
by several Western media outlets, included revealing interviews with some of the young soldiers
responsible for the Yeonpyeong shelling:
"Our eyes were full of fire right after we saw the enemy's shells being fired into
our sacred waters," soldier Kim Moon Chol said, clinching his fists and standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with three uniformed colleagues... "At the order of 'fire,' we
poured our merciless thunderbolt of fire at the enemy."40

The above quote is striking in its suggestion that, in addition to small islets, rocky
outcroppings, and submerged shoals, now the very water itself can be considered a “sacred” part

39 Cha and Kang, Nuclear North Korea, p72.

40"Troops boast of South Korea attack" ([Link]
South-Korea-attack)
 40

of national territory. This has serious implications for the emotive and nationalist element of
struggles over maritime territory.
The NLL dispute is particularly attractive for the purposes of our theory-building because
it involves a military rivalry dyad that shares both sea and land borders. In terms of military
capability, while South Korea has comparable army and navy forces, North Korea’s military
strength lies predominantly in its ground troop size, artillery, and nuclear capability, with an
aging and dilapidated naval force defending the seas. Based on relative power dynamics alone
we might expect North Korea to prefer to make incursions across the land border of the DMZ.
Indeed, DMZ incursions and assaults were a regular occurrence throughout the 1960s and 1970s,
but have dropped off sharply in recent times. Battles on the West Sea, unheard of until recent
times, are now the dominant arena for inter-Korean military rivalry.41 Whether the North’s
objective was to force a renegotiation of the armistice with the US, to provide an outlet for
domestic frustration, or simply revenge, none of these theories explain why it chose a maritime
target over a ground incursion. The best explanation lies in the relative insignificance of small
border islands and the North’s gamble that South Korea would be unwilling to go to war to
avenge them.

V. Observations and Conclusions

The maritime disputes described above demonstrate several features worthy of further
analysis. First, unlike land disputes, maritime disputes potentially involve a much more diverse
range of actors: not only national navies and coast guards, but also nationalist groups, fishing
vessels, research vessels, and corporate interests. The periodic intrusions by these private actors
have been more than a mere annoyance and have actually initiated major incidents in both the
Scarborough Shoal and Senkaku/Diaoyutai in the past. While their true independence from
government direction is the subject of some debate, it is clear at least that private actors add a
wild card dimension to territorial conflict that is far more difficult for states to control in cases of
disputed maritime territories than disputed land territories. Private citizens have been known to

41For more details see Global Security’s timeline of Korea DMZ incidents ([Link]
military/ops/[Link]) which includes maritime incursions and attacks.
 41

intrude upon disputed land borders as well, as in illegal immigrants, lost hikers, smugglers, etc.;
however, controversial land borders are generally clearly defined and well guarded, and private
trespassers are normally detained without provoking major military standoffs.
Second, potent nationalism can extend even to uninhabited islands and the water itself, as
seen in the above quote by the North Korean soldier. This defies earlier theorizing by scholars of
ethnic and nationalist conflict, whose models depended on the presence of strong ethnic, cultural
or linguistic affinity with people living in the disputed area. The maritime conflicts in East Asia
suggest a much more practical and materialistic side to nationalism — when intense national
rivalry is at work, even inanimate objects like rocks, shoals and waves can become sacred
national symbols to be defended with blood and treasure. This challenges existing views of
territorial conflict outlined by Huth and Gibler, who model nationalist-driven territorial conflict
as dependent on the existence of coethnic groups living in the disputed territory.
Third, the long peace in Asia and American over-reach in other parts of the world are
contributing to growing skepticism about the extent of U.S. commitments to its alliances in East
Asia, particularly on the part of China. In steadily upping the ante with military incursions by sea
and air in Senkaku/Diaoyutai area, China appears to be testing how far it can go before
provoking a genuinely destructive military response from the U.S. Numerous Japanese
academics and opinion leaders have expressed doubt that the U.S. will come to Japan’s aid over
the tiny Senkakus, and this is inspiring calls for a second look at Japan’s pacifist Constitution and
the restrictions on its military powers. In the Scarborough Shoal, the popular narrative is that
China’s military was emboldened by the U.S. Navy withdrawal from Subic Bay. Even in North
Korea’s transgressions across the NLL, we can presume a calculation was made in Pyongyang
that the U.S. would hold South Korea back from any major retaliatory action.
This brings us to a fourth observation: sea territory is perceived as a safe alternative to
land territory as a target of military incursion. Sea incursions are likely to spark protests and
perhaps boycotts, but unlikely to stir up enough political will to commit to an actual war. Had
North Korea attacked a target across the DMZ (the land border), rather than a sparsely populated
small island in the West Sea, such an attack would have constituted an unambiguous act of war
requiring immediate and massive retaliation. Were China to make new claims to a Diaoyutai-
 42

sized chunk of territory across its land border with India, international condemnation would be
assured, and Indian military retaliation would be likely. This relatively stronger defensive
attitude about contiguous land territory is strategically puzzling, since with a land incursion all
that is gained is the land itself; by capturing a small island one can potentially claim an exclusive
economic zone extending to 200 nautical miles around it.
Fifth, the expansion of maritime claims into the airspace, with rival countries now
claiming overlapping Air Defense Zones, creates a new wrinkle that has not been seen before in
land-based territorial disputes. It it too soon yet to tell how fiercely the various sides will defend
their ADIZes, but we can at least identify a trend of expanding territorial claims, first over land,
then over uninhabited islands and exclusive economic zones in the sea, and now even extending
into the air itself. Not only is airspace, like water, unpopulated, but it is unlikely to involve any
major resource claims. This should make ambitious rising powers more likely to push airspace
boundaries, anticipating that rival states’ domestic audiences will be even less likely to favor
retaliatory action in defense of national airspace than they are about national waters. It may be
that air will prove to have even greater “starting power” than water when it comes to setting the
stage for great power rivalry.
The increasingly heated confrontations over the NLL, Senkaku/Diaoyutai and
Scarborough Shoal have expanded beyond the point where they may be explained away as
natural cycles of escalation and de-escalation. It seems clear that these confrontations are
growing more militarized and state actors are increasingly taking the lead in dispute escalation
rather than pressuring nationalist groups to back down. Rising China in particular is pushing past
long-accepted boundaries in the Asia Pacific and pressing increasingly flimsy justifications for
new territorial claims, despite strong economic interdependence throughout the region.
Liberalist theories of economic interdependence and international norms that have proven
effective in explaining the growing stability of land borders among post-modern states seem less
potent in the face of growing maritime disputes. Realist theories of territorial conflict driven by
resource competition are defied by the heated nationalist disputes over resource-poor and
strategically insignificant small islands like Yeonpyeong and Dokdo/Takeshima. Constructivist
arguments based on ethnic, cultural and linguistics ties do not satisfactorily explain the intense
 43

nationalist fervor attached to uninhabitable rocks, shoals, and the water itself in the Asia Pacific.
The growing phenomenon of maritime territorial conflict thus poses a strong challenge to all of
our leading models of territorial conflict, and deserves to be examined on its own terms as a
phenomenon distinct from land-based territorial conflict.
 44

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