17 December 2014

The World Hot Spots You’ve Never Heard of That Could Ruin 2015

Gregory Viscusi and Nicole Gaouette, “The World Hot Spots You’ve Never Heard of That Could Ruin 2015,” Bloomberg, 16 December 2014.

The Spratlys. Narva. Fezzan.

These places risk becoming household names in 2015. Can’t locate them on a map? Well, a lot of people couldn’t have found Donetsk in Ukraine or Raqqa in Syria as 2014 got under way.

As experts debate potential nasty surprises in 2015, certain scenarios keep coming up: a naval incident between China and one of its neighbors over a series of sparsely inhabited islands. A renewed push by Islamic rebels in Libya’s lawless south into West Africa. An implosion in North Korea.

INFOGRAPHIC: A Pessimist’s Guide to Hot Spots in the World of 2015

Other possibilities include a Russian push into the Baltic countries, a third Palestinian intifada, an Israeli strike against Iran and a continued fall in oil prices that destabilizes countries from Russia to Venezuela. …

China disputes the sovereignty of the East China Sea with Japan and Korea. Using a map first published in the 1940s, China also claims about 90 percent of the South China Sea, including the Spratlys and the Paracel Islands. Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei all have competing claims. …

It’s more than talk. In May, China placed an oil rig in waters claimed by Vietnam, near the disputed Paracels in the South China Sea. That triggered anti-China riots that killed two, prompting foreign-owned factories to shut production and Chinese workers to flee. Vietnam said Chinese ships sent to protect the rig were ramming Vietnamese fishing boats, charges rejected by China. …

China eventually removed the rig in July, a month earlier than scheduled, saying the drilling was done. Then in October, it completed an airport upgrading on Woody Island, one of the Paracels. …

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s goal is to create a “zone of exceptionalism” under which the established rules-based order would be replaced by acceptance of China’s interests and authority, said Andrew Erickson, an associate professor in the strategic research department at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. ….