By Zachary Keck
The East China Sea ADIZ is consistent with China’s larger, sophisticated strategy toward maritime disputes.
The tension surrounding the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) is being covered in the kind of exhaustive detail that is rarely given to Asia’s maritime disputes. Many reports have surfaced claiming that the move might have been a strategic blunder for China. Yet, I’ve yet to see any reports explaining in precise details what China was hoping to accomplish by creating the ADIZ.
To be sure, Beijing probably took some joy in seeing the anger the move sparked in Tokyo, particularly given that it perceives its creation of the East China Sea ADIZ as little different from Japan purchase of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands last year. But foreign policy is rarely based solely on vengeance. Indeed, creating the East China Sea ADIZ was much more sophisticated and part of a larger strategy China has been pursuing long before last weekend.
In essence, the East China Sea ADIZ is part of China’s “lawfare” strategy toward its maritime disputes. “Lawfare,” as used in the context of international warfare, is often attributed to retired Air Force General Charles Dunlap, who defined it in a famous 2001 essay as “the use of law as a weapon of war.” Interestingly, according to the spectacular Lawfare blog, Dunlap was preempted by two PLA officers who wrote in a 1999 book, Unrestricted Warfare, that lawfare “is a nation’s use of legalized international institutions to achieve strategic ends.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat