Cooperation and Engagement in the Asia-Pacific Region brings together contributions from leading experts around the world in the law of the sea. The volume addresses topics such as regional cooperation, protection and preservation of the marine environment, freedom of navigation, sustainable fisheries, and future cooperation within the important Asia-Pacific region. This book provides valuable insight into a region that encompasses many important maritime regions, and harbors promising opportunities for maritime cooperation and engagement.

Many of the maritime disputes today represent a competing interest of two groups: coastal states and user states. This edited volume evaluates the role of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in managing maritime order in East Asia after its ratification in 1994, while reflecting upon various interpretations of UNCLOS. Providing an overview of the key maritime disputes occurring in the Asia Pacific, it examines case studies from a selection of representative countries to consider how these conflicts of interest reflect their respective national interests, and the wider issues that these interpretations have created in relation to navigation regimes, maritime entitlement, boundary delimitation and dispute settlement.

China’s maritime “gray zone” operations represent a new challenge for the U.S. Navy and the sea services of our allies, partners, and friends in maritime East Asia. There, Beijing is waging what some Chinese sources term a “war without gunsmoke.” Already winning in important areas, China could gain far more if left unchecked. One of China’s greatest advantages thus far has been foreign difficulty in understanding the situation, let alone determining an effective response. With contributions from some of the world’s leading subject matter experts, this volume aims to close that gap by explaining the forces and doctrines driving China’s paranaval expansion, operating in the “gray zone” between war and peace. The book covers China’s major maritime forces beyond core gray-hulled Navy units, with particular focus on China’s second and third sea forces: the “white-hulled” Coast Guard and “blue-hulled” Maritime Militia. Increasingly, these paranaval forces, and the “gray zone” in which they typically operate, are on the frontlines of China’s seaward expansion.

The Free Sea offers a unique, single-volume analysis of incidents in American history that affected U.S. freedom of navigation at sea. The book spans more than 200 years, beginning in the Colonial era with the Quasi-War with France in 1798 and extending to contemporary Freedom of Navigation operations in the South China Sea. Through wars and numerous crises with North Korea, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Russia and China, freedom of navigation has been a persistent challenge for the United States, a nation reliant on open seas for economic prosperity, military security and global order. This volume focuses on the struggle to retain freedom of the seas. Challenges to U.S. warships and maritime commerce have pushed, and continue to challenge, the United States to vindicate its rights through diplomatic, legal, and military means, underscoring the need for the strategic resolve in the global maritime commons.

This work analyzes the management of shared fish stocks; protection of the underwater cultural heritage; the possibilities of establishing marine protected areas and other means for safeguarding vulnerable marine ecosystems; the use of the high seas for intelligence as well as recent developments on interdiction of vessels on the high seas. Special emphasis is paid to the role of international courts and tribunals in the progressive development of the law of the sea as well as the ability of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to accommodate new uses and challenges, such as new concerns, new technological possibilities, in particular, new contexts and functions of established rules. The 1982 Convention seems capable of coping with most of them, although it remains useful to explore its possibilities and limits. This work, covering many aspects, will be useful to anyone interested in the law of the sea.

Japan, the geopolitical lynchpin in the East Asian region, has developed a unique maritime security policy and interpretation of the law of the sea. Japanese Maritime Security and the Law of the Sea examines Japan’s domestic laws and its approach to international law.