Thursday, May 22, 2014
No Sense of Urgency, Please (South China Sea -- 2014.)
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The South China sea in the northern area, that which is in dispute between China and Viet Nam, has a crossing of claimed borderlines that allow for both territories to claim rights there, though China with it greater political power is treating the issue for its own purposes in letting the Viets remonstrate and while doing what it has done within the last few days: First planning to and then locating a seabed oil derrick within the territories the Viets have claimed for themselves. Given its economic agenda and the way business in Asia and China is managed today, the Chinese regime wishes to assert policital and military power over the Viets, a seemingly smaller, weaker neighbor. These two countries last took on the territorial rights and borders issue formally in a 1979 war between the two.
The egregious thought of impeding or seizing land by nearby political neighbors has long been resolved, even for belligerents, by the drawing of borders, and sometimes regional or organizational, over land, though with the ocean this is much more difficult, especially when political or ideological adversaries are involved as adjoining territories or near neighbors. Some water rights and their use on land have been points of contention everywhere for years as in a way, water is moneys in the bank in some places in the world, and those with such rights, regional, national, of the prefecture, province or state, right on down to the county and municipality, are better of than the have - nots; and much better in the case of land - water rights.
In the ocean, water territorial rights are diffuse and nebulous as the oceans of the world and the seas related to them are quite large and all incidents therein are largely subject to self - regulation more or less, not necessarily the regards of those experts in delineating borders and settling those disputes including those of the 200 mile territorial waters limit set down years ago. To those individuals in countries in dialogue with each other over such disputes, these do not appear solvable in the traditional sense where linear borders are used to reckon with assertions as to the wills of various conflicting parties. The Chinese have obviously provoked the Viets into first debating the recent violation(s) of sovereignty, then without asking committed at least a public relations problem for themselves via placing a large oil rig near the coast of Viet Nam, but far enough from shore to temper the angry reaction from anyone monitoring practical violations of Viet sovereignty to want to talk about it save for in an international court. In refusing the Viet overtures to submit the matter to international scrutiny and have some permanent determination thereby, the Chinese being very much like themselves, have refused the territorial resolution process and have started their drilling, probably damaging permanently what must be a spotless power politics record as of late [maybe until 2007 or so, actually]. What to do? Comments invited.
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