This volume offers a comprehensive and empirically rich analysis of regional maritime disputes in the South China Sea (SCS). By discussing important aspects of the rise of China’s maritime power, such as territorial disputes, altered perceptions of geo-politics and challenges to the US-led regional order, the authors demonstrate that a regional power shift is taking place in Asia-Pacific. The volume also provides in-depth discussions of the responses to Chinese actions by SCS claimants as well as by important non-claimant actors.
“Seamlessly connects geography, history and great power intrigue across the entire Indo-Pacific region, increasingly the fulcrum of world history.” —James Clad, Director, Asian Security Programs at the American Foreign Policy Council In the sphere of future global politics, no region will be as hotly contested as the Asia-Pacific, where great power interests collide amid the mistrust of unresolved conflicts and disputed territory. This is where authoritarian China is trying to rewrite international law and challenge the democratic values of the United States and its allies. The lightning rods of conflict are remote reefs and islands from which China has created military bases in the 1.5-million-square-mile expanse of the South China Sea, a crucial world trading route that this rising world power now claims as its own. No other Asian country can take on China alone. In Asian Waters, award–winning foreign correspondent Humphrey Hawksley breaks down the politics—and tensions—that he has followed through this region for years. Reporting on decades of political developments, he has witnessed China’s rise to become one of the world’s most wealthy and militarized countries, and delivers in Asian Waters the compelling narrative of this most volatile region. Can the United States and China handle the changing balance of power peacefully? Do Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan share enough common purpose to create a NATO-esque multilateral alliance? Does China think it can even become a superpower while making an enemy of America? If so, how does it plan to achieve it? Asian Waters delves into these topics and more as Hawksley presents the most comprehensive and accessible analysis ever of this region.
Winner, 2014 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences Despite Mumbai's position as India's financial, economic, and cultural capital, water is chronically unavailable for rich and poor alike. Mumbai's dry taps are puzzling, given that the city does not lack for either water or financial resources. In Pipe Politics, Contested Waters, Lisa Björkman shows how an elite dream to transform Mumbai into a "world class" business center has wreaked havoc on the city’s water pipes. In rich ethnographic detail, Pipe Politics explores how the everyday work of getting water animates and inhabits a penumbra of infrastructural activity—of business, brokerage, secondary markets, and sociopolitical networks—whose workings are reconfiguring and rescaling political authority in the city. Mumbai’s increasingly illegible and volatile hydrologies, Björkman argues, are lending infrastructures increasing political salience just as actual control over pipes and flows becomes contingent on dispersed and intimate assemblages of knowledge, power, and material authority. These new arenas of contestation reveal the illusory and precarious nature of the project to remake Mumbai in the image of Shanghai or Singapore and gesture instead toward the highly contested futures and democratic possibilities of the actually existing city.
China’s rise has upset the global balance of power, and the first place to feel the strain is Beijing’s back yard: the South China Sea. For decades tensions have smoldered in the region, but today the threat of a direct confrontation among superpowers grows ever more likely. This important book is the first to make clear sense of the South Sea disputes. Bill Hayton, a journalist with extensive experience in the region, examines the high stakes involved for rival nations that include Vietnam, India, Taiwan, the Philippines, and China, as well as the United States, Russia, and others. Hayton also lays out the daunting obstacles that stand in the way of peaceful resolution. Through lively stories of individuals who have shaped current conflicts—businessmen, scientists, shippers, archaeologists, soldiers, diplomats, and more—Hayton makes understandable the complex history and contemporary reality of the South China Sea. He underscores its crucial importance as the passageway for half the world’s merchant shipping and one-third of its oil and gas. Whoever controls these waters controls the access between Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Pacific. The author critiques various claims and positions (that China has historic claim to the Sea, for example), overturns conventional wisdoms (such as America’s overblown fears of China’s nationalism and military resurgence), and outlines what the future may hold for this clamorous region of international rivalry.
This book examines India’s transboundary river water disputes with its South Asian riparian neighbours — Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. It explores the history of disputes and cooperation over the transboundary river water in this region as well as discusses current disputes and future concerns. It analyses how and why existing transboundary river water sharing treaties between India and its South Asian riparian neighbours are confronted with challenges. The book indicates that India’s transboundary river water disputes with its South Asian riparian neighbours are likely to escalate in coming years due to the widening of the demand¬–supply gap in the respective countries. It further shows the impact of bilateral relations on the resolution of transboundary river water disputes, even as cordial relationships do not always guarantee the absence of river water disputes between riparian states. The book looks at some key questions: How political are India’s transboundary rivers water disputes in South Asia? Why do the roots of India’s river water disputes with Bangladesh and Pakistan lie in the partition of the British India in 1947? Why are there reservations against India’s hydroelectricity projects or allegations of water theft? Is it possible to resolve transboundary river water disputes among these South Asian countries? This book will greatly interest scholars and researchers working in the areas of river management, environmental politics, transnationalism, water resources, politics and international relations, security studies, peace and conflict studies, geopolitics, development studies, governance and public administration, and South Asian studies in addition to policymakers and journalists.
"A superb book.…Mearsheimer has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the behavior of great powers."—Barry R. Posen, The National Interest The updated edition of this classic treatise on the behavior of great powers takes a penetrating look at the question likely to dominate international relations in the twenty-first century: Can China rise peacefully? In clear, eloquent prose, John Mearsheimer explains why the answer is no: a rising China will seek to dominate Asia, while the United States, determined to remain the world's sole regional hegemon, will go to great lengths to prevent that from happening. The tragedy of great power politics is inescapable.
This book presents an updated view of the Philippines, focusing on thematic issues rather than a description region by region. Topics include typhoons, population growth, economic difficulties, agrarian reform, migration as an economic strategy, the growth of Manila, the Muslim question in Mindanao, the South China Sea tensions with China and the challenges of risk, vulnerability and sustainable development.
This compact, insightful book offers an up-to-the-minute guide to understanding the evolution of maritime territorial disputes in East Asia, exploring their legal, political-security and economic dimensions against the backdrop of a brewing Sino-American rivalry for hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. It traces the decades-long evolution of Sino-American relations in Asia, and how this pivotal relationship has been central to prosperity and stability in one of the most dynamics regions of the world. It also looks at how middle powers – from Japan and Australia to India and South Korea – have joined the fray, trying to shape the trajectory of the territorial disputes in the Western Pacific, which can, in turn, alter the future of Asia – and ignite an international war that could re-configure the global order. The book examines how the maritime disputes have become a litmus test of China’s rise, whether it has and will be peaceful or not, and how smaller powers such as Vietnam and the Philippines have been resisting Beijing’s territorial ambitions. Drawing on extensive discussions and interviews with experts and policy-makers across the Asia-Pacific region, the book highlights the growing geopolitical significance of the East and South China Sea disputes to the future of Asia – providing insights into how the so-called Pacific century will shape up.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FINANCIAL TIMES From Robert D. Kaplan, named one of the world’s Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, comes a penetrating look at the volatile region that will dominate the future of geopolitical conflict. Over the last decade, the center of world power has been quietly shifting from Europe to Asia. With oil reserves of several billion barrels, an estimated nine hundred trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and several centuries’ worth of competing territorial claims, the South China Sea in particular is a simmering pot of potential conflict. The underreported military buildup in the area where the Western Pacific meets the Indian Ocean means that it will likely be a hinge point for global war and peace for the foreseeable future. In Asia’s Cauldron, Robert D. Kaplan offers up a vivid snapshot of the nations surrounding the South China Sea, the conflicts brewing in the region at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and their implications for global peace and stability. One of the world’s most perceptive foreign policy experts, Kaplan interprets America’s interests in Asia in the context of an increasingly assertive China. He explains how the region’s unique geography fosters the growth of navies but also impedes aggression. And he draws a striking parallel between China’s quest for hegemony in the South China Sea and the United States’ imperial adventure in the Caribbean more than a century ago. To understand the future of conflict in East Asia, Kaplan argues, one must understand the goals and motivations of its leaders and its people. Part travelogue, part geopolitical primer, Asia’s Cauldron takes us on a journey through the region’s boom cities and ramshackle slums: from Vietnam, where the superfueled capitalism of the erstwhile colonial capital, Saigon, inspires the geostrategic pretensions of the official seat of government in Hanoi, to Malaysia, where a unique mix of authoritarian Islam and Western-style consumerism creates quite possibly the ultimate postmodern society; and from Singapore, whose “benevolent autocracy” helped foster an economic miracle, to the Philippines, where a different brand of authoritarianism under Ferdinand Marcos led not to economic growth but to decades of corruption and crime. At a time when every day’s news seems to contain some new story—large or small—that directly relates to conflicts over the South China Sea, Asia’s Cauldron is an indispensable guide to a corner of the globe that will affect all of our lives for years to come. Praise for Asia’s Cauldron “Asia’s Cauldron is a short book with a powerful thesis, and it stands out for its clarity and good sense. . . . If you are doing business in China, traveling in Southeast Asia or just obsessing about geopolitics, you will want to read it.”—The New York Times Book Review “Kaplan has established himself as one of our most consequential geopolitical thinkers. . . . [Asia’s Cauldron] is part treatise on geopolitics, part travel narrative. Indeed, he writes in the tradition of the great travel writers.”—The Weekly Standard “Kaplan’s fascinating book is a welcome challenge to the pessimists who see only trouble in China’s rise and the hawks who view it as malign.”—The Economist “Muscular, deeply knowledgeable . . . Kaplan is an ultra-realist [who] takes a non-moralistic stance on questions of power and diplomacy.”—Financial Times
The settlement of the maritime boundary disputes between China and Japan in the East China Sea, and between Greece and Turkey in the Aegean Sea, is politically deadlocked. While diplomatic settlement efforts have been ongoing for the past several decades, neither side in each case appears prepared to back down from its respective maritime and territorial claims. Several incidents at sea have occurred, prompting diplomatic protests, military standoffs, even exchange of fire. The existing status quo is inherently unstable and does not favour either side to the extent that it holds hostage the multiple benefits that could otherwise be generated from the exploitation of the seabed energy and mineral resources in the disputed waters, creating an urgent need for a meaningful discussion on finding a practical way forward. This monograph undertakes a comprehensive analysis of these disputes based on the rules and principles of international law, critically evaluating possible institutional designs of inter-State cooperation over seabed activities in disputed maritime areas and makes recommendations for the prospect of realising joint development regimes in the East China Sea and the Aegean to coordinate the exploration for and exploitation of resources without having resorted previously to boundary delimitation settlement.
