By Prashanth Parameswaran
Some are calling for a new institution to manage Asia’s maritime disputes.
“The physical contours of East Asia,” leading geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan recently wrote, “argue for a naval century.” Given the significance of the maritime realm in the region – evident in everything from rich energy resources to vital maritime trade routes to raging territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas – few would disagree.
Despite this, as Ken Sato, president of the Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS), observed last month at a symposium in Tokyo, East Asia still does not have a permanent organization or regional body to address maritime security issues. In his opening remarks to the Symposium on New Maritime Security Architecture in East Asia held at IIPS on January 30, he proposed the establishment of a new grouping tentatively named the Asia Maritime Organization for Security and Cooperation (AMOSC).
In the view of Sato and others, AMOSC’s central goal would be to prevent and manage existing maritime disputes between countries by enhancing domain awareness, improving capacity-building, and enacting confidence-building measures. Sato also said in his remarks that this would be a very timely proposal given Japan’s recent meetings with both China and the United States as well as the fact that 2015 marks the year of ASEAN-China maritime cooperation.
While the effort to mitigate maritime competition is a laudable one, those familiar with previous debates about regional institution-building will instantly recognize that such new proposals often also bring up some rather old and uncomfortable procedural, stylistic and substantive questions.
Read the full story at The Diplomat