Week: Our Perspectives

Posts from the ISN, CSS and guest writers

China’s New City: Is this Beijing’s Pivot?

Paracel islands
Paracel islands. Photo: Nicolas Lannuzel/flickr.

It’s not relocating aircraft carriers to the Pacific or stationing 2,500 marines in Australia but China’s provocative establishment of a new city, Sansha, in the disputed Paracels chain takes the geopolitical drama in the South China Sea to a new stage. This escalating assertiveness may have a larger strategic importance as part of Beijing’s response to the often touted US “pivot” or rebalancing in Asia.

Proclaiming a new city on the 2km long atoll in the South China Sea (population some 150 fishermen), replete with its own mayor, municipal council, and military garrison takes the issue a step beyond diplomatic quarrels with other claimants, in this case the Philippines and Vietnam. China appears to also view its newly anointed Sansha as a sort of administrative and monitoring hub for the wider South China Sea area.

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Saif Wants to be Tried at the ICC – But That’s Not All

Benghazi caricatures of Gadafi
Benghazi caricatures of Gadafi. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Late last week, the Office of Public Counsel for the Defence (OPCD), which has been representing Saif al-Islam Gaddafi at the ICC, filed its official response to Libya’s admissibility challenge at the ICC. The impressive report, a whopping 92-pages long, should be read in its entirety. It includes an in-depth account of the arrest and detention of Melinda Taylor and the ICC4. Kevin Jon Heller at Opinio Juris has covered the most controversial and pertinent bits of the report (see here and here) and has posted a must-read piece on the relevance of the failure to provide Saif with due process in Libya’s admissibility challenge. Here are a few things that I found particularly interesting and important.

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Occupying the Patriarchy: Women Seek to Remake Occupy in their Image

Women say no to war
Women at Occupy Wall Street, New York, 30 September 2011. Photo: Cedrus.k/flickr.

Since its inception, feminism has sparked controversy, and eventually developed an image of militancy and extremism. As a result, women who may otherwise agree with feminism’s goals shy away from adopting the label, leading some to argue that feminism was no longer a relevant school of thought for young women. And yet, issues important to the lives of these young women only grew in importance during the recession: gender disparities in wages continue, while women’s unemployment rate stays stubbornly higher than men’s; controversy over the Affordable Care Act targeted women’s basic health care. Suddenly, something changed. Feminism was no longer about burning bras and unshaved legs; young women began rallying—against victims of rape being called sluts, against the scorn of the political right and the savior complex of the political left, and for a complete systemic re-analysis.

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The Logic of China’s North Korea Policy

DPRK: train from Pyongyang to Dandong
Train from Pyongyang to Dandong. Photo: kwramm/flickr.

US and South Korean analysts are annoyed and frustrated by China’s policy toward North Korea. In their eyes, Beijing’s policy not only jeopardizes the security of the US and the ROK and undermines international norms, but is detrimental to China’s own national interests as well. But judgments about whether China’s North Korea policy is illogical or self-defeating depend very much on what people see as China’s goals. Most Chinese analysts would argue that China’s policy has its own internal logic; whether the US and South Korea see that logic is a different matter.

The widely accepted assumption is that China has three goals when it comes to North Korea: stability (no implosion and no war), peace (diplomatic normalization between the US and North Korea), and denuclearization/nonproliferation. Among these three, China prioritizes stability over peace and denuclearization. The secondary status of denuclearization is a sore spot for Washington and Seoul, which see it as the most important goal (or should be). And while different priorities lead to different approaches, North Korean actions have been destabilizing. Therefore, China’s strategy is counterproductive in terms of its own priority, hence illogical.

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Sea of Japan vs. East Sea

Old map of the "Mer de Corée", which is nowadays widely called the "Sea of Japan"
"Sea of Japan", "East Sea" or both? Map: Wikimedia Commons.

With 16 history professors, diplomats and maritime officials, South Korea sent the third-largest delegation to the 18th International Hydrographic Conference, in Monte Carlo, in April this year. In this case, however, strength did not lie in numbers:  At the summit, the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO)rejected Korea’s request to use the name “East Sea” alongside the established “Sea of Japan” to designate the body of water that lies between the Japanese Archipelago and the Korean Peninsula. Instead, it was decided that the exclusive use of the name “Sea of Japan” would continue through 2017, when the next conference is set to take place.

For twenty years, Japan and South Korea have been involved in a diplomatic spat over the name of the body of water in question – which borders Japan, North Korea, Russia and South Korea – and the dispute remains a source of continued frustration for the Koreans. So far, the naming controversy has not led to a direct military clash between the two countries, but, with Japan continuing to favor the status quo, Korea seems to be stepping up efforts to achieve a name change (either to its preferred option, or to the concurrent use of the two terms), thus politicizing the technical question of maritime name designations.

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