 |
| Image: Flickr User - Greg Bishop |
By Prashanth Parameswaran
A look at how one proposal might work.
Yesterday, media reports surfaced about how the U.S. military was mulling using aircraft and Navy ships to directly contest Chinese territorial claims to rapidly expanding artificial islands. In an earlier piece, I considered this proposal as part of the larger case for a more robust U.S. approach in the South China Sea. But what is the logic behind this specific proposal, how would it work in practice, and what would its implications be?
The essence of this proposal is to physically challenge the legality of China’s land reclamation activities in the South China Sea. Many have worried that Beijing may try to suggest that its reclaimed features built on low-tide elevations are islands or rocks, since that would then allow them to generate maritime claims (a territorial sea of 12 miles, along with an exclusive economic zone and a continental shelf for an island, and a territorial sea of 12 miles for a rock).
Yet in fact, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) makes it clear that such features would not be able to generate any maritime claims. Low-tide elevations are not capable of generating claims themselves per se, with the idea being that they are distinct from islands because they are inundated at high tide. Neither do “artificial islands”. According to Article 60(8) of UNCLOS, “Artificial islands, installations, and structures do not possess the status of islands. They have no territorial sea of their own, and their presence does not affect the delimitation of the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone, or the continental shelf.”
Under the proposal being considered, U.S. Navy ships and aircraft would be used to illustrate this point. To take a concrete example, U.S. Navy ships would do so by passing through within 12 miles of one of the reclaimed features to show that they do not recognize that these features qualify as islands or rocks that generate a 12-mile territorial sea.
Read the full story at The Diplomat