Territorial disputes and a multidimensional view
Territorial disputes are a clear example of the zero-sum game played by the claimed and claiming agents, who feed their differences rather than recognizing their affinities. Current global events such as COVID-19 clearly show the necessity for a coherent, cohesive and comprehensive response to crises. World leaders and organizations are failing to address global issues in an efficient manner. In a similar vein, legal, political and international relations scholars assert dead-end arguments; futile hermeneutical, technical, conceptual and theoretical discussions; and seem oblivious to the urgency that crises present. Current and ongoing crises as well as the exacerbation of pre-existing conditions require urgency. The impact on legal and socio-political inequalities; economic ramifications of crises and the prospect for recovery depending on places and social characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, age, skill-levels, local government-support, etc.; and the effects on the environment require immediate attention.
The legal, political and international relations disciplines offer various potential remedies, procedures and organizations to deal with crises and solve these problems. Although these remedies, procedures and organizations are useful in certain situations, it is indisputable that they are ineffective at peacefully and permanently handling crises. If and when current models fail or consistently fall short of addressing global changes and crises, a requisite paradigm shift should be implemented. COVID-19 is one of several indicators that prove mankind as a whole needs to reframe crises, reassess situations and discard the frames of past paradigms. The outcomes of current fragmented and unidimensional analyses and responses to crises (as a result of the science of reference and its methodology and the agent in question, such as individuals, communities and states) cannot but have a limited significance in theory and practice.
This monograph entitled Cosmopolitanism, State Sovereignty and International Law and Politics: A Theory (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 2023/24) introduces a multidimensional analysis that assesses the phenomena of pluralism of pluralisms. A pluralism of pluralism means the acknowledgment of a variety of agents (individuals, communities and states) that may play different roles in their interrelations (host, participant, attendees and viewers), and hence, the recognition of the plurality of subjects at play. Furthermore, these agents and players may act within several contexts (local, regional and international) and their interrelations simultaneously exist in three realms (rational, empirical and axiological). To add to this intricacy, the many views (law, politics, philosophy and non-scientific theories) about agents, players, contexts and realms contain both a horizontal and vertical dimension that should take into account the two variables of time and space.
Multilayer and multi-contextual territorial disputes and positive versus negative synergy
In its predecessor, Territorial Disputes and State Sovereignty: International Law and Politics (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 2020), the author used this multidimensional view to assess and explain several territorial disputes, including those in the Middle East.
There are several issues at stake in any territorial dispute and some are constant or, arguably, more relevant than others depending on each case and the context of reference—i.e. domestic, regional and international. They may center on any of the elements that characterize a political community—i.e. territory, population, government and law. Indeed, territorial disputes may be characterized by reference to territorial sub-elements such as strategic location, territorial integrity and natural resources, to name a few. Yet, territorial disputes may be as well based on population—e.g. bordering minorities, refugee’s crisis, common ethnicity, etc. —government and law—e.g. political unification, leader’s prestige, legal entitlement.
Issues at stake can be assessed in their individuality or together, in one or several contexts. However, it is only when a territorial dispute is explored in synergy that it becomes meaningful. To be more precise, the traditional scholarly studies in legal and political sciences center on the same question, the question of territorial disputes. However, legal and political sciences fasten on only one aspect of legal or political reality: on the existential; or an idealistic legal or political aspect, on the essential. The former views only the certainty, the factual power; the latter sees territorial disputes only from the angle of justice and fairness. It is not that one view or segment in these views is more important than the others. Different studies have simply suppressed one member of the relation in favor of the other. Instead, a more comprehensive analysis should think of an ideal or non-ideal, and empirical or theoretical view of territorial disputes as neither antagonistic nor identifiable, but somehow related as different individual members, components or objects of that whole that may stand in a fruitful exchange with one another provided they are assessed in positive synergy.
Territorial disputes in Asia: The South China Sea and the multidimensional analysis
The highly complex area of the South China Sea encompasses the domestic, regional and international contexts. With $3.37 trillion total trade in 2016 and 40% of the global liquefied natural gas trade transited through the area in 2017 the South China Sea presents a tremendously complex geopolitical jigsaw with many issues at stake including sovereignty claims made by several agents.
China affirms the territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea whilst, according to the Chinese government, upholding peace and stability in the area. China’s claims of sovereignty over the sea face several regional challengers such as Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. China claims all the islands off the coast. China occupies nine islands while Malaysia occupies three, the Philippines five, Brunei two, and Taiwan occupies one small islet. The complete coastline of Vietnam is enveloped by the South China Sea. More recently, China has increased efforts to reclaim land in the South China Sea by physically increasing the size of islands, creating new islands and by constructing ports, military installations, and airstrips.
Because Vietnam has a 2,000-mile coastline facing the East Sea (South China Sea) and 50% of its population lives along the coast, the government sees maritime as its greatest security threat. In 2016, approximately $1.6 billion was destined to maritime defense capabilities, but this is expected to increase to $2 billion by 2020. The Vietnamese Navy and Air Force had very little capacity to protect Vietnam’s maritime interests, but over the past decade both services have undergone some modernization. China has a direct influence over Vietnam in the area. For example, in March 2018, following pressure from China, Vietnam ended a partnership with Repsol to drill for oil at Vanguard Bank in the South China Sea.
Under President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines has changed the role as resistance against China’s position in the South China Sea, while simultaneously downgrading security cooperation with the United States—its treaty ally. However, data, show that traditional allies like Japan, the United States, and Europe lead the investment landscape in the Philippines.
Malaysia has preferred to rely on diplomacy and consensus that avoids embarrassing other states in addressing its maritime disputes in the South China Sea. After securing Malaysia’s claim on three Spratly islands through military occupation, Mahathir’s administration focused greater diplomatic efforts to get all disputing parties including China to consult with each other; using the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a main platform for these discussions. The “Mahathir Doctrine” maintains that the South China Sea should be a sea of cooperation, connectivity, and community–building, not confrontation or conflict.
Brunei’s claim is relatively limited in comparison to the other five claimant states. Brunei claims only a 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) under the terms of UNCLOS, in addition to several land features falling within its legally delimited boundaries in the southern portion of the sea, including Louisa Reef, Owen Shoal and Rifleman Bank. In direct contrast to each of the other claimants, Brunei does not occupy any land features in the sea and maintains no permanent military presence in the area to enforce its claim. The unspoken arrangement whereby Brunei remains silent on the South China Sea issue in order to secure Chinese investment has the potential to benefit both countries.
Like many other territorial disputes in the South China Sea, the origin of the contemporary dispute between China and Indonesia can be traced back to the 1947 map drawn by Nationalist Chinese diplomats featuring a dashed line encircling much of the South China Sea. In every version, one of the dashes intersects the northern boundary of Indonesia’s declared EEZ north of the Natunas, around 1400 kilometres from the Chinese mainland. The waters in the disputed area are an important fishery and the seabed below is home to large natural gas reserves.
The South China Sea constitutes today’s most difficult foreign policy dilemma for Cambodia since ASEAN and China are both crucially important for the kingdom’s security and economic development. Cambodia’s position on the South China Sea is aimed at continuing implementing the declaration of conduct (DOC); urging ASEAN and China to make the utmost effort to finalize the code of conduct (COC); and encouraging countries concerned to discuss and resolve their issue because ASEAN is not a court.
Several of these states, namely Vietnam, The Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, are members of ASEAN. Indonesia, which is also an ASEAN member, has an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) generated from the Natuna Islands, overlapping China’s so-called ‘nine-dash-line claim’ in the South China Sea.
In Territorial Disputes and State Sovereignty: International Law and Politics (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 2020), the author includes in the analysis relevant references and other agents such as ASEAN, Taiwan, Australia, Japan and the United States.
A new paradigm
The forthcoming monograph Cosmopolitanism, State Sovereignty and International Law and Politics: A Theory (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 2023/24) sketches a reconceived way of an approach to understanding the relationship between individuals, communities and states. Indeed, in order to coordinate separate and sovereign legal systems, additional and continued research is a task that deserves further exploration. The chapters attempt to take the first steps in creating that path.
Territorial disputes at large are an example of crises in which both sovereignty and cosmopolitanism play a defining role. As a whole, the monograph shows the complexity present in issues that include different agents in order to make evident a crucial point, often ignored or neglected: The apparent tension between sovereignty and cosmopolitanism may be more thoroughly and adequately considered, and arguably resolved, if the scholarly exploration embraces a multidimensional approach. Undoubtedly, it may be the case that a particular agent, their role, a context, a realm or a mode of existence is more significant than the other pluralities or their subgroups with regard to a singular case that compromises sovereignty and cosmopolitanism. Nevertheless, it is in the multidimensional understanding as multi-agent, multi-contextual, multi-realm and multi-existence nature of these issues that a more robust account of their intricacies can be achieved. Therefore, by having a more robust account of their intricacies, it may be possible to reimagine in theory, and hopefully, in practice, a way of dealing with them peacefully and permanently.
The complexity sovereignty and cosmopolitanism presents is challenging. By accepting the fact that states will not forfeit their sovereignty and that individuals should have a minimum set of guarantees protected by law regardless of their individual circumstances, this monograph argues for positive law cosmopolitanism. States could retain their sovereignty and at the same time individuals would enjoy a minimum set of legal guarantees recognized beyond jurisdictional differences.
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Friday 1st Septembert 2023
Dr Jorge Emilio Núñez
Twitter: @DrJorge_World
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