Coastal Conflict or Maritime Mediation: The Coming Crisis for Sea Borders
Coastal Conflict or Maritime Mediation
The Coming Crisis for Sea Borders
By Collin Mattis
In recent decades, the geopolitical importance of oceans has been on the ascent. Since WWII, the seas have become a critical highway for the shipping of goods, with approximately 80% of all global trade today being transported by sea.[i] States frequently mismanage the extraction of maritime resources, such as oil, minerals, and gas, leading to devastating environmental and economic impacts. Records even suggest at least 32% of fish stocks are overexploited.[ii] More gravely, climate change threatens to entirely reshape coastal baselines and even jeopardize the existence of some countries with rising sea levels.[iii] All of these factors will force nations to reconsider the importance of their maritime territory and may lead to an increasing urgency to settle the border disputes that define them. In particular, the rising scarcity of resources has reopened the old debate of who owns what, but now this time over bodies of water. A question naturally presents itself: how will sovereign nations go about solving maritime territorial disputes defined by international law in the 21st century global order? Whether states opt to pursue cooperation or conflict could largely be determined by their diplomatic trust and the balance of power within the region.
Background
In 1982, the United Nations attempted to fold the world’s oceans into its legal jurisdiction with the establishment of The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.[iv] The institution has since served as an international “constitution for the oceans,” laying out the legal framework for determining territorial waters, sea-lanes, and resource rights.[v] And yet, like many other international laws, the Law of the Sea struggles to elicit state cooperation. While over 150 countries have ratified the Convention, only 168 of the 427 potential maritime borders it sets out have been formally agreed upon, and many more have only partial consensus.[vi] Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), maritime areas extending 200 nautical miles from a country’s shoreline, allow for exclusive extraction rights to the resources within them. However, these softer maritime borders often serve as a major source of dispute.[vii] Due to their increasing value, maritime borders and their contested nature will shift the status quo, as countries are incentivized to solidify these boundaries, either through conflict or cooperation.
Oceans to Create Compromise?
Violent exchanges over maritime borders often appear to be too costly for states to seriously consider despite their potential benefits. While ocean territories possess similar tangible attributes to land, such as economic resources and strategic value, they have been less likely to spark a war due to their lesser cultural and national significance.[viii] People have more trouble associating ocean territories with the idea of a homeland, ethnic or religious identity, or even a sense of ownership over the space.[ix] Rationally, state leaders prefer to avoid the costs of violent conflict whenever possible, particularly in a geopolitical climate where so many multilateral institutions are set up to prevent war. While oceans will become more economically and strategically valuable in the future, they do not hold the cultural and national weight often necessary to inflame the masses and rally the public behind a war.[x] Therefore, maritime border disputes will most likely be resolved through diplomacy and negotiation.
Due to their economic value and increasing scarcity, the gains from harnessing ocean resources may serve as the necessary incentive to spur cooperation and solve maritime border disputes diplomatically. As recent as 2010, Norway and Russia agreed to solidify their 1,750-kilometer Arctic maritime boundary.[xi] Resource extraction of both oil and natural gas was a central objective to both countries’ Arctic strategies, incentivizing both parties to cement their boundaries in order to maximize their efficiency.[xii] Back in 2010, this agreement was hailed as a sign of a new era in Norwegian-Russian relations and Arctic governance. As former Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Store noted, the agreement only worked because there was “trust between negotiating partners.”[xiii] However, such an agreement might not have been possible even four years later. With the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, Norway would likely not have enough trust that a border would be respected. This suggests that when resource scarcity forces countries to turn towards ocean reserves, trust is an essential component in pursuing cooperation between nations.
Other than the establishment of mutual trust, diplomatic solutions to disputed maritime resources can also be achieved when there is a clear power imbalance between the competing parties. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to international law, has legitimate access to the oil-rich maritime area currently occupied by Angola.[xiv] Even though the DRC would be more likely to win an international court case over the border – making them the third largest oil producer in Subsaharan Africa – they have yet to press their claims against Angola.[xv] This is a result of the instability and debt created under the regimes of presidents Laurent-Désiré Kabila and Joseph Kabila, who became dependent on Angola’s support to keep their country afloat.[xvi] With non-regime actors still pursuing these maritime claims, the Kabilas agreed to allow Angola to maintain control over the region in exchange for Angolan backing of their regime.[xvii] The dominant power, Angola, thus maintained access to the oil central to its economy, and the weaker power, the DRC, continued to fulfill short-term rent seeking and regime survival objectives.[xviii] This example demonstrates how peaceful agreements on maritime borders can also be achieved when the power disparity is so prominent that the weaker state recognizes the most strategic way forward is to submit in return for concessions.
Oceans: A New Cause of Conflict?
Even though oceans often lack symbolic importance, their economic and strategic usefulness only continues to grow. In fact, because of these characteristics, boundary-making in oceans has generally been functionalist in that it prioritizes the utilitarian usage of maritime space.[xix] In regard to whether this can directly lead to warfare, political theorist Jean-Marc F. Blanchard argues that “the party more likely to escalate a border dispute to war is the party that views the border as having greater innate functional value relative to its needs.”[xx] In other words, border disputes are more likely to escalate into war as the functional value of that border and what lies within it increases. Therefore, while oceans generally fail to generate strong feelings of national identity, their military-strategic and economic functionality will only grow with time, making future conflict over oceans a more reasonable possibility.
Once again, the increasing scarcity and value of ocean resources can sometimes guide countries to settle their disputes. However, with a more equal balance of power and a lack of healthy diplomatic relations, disputes might boil over into armed conflict. The South China Sea offers an example of how the increasing strategic and economic value of oceans might lead to strong tensions or even naval warfares. Geopolitically, the region is subject to several overlapping disputes between China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei based on historic territorial claims or the need for control over key strategic islands.[xxi] In addition, the region is also of crucial economic importance. Over one-third of all global shipments pass through the South China Sea, which itself contains an estimated 22 billion barrels of oil and 290 trillion cubic feet of gas, not to mention 10% of the world’s fisheries.[xxii] This economic value helps explain why it has become one of the first maritime regions to experience real violent conflict.
In 1974, the Battle of the Paracel Islands saw China and Vietnam engage their navies, leading to the killing of dozens of Vietnamese soldiers.[xxiii] Today, the conflict is largely one between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), supported by the United States. China cites historical claim to ownership, all the while steadily building artificial islands, while the ASEAN states object based on the parameters established by international law.[xxiv] China’s ambitions for regional hegemony and America’s support of the ASEAN have resulted in a tense stalemate, with no side able to force its will. The South China Sea offers an example of how disputes over maritime regions with particularly high economic and strategic functionality are harder to settle because of mistrust between equally powerful competitors. Scholar Robert D. Kaplan extends this argument by suggesting that sea conflict is more appropriate to the 21st century, with technology further removing humans from the moral decisions and physical risks of war.[xxv] Naval warfare is largely a battle defined by competing machinery and strategy, which minimizes direct human interactions and casualties.[xxvi] Therefore, countries may actually grow to favor engaging in war in water rather than on land.
Conclusion
Nations have too much at stake to leave their ocean disputes unsettled. The question is whether states will resolve them with battleships or friendships. This is largely determined by the strength of the contending countries’ relations and the balance of their power dynamics. When relations are healthy and both parties can trust that their newfound agreement will be upheld, a mutual compromise on the designation of maritime borders can be made, allowing both parties to engage in resource extraction, as is the case with Norway and Russia. Alternatively, if one country is dependent on a key good or service from another country due to a power imbalance, they may be incentivized to agree on a deal that favors the claim of the dominant country in order to maintain stability, such as with Angola and the DRC. However, if a maritime border is contested between nations who do not trust one another and are each backed by relatively even levels of power, conflict may be the more likely outcome, such as within the South China Sea.
Beyond the increasing economic and strategic value of maritime zones, several other emerging, less predictable factors may alter how and where conflict or compromise is performed. While damage to ocean biomes and climate change is more likely to encourage international cooperation, the resulting depletion of resources and rising sea levels could transform how these borders are even defined. The resulting desperation and confusion will serve as a major test of international institutions' ability to mediate and may force conflict. The accepted credibility of these institutions may also be challenged in coming years with the rise of anti-globalist, populist leaders. President Donald Trump not only places national interests above all others, at times even in defiance of international law, but he also encourages other national leaders to do the same, embracing their distinctive cultures, national sovereignty, and respect for borders.[xxvii] And they are listening. Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, has made it his mission to put Brazil first, declaring war on globalism and international institutions.[xxviii] His emphasis on Brazil’s borders signals the geographic limits of sovereignty and declares to other countries that the state has the right to exist without their meddling.[xxix] If oceans were to obtain these constitutive functions, in addition to their economic and military-strategic value, their growing salience will only encourage more forceful action. There is no definitive answer as to whether these increasing pressures on state leaders to settle their maritime disputes will result in violent violent conflict or careful cooperation. Regardless of the outcome, it is clear that we are entering a new era of oceans, where international law will be put to test.
Illustration by Samantha Malzahn.
[i] Osthagen, Andreas. “Lines at Sea: Why Do States Resolve Their Maritime Boundary Disputes?” London School of Economics and Political Science, 2019.
[ii] Osthagen, Andreas. “Lines at Sea: Why Do States Resolve Their Maritime Boundary Disputes?”
[iii] Osthagen, Andreas. “Lines at Sea: Why Do States Resolve Their Maritime Boundary Disputes?”
[iv] “Law of the Sea | International Law [1982] | Britannica.” Accessed November 4, 2020.
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[viii] Hensel, Paul R., and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell. “From Territorial Claims to Identity Claims: The Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project.” Conflict Management & Peace Science 34, no. 2 (March 2017): 126–40.
[ix] Hensel, Paul R., and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell. “From Territorial Claims to Identity Claims: The Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project.”
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[xi] Osthagen, Andreas. “Lines at Sea: Why Do States Resolve Their Maritime Boundary Disputes?”
[xii] Osthagen, Andreas. “Lines at Sea: Why Do States Resolve Their Maritime Boundary Disputes?”
[xiii] Osthagen, Andreas. “Lines at Sea: Why Do States Resolve Their Maritime Boundary Disputes?”
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[xv] Edmond, Patrick, Kristof Titeca, and Erik Kennes. “The DRC-Angola Offshore Oil Dispute: How Regime (In)Security Outweighs Sovereign Claims.”
[xvi] Edmond, Patrick, Kristof Titeca, and Erik Kennes. “The DRC-Angola Offshore Oil Dispute: How Regime (In)Security Outweighs Sovereign Claims.”
[xvii] Edmond, Patrick, Kristof Titeca, and Erik Kennes. “The DRC-Angola Offshore Oil Dispute: How Regime (In)Security Outweighs Sovereign Claims.”
[xviii] Edmond, Patrick, Kristof Titeca, and Erik Kennes. “The DRC-Angola Offshore Oil Dispute: How Regime (In)Security Outweighs Sovereign Claims.”
[xix] Johnston, Douglas M. The Theory and History of Ocean Boundary-Making. Kingston [Ont.]: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988.
[xx] Blanchard, Jean-Marc F. “Linking Border Disputes and War: An Institutional-Statist Theory.”
[xxi] Zaka, Khalid. “Khalid Zaka: A Summary of the South China Sea Conflict.” The Georgia Straight, September 10, 2020.
[xxii] Zaka, Khalid. “Khalid Zaka: A Summary of the South China Sea Conflict.”
[xxiii] Zaka, Khalid. “Khalid Zaka: A Summary of the South China Sea Conflict.”
[xxiv] Zaka, Khalid. “Khalid Zaka: A Summary of the South China Sea Conflict.”
[xxv] Kaplan, Robert D. “The South China Sea Is the Future of Conflict.” Foreign Policy, no. 188 2011: 76.
[xxvi] Kaplan, Robert D. “The South China Sea Is the Future of Conflict.”
[xxvii] Trump, Donald. “Remarks by President Trump to the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.” The White House. Accessed November 4, 2020.
[xxviii] Casaroes, Guilherme, and 2019. “Making Sense of Bolsonaro’s Foreign Policy at Year One.” Americas Quarterly (blog). Accessed November 4, 2020.
[xxix] Blanchard, Jean-Marc F. “Linking Border Disputes and War: An Institutional-Statist Theory.”
