Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 3, No. 6, June 2015.

Littoral combat ship USS Fort Worth (LCS 3). The ship arrived in Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines, to resupply May 13 after a weeklong routine patrol in international waters and airspace of the South China Sea near the Spratly Islands. While Fort Worth has transited the South China Sea many times, this patrol marks the first time an LCS has operated in international waters near the Spratlys. Source: Flickr.

Gordon G. Chang

As Beijing seeks to exert influence westward, into the Indian Ocean, New Delhi is looking east, into the South China Sea.

The two powers, acting on each other’s periphery, can reach compromises and cooperate in many areas, but on some points resolution of differences will be difficult.  China, from all appearances, is trying to exclude the vessels and aircraft of other nations from most of the South China Sea, and India insists on freedom of navigation.

Their clashing maritime initiatives suggest ties between the two giants will remain troubled.  Chinese President Xi Jinping likes to use the phrase “win-win,” but the South China Sea looks for China and India to now be a zero-sum contest.

For decades, the two nations had almost no interaction in international water.  India had announced a “Look East” policy in 1991, but its outreach was limited, more aspiration than core policy.[i]  Moreover, there was no element of competition with China for control of sea lanes.  The phrase “South China Sea” rarely passed the lips of Indian diplomats or security analysts, and the Indian navy did not venture far from its ports.  China’s fleet, for its part, stayed in coastal waters, the Indian Ocean being well beyond its capabilities.

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 3, No. 6, June 2015.

This photo taken April 12, 2015 shows Subi Reef in the South China Sea, where China has continued reclamation work to build an airstrip. China is asserting sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, which is also claimed in whole or in part by Taiwan, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. (Photo by the Philippine military)(Kyodo)

Priscilla A. Tacujan, Ph.D.
Independent Consultant

By now, it should be clear to everyone that China is not giving up its maritime claims in the South China Sea.  Despite pending international court decisions and worldwide condemnations, China has aggressively reclaimed about 2,000 acres of land in the South China Sea — proof of its intent to stay, defend, and protect 90% of the sea that it claims it owns.  Indeed, when State Secretary John Kerry asked China to halt its reclamation activities during his visit to Beijing last week, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s response was as revealing as it was firm: China’s determination “to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the South China Sea is as firm as a rock, and it is unshakable.”[i]

According to the Pentagon’s Annual Report to Congress (2015) on China’s growing military presence on the high seas, China has started infrastructure projects on four reclamation sites that “could include harbors, communications and surveillance systems, logistics support, and at least one airfield,” prompting most analysts to believe that Beijing is attempting “to change facts on the ground.”  In his remarks during a US-Japan relations conference held in Washington DC last month, Admiral Dennis Blair, Chairman of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation (USA), described China’s current “gray zone strategy” as “an administrative, civilian and sub-military strategy” that is intended to create a new territorial jurisdiction, hence, de facto control, over the South China Sea.[ii]  With this strategy, China would be able to create “a defensive sea barrier extending hundreds of miles from China’s coast to what it calls ‘the first island chain.”[iii]

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 3, No. 5, May 2015.

Flags signifying the different political parties fly during election season in Istanbul, Turkey, 2015. Turkey will hold general election on June 7, 2015. Although it is a relatively small party, all eyes will be on HDP. If it reaches the minimum 10 percent threshold required for entering parliament as a party, it could effectively thwart Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambition to lead a presidential system following a constitutional change. Source: Leticia Barr via Flickr.

George Dyson
Turkey-based Researcher

Single digit differences in the percentage of votes attained by parties in Turkey’s upcoming general election could lead to radically different outcomes, all of which hold consequences for the health of the ongoing peace process (the “resolution process”) between the Turkish state and Kurdish armed groups in the country’s restive south east. If political groups close to the Kurdish movements find themselves frustrated at the ballot box, unable to cross Turkey’s high threshold that keeps smaller parties out of the mainstream, there is a chance of an increase in violence, even moves towards secession. Similarly, the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party), if it does not do sufficiently well at the next elections, may find it hard to push through with the resolution process. However, there are other potential outcomes that would not degrade the resolution process. Turkey’s south east regions with large Kurdish populations hold great economic potential, with hydrocarbon reserves, a mobile population and proximity to an opening Iran and a flourishing Northern Iraq. A collapse of the resolution process and an increase in the conflict could seriously prejudice this potential and lead to greater instability across Turkey. Continued cooperation could help bring greater stability to the wider region.

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 3, No. 5, May 2015.

The ISIL flag, 2014. The IS declaration of a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria inspired a stream of thousands of foreign fighters to join it and earned it pledges of allegiance by individual militants around the region. Source: Flickr.

Mark Nader
University of Western Ontario

Since proclaiming itself a caliphate on 29 June 2014, militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have killed over 5,000 civilians in Iraq, while displacing hundreds of thousands more.[1] In Syria, ISIL has embedded itself in the country’s ongoing civil war, where the actions of the Islamic State have led to the deaths of more than 200,000 people[2] and the displacement of more than three million civilians.[3] Although ISIL began as a splinter group of al Qaeda, known as al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), it has since grown into a hybrid organization that is “part terrorist network, part guerilla army, and part proto-state,” within which terrorists with transnational ambitions have taken refuge.[4]

Militants of the Islamic State seek to eliminate the state system altogether and replace it with a global Islamic caliphate that is governed in accordance with Islamic law. The next few pages are devoted to answering the question: what are ISIL’s short, intermediate, and long-term objectives? Many leading foreign policy experts believe that the Islamic State represents an international security threat, however, the degree of this threat, and the strategy that is best to combat it is the subject of disagreement.[5] Next, I will discuss the consequences of failing to destroy ISIL, the contributing factors that led to the rise of this terrorist network, and policy recommendations by experts to combat this phenomenon. It is my position that in order to defeat ISIL we must destroy the organization altogether. This requires a strategy to strengthen the periphery states[6] surrounding ISIL in order to contain their militants and to prevent them from further expanding; a sustained air campaign designed to destroy key infrastructure targets and to disrupt ISIL’s logistical capabilities; and a comprehensive ground operation consisting of combat troops to root out all existing traces of the Islamic State.[7]

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 3, No. 5, May 2015.

Recent satellite imagery from the Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES) show that China is building an island on Fiery Cross Reef near the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

Matthew Michaelides
Editor of the Journal of Political Risk

Today, 100 participants gathered at the Harvard Club of New York City for the Journal of Political Risk’s Conference on the South China Sea to discuss all aspects of the ongoing territorial dispute between China and the Southeast Asian states of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. Papers given at the presentation will be among those compiled and released in a forthcoming book on the South China Sea dispute.

The event opened with a discussion of some of the recent actions taken by China in the South China Sea. Bill Hayton, author of The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia (Yale University Press, 2014), spoke on China’s recent island-building operations on several disputed reefs and islands in the South China Sea, including Mischief Reef and Fiery Cross Reef. Mr. Hayton noted that China acts as it does because it genuinely, albeit wrongly, thinks of itself as the rightful owner of maritime territory within the 9-dash line. He noted that China did not claim new features in the recent island-building, rather it built on features occupied for 20 years or more. Lastly, Mr. Hayton predicted that China would continue to expand, provoking further conflict.

Speakers at the event proposed several constructive proposals for resolving the dispute presently facing the Southeast Asian region.

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