In fact, international law does provide an achievable solution to the China-Japan dispute.
A year ago, China established a very large Air Defense Interception Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea to fortify its territorial claims in the vicinity of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The United States signaled its serious concern with the action by operationally protesting the claim with the dispatch of B-52 bombers through the zone in late November 2013. On January 30, 2013, Japanese authorities reported that a Chinese frigate locked its fire control radar on a Japanese destroyer. In March 2014, a very senior Chinese security official said that the Chinese Army will not stir up war but will “fight back” at any provocation.
The author wrote extensively a year ago that an equitable and face-saving solution was possible if both countries moderated their claims in accordance with general international law and the 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS). That proposal was labeled as interesting, but it never seems to have been taken seriously by policymakers on either side of the dispute. All the while, policy officials and academics from the Japanese and Chinese camps have focused on the question of whose title is better, who would win if there were war, or why no solution is politically possible because of the irreconcilable positions. Others wrote about the urgent need for maritime confidence building measures (CBMs) along the lines of the US-Russia INCSEA model to prevent an incident at sea among the two contestants. There are understandable fears that a military incident could escalate into a full-fledged battle between Asia’s two military and economic heavyweights.
On the margins of the APEC Summit in November 2014, Presidents Xi Jinping and Abe finally cobbled together some dialogue and a vague agreement to establish a hotline and a maritime communication mechanism. The agreement, laced with non-binding diplo-babble, is probably the best that Beijing and Tokyo could muster given the sour state of affairs. CBMs are well and good but they are no substitute for a thoughtful strategy to solve the problem. In this particular case, the policymakers in both countries need not be creative since the long-term solution to this incendiary problem is for both countries to strictly conform their maritime claims and boundaries to UNCLOS and international law.
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