Andrew S. Erickson

Big news! Dr. Peter Alan Dutton, J.D., has just joined Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center as a Senior Research Scholar in Law and a Senior Fellow. This follows twenty-three years of superlative leadership, scholarship, teaching, and other academic and policy contributions at the U.S. Naval War College. His new bio is appended immediately below. The compilation following below it documents Prof. Dutton’s body of work and experience that he brings to this new position, and makes it readily accessible to all who may find it of interest. In New Haven, Dr. Dutton continues an amazing career, which I’ve previously summarized (in reverse chronological order) as “Dean, Director, Scholar, Lawyer, Naval Flight Officer.” Looking forward to his next great chapter as he returns to focusing on his love of legal studies, and to the insights that flow from it!

Peter Dutton is a Senior Research Scholar in Law and Senior Fellow in the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. Before joining the Center, he was professor of international law in the Stockton Center for International Law at the U.S. Naval War College. He also served as dean (interim) of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies, as director of the China Maritime Studies Institute, and as professor of joint military operations.

Dutton served the U.S. Navy for more than 40 years in active duty and civilian capacities. His active-duty career began as a naval flight officer in a variety of aircraft, including the A-6E Intruder, with operations in the Caribbean, Pacific, and European theaters. As a Judge Advocate, his active-duty deployments include with Carrier Group Six, on board the USS John F. Kennedy, deployed to the Persian Gulf in support of Operation Southern Watch and other operations. He worked with and advised a series of Pacific Fleet Commanders, Secretaries of Defense, Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other government offices on  policies in the Asia-Pacific region. He also testified before the Senate and the House of Representatives on a variety of China-related issues.

Dutton’s research is interdisciplinary, combining international law, China studies, and international politics, including geostrategic theory. His writings focus on international law of the sea and air, with an emphasis on the East and South China Seas, and geo-political strategy. Additional research interests include Chinese views of sovereignty and international law, international law and Taiwan, and the strategic implications of China’s maritime expansion. He is a non-resident affiliate in research at Harvard University Fairbank Center for China Studies, and a non-resident affiliated scholar at the US-Asia Law Institute at New York University School of Law. Dutton holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from King’s College London, a J.D. from the College of William & Mary, an M.A. from the U.S. Naval War College, and a B.S. from Boston University.

FOUNDATIONAL SERVICE, WORKS, AND CONTRIBUTIONS

For the past twenty-three years, Dr. Dutton made superlative leadership, scholarship, teaching, and other academic and policy contributions at the Naval War College. The NWC professor (2004–24) and former China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) director (2011–19) and Interim Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies (May 2021–October 2022) played a leading role in analyzing and interpreting China’s disputed island and maritime sovereignty claims, efforts to promote them, and broader geostrategic goals and trajectory. He did so for the scholarly and policy communities, the U.S. Navy, and other organizations of the U.S. government. Dr. Dutton drew on an unusual—if not unique—combination of training as a scholar, lawyer, naval flight officer, and journalist. He served at NWC as Judge Advocate General, Director of CMSI, and Interim Dean of CNWS, the College’s research arm; as well as tenured Full Professor in CNWS’s Strategic and Operational Research Department(SORD) and Stockton Center for International Law (SCIL).

As Interim Dean, CNWS, Professor Dutton shepherded the organization through a period of great challenges and change inside the College and at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) leadership level alike. He helped reintegrate the Center’s diverse faculty to normal at-work operations after more than a year of college-wide remote work during the COVID pandemic. Dr. Dutton simultaneously helped CNWS achieve a much closer, more integrated research relationship with the Director(ate) of Warfighter Development (OPNAV N7) and across the Navy in response to requirements from the Fleet. In the ramp-up to his deanship, Prof. Dutton headed a fourteen-month hiring evolution across the Center in which he chaired eight hiring committees that supported the hiring of ten new CNWS faculty members.

Prior to serving at the senior leadership level, Dr. Dutton spent eight-and-a-half years as CMSI Director during a time of rapid strategic and operational change in Sino-American relations and corresponding increase in demand for high-quality, ground-breaking research products. From early 2011 through 2019, as head of CMSI, Director Dutton fostered broad understanding of Beijing’s strategy, policy, and activities at sea. Under his organizational and intellectual leadership, CMSI scholars performed impactful academic research using Chinese-language sources to develop deeper insight into key aspects of China’s growing maritime power. These efforts helped to inform the Navy, advise current leaders, educate the service’s next generation, and engage the Nation more broadly. Professor Dutton led the growth of CMSI faculty from four to eight full-time research and support personnel, expanded and included affiliates from around the College to more than a dozen, served as an integrator for China-related research across the College, and expanded CMSI’s engagement with faculty members from NWC’s teaching departments, the College of Maritime Operational Warfare (CMOW), and International Programs. Externally, he developed close relationships with each successive Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet and other operational leaders and their staffs to ensure CMSI research was closely connected to the fleet’s most pressing research requirements.

Dr. Dutton has contributed world-class academic scholarship at the intersection of international law, China studies, and maritime strategy. Its rigor and relevance has generated numerous invitations testify before the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. His writings have been included, inter alia, in policy briefings to the President of the United States, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, several of whom he was subsequently requested to brief in person. His publications and presentations on PRC views of international law have been fundamental to the work of the National Security Council, the National Intelligence Council, and the highest-level operational commands. Additionally, Dr. Dutton’s research has been widely utilized by allied governments and he has been called upon to brief Cabinet level officials including in the United Kingdom, the Philippines, and Japan. His articles have published in a wide range of scholarly journals, including in the premier international law publication, the American Journal of International Law.

Dr. Dutton has thereby advanced the understanding of China’s maritime expansion in the broader naval, policy, and academic communities through regular conferences, the publication of conference volumes, CMSI’s China Maritime Studies series, and numerous other published articles, books, and reports. Furthermore, during his time as a member and leader of CMSI, Dr. Dutton completed a Ph.D. at King’s College London. His dissertation, entitled “Securing the Sea: China’s Quest for Maritime Security,” considered the geostrategic and security rationales for China’s sovereigntist approach to international law of the sea. His dissertation was awarded the “Outstanding Dissertation” award for his year of graduation. The presentations, lectures, and articles that resulted from his doctoral-level scholarship contributed substantially to NWC’s curriculum.

Among Prof. Dutton’s many observations: Rather than operate freely on exterior lines like such geographically advantaged sea powers as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan, China must radiate sea power from interior lines in a way that currently prioritizes the assertion of increasing control over its disputed sovereignty claims in the Yellow, East, and South China Seas; while also seeking growing influence across the Indo-Pacific, as well as nascent access and presence globally. Watch for Harvard to publish a book on this and related findings based on his King’s College London Ph.D. dissertation! (I have personally witnessed a U.S. cabinet official reveal that he had read several chapters as Dutton briefed him.)

Dr. Dutton began his career at NWC just weeks after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks as the Staff Judge Advocate for the College. Because he had just come from deployment to the Persian Gulf as a Strike Group Judge Advocate, he was immediately called upon to contribute to the operational law teaching program in NWC’s Joint Military Operations (JMO) department as an additional duty. Dr. Dutton was then offered a full-time position as an active-duty JMO moderator and eventually a full-time civilian faculty position in the department. In addition to creating the first-ever differentiated law curriculum for the College of Naval Warfare, Professor Dutton made additional original contributions to the curriculum relating the concept of legitimacy to the achievement of operational and strategic objectives. These concepts made a lasting impact on the curriculum and are still taught by members of the JMO faculty today. Prof. Dutton has also been an active and popular contributor to the Electives program, sole-taught courses on “Governing China” and “China’s Century of Humiliation,” and contributing to a wide range of other electives, including Joint Land Air Sea Strategic Exercise (JLASS), international and maritime law electives, and the Maritime Advanced Warfare Seminar (MAWS), among others.

Professor Dutton is a highly-regarded scholar in his field. His in-residence affiliations include spending a year as a visiting scholar in MIT’s Security Studies Program. In 2012, he was invited to serve as an adjunct professor of law at the New York University School of Law, where he taught a course on “Chinese Attitudes Toward International Law.” At NYU Law School, he also served as a senior fellow and faculty advisor to the U.S.-Asia Law Institute where he managed a major research program on international law of the sea that included more than a decade of engagements with PRC scholars and officials and a project on the international law of maritime delimitation to assist East and Southeast Asian states manage their maritime disputes with China. In 2018 and 2023, Dr. Dutton was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Adelaide School of Law in Adelaide, South Australia. Since 2023, Dr. Dutton has been an Affiliated Scholar with the Norwegian Institute of Defence Studies in Oslo, Norway. He maintains additional active relationships with the Harvard University Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and the American Society of International Law.

Through all these efforts, Dr. Dutton has helped to both further China maritime security studies generally and pioneer an important academic field truly understood by only a select few, some of whom lack his freedom to interface with such a broad range of interlocutors and audiences on both sides of the Pacific. Although too modest to say so himself, Professor Dutton can already claim significant formal and informal policy influence. In the formal dimension, his periodic testimony before U.S. government bodies bears (re)reading as an encapsulation of his ongoing findings.

I have periodically reviewed the below testimonies and publications, and discovered fresh insights in the process. I thus commend this work by Professor Dutton to anyone interested in this subject. The summaries below are instructive, but it’s worth clicking on the links for the full text:

Peter A. Dutton, “Conceptualizing China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations,” in Andrew S. Erickson, ed., Maritime Gray Zone Operations: Challenges and Countermeasures in the Indo-Pacific (New York, NY: Routledge Cass Series: Naval Policy & History, 2022/paperback 2024), 19–34.

Something different is going on in the waters of the South China Sea. It is an international contestation, but not international armed conflict. It involves physical coercion, but not military force. It is neither truly a constabulary action, nor a campaign of war. This contestation exists in the space between conflict and peace. It involves unoccupied and unoccupiable space. This new form of contestation was in part enabled by the creation of vast resource zones at sea during the 20th century. In these continental shelves and exclusive economic zones, states accrued new forms of political space at sea. They acquired exclusive sovereign rights to the living and non-living resources and the jurisdictional authority to bring to bear the state’s constabulary powers to enforce those rights, while at the same time international law preserved many traditional freedoms enjoyed by all states.¹ In a sense, these zones are themselves gray.

It happens all the time that states contest jurisdiction in these areas, as states dispute where boundaries should be drawn between their respective resource zones.² Such boundary disputes are about the proper application of the rules to a given geographic area, not fundamental disagreements about what rules should apply and who should make them. They might involve incremental expansion of a state’s authority, but not the wholesale redefinition of sovereign rights to most of one of the world’s great seas as belonging to a single coastal country.³ This new phenomenon, this gray zone strategy, involves China’s use of non-militarized coercion to redefine the legal status of the 1.39 million square miles of ocean space it claims and to consolidate its authority over it.

To focus only on the specific actions employed by China in the South China Sea—indeed in all the seas around China—might lead to the conclusion that what is being observed is simply a new application of an existing concept—either hybrid warfare or gunboat diplomacy. But this new form of maritime contestation is not simply about the choice of tactics, nor about the simultaneous employment of constabulary and irregular forces in combination with other instruments of national power. It is also about the redefinition of the nature of a globally important maritime space and the wholesale rejection of the international rules that govern which state has priority of rights within it. It is about an expansionary campaign disguised as a defensive action. … … …

***

Peter A. Dutton, “Palestine’s Quest for Full United Nations Membership,” Articles of War(Lieber Institute: West Point, NY, 22 April 2024).

Amidst the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, the United States vetoed Palestine’s latest bid for full acceptance as a member State of the United Nations (UN). In the view of the United States, the only way for a stable future between Israel and Palestine is through direct, bilateral negotiations.

Earlier in the week the United Nations Security Council had unanimously agreed to begin the process to consider Palestine’s petition to become a full member State. Ambassador Vanessa Frazier of Malta, who holds the Security Council’s rotating presidency for the month of April 2024, acknowledged the lack of objection to initiating the process and announced the Palestinian request would be given immediate consideration.

Earlier, the Security Council met in a private session to discuss giving renewed consideration to Palestine’s request for full membership, which it first entered on September 23, 2011. A second, public session was held in which the Security Council approved the proposal to reconsider Palestine’s application. Ambassador Frazier then referred the matter to the Security Council’s admissions committee for immediate consideration. Thus began a new phase of Palestine’s quest for full UN membership. … … …

***

Peter A. Dutton, “Challenging China: The Philippine Experience in the South China Sea,” U.S.-Asia Law Institute Podcast with Dr. Jay Batangbacal, New York University School of Law, 29 January 2024.

An obscure reef in the South China Sea has become the latest flashpoint in China’s long-running campaign to dominate the South China Sea. Since last summer, the Chinese Coast Guard has repeatedly employed water cannons, lasers, and acoustic weapons and rammed Philippine Navy and Coast Guard vessels to prevent them from resupplying military personnel positioned at Second Thomas Shoal. The U.S. labels China’s actions as violations of international law and has confirmed that its mutual defense treaty with the Philippines extends to attacks on Philippine vessels at sea. Jay Batongbacal, a lawyer and professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law, will discuss how this tiny maritime feature became a potential conflict site, why a 2016 ruling by an international tribunal in the Philippines’ favor has not ended the dispute, and how international law can continue to be effective in the face of Chinese attacks. Peter Dutton, an adjunct professor of international law at NYU School of Law, will be the moderator.

***

Peter A. Dutton, “Oceans Under Pressure: China’s Challenge to the Maritime Order,” Britain’s World (Council on Geostrategy: London, UK, 23 January 2024).

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) reflects a series of compromises between the ocean’s various stakeholders and seeks to preserve maritime stability by ensuring tensions do not build to the point of conflict. As it opened for signature in 1982, states began organising their maritime claims and activities around its four key elements (see Box 1), which transformed and stabilised the maritime domain. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), however, is systematically and dangerously undermining each of these foundational elements, threatening to return the global maritime domain to its former state of instability. If the UNCLOS system is to be preserved, states with important maritime interests, including the United Kingdom (UK), must reinforce its provisions with clear policy statements, support affected stakeholders actively, and employ stiffer action where required. Without such efforts, the future order of the oceans is in doubt.

The key elements of UNCLOS

Beginning in the early 20th century, advancements in military technologies, notably the capacity to drill offshore for oil and gas, and expanded industrial fishing, put pressure on states to establish international laws to regulate activities at sea. It was not until after the Second World War, however, that states were able to address these pressing issues. In 1982, negotiators completed a comprehensive treaty to provide order, stability, and sustainable productivity in the world’s oceans. To achieve these aims, UNCLOS advances four interwoven areas of international law.

First, it defines maritime zones and establishes the bases for delimiting them. It is the first international treaty, for instance, to establish a uniform maximum breadth of the territorial sea at 12 nautical miles and creates the 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) within which coastal states possess sovereign rights to the resources inside it. It provides a system to delimit maritime zones between neighbours based on coastal geography, international law, and equitable results. These important advancements brought rapid and substantial uniformity to maritime claims around the world and stability to what had previously been a global patchwork.

Second, UNCLOS defines the rights and duties which apply within its several maritime zones. It balances the security and economic interests of coastal states against the freedoms of maritime states to navigate and operate freely on the seas. In doing so, it provides for various passage regimes, including the right of innocent passage in the territorial sea, which requires ships to pass in an un-threatening manner, and transit passage, which grants ships and aircraft the right to pass through narrow coastal straits. In the rest of the oceans, it preserves the right of high seas freedoms, excepting only a coastal state’s right to the resources and related jurisdiction in its EEZ and continental shelf.

Third, UNCLOS establishes rules, standards, and norms to protect the maritime environment. It views the resources in and under the high seas as the ‘common heritage of mankind’. It gives coastal states jurisdiction to protect and preserve the marine environment and requires them to undertake measures to avoid over-exploitation of living resources. Further, it requires cooperation between neighbouring states to conserve living resources and to prevent marine pollution and other environmental damage. It requires environmental assessment prior to undertaking action which may cause substantial pollution.

Fourth, and finally, UNCLOS establishes a mandatory system to resolve disputes and advance maritime stability. It obliges states to settle disputes by peaceful means, allows parties to choose their own dispute resolution methods, and establishes processes among which states can choose to adjudicate disputes. It even lets states opt out of the most contentious types of disputes, such as those involving sovereignty over territory, military activities, and law enforcement. … … …

***

Peter A. Dutton, “The Naval Balance in the Indo-Pacific,” Sea Power Podcast, Episode 8, Isaac B. Kardon, U.S. Naval War College, November 2023.

Guest Peter Dutton discusses a paper delivered in Australia in November 2022, considering AUKUS, the Quad, and the naval capabilities that the PRC brings to bear in the Indo-Pacific theater.

***

Peter A. Dutton, “China is Rewriting the Law of the Sea,” (Review of China’s Law of the Sea, by Isaac B. Kardon, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), Foreign Policy, 10 June 2023.

Washington missed the boat to shape the global maritime order. Beijing is stepping in.

For decades, scholars and policymakers have puzzled over the question: What is China trying to accomplish with its extensive maritime claims throughout the South and East China seas?

A few answers are floated regularly: Perhaps Beijing wants to control natural resources. The South China Sea is a rich source of fisheries and other living resources, and it contains commercially viable hydrocarbon deposits. Or, perhaps, Chinese leaders seek security. After all, Beijing has constructed military bases on Woody Island in the Paracels and on all seven of the Spratly Islands that it occupies. Chinese leaders may also want to bolster Beijing’s status in the larger regional order by setting the maritime agenda and making the rules for dispute resolution.

But neither resource interests, security, nor status alone provide satisfactory explanations for Beijing’s behavior. Instead, as China analyst Isaac B. Kardon argues in his groundbreaking book, China’s Law of the Sea: The New Rules of Maritime Order, Beijing sees itself as fundamentally above the law and beyond accountability to others, especially smaller states. And while full-scale global change to the oceans regime is beyond China’s grasp, Kardon writes, Beijing’s actions may have consequences beyond its nearby waters.

The law of the sea—codified for decades in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea—is pretty clear on most things. Countries have territorial seas stretching 12 nautical miles off their coasts. Islands do, too. Rocks and submerged features do not. Countries also have resource zones that stretch at least 200 nautical miles, theirs alone to fish, mine, and harvest deep-sea riches. Every state can fly, sail, and operate in waters beyond the territorial seas and pass freely through straits. The problem is that China, though a party to the U.N. convention, flouts each of these elements.

China, as Kardon systematically demonstrates, challenges the prevailing law of the sea by undermining the geography-based rules for defining coastal zones, controlling ocean resources that belong to other states, hampering freedom of navigation, and ignoring its commitment to abide by dispute resolution provisions. … … …

***

Peter A. Dutton, “Conceptualizing China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations,” in Andrew S. Erickson and Ryan D. Martinson, eds., China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019; paperback 15 January 2023), 30–37.

• Reprinted in Japanese as:
• ピーター・A・ダットン(Peter A.Dutton)
  退役米国海軍中佐および法務官、米国海軍大学中国海事研究所(CMSI)所長。
• 第2章 中国の海上グレーゾーン作戦の概念化
•  アンドリュー・S・エリクソン (編集), ライアン・D・マーティンソン (編集), 五味 睦佳 (翻訳), 大野 慶二 (翻訳), 木村 初夫 (翻訳), 五島 浩司 (翻訳), 杉本 正彦 (翻訳), 武居 智久 (翻訳), 山本 勝也 (翻訳) [Andrew S. Erickson (Editor), Ryan D. Martinson (Editor), Gumi Mutsuka (Translator), Ohno Keiji (Translator), Kimura Hatsuo (Translator), Goto Koji (Translator), Sugimoto Masahiko (Translator), Tomohisa Takei (translator), and Katsuya Yamamoto (translator)]; 中国の海洋強国戦略:グレーゾーン作戦と展開 (日本語) [China’s Maritime Power Strategy: Strategy and Deployment in Gray Zone (Japanese translation of China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations)] (Tokyo: 原書房 [Hara Shobo Press], 2020), 50–59.

This volume is designed to grapple with an important aspect of the nature and form of the Chinese-led change occurring at sea in East Asia. Something new has been going on since at least 2012, when China employed a combination of coast guard cutters and maritime militia vessels to seize physical control of Scarborough Reef in the South China Sea. Even earlier, coordination among the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy (PLAN), China Coast Guard (CCG) vessels, and People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM) units was seen in the 2009 USNS Impeccable incident. Since then, the pattern has been repeated many times. It is, for instance, a central feature of the ongoing Chinese activities in the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute in the East China Sea. It was evident in China’s 2014 employment and shielding of the Hai Yang Shi You 981 drilling rig in the waters between Vietnam and the Paracel Islands. And it was central to China’s assertion of traditional fishing rights in the Indonesian exclusive economic zone off Natuna. This new phenomenon is China’s use of nonmilitarized coercion to achieve its maritime aims in the East Asian sea space.

As I wrote in 2013, China found a gap to exploit in resolving the disputes in the South China Sea in its favor. This gap exists in the space between peaceful dispute resolution options chiefly negotiations or institutional approaches to resolving the disputes-and armed conflict. China sought this gap after being foreclosed from other options. Bilateral negotiations, which it favored, went nowhere because China approached them on the condition that the other party accept Chinese sovereignty before proceeding. This and the obvious political and economic imbalance made bilateral negotiations unacceptable to the weaker parties. Similarly, China found multilateral negotiations unacceptable. It was unwilling to cede its position of power and did not want to link the outcome of negotiations with its overall relations with Association of Southeast Asian Nations states. Litigation, arbitration, or mediation were also unacceptable options to China, as its reaction to the Philippines’ South China Sea arbitration case demonstrated. There was simply too much to lose, both in the substantive aspects of China’s claims and in China’s increasing prerogatives as regional leader and rule setter.

At the same time, use of force to quickly resolve the disputes was too risky. The Philippines is a treaty ally with the United States, which might come to its aid if Beijing used force to resolve the territorial disputes between it and Manila.

Additionally, the overarching U.S. strategic objective for the region after the Cold War ended was to maintain stability. The omnipresent U.S. Seventh Fleet was there to see that military force was not used by any party to resolve any of the many disputes left over from World War II. Accordingly, like water flows toward a crack in cement, China’s policies toward its South China Sea disputes flowed naturally to the gap between peaceful dispute resolution and armed conflict. This is the gray zone-not peace, not war, but having attributes of each.

What is China trying to accomplish? What are the elements of the gray zone strategy? And why does it seem to be working? China’s fundamental objective is to project national power in all its dimensions into the maritime domain. There are at least three familiar subcomponents to China’s strategy. First, in terms of security, China is a continental power seeking a maritime buffer zone to enhance its security from threats from the sea. In this sense, China is advancing an interior security strategy by creating expanding rings of control, denial, and contestation beyond its coastline.

To do this, China seeks to create the conditions necessary to exercise increased sea control at least as far from its shores as is necessary to confront U.S. sea power before it can be projected ashore. This is the classic struggle between sea power and coastal defense. It is as old as triremes and cannon balls. What is different about this security strategy, however, is that at the same time as it seeks to expand its control over East Asian waters, China wants to avoid direct conflict. This strategy seeks to expand Chinese control over the East Asian littorals without provoking a kinetic response from any other state.

Second, China’s maritime power projection strategy also has a resource component. China is a resource-insecure state. Its policymakers wrestle with an enormous population, air and water pollution, declining ground water, increased desertification, and the lack of annual replacement of glacial mass on the Tibetan plateau to feed China’s key rivers. Chinese strategic documents repeatedly point to the oceans as an essential space for the future survival of the Chinese people. They are taught to believe there is a fundamental fairness in claiming for a population of nearly a billion and a half more sea space than international law currently allows. Law seems of little consequence to those who believe China is fighting for its survival. So, regardless of the law, China is expanding the waters that it claims a right to exploit for fishing and aquaculture. Similarly, China seeks to expand its control over nonliving resources on and under the seabed, especially hydrocarbons, although on this issue China seems to take a somewhat more compromising approach.

Third, China is a rising regional power seeking to project political influence into the maritime domain as one way to center regional relations around its own interests and preferences. As noted, Beijing is positioning itself as the rule maker in its relations with regional states. This is clear in its statements concerning the South China Sea arbitration, for instance. Additionally, China’s behavior in the Senkaku/Diaoyu crisis of September 2012 was consistent with enhancing the regional credibility of Chinese power. In response to the Japanese government’s purchase of three of the islets, China chose to escalate the political significance of that sovereignty dispute both internally and externally. To demonstrate that China’s policies had the strong support of its citizens, Chinese newspapers throughout September were filled with the minute details of each side’s actions and focused especially on the change China was creating at Japan’s expense. The articles commanded the attention of the Chinese people and built support for the Chinese Communist Party’s policies. Externally, the Chinese filled the waters around these small islands with coast guard ships and fishing vessels in a campaign that remains unabated to this day. The effect was to successfully challenge Japanese exclusive control over the Senkaku Islands. This was an external signal that China no longer needed to accept a secondary status in the political order of East Asia.

These are at least some of the aims of China’s strategy. There may be others, and this volume offers multiple perspectives. But what are some of the elements of the strategy? … … …

***

Peter A. Dutton, “Introduction, Deterrence: Selected Articles from the Naval War College Review,” Naval War College Newport Paper 46 (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2021), 1–6.

Volume Information

The subject of deterrence fell away from the forefront of American strategic thinking during the three decades following the fall of the Soviet Union. Our ability to deter much weaker states by denying them the ability to achieve their aims was long assumed. But today there is a new global security situation that makes it imperative for American military officers and security specialists to begin to relearn the fundamental tenets of this aspect of national security.

The purpose of this volume is to contribute to that campaign of learning by drawing on some of the excellent scholarship published in the Naval War College Review during the Cold War and the decades since. Some of the articles included here lay out a few of the fundamentals of the theories of deterrence.

Introduction

The subject of deterrence fell away from the forefront of American strategic think­ing during the three decades following the fall of the Soviet Union. Our ability to deter much weaker states by denying them the ability to achieve their aims was long assumed. But today there is a new global security situation that makes it imperative for American military officers and security specialists to begin to relearn the fundamental tenets of this aspect of national security.

The purpose of this volume is to contribute to that campaign of learning by drawing on some of the excellent scholarship published in the Naval War College Review during the Cold War and the decades since. Some of the articles included here lay out a few of the fundamentals of the theories of deterrence. A notable aspect of these articles is how similar the challenges of deterring the Soviet Union were to the challenges of deterring China and Russia that we face now. A second purpose of this collection is to describe and assess some of the practical aspects of deterrence in East Asia and Europe today. But despite its scope, this volume only can begin to educate the reader about the complex and well-developed theories and practical requirements of deterrence. Accordingly, a third purpose of this volume is to whet the reader’s appetite to learn more and, from a base of knowledge and in light of professional experience, to contribute new thinking to the literature on deterrence.

Indeed, more study will be needed if we are to perpetuate for another generation the freedom from direct attack by another country that the United States has enjoyed over the past seventy-six years. Our security since the end of the Second World War has been no accident. Well before the conclusion of that devastating conflict, American strategists were planning to win the peace. In the years just prior to the war, Nicholas J. Spykman, as chairman of Yale University’s Department of International Relations and director of the Yale Institute of International Studies, developed the fundamental outlines of the system of American-led global security.1 That system enabled an unparalleled period of global security and economic development and suppressed direct conflict between great powers.

Spykman developed his theories of security after watching two great powers—Germany and Japan—rise in Europe and Asia in the first half of the twentieth century and, in ris­ing, initiate two global wars during which American soil was attacked and American lives were lost. Spykman’s system of security rested on the premise that the United States is most secure when no regional great power can consolidate a position of primacy in either Europe or Asia and by so doing project power outward to attack the United States or curtail American access to the trading system of Eurasia.

To ensure in each region of Eurasia that no country or combination of countries could threaten America and its interests, American power—resident in Europe and Asia—would maintain stability by entering into alliances with like-minded states.2 These regional alli­ance systems would retain either a regional preponderance of power or at least a sufficient balance of power to deter conflict (see figure). In combination, these regional systems guaranteed that American power could underwrite global security. Further, maintaining resident forces in Europe or Asia required free access to the global commons to ensure that the United States could trade freely with Eurasian states and could deploy forces across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to shore up its forward-deployed forces as necessary.

Spykman’s premises informed America’s decision after World War II to remain engaged in the world rather than retreat to the isolation of the North American continent. The global strategic posture he outlined led to the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza­tion in Europe and to a system of bilateral alliances in East Asia with Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand. American forces in the region built on these alliances to add a system of partnerships with other states interested in maintaining stability, free trade, and national development. Since 1950, defense of this system has been and remains the most important reason for the American policy of preventing mainland China from taking over Taiwan by force. Deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan continues to be a central organizing purpose of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific region. The offshore alliances and partnerships that extend along the island chain from the Japanese islands through Taiwan and the Philippines to Australia enable American naval and air forces resident in Asia to ensure regional security and contribute to global stability.

Today, however, China’s rise in Asia and its entente with Russia, which straddles Eurasia, threaten this American-led system of security. Russian naval developments pose a threat to the American homeland and endanger our ability to project forces across the Atlantic.3 China’s rapid and comprehensive military development is focused on bringing Taiwan under its control, severing the American geostrategic position in Asia, and enabling China to advance the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s goal of global expansion with fewer limitations.4 Disruptive actors in western Asia and the Middle East, such as Iran and Syria, also threaten stability there.

With these developments, America and its allies no longer enjoy military primacy in any key region of the world beyond the Western Hemisphere, and they struggle to retain a balance of power in Asia in particular. Since the American-led security system is global, fault lines in one region cause tremors across the entire system. Accordingly, successive American administrations have deterred China from using military force to attack Taiwan and thereby disrupt the order on which regional and global stability and American security depend.

However, memories of how best to deter a peer or near-peer competitor have dimmed since America and its allies undertook to deter aggression by the Soviet bloc. Deterrence is not simply a matter of “overmatch”—a term used too often in the Pentagon today. Of course, deterrence involves careful force structure and military planning, but it also involves a deep understanding of a potential adversary’s motives, interests, and objectives. It can involve all elements of national power. It certainly involves careful political signaling, publicly and privately. And it involves the underappreciated factor of restraint and “off-ramps.” Deterring a potential adversary requires the implicit reassurance that negative consequences will be avoided as long as key lines remain uncrossed. It may be enhanced by positive opportunities as well as negative guarantees. The chapters of this volume begin to address some of these attributes of nuclear and conventional deterrence.

The volume begins with Jack Raymond’s lecture to the Naval War College’s Naval Command Course, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons on National Strategy and Policy.” Raymond observes that “one of the recurrent national mistakes of the United States has been to underestimate the will and capacity of other countries to outperform it in industrial, technological, and scientific fields.” Deterring our adversaries requires us to understand them—words that seem all the more prescient today since Raymond was lecturing in 1966 about the inevitability of confrontation between the United States and China. He warns that in Asia, “deterrence and containment, in order to have any chance of being effective, [require] sizeable ground and naval forces as well as nuclear air power.” Raymond cautions against the dangers of neglect of the strength of conventional forces and too much reliance on nuclear deterrence, recalling how “Admiral Felt[,] taking command of the Pacific forces in 1958, just as the Taiwan crisis broke, [found] that he had only a limited supply of conventional explosives. In war, the Fleet would either have had to remain virtually inactive or attack with nuclear bombs.” Some theorize that this situation actually could serve to deter an opponent, since to defend its interests the United States would have no choice but to escalate. From our historical remove, however, that seems a dangerous assumption indeed.

The next several chapters pick up this thread of the role of nuclear weapons in deterrence. The eminent scholar Colin Gray, in “Defense, War-Fighting and Deterrence,” addresses the concept of deterrence through denial—that is, preventing an enemy from achieving its objective through the use of force. One Soviet theory of victory at the time anticipated that if through a nuclear exchange the Soviet Union could destroy the United States, it could eliminate its chief global rival and thus emerge damaged but victorious. Gray responds with the concept of deterrence through resilience—that is, America could win by surviving. But to deter nuclear conflict, the United States would need to commit to comprehensive resilience programs, including “civil defense, air defense, BMD [ballistic-missile defense], and offensive forces,” to ensure that the Soviet Union could not defeat it completely. While this may be a good strategy for homeland defense, Gray does not address how this strategy might apply to those allies whom we have pledged to defend from nuclear attack, a concept known as extended deterrence. Donald Snow, in “Strategic Uncertainty and Nuclear Deterrence,” answers Gray’s essay directly, arguing that nuclear wars are likely to destroy utterly all societies that engage in them. In Snow’s view, to ensure that nuclear wars never will be fought, they must be considered unwinnable. He argues in favor of a posture of mutually assured destruction so that if great-power rivals “know with certainty that an attack will result in a crushing counterattack, then neither can ever calculate advantage from initiating a nuclear war and both are deterred.”

Edward Ohlert, in an award-winning Naval War College student essay entitled “Strategic Deterrence and the Cruise Missile,” observes that in the face of “persistent pressure of a vigorous Soviet [nuclear] procurement program, U.S. perceptions of deterrence have evolved from ‘clear superiority’ through ‘mutual assured destruction’ to ‘flexible response options.’” But Ohlert offers that the Soviet Union pursued a “deterrent strategy based primarily upon demonstrated capability to reestablish strategic equivalence.” In other words, the Soviet goal was not mutually assured destruction but to “guarantee that, in postwar conditions, the opponent does not have sufficient unopposed reserve nuclear forces to conquer the world,” so a situation of parity would resume. On the topic of parity, Jerome Burke, in “‘Analogous Response’: The Cruise-Missile Threat to CONUS,” discusses how the Soviet Union’s failure to get American agreement to withdraw cruise missiles from Europe led it to develop advanced weapon systems, including submarines armed with nuclear or ballistic missiles, which the USSR positioned stealthily off the American East Coast. Burke argues that today “Putin has reasserted the Soviet strategic objective of holding the continental United States . . . at risk with now-combat-proven land-attack cruise missiles . . . and modern, difficult-to-detect submarines.” He concludes that a core part of Russia’s deterrence doctrine is to “hold the United States under a nuclear threat equal to that which the United States and NATO pose to Russia.”

Moving to essays about the utility of naval power to deter actions across the spectrum of conflict, we have George Lindsey’s chapter, “The Place of Maritime Strength in the Strategy of Deterrence,” in which he reminds us that strategic nuclear war is not the only deterrent object of military forces. Naval forces have a role in deterring the full range of conflict that includes tactical nuclear warfare, conventional war, and “situations less than war.” Picking up on this last concept, Hunter Stires, in “‘They Were Playing Chicken,’” looks back in time at the activities of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet from 1937 to 1940. Japan and China were at war; the United States was neutral but had interests in the battle space. To secure American strategic objectives, a mission-command culture was fostered to encourage independent action and judgment at the tactical level. Stires relates this prewar period to the situation today in the South China Sea, noting that in the late 1930s such tactical deterrence was sufficient to achieve American strategic objectives without causing unwanted escalation. While this approach may have been effective before the introduction of nuclear weapons, it will be fair for readers to consider whether such mission command today could result in tactical brinkmanship that would lead to unwanted escalation.

The last three chapters in this volume address various aspects of conventional deterrence in relation to potential conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Sam Goldsmith, in “U.S. Conventional Access Strategy,” addresses the key question of the value of the object, asserting that China’s “leadership appears unconvinced that the United States would risk a conflict with China—one that could escalate to a nuclear war—over disputes concerning territories that geographically are distant from the U.S. mainland and seemingly are unrelated to core U.S. national security interests.” The word seemingly is key here. Has the United States clearly and effectively communicated the value of the object? Do Chinese leaders understand how, in American minds, Taiwan relates to the American-led global system of security and stability? Goldsmith concludes that “[w]ithout clear U.S. deterrence, the risk of miscalculation only will increase.” He then lays out the developments needed to enhance our regional force posture to achieve assured conventional access to “return the China-U.S. strategic deterrence calculus to a more stable equilibrium.” More should be said, however, about how clearly American leaders communicate American interests in Taiwan’s status.

Like Goldsmith, Jeffrey Kline and Wayne Hughes, in “Between Peace and the Air-Sea Battle,” offer advice on how to deter China from initiating a cross-strait war. They argue that at least until necessary force-structure advances are made to achieve assured conven­tional access, a “war at sea” strategy can deter Chinese aggression; or, if deterrence fails, it can deny China use of the sea inside the first island chain while the United States and its allies execute a distant blockade. Finally, Naval War College professor William Murray places one additional piece in a conventional cross-strait deterrence puzzle in “Revisit­ing Taiwan’s Defense Strategy.” Whether the United States prepares to fight in close, as Goldsmith describes, or at a distance, as Kline and Hughes lay out, in either scenario deterrence is enhanced if Taiwan’s defenses prevent or delay PLA forces from establishing a lodgment on the island. Echoing Gray’s advocacy for the deterrent effect of resilience, Murray advises Taiwan to undertake a “porcupine defense” by hardening key facilities, building redundancies into critical infrastructure, stockpiling critical supplies, and un­dertaking other military and civilian programs to extend the time during which Taiwan can withstand a PLA onslaught until the United States and other like-minded states can come to the island’s aid.

These articles are brought together to help readers begin the campaign of relearning the fundamentals of deterrence in a world in which peer and near-peer competitors once again are key actors. Those whose ambition is to learn more deeply about deter­rence might begin with classics such as Thomas C. Schelling’s Arms and Influence and The Strategy of Conflict, Richard K. Betts’s Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance, and Herman Kahn’s On Escalation. These readings will confirm that deterrence is a complex business. But if the United States and its allies are to avoid great-power conflict in this century and retain for another generation the global posture that has served our interests so well, we must commit to mastering the subject.

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Isaac B. Kardon, Conor M. Kennedy, and Peter A. Dutton, Gwadar: China’s Potential Strategic Strongpoint in Pakistan, China Maritime Report 7 (Newport, RI: Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute, August 2020).

China Maritime Report No. 7 offers a detailed examination of China’s infrastructure project in the port of Gwadar, Pakistan. Written by Dr. Peter Dutton, Dr. Isaac Kardon, and Mr. Conor Kennedy, this report is the second in a series of studies looking at China’s interest in Indian Ocean ports and its “strategic strongpoints” there (战略支点). People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials, military officers, and civilian analysts use the strategic strongpoint concept to describe certain strategically valuable foreign ports with terminals and commercial zones owned and operated by Chinese firms.

Gwadar is an inchoate “strategic strongpoint” in Pakistan that may one day serve as a major platform for China’s economic, diplomatic, and military interactions across the northern Indian Ocean region. As of August 2020, it is not a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) base, but rather an underdeveloped and underutilized commercial multipurpose port built and operated by Chinese companies in service of broader PRC foreign and domestic policy objectives. Foremost among PRC objectives for Gwadar are (1) to enable direct transport between China and the Indian Ocean, and (2) to anchor an effort to stabilize western China by shoring up insecurity on its periphery. To understand these objectives, this case study first analyzes the characteristics and functions of the port, then evaluates plans for hinterland transport infrastructure connecting it to markets and resources. We then examine the linkage between development in Pakistan and security in Xinjiang. Finally, we consider the military potential of the Gwadar site, evaluating why it has not been utilized by the PLA then examining a range of uses that the port complex may provide for Chinese naval operations.

Key Findings

• Chinese analysts view Gwadar as a top choice for establishing a new overseas strategic strongpoint, owing to its prime geographic location and strong Sino-Pakistani ties. Many PLA analysts consider Gwadar to be a suitable site for naval support.
• China’s interest in Gwadar—and in Pakistan’s economic development in general—does not depend primarily on commercial returns. Instead, the Gwadar project is best understood as a mode of strategic investment in China’s internal and external security.
• Externally, Gwadar’s principal strategic purpose for China is to become an “exit to the ocean” (出海口)—that is, a direct route via Chinese infrastructure to secure reliable access to the strategic space and resources of the northern Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.
• Internally, Gwadar is an extension of China’s national security and development policies. Beijing seeks to develop commercial linkages between western China, Pakistan, and Central Asia to promote economic growth and thus manage perceived risks to social stability in Xinjiang.
• Extensive transport infrastructure is fundamental to China’s overall plans for Pakistan. Yet while the planned transport corridor is often discussed as though it were operational, very little modern infrastructure has been built beyond a few roads and the port itself.
• The inland markets and resources of Pakistan (and Afghanistan) present some commercial prospects, but these have not yet borne fruit in part due to severe insecurity.
• Security measures may mitigate some risks to Chinese projects and personnel, but Gwadar and its hinterlands are unlikely to be secure enough to become a major commercial entrepôt.
• Gwadar is not a PLA base, but it is used extensively by the Pakistan Navy (PN). The PN operates frigates and patrol vessels bought from China and will also field Chinese-made submarines. Their facilities, parts, and technicians may be readily employed for some of the PLAN fleet.
• Gwadar’s port facilities could support the PLAN’s largest vessels. Beyond the pier, Gwadar possesses a sizeable laydown yard for marshalling military equipment and materials.
• Gwadar will not necessarily have utility as a base in a wartime scenario. The most critical factor informing this view is the apparent lack of political commitment between China and Pakistan to provide mutual military support during times of crisis or conflict.
• If the infrastructure projects mature, Gwadar could become a key peacetime replenishment or transfer point for PLA equipment and personnel. Prepositioning parts, supplies, and other materials at Gwadar would be a productive use of the port and airfield facilities.

Series Overview

This China Maritime Report on Gwadar is the second in a series of case studies on China’s Indian Ocean “strategic strongpoints” (战略支点). People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials, military officers, and civilian analysts use the strategic strongpoint concept to describe certain strategically valuable foreign ports with terminals and commercial zones owned and operated by Chinese firms. Each case study analyzes a different port on the Indian Ocean, selected to capture geographic, commercial, and strategic variation. Each employs the same analytic method, drawing on Chinese official sources, scholarship, and industry reporting to present a descriptive account of the port, its transport infrastructure, the markets and resources it accesses, and its naval and military utility.

The case studies illuminate the various functions of overseas strategic strongpoint ports in China’s Indian Ocean strategy. While the ports and associated infrastructure projects vary across key characteristics, all ports share certain distinctive qualities: (1) strategic location, positioned astride major sea lines of communication (SLOCs) and/or near vital maritime chokepoints; (2) high-level coordination among Chinese party-state officials, state-owned enterprises, and private firms; (3) comprehensive commercial scope, including Chinese-led development of associated rail, road, and pipeline infrastructure and efforts to promote trade, financing, industry, resource extraction, and inland markets; and (4) potential or actual military utilization, with dual-use functions that can enable both economic and military activities.

Ports are a key enabler for China’s economic, political, and potentially military expansion across the globe. As China’s overseas economic activity grows, so too have demands on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to secure PRC citizens, investments, and supply lines abroad. Official PLA missions now include “safeguarding the security of China’s overseas interests,” but “deficiencies in overseas operations and support” persist. Yet with the notable exception of the sole overseas PLA Navy (PLAN) base at Djibouti, all of the facilities examined in this series are ostensibly commercial. Notably, the establishment of the Djibouti base followed many years of Chinese investment at the adjacent commercial port and sustained attention into resources and markets inland.

We should not assume that Djibouti is a model for other future bases. Instead, China’s strategic strongpoint model should be understood as an evolving alternative to the familiar model of formal overseas basing. With strongpoints, trade, investment, and diplomacy with the host country remain the principal functions. However, the strongpoint creates conditions of possibility for the PLAN to establish a network of supply, logistics, and intelligence hubs. We are already observing this nascent network in operation across the Indian Ocean, and this series seeks to understand its key nodes.

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Peter A. Dutton, “Vietnam Threatens China with Litigation over the South China Sea,”Lawfare Blog, Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School, 27 July 2020.

Vietnam and China have sparred over competing claims in the South China Sea for nearly 50 years. Recently, Vietnamese officials have begun initiating legal proceedings against China to try and change their unfavorable position in the region.

Vietnam and China have sparred over competing claims in the South China Sea for nearly 50 years. But for the first time, in November 2019, Vietnamese officials publicly issued threats to initiate international legal proceedings against China—similar to the Philippine case that ended in 2016. Since November, there have been further indications that the Vietnamese government is quite serious, despite the limited success enjoyed by the Philippines when it invoked the law. In this post, I will address two questions on this issue: What motivates the Vietnamese government to consider this step at this time? And what can Vietnam gain?

For starters, at stake are development rights for the oil and gas reserves under Vietnam’s continental shelf. While the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea allocates resource rights in the water and under the seabed to Vietnam, out to at least 200 nautical miles from Vietnam’s shores, China stakes a “historic rights” claim to much of the same resources through its nine-dash line. This line encompasses about 80 percent of the South China Sea but has already been formally invalidated once by the arbitrators in the Philippine case. Despite its loss in court, China did not abandon its claim. Throughout 2019, Chinese government vessels harassed Vietnamese hydrocarbon survey efforts in an especially rich undersea region known as Vanguard Bank. Under the joint venture between Rosneft and Petro-Vietnam, an exploratory drilling rig began operating in the area in July 2019. China then sent its own survey vessels—under heavy coast guard escort—to demonstrate its claim. Further north, in 2011, ExxonMobil and Petro-Vietnam discovered commercially significant oil and gas deposits in Vietnam’s Block 118. The Ca Voi Xanh (Blue Whale) gas field—the area these two companies are trying to develop—lies only 50 miles off Vietnam’s coast but straddles the vast area claimed by China. A final go-ahead decision is expected sometime this year, and gaining clarity over its legal rights to resources in the region may be a key reason for Vietnam to arbitrate.

Also at stake are fishing rights in Vietnam’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone and in the waters off the disputed Paracel Islands. The Vietnamese government defies annual Chinese fishing bans that attempt to control and curb Vietnamese fishing activities in areas that overlap with China’s nine-dash line. Arbitration in this region would clarify legal rights to the resources and deflect some of the domestic pressure to protect Vietnamese fishermen. Domestic resentment is a force that must be managed carefully since, in 2014, at the height of a dispute over Chinese oil rig HYSY 981, the Vietnamese people conducted anti-China riots, assaulted Chinese in Vietnam and vandalized Chinese commercial interests.

Finally, as noted above, Vietnam disputes Chinese ownership of the Paracel Islands, a group of small but strategically important features that lie between the Vietnamese coast and China’s Hainan Island. The islands have long been claimed by Vietnam, but Chinese forces first occupied features in the Paracels in 1955 in the wake of Vietnam’s war for independence against France. In 1974 China fought a short sea battle against South Vietnamese forces to take full control over the last remaining Vietnamese positions. Since then, China has consolidated control over the islands, built up a military garrison, and harassed or arrested Vietnamese fishermen who try to continue fishing there. … … …

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Peter A. Dutton, Isaac B. Kardon, and Conor M. Kennedy, Djibouti: China’s First Overseas Strategic Strongpoint, China Maritime Report 6 (Newport, RI: Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute, April 2020).

China’s first overseas strategic strongpoint at Djibouti is a secure commercial foothold on the African continent and a military platform for expanding PLA operations in the Indian Ocean and beyond.

This China Maritime Report on Djibouti is the first in a series of case studies on China’s “overseas strategic strongpoints” (海外战略支点). The strategic strongpoint concept has no formal definition, but is used by People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials and analysts to describe foreign ports with special strategic and economic value that host terminals and commercial zones operated by Chinese firms.

Series Introduction

This China Maritime Report on Djibouti is the first in a series of case studies on China’s “overseas strategic strongpoints” (海外战略支点). The strategic strongpoint concept has no formal definition, but is used by People’s Republic of China (PRC) officials and analysts to describe foreign ports with special strategic and economic value that host terminals and commercial zones operated by Chinese firms. Each case study examines the characteristics and functions of port projects developed and operated by Chinese companies across the Indian Ocean region. The distinctive features of these projects are: (1) their strategic locations, positioned astride major sea lines of communication (SLOCs) and clustered near vital maritime chokepoints; (2) the comprehensive nature of Chinese investments and operations, involving coordination among state-owned enterprises and private firms to construct not only the port, but rail, road, and pipeline infrastructure, and further, to promote finance, trade, industry, and resource extraction in inland markets; and (3) their fused civilian and military functions, serving as platforms for economic, military, and diplomatic interactions.

Strategic strongpoints advance a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership objective to become a “strong maritime power” (海洋强国)—which requires, inter alia, the development of a strong marine economy and the capability to protect “Chinese rights and interests” in the maritime domain. With the notable exception of the sole overseas People’s Liberation Army (PLA) base at Djibouti, all of the facilities examined in this series are ostensibly commercial. Even the Chinese presence in Djibouti has some major commercial motivations (addressed in detail in this study). However, China’s strategic strongpoint model integrates China’s various commercial and strategic interests, facilitating Chinese trade and investment with the host country while also helping the PLA establish a network of supply, logistics, and intelligence hubs across the Indian Ocean and beyond.

Report Summary

This report analyzes PRC economic and military interests and activities in Djibouti. The small, east African nation is the site of the PLA’s first overseas military base, but also serves as a major commercial hub for Chinese firms—especially in the transport and logistics industry. We explain the synthesis of China’s commercial and strategic goals in Djibouti through detailed examination of the development and operations of commercial ports and related infrastructure. Employing the “Shekou Model” of comprehensive port zone development, Chinese firms have flocked to Djibouti with the intention of transforming it into a gateway to the markets and resources of Africa—especially landlocked Ethiopia—and a transport hub for trade between Europe and Asia. With diplomatic and financial support from Beijing, PRC firms have established a China-friendly business ecosystem and a political environment that proved conducive to the establishment of a permanent military presence. The Gulf of Aden anti-piracy mission that justified the original PLA deployment in the region is now only one of several missions assigned to Chinese armed forces at Djibouti, a contingent that includes marines and special forces. The PLA is broadly responsible for the security of China’s “overseas interests,” for which Djibouti provides essential logistical support. China’s first overseas strategic strongpoint at Djibouti is a secure commercial foothold on the African continent and a military platform for expanding PLA operations in the Indian Ocean and beyond.

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Peter A. Dutton, Testing the Boundaries: When Are International Institutional Dispute Resolution Mechanisms Effective to Resolve Maritime Disputes? A Research Report for the Maritime Dispute Resolution Project (New York, NY: U.S.-Asia Law Institute, New York University School of Law, 2019).

The following is a summary of specific issues addressed in the case study analysis and workshop discussions. The summary reflects the views and understandings of the report authors about those discussions and may not reflect the views or understandings of every workshop participant. Further, the summary presented below is not meant to represent the views of any agency of the U.S. government or of any other government.

Overall, it is clear that states from around the world, in every region, have elected to submit their territorial-maritime disputes to IIDR mechanisms. Additionally, states employ the full range of IIDR mechanisms available. These include either full or special panels of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), ad hoc arbitral tribunals, and conciliation commissions. In each case, the parties carefully selected the IIDM mechanism that was best suited for the nature of their particular dispute, and sought to tailor the scope of the IIDR forum’s jurisdiction and the standards to be applied. Their decisions reflect the careful advice of lawyers and legal advisors with special expertise in international dispute resolution and in the intricacies of international law related to maritime claims. … … …

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Ryan D. Martinson and Peter A. Dutton, China’s Distant-Ocean Survey Activities: Implications for U.S. National Security, China Maritime Report 3 (Newport, RI: Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute, November 2018).

Today, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is investing in marine scientific research on a massive scale. This investment supports an oceanographic research agenda that is increasingly global in scope. One key indicator of this trend is the expanding operations of China’s oceanographic research fleet. On any given day, 5-10 Chinese “scientific research vessels” (科学考查船) may be found operating beyond Chinese jurisdictional waters, in strategically-important areas of the Indo-Pacific. Overshadowed by the dramatic growth in China’s naval footprint, their presence largely goes unnoticed. Yet the activities of these ships and the scientists and engineers they embark have major implications for U.S. national security.

This report explores some of these implications. It seeks to answer basic questions about the out-of-area—or “distant-ocean” (远洋)—operations of China’s oceanographic research fleet. Who is organizing and conducting these operations? Where are they taking place? What do they entail? What are the national drivers animating investment in these activities?

It comprises five parts. Part one defines the fleet, and the organizations that own and operate it. Part two examines primary operating areas. Part three describes the range of activities conducted by Chinese research vessels while operating in distant-ocean areas. Part four sketches the key strategic China Maritime Report No. 3 2 purposes driving state investment in out-of-area oceanography. Part five discusses the implications of Chinese oceanographic research for U.S. national security.

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Ryan Martinson and Peter Dutton, “Chinese Scientists Want to Conduct Research in U.S. Waters—Should Washington Let Them?” The National Interest, 4 November 2018.

In recent years, Chinese scientists—and the government agencies that back them—have fixed their gaze on American waters, especially those near the U.S. territory of Guam. This has raised questions about the ability of current policy to adequately protect U.S. interests.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is not the only element of Chinese sea power plying the world’s great waterways. Today, Chinese oceanographic research vessels routinely operate in strategically important areas of the Indo-Pacific region. From the deck plates of China’s large (and still growing) fleet of survey ships, Chinese scientists are pursuing their research agendas in exotic new places: Madagascar, Micronesia, Benham Rise in the Philippine Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone in the waters south of Hawaii.

The rapid expansion of China’s out-of-area—or “distant-ocean” (远洋)—oceanographic research operations raises important questions for Indo-Pacific nations. Many places of interest to Chinese oceanographers fall within the two hundred nautical mile exclusive economic zone of other countries. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) empowers coastal states to decide whether to allow marine scientific research (MSR) in their exclusive economic zones. Should they approve Chinese MSR? If so, under what conditions? What if Chinese scientists are not doing what they say they are doing? What are the risks of ignorance?

As an Indo-Pacific country and the state with the world’s largest exclusive economic zone, the United States faces these same questions. In recent years, Chinese scientists—and the government agencies that back them—have fixed their gaze on American waters, especially those near the U.S. territory of Guam. This has raised questions about the ability of current policy to adequately protect U.S. interests.

American policy has long been to make the waters of the U.S. exclusive economic zone open and available to the activities of foreign scientists. In many cases, it does not even require a permit or advance notice to undertake MSR. While this policy is admirable for its robust endorsement of maritime freedom, this approach leaves the United States vulnerable to exploitation by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a strategic competitor with an ocean agenda markedly different from our own.

Chinese distant-ocean MSR directly serves state interests, including security interests. Many of these operations are more akin to “military surveys,” similar to work done by U.S. Navy special mission ships like the USNS Bowditch. While military surveys are not unlawful, the fact that China disguises military surveys in the garb of MSR harms U.S. interests in at least two ways. It confounds America’s ability to accurately gauge the scale and content of Chinese data collection efforts. Moreover, it undermines the U.S. interest in maritime freedom by allowing China to pursue military aims without reciprocating these freedoms to the United States and other nation-states. To counter these harmful effects, Washington should more vigorously assert its coastal state rights under UNCLOS.

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Peter A. Dutton and Isaac B. Kardon, “Continuing to Confront China: Trump’s Approach to Maritime Security in East Asia,” GlobalAsia 12.4 (December 2017).

At the 2017 Shangri-La Dialogue, held in Singapore, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis made clear that, despite some new elements and shifts in emphasis, there would be significant continuity in the U.S. security strategy in East Asia. As he put it: “By further strengthening our alliances, by empowering the region and by enhancing the U.S. military in support of our larger foreign policy goals, we intend to continue to promote the rules-based order that is in the best interest of the United States and all of the countries in the region.” These words could just as easily have been uttered by his predecessors in the Barack Obama administration, and indeed, those of the last several administrations. On a bipartisan basis, all shared a vocal commitment to the so-called liberal international order, underwritten by a formidable U.S. forward military presence in East Asia.

In the contested East and South China Seas, the current administration continues to anchor its policy in defense of “the rules” and the security of allies. On the key questions of sovereignty, maritime jurisdiction and U.S. access to the East Asian littoral, we see a surprising lack of major adjustments. It is, of course, possible that this is just temporary, but in the first year of the new administration, policy on maritime disputes in Asia remains roughly unchanged. Below, we analyze two major continuous aspects of the administration’s policy on maritime security in the region: the central role of allies and “rules-based” interactions. We then turn to some specifics on maritime disputes, most of which are still intact from the previous administration. Overall, the biggest changes are in emphasis rather than substance, though the tough talk about using U.S. “hard power” is now matched by an augmented defense posture that may have consequences for regional security over time. … … …

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Jerome A. Cohen and Peter Dutton, “How India Border Stand-Off Gives China a Chance to Burnish its Global Image,” South China Morning Post, 21 July 2017. 

For the past month, there has been a tense stand-off between China and India in the tri-border Himalayan region that includes Bhutan. Troubles began when China resumed building a road on the Doklam Plateau, which is disputed between Bhutan and China. India, because of its own security interests and as Bhutan’s security guarantor, stepped in to defend the position of the kingdom. China now claims India has invaded “its” territory. Tensions are high, and more than a few commentators have suggested this may be the most serious Sino-Indian border crisis since their 1962 war.

Many possibilities have been advanced for Beijing’s motive to stir up trouble. Some suggest Beijing seeks to peel Bhutan from India’s orbit. Others believe China seeks to take tactically useful high ground from which to threaten a narrow pass connecting to India’s eastern territories. Others focus on domestic Chinese political-military motivations ahead of the 19th Communist Party Congress. Another possibility is that China may be using the tension to create leverage in advance of border dispute negotiations. But why provoke India now? … … …

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Peter A. Dutton and Ryan D. Martinson, eds., China’s Evolving Surface Fleet, Naval War College China Maritime Study 14 (July 2017).

This edited volume focuses on the development of China’s surface navy, the roles and missions of this evolving fleet, and the strategic ramifications of such development. Major themes include the capacity, organization and control, and support of China’s surface fleet; the aircraft carrier as a new element therein; and U.S. and international views concerning the overall implications. Specific chapter topics include China’s amphibious force and missile craft, the interconnection between China’s Surface Fleet Developments and its maritime strategy, the significance of China’s surface fleet in PLA doctrinal writings, the PLAN destroyer force, Chinese deck aviation, Far Seas operations in the Indian Ocean and beyond, the evolution of PLAN logistics and maintenance, and international perspectives.

***

Peter A. Dutton and Isaac B. Kardon, “Forget the FONOPs—Just Fly, Sail and Operate Wherever International Law Allows,” Lawfare Blog, Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School, 10 June 2017.

On May 24, the guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey (DDG 105) operated within 12 nautical miles (nm) of Mischief Reef, a disputed feature in the South China Sea (SCS) controlled by the People’s Republic of China, but also claimed by the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The Dewey’s action evidently challenged China’s right to control maritime zones adjacent to the reef —which was declared by the South China Sea arbitration to be nothing more than a low tide elevation on the Philippine continental shelf.  The operation was hailed as a long-awaited “freedom of navigation operation” (FONOP) and “a challenge to Beijing’s moves in the South China Sea,” a sign that the United States will not accept “China’s contested claims” and militarization of the Spratlys, and a statement that Washington “will not remain passive as Beijing seeks to expand its maritime reach.” Others went further and welcomed this more muscular U.S. response to China’s assertiveness around the Spratly Islands to challenge China’s “apparent claim of a territorial sea around Mischief Reef…[as well as] China’s sovereignty over the land feature” itself.

But did the Dewey actually conduct a FONOP? Probably—but maybe not. Nothing in the official description of the operation or in open source reporting explicitly states that a FONOP was in fact conducted. Despite the fanfare, the messaging continues to be muddled. And that is both unnecessary and unhelpful. … … …

***

Bonnie S. Glaser, “Breaking down the South China Sea ruling: A Conversation with Peter Dutton,” China Power Podcast, Center for Strategic and International Studies, April 2017.

In this episode, we discuss the landmark UNCLOS ruling by an arbitral tribunal constituted under the Convention with Peter Dutton, Director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. On July 12, 2016, the tribunal ruled against China’s claims to historic rights within the Nine-Dash Line, and that its construction of several artificial islands violated the sovereign rights of the Philippines. It also found that China is in violation of its obligation to protect the marine environment and that its vessels are illegally harassing Filipino fishermen and interfering with energy exploitation efforts. China declared the award null and void and insisted that it has no binding force. China said it neither accepts nor recognizes the decision. …

***

Bonnie Glaser, Zack Cooper, and Peter Dutton, “Mischief Reef: President Trump’s First FONOP?” Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 30 November 2016.

The election is barely over, but the pressure will soon be on the new administration and its national security team to demonstrate U.S. resolve to support international rules and norms in the South China Sea. Observers will be watching closely for any sign of the new administration’s willingness, or unwillingness, to accept risk in response to China’s recent assertive behavior. In particular, regional experts will judge the new administration on where and when it conducts its first freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) in Asia. China too may be tempted to test the new administration’s policies with assertive operations, as was done in 2001 and 2009. … … …

***

“Teleconference with Peter Dutton on the South China Sea Tribunal Decision,” Event Audio, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, 13 July 2016. 

U.S. Naval War College Professor Peter Dutton discusses the UNCLOS Arbitral Tribunal decision on the Philippines’ South China Sea case against China in an on-the-record teleconference moderated by National Committee President Stephen Orlins on July 13, 2016. Professor Dutton has been an active participant in the Committee’s U.S.-China Track II Dialogue on Maritime Issues & International Law, and shared his views on the implications of the decision for China, its neighbors, and Sino-American relations. … … …

***

Peter A. Dutton, “A Dispute about Legality, or a Political Onslaught? China’s Response to the Arbitration Decision on the South China Sea Issue,” Commentary, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), 8 August 2016.

China has advanced a number of arguments to justify its decision to ignore the arbitral tribunal’s recent ruling on the South China Sea dispute. None of them make much legal sense, but all raise questions about China’s views of the international order.

Immediately following the 12 July decision of the arbitral tribunal’s hearing on the South China Sea dispute between the Philippines and China, the People’s Republic embarked on a major media offensive, with Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese Ambassador to London, attacking the decision as illegal, and ‘a political farce’. No criticism avenue was spared. China’s vice foreign minister even wondered why there were no Asians on the tribunal, evidently implying that the race and nationality composition of the tribunal somehow automatically impaired its fairness. In its war of words, Beijing criticised everyone and everything, from the US, to Japan, and of course the Philippines for their direct role in the legal upset. With raw emotions now fading and no sign of a possible Sino–Philippine deal resulting from the ruling, it is time for a more reasoned reflection on the case. … … …

***

Jerome A. Cohen and Peter A. Dutton, “Japan’s Important Sideshow to Arbitration Decision in the South China Sea,” East Asia Forum, 16 May 2016.

While tensions continue to rise in the South China Sea and the disputing governments nervously await a decision in the Philippines’ arbitration case against China, an important sideshow has arisen between Japan and Taiwan in the central Philippine Sea.

On 24 April Japan’s Coast Guard arrested a Taiwanese fishing vessel and its crew for fishing in waters that Japan claims are part of its 200-nautical mile ‘exclusive economic zone’ (EEZ) under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Japan’s EEZ claim is based on its control over two tiny rocks surrounded by a coral reef more than 1000 miles south of Tokyo. Although Japanese military patrols began chasing Taiwanese fishing boats away from the area two years ago, this was reportedly the first actual detention since 2012. … … …

***

Peter A. Dutton, “A Maritime or Continental Order for Southeast Asia and the South China Sea?” Address at Chatham House, London, U.K., 16 February 2016; reprinted in Naval War College Review 69.3 (Summer 2016): 5–13.

… Today, China’s land power is once again ascendant in the region in the form of missile, air, space, and cyber forces, augmented by a growing naval capability. Accordingly, the future locus of strategic power in the South China Sea—maritime or continental—is in play. So too may be the degree to which Southeast Asia, and especially continental Southeast Asia, will have freedom to choose trade and engagement policies without Beijing’s imprimatur. My central thesis is that China’s advances into the South China Sea pose a challenge to the capacity of naval and other power-projection forces to ensure an open economic and political regional order. In particular, China’s island building in the Spratly Islands creates a significant new strategic challenge to the open, global, liberal, maritime order in Southeast Asia.

Many have asked, what are the strategic implications of China’s island-building program in the South China Sea, and why has America reinvigorated its freedom-of-navigation program to begin to address it? …

As I see it, the purpose of the U.S. freedom-of-navigation program is to support the maintenance of a rules-based international order at sea. Some Americans assume that this maritime order exists on its own, that the security, economic benefits, and political stability that flow from this order exist without any effort from us, like the oxygen we breathe. This is simply not the case. The maritime order that has promoted global economic growth since 1945 and the peaceful expansion of state interests into the oceans of the world since 1982 is an order that was created and must be tended. This order is expressed through a structure of international law and institutions, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the customary law the convention reflects. But law never exists in a vacuum. Law exists because the sovereign authority of states establishes it, and it persists primarily because the power of states reinforces and sustains it. Thus, there is a fundamentally important correlation between law and power. Law cannot exist without power to reinforce it. And power without the limits of law is mere tyranny. This is as true at sea as it is on land. So the purpose of the freedom-of-navigation program, as I see it, is to marry American power with international law in order to reinforce the rights and obligations and the freedoms and duties that comprise international law of the sea. …

Concerning the new strategic dynamic, China’s island building has the tendency to turn the South China Sea into a strategic strait. In essence, it presents a situation for naval power much like a long Strait of Hormuz. How does the South China Sea, a body of water at least six hundred nautical miles wide, become a strait? If the Chinese place sea-denial military capabilities on the reclaimed islands, the South China Sea becomes a body of water that can be controlled from the land territory of a single country. When Chinese bases remained in the northern part of the South China Sea, it was clear they were defensive in nature and posed less of a threat to free movement of seapower in the South China Sea. But the new bases China has built on islands in the southern part of the South China Sea have military-sized runways, substantial port facilities, radar platforms, and space to accommodate military forces. The logical conclusion to draw from the addition of these facilities to China’s preexisting mainland bases is that the country seeks the capability to dominate the waters of the South China Sea at will. Building the islands is therefore, in my view, a significant strategic event. These actions leave the potential for the South China Sea to become a Chinese strait rather than an open component of the global maritime commons. …

… In closing, global maritime access and the security it provides, unlike the air we breathe, do not just exist as a state of nature. They must be established and then regularized through laws and institutions that support them. And then . . . they must be defended through political, economic, and military means when challenged.

***

Bonnie S. Glaser and Peter A. Dutton, “The U.S. Navy’s Freedom of Navigation Operation around Subi Reef: Deciphering U.S. Signaling,” National Interest, 6 November 2015.

“To ensure that China and other nations around the world fully understands what took place, the Pentagon should explain the legal basis for its operation and clarify what message it intended to send.”

Since the United States sailed in the waters close to Subi Reef, a low-tide elevation (LTE) that China has built up into a massive artificial island, some experts have charged that the U.S. bungled the operation by conducting an “innocent passage,” implicitly granting China a 12 nautical mile territorial sea around the LTE to which it is not entitled. This accusation is not valid, however, and reflects an incomplete understanding of what is admittedly a complicated element of the Law of the Sea Convention.

Critics of the naval maneuver have contended that to underscore the message to China that it is not entitled to a territorial sea around Subi Reef it was necessary to conduct a freedom of navigation operation in a manner that blatantly challenges an excessive maritime claim that goes beyond what is entitled under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In other words … no innocent passage. However, the geography of the Spratly archipelago, which contains more than 120 scattered islands, isles, shoals, banks, atolls, cays and reefs situated in close proximity to one another, is key to understanding the nature of the U.S. Navy’s freedom of navigation operation. Before analyzing this criticism, the relationship between maritime geography and the law of the sea must also be set out. … … …

***

Peter A. Dutton and Ryan D. Martinson, eds., Beyond the Wall: Chinese Far Seas Operations, Naval War College China Maritime Study 13 (May 2015).

Much has been written about Chinese sea power in the “near seas” of East Asia—those waters located within the chain of islands extending from the Kurils in the north to Sumatra in the south. This volume attempts to broaden the discussion by examining China’s efforts to shape its navy to meet new and growing needs beyond Asia, in waters to which it usually refers as the “far seas,” or “distant seas.” Remote from domestic bases of support, the far seas impose a range of logistical and operational challenges on the PLA Navy. But this distance from the Chinese homeland also provides new opportunities for cooperation with the other navies of the world, creating a much-needed antidote to the growing tensions east of Malacca.

This all raises important questions: As China moves more confidently beyond the East Asia region, what roles will China’s maritime power play in protecting China’s evolving far seas interests? How will China’s navy contribute to stability in the global commons? Will China’s approach to foreign policy and international law evolve or change; and, if so, how? How might these changes affect the relationship between Chinese and American maritime power? In addressing these questions, this volume addresses the links between China’s evolving overseas national interests, its evolving foreign policy perspectives, its perspectives on international law of the sea, and its naval and maritime development. It also considers how these developments might support a cooperative approach to global maritime stability—especially outside East Asia. China’s global interests are increasing and recent operations in the Gulf of Aden, hospital ship operations in Africa and the Caribbean, and ship operations in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, in combination with new force structure and doctrinal developments, suggest the PLAN is also developing the capacity to operate more effectively beyond the near seas to influence events that affect China’s expanding interests.

***

Peter A. Dutton and Andrew S. Erickson, “When Eagle Meets Dragon: Managing Risk in Maritime East Asia,” RealClearDefense, 25 March 2015.

On 19 August 2014 a U.S. Navy (USN) P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft was flying in international airspace above the Chinese exclusive economic zone (EEZ) ~135 miles east of Hainan Island in the South China Sea when a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) armed J-11 fighter intercepted it. In a series of maneuvers that came within 30 feet of the P-8, the J-11 exposed its weapons load out and conducted a barrel roll over the U.S. aircraft, passing within 45 feet of the U.S. aircraft. While the incident ended without a collision or harm to the aircrew, it invoked memories of another that did not end as well—the April 2001 collision between a USN EP-3 and a PLAN J-8 in which the Chinese pilot perished. Pentagon Spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby described the encounter as “very, very close, very dangerous…unprofessional…unsafe…and…certainly not keeping with the kind of military-to-military relationship…we’d like to have…with China. … The message we’re sending back to China is that’s unacceptable and unhelpful to the military relationship that we would like to have with them.”

The P-8 Incident’s seriousness spurred the U.S. government to seek assurances that future interactions between military units would be conducted safely, resulting in eight weeks of negotiations and five weeklong meetings between two working groups of American and Chinese military officials with U.S. Navy representation on both teams. As a result, two Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) designed to enhance stability of bilateral military relations were signed at the November 2014 APEC Summit by U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Chinese Minister of Defense Chang Wanquan. This process fulfilled a suggestion by President Xi Jinping to President Obama at the June 2013 Sunnylands Summit to explore CBMs to improve the bilateral and regional military climate. … … …

***

Peter A. Dutton, Andrew S. Erickson, and Ryan D. Martinson, eds., China’s Near Seas Combat Capabilities, Naval War College China Maritime Study 11 (February 2014).

This edited volume explores China’s claims and capabilities within and around the ‘First Island Chain,’ the so-called ‘Near Seas.’ It assesses the rapidly evolving situations of concern in the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and South China Sea; and related capabilities, doctrinal development, and plausible scenarios. It concludes with discussion of possible U.S. Navy responses to China’s ‘Near Seas’ strategy.

***

Peter A. Dutton, Professor and Director China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College, Testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing on China’s Maritime Disputes in the East and South China Seas, 14 January 2014.

China pursues its security through interior strategies that involve the development of rings of security around central areas of national interest. The Chinese have long felt vulnerable from the sea and their current maritime strategy seeks to reduce that vulnerability by extending a ring of maritime control around China’s periphery. China pursues this control through a combination of force structure development and legal assertions. Tensions arise because China’s strategy conflicts with the territorial claims, resource interests, and security concerns of other states in East Asia. China’s strategy also causes friction with the United States, which relies on freedom of navigation in maritime East Asia for American security interests and which must reassure regional allies and partners that American security guarantees are meaningful. In order to assure the position of the United States in East Asia, American policies must focus on maintaining the region as an open, maritime system. This requires continuous development of technological advantages to ensure the center of power in Asia does not migrate from the maritime domain to the continent. It also requires supporting the ability of allies, friends, and partners to resist China’s non-militarized coercion, and reinforcing the normative structure that supports the efficacy of maritime power in the region and around the globe. … … …

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Peter Dutton, “Viribus Mari Victoria? Power and Law in the South China Sea,” Paper presented at “Managing Tensions in the South China Sea” conference, Center for Strategic & International Studies, Washington, DC, 5–6 June 2013.

What is the role of international law in managing the disputes in the South China Sea? This question is really two-fold. The first part is what role, objectively speaking, can law play to manage the disputes in the South China Sea. The second aspect of the question is what role, subjectively speaking, are the parties to the disputes willing to allow law to play in managing those same disputes? Additionally, it is important to observe that there are really three fundamentally different types of disputes in the South China Sea—sovereignty disputes, resource boundary disputes, and disputes over the degree of state control over offshore waters–and the objective and subjective roles of law are different for each. In order to simplify the task of addressing these issues, I shall limit my remarks to the cases of China and the Philippines and primarily to the issue of the role of UNCLOS as an important source of stability amidst the complexities of the South China Sea disputes. … … …

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Peter A. Dutton, Professor and Director, China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College, Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Committee Hearing on China’s Maritime Disputes in the East and South China Seas, 4 April 2013.

Questions presented: What are the origins of China’s territorial claims in the East and South China Seas? Upon what historical, geographic, or other bases does China justify them? What is China’s strategy for promoting its “9-dash line” claim? How does China address skepticism to this claim and how sustainable is this strategy? What impact will the Philippines’ initiation of South China Sea boundary arbitration proceedings have on the outlook for the resolution of other maritime boundary disputes in the region? What is the impact of China’s decision not to participate in the proceedings? How will the maritime boundary dispute in East Asia be resolved, if at all? What avenues have the greatest promise to yield an enduring solution? Discuss possible roles for international institutions, such as the United Nations (UN), and regional institutions, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). What should be the role of the US in achieving resolution and ensuring the resolution endures?

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Peter Dutton, Robert S. Ross, and Øystein Tunsjø, eds., Twenty-First Century Sea Power: Cooperation and Conflict at Sea (New York: Routledge, 2012).

This book offers an assessment of the naval policies of emerging naval powers, and the implications for maritime security relations and the global maritime order.

Since the end of the Cold War, China, Japan, India and Russia have begun to challenge the status quo with the acquisition of advanced naval capabilities. The emergence of rising naval powers is a cause for concern, as the potential for great power instability is exacerbated by the multiple maritime territorial disputes among new and established naval powers.

This work explores the underlying sources of maritime ambition through an analysis of various historical cases of naval expansionism. It analyses both the sources and dynamics of international naval competition, and looks at the ways in which maritime stability and the widespread benefits of international commerce and maritime resource extraction can be sustained through the twenty-first century.

This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, Asian security and politics, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.

***

Peter A. Dutton, “Cracks in the Global Foundation: International Law and Instability in the South China Sea,” in Patrick M. Cronin, ed., Cooperation from Strength: The United States, China and the South China Sea (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security: 9 January 9 2012), 67–81.

China is asserting its interests in ways that threaten the foundational norms that govern the global maritime commons. This trend is most evident in the South China Sea, where China’s policies and activities are challenging stability and security.

China is challenging these norms in two ways. First, it is challenging established provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which allows states to claim Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and continental shelves. Instead, China bases its maritime jurisdictional rights on a historical a “nine-dashed line,” instead of an EEZ or a continental shelf.1 This view regarding how states may legitimately claim maritime resource rights increasingly is causing friction with its South China Sea neighbors.

Second, China is challenging the rights of navies to conduct operations, undertake exercises and gather intelligence in the EEZs of other states. Though China benefits substantially from the existing order, Beijing’s views about some key norms governing military activities throughout the global system diverge from those of the United States and other like-minded countries. Such Chinese activities are both creating instability in the South China Sea and undermining international legal norms designed to suppress international instability and armed conflict.

China’s challenge to existing maritime norms is creating hairline fractures in a global order that governments created after two world wars to advance peace and prosperity. For decades, that order has provided access to markets, resources and trade, as well as mechanisms for peaceful dispute resolution. Asia – and East Asia, in particular – has benefitted tremendously from this global system, with China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Taiwan ranked as the world’s 2nd-, 3rd-, 12th-, 15th- and 19th-largest economies, respectively.2 Although the cracks in this order so far remain hairline fractures, sustained and effective American leadership will be needed to resist these Chinese challenges and solidify the foundation of the current global order. … … …

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Peter A. Dutton, “Three Disputes and Three Objectives: China and the South China Sea,” Naval War College Review 64.4 (Autumn 2011): 42–67.

The recent heightening of the competition between China and its neighbors over sovereignty, resources, and security in the South China Sea has drawn the attention of diplomatic and military leaders from many countries that seek to promote stability and security in these globally important waters. For states that ring the South China Sea, its waters represent a zone of rich hydrocarbon and protein resources that are increasingly dear on land as populations exhaust their territories’ ability to meet their increasing needs. This resource competition alone could be the basis of sharp-edged disputes between the claimants. However, the South China Sea also represents the projection of the cultural consciousness of the centuries-long relationship that each coastal nation has had with its adjoining seas. This fact fuels competing modern-day nationalist tendencies among claimant-state populations, tendencies that in turn magnify the importance of the disputes and, during times of crisis, narrow the options for quiet negotiation or de-escalation.

As American leaders discuss policies and strategies in support of regional stability, some have described the complex disputes in the South China Sea as essentially a tangled knot of intractable challenges. Actually, however, there are three severable categories of disputes, each with its own parties, rule sets, and politics. There are disputes over territorial sovereignty, in the overlapping claims to the South China Sea’s islands, rocks, and reefs; disputes over which coastal states claim rightful jurisdiction over waters and seabed; and disputes over the proper balance of coastal-state and international rights to use the seas for military purposes. Unfortunately, the region’s states are currently pursuing win-lose solutions to all three of these disputes. A careful analysis of the nature of each dispute reveals, instead, opportunities for more productive pathways to resolution achieved through win-win problem solving and recognition of the mutuality and commonality of interests in these globally important waters. … … …

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Peter A. Dutton, “An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Current Maritime Security Frameworks and Mechanisms in the South China Sea,” paper presented at First Manila Conference on the South China Sea: Toward a Region of Peace, Cooperation, and Progress, Makati City, Philippines, 5–6 July 2011.

As 2011 unfolds, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines are all proceeding apace with exploration operations and drilling plans to capture the undersea hydrocarbon resources of the South China Sea in the hodgepodge of contending state claims there. Friction, sometimes serious, has resulted and each of the three states has stepped up its rhetorical assertion of sole jurisdictional authority to drill in specified areas. Each state has also increased its South China Sea naval activities in ways that are either meant to signal resolve to defend its right to the resources or are at least perceived as such.

Some observers have suggested that regional economic ties and the mutual desire for a stable external environment within which to promote economic development will keep energy competition and sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea from resulting in conflict. Others opine that tensions are manageable because the fact that to date Chinese maritime claims in the East and South China Seas “are generally being enforced by unarmed patrol cutters [sends] a clear signal that Beijing does not seek escalation to a major crisis on these matters.” Others claim that such views are wishful thinking. This paper examines whether in the midst of such aggravated circumstances existing maritime security frameworks and mechanisms two in particular, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea—are sufficient to maintain regional peace and to advance regional economic development. Concluding that they are not, this paper will also make some suggestions for improvements in order to build confidence and make progress toward lasting stability. … … …

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Cmdr. Carla McCarthy, Naval War College Public Affairs Office, “Dutton Becomes Director of NWC’s China Maritime Studies Institute,” 12 May 2011.

NEWPORT, R.I. – Professor Peter Dutton officially stepped into the position of director for the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the Naval War College (NWC) on May 11.

The outgoing director, Professor Lyle Goldstein, led the institute since its establishment in 2006. He turned over leadership of the institute to focus on a number of scholarly projects he looks forward to pursuing and will remain an active member of the CMSI team.

“As founding CMSI director, Professor Goldstein has done an outstanding job creating an invaluable resource for the Naval War College, the U.S. Navy and the wider U.S. national security community,” said Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, NWC’s Provost, when she announced the leadership transition in March.

Under Goldstein’s guidance, CMSI faculty and associates published broadly, furthered dialogue with Chinese academic counterparts, engaged with U.S. operational leaders and staffs in the Pacific region, and opened a unique research library featuring an unprecedented collection of Chinese research journals on topics ranging from marine science to regional security to defense policy. CMSI hosted six conferences and workshops dedicated to subjects such as China’s submarine developments, China’s energy strategy, and defining a cooperative maritime partnership with China. Goldstein also launched a Naval War College Press monograph series, called China Maritime Studies, an important resource for military decision makers, policymakers and academics.

Dutton joined CMSI in 2007. His current research focuses on American and Chinese views of sovereignty and international law of the sea and the strategic implications to the United States and the United States Navy of Chinese legal and policy choices.

“Peter brings to the position a breadth of experience in naval operations, international law and Asian studies,” said Ambassador Peters. “I am confident that CMSI will continue to flourish under his leadership.”

CMSI is part of the Strategic Research Department within NWC’s Center for Naval Warfare Studies, which is the research arm of NWC as a nexus for broadly based, advanced research on the naval contribution to national strategy.

***

Peter A. Dutton, “China’s Efforts to Assert Legal Control Over Maritime Airspace,” in Andrew S. Erickson and Lyle J. Goldstein, eds., Chinese Aerospace Power: Evolving Maritime Roles (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011), 90–107.

With continuing tensions on the Korean peninsula serving as a constant reminder that international security in East Asia is inherently fragile and the heightened concerns of all states about terrorist threats from the air since 11 September 2001, intercept of foreign military aircraft and national air defense identification zones (ADIZ) once again are topics that assume a prominence in national security discussions that they have not held in several decades. Nowhere have these concerns been more active than in East Asia. China, for instance, in advance of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games announced its intent to establish an ADIZ over the East China Sea and the Strait of Taiwan to protect visitors from possible terrorist air attack. Elsewhere in the region, Japan increased the number of air intercepts it performs each year. Additionally in 2008, increased Chinese air exercises in the central East China Sea region, ownership of which is disputed by Japan and China, caused “emergency scrambling” by Japanese Self-Defense Force jets. Most recently, in July 2010, Japan extended the southern portion of its ADIZ twenty-two kilometers closer to Taiwan to ensure air coverage over all portions of the southernmost island in the Ryukyu island chain, known as Yonaguni. While this move was essentially administrative in that it adjusted Japan’s ADIZ to cover the internationally recognized sovereign Japanese airspace over the airspace of Yonaguni Island and the territorial sea surrounding it, the action nonetheless provoked a sharp response from the Taiwan authorities. … … …

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Peter A. Dutton, “Governing the Maritime System: Soccer Match or Street Fight?,” Presentation at “The U.S.-Japan Alliance and Evolving Challenges in East Asia: Freedom of Navigation and North Korea” conference, sponsored and hosted by The Brookings Institution Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies in Cooperation with the Slavic Research Center at Hokkaido University, 15 December 2010.

PETER DUTTON: Well, thank you very much, Richard. Thank you for having me, and thank you very much for allowing me to share in this particular panel, which is very helpful and enlightening.

I’d like to begin by mentioning a couple of quotes. The first is this past week I had the privilege of being involved in a gaming exercise in which the CNO, the Chief of Naval Operations, gave a speech in which he said, “Navies exist to protect the flow of commerce, communication, and resources.” These are the three fundamental responsibilities of the Navy, which Minister Akiba also alluded to when he said that “power and stability are required to support the free-flow of resources and commerce.”

So what we have fundamentally as a Naval responsibility is this stability in the maritime commons that enables the free-flow of commerce and communication. Communication, of course, we can think of as protecting the internet cables under the oceans, but that’s not really what we’re talking about so much as what Bernard Oxman calls maritime communication between states. It’s the ability of states to support each other in times of crisis. Crisis sometimes comes as humanitarian assistance is needed in times of unexpected crisis but also times of political crisis. We can think, of course, of what is going on the Korean peninsula now as an example of that type of maritime communication that Navies are required to support in order to achieve the regional peace and stability that’s essential to the free-flow of commerce and resources through the global system.

And so I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in regard to this particular topic lately, and I’m going to offer you perhaps a bumper sticker, which is the U.S.-China struggle over the norms that govern the maritime system, will it be a soccer match or a street fight? A soccer match or a street fight. In other words, will it be — it will be competition, first of all. Let’s just be honest about there. There will be competition. Will it be competition within an agreed set of rules, a framework of rules upon which we agree and which then enable healthy competition, or will it be a street fight? That is to say, competition with knives.

So I’ve been thinking about this particular problem and how do we make it more like a soccer match than a street fight in the future. What is going to be required if we all agree that a soccer match is what we’re aiming for because it’s essential for the regional stability that underpins the well being of states.

There are a couple studies that I’d like to reference in relationship to what I’ve been thinking about. One is by the Lowy Institute in Australia. I have a copy if anyone is interested to look at it after the break, and it’s available online as well. But it’s about Asian security futures, and four futures are looked at. Two essentially are for the purpose of discarding, I suspect. American primacy on one hand, PRC primacy on the other hand, and then there is a broad spectrum of potential futures in between, two of which were chosen.

One is essentially regional balancing, the other is a sort of concert of powers within the region. And it’s very good because fundamentally what it reminds us is if you accept the fact that the primacy is probably unlikely in the 21st century in East Asia, that all of the futures along that spectrum require, fundamentally require, some sort of cooperative activity in East Asia to either maintain a balance of power or to maintain a concert of powers. Each of which is organized to provide stability in the region, which requires, of course, access to the maritime commons in order to achieve it.

The fundamental nature of East Asia is as a maritime region. Its geography requires it. Its geography demands it, and, therefore, it is the maritime aspect of stability that has to be the focus of bringing about the regional stability, regardless of which future we see for security in East Asia. This is focused on — this particular study is focused on traditional security, as we think of it, interstate security issues. Providing the stability necessary, the political stability necessary in the region to ensure political stability does not disrupt — or political instability does not disrupt the regional stability necessary for the well functioning of the global system.

The second study I’d like to refer you to was put out by the National Bureau of Asian Research. It’s a good study on nontraditional security, edited by Tim Cook, and he has done a very good job. There is a particular chapter in there by Sheldon Simon I like a lot actually, which talks about nontraditional security items in East Asian. Because remember the other function of Naval activity, other than keeping the maritime communications necessary for interstate communication functioning, is to provide policing power, the constabulary power, necessary to grease the wheels of regional functioning. This is not focused on state activity. This is focused on non-state activity. It could be disasters in the region that require a response from the maritime region. It could be illegal activities such as piracy, black marketing, human smuggling, drug trafficking, et cetera. There is a whole range of nontraditional activities that Navies are required to address as part of their constabulary function.

In this regard I would like to point out that Sheldon Simon articulates quite a bit of the activities that I think Japan is undertaking. I would say quietly undertaking very important stabilizing activities by the Japanese government and private entities within Japan to provide that kind of nontraditional security within the East Asian region.

The method that is chosen is to reinforce the capacity of governments to be able to provide the stability in their jurisdictional waters as is necessary. This is a very effective method in East Asia because East Asia is a region in which there is essentially functional governance, not only on land but at sea as well. And the challenge in East Asia is to increase the capacity for functional governance at sea.

This method has to be supplemented, not only in East Asia but in other places — Somalia is a classic example — with the right of Navies to undertake the stabilizing activities in jurisdictional waters of other states that are necessary to provide functional governance where the coastal state has no capacity to provide that governance. In other words, Somalia has no ability to provide stability from illegal activities, nontraditional threats, in its maritime waters. Therefore, the international community has to, as a matter of right, undertake those activities. It’s the simple balance between coastal states and the international community of rights and obligations in these jurisdictional waters.

So what we see is this struggle between China and the United States over the norms that will govern the global system. And China is attempting to pull those norms toward — out of the current balance into a balance that favors the ability of coastal states to jurisdictionalize their waters at the expense of the right of the international community to exercise either traditional security functions or nontraditional security functions in the coastal waters of another state, fully out to 200 miles at least.

Now this is a challenging problem, right? This is a tension between two fundamental approaches to governance at sea. One which I believe is essential to success, and that is based on freedom of navigation, and the other which I think would actually — the Chinese approach — would create what I call zones of sanctuary. These are, in other words, extending zones of full coastal state control where the international community has no right to employ its Naval activities in ways that would create sanctuary for destabilizing activities to have more freedom of action to operate because coastal states have insufficient capacity to suppress the activities in that region.

So there are a host of problems in East Asia that are looking for solutions. I’d like to turn my point a little bit here, and I will come back to the street fight versus soccer match analogy in a minute.

There are a whole host of problems in East Asia that are looking for solutions. They’re searching for solutions. The South China Sea is a classic example. Currently, there are three categories of disputes: disputes over sovereignty, disputes over jurisdiction, which is fundamentally about resources, and the third is the dispute over control, right. Sovereignty is the rocks themselves. Jurisdiction is about the resources in and under the waters, and control is about this question of the balance of coastal state rights versus international rights. They have different parties and different dynamics to each of those disputes. But in the sovereignty and jurisdiction questions, the regional states are pursuing win-lose solutions. Sovereignty and jurisdiction are win-lose propositions. It’s either my island or it’s yours. It’s either my jurisdictional zone or it’s yours.

My point is that the problems in the region are begging for some other regional solution rather than the win-lose solution of sovereignty and jurisdiction that are being proposed today. The old norms themselves of sovereignty and jurisdiction, which are embedded in UNCLOS, are, in fact, exacerbating or even causing regional conflict in this regard. So in addition to the pressure being put on the norms by China in terms of that balance of coastal state and international rights, there is also pressure on the normative activity based on the first two categories of disputes, disputes over the island themselves and the resources in the waters around them.

So in all of these three areas of disputes, sovereignty, jurisdiction, and control, we have pressure on the normative architecture that currently exists today. It suggests two things. It suggests, number one, that over time the normative architecture will inevitability have to evolve. Because the current set of solutions is probably insufficient in some way to address the developing problem sets, problem sets for the 21st Century. So evolution in my mind is inevitable in the face of this pressure.

And the second problem is that — or the second thing that it suggests is that these are issues over which there is a high probability of conflict. As states put pressure on the system, it will break, if it doesn’t evolve, and states may have — may push toward a conflict as a way of resolving issues in their favor. So there is pressure, and it’s a pressure that could result in conflict are two things we have to be aware of.

Back to the soccer match competition with rules or street fight competition with knives. It becomes increasingly important then, I think, that all major powers within the East Asian region, but most especially China and the United States agree to work from a common framework, a common normative architecture — to agree on and to support a common normative architecture.

Now I’m not saying that, especially in the area of traditional security, that a renegotiation of the norms is appropriate. It’s not appropriate. The United States requires freedom of navigation in order to ensure traditional security activities — traditional security does not disrupt regional stability. But all sides have to accept to be bound by the existing system. And that suggests to me, first and foremost, that the United States must enter UNCLOS in order to ensure the stability of the current architecture within which the United States and China can both compete effectively, a soccer match essentially.

Now I will note that UNCLOS, in my opinion, preserves American power amidst change. I think this is an important thing to remember. The norms that are in UNCLOS preserve American power amidst inevitable change. So that’s an important thing for us to remember. The second is that, as a general rule, disorder tends to present opportunities for a rising power and order tends to favor the established power. So these are three points I think that are worth making in support of American accession to UNCLOS.

China needs to agree to be bound as well, not by novel interpretations of UNCLOS but by existing interpretations of UNCLOS, with the recognition that over the course of the 21st century, if we all agreed to be bound by the existing norms, those norms will inevitably evolve in ways that help to resolve the challenges that we currently see putting pressure on the normative architecture that currently guides and governs us all. But the question then will become, we’ll be inside a normative architecture from which to work towards an evolution that operates effectively for both sides or for all sides, and in that sense we can prove power transition theory wrong for the 21st century. We can, in fact, enter a normative architecture and evolve that normative architecture together in a way that suits the interests and the needs of the 21st century.

In the meantime, of course, it will require restraint. Restraint in the application of what one perceives as one’s rights, but also certain insistence on those rights and, therefore, at times it will require an exercise of those rights in ways that could be seen as provocative. If both sides understand what the actions are in an attempt to preserve one’s rights, then it doesn’t actually need to be provocative. So an exercise of political restraint is also called for in this regard.

So I think rather than overstay my welcome, I’ll leave at that point, and I will look forward to any questions you have later. Thank you.

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Peter A. Dutton, Military Activities in the EEZ: A U.S.-China Dialogue on Security and International Law in the Maritime Commons, Naval War College China Maritime Study7 (December 2010).

China is attempting to assemble the technology to challenge the U.S. Navy’s access to the western reaches of “its” lake and thereby challenge the political access that American naval power now ensures. China has also mobilized its lawyers. Its international-law specialists have become adjunct soldiers in China’s legal campaign to challenge the dominant, access-oriented norms at sea, especially for military freedoms of navigation in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ). This expanse of waters, known as the EEZ, stretches two hundred nautical miles from a coastal state’s shores and collectively constitutes more than a third of all ocean space. Because the EEZ is a rich resource zone and a region through which all major sea-lanes pass, its space is critical to regional political stability, national resource extraction, and global commerce. For the United States, the world’s EEZs are therefore critical regions in which naval power must be brought to bear in support of two fundamental sources of stability for the global system: deterrence of international armed conflict and suppression of nontraditional threats to commerce and other activities. For China, however, its EEZ and other jurisdictional waters are zones in which outside interference is an unwelcome intrusion into domestic security issues, a zone of competition for resources with neighboring states that claim overlapping rights, and a region in which national, not international, maritime power should dominate.

This volume is the product of a workshop held in Newport in July 2009 to discuss the different perspectives held by the United States and China on the legitimacy of foreign military activities in a coastal state’s EEZ. The conference, addressing “The Strategic Implications of Military Activities in the EEZ,” was attended by fifty representatives of the American and Chinese policy, military, legal, and academic communities. Its aims were to increase mutual understanding of the bases for each state’s perspectives and to add a dimension of richness to ongoing talks between the two countries under the framework of the Defense Consultative Agreement and the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement. Eight papers from workshop participants are reproduced here. … …

On the wall in the entranceway to the personal of offices of the Commander, Pacific Fleet, there hangs prominently displayed a life-size portrait of Adm. Chester William Nimitz, the legendary architect of the American naval victory in the Pacific sixty-five years ago. The painting is specially lit, giving the admiral’s thoughtful gaze a lifelike glow as if he were present, judging the decisions and actions of his successors in command as these of officers and means to preserve regional peace and guard American interests. In the painting’s background are the objects of naval war, standing as striking reminders of the heavy price in American blood and treasure paid for the nearly three generations since then during which the Pacific Ocean has been an American lake. It has been this freedom from serious threat that has provided room for American strategic and operational maneuver during the Korean conflict, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War, that has afforded an avenue for the movement of forces during conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the capacity to deter conflict in East Asia, the access needed to assure the security of allies and partners, and the ability to provide support to populations devastated by disaster.

The responsibility to keep peace and find means to secure American interests for future generations must weigh heavily on each commander as he passes Nimitz’s gaze, and never more so than today. Change is afoot in the Pacific. The Chinese military is developing the capacity to challenge American freedom of action in and around the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea—China’s “near seas.” China’s naval modernization is efficiently focused on controlling access to these near seas in military crisis. For instance, China has long possessed one of the largest arsenals of naval mines in the world. Over the last three decades its navy has also developed a capable submarine fleet, to challenge the freedom of action of any naval force in the region. More recently, China has announced programs to develop antiship ballistic missiles and aircraft carriers and has demonstrated the capacity to employ antisatellite weapons and cyber-disruption. In short, China is attempting to assemble the technology to challenge the U.S. Navy’s access to the western reaches of “its” lake and thereby challenge the political access that American naval power now ensures.

China has also mobilized its lawyers. Its international-law specialists have become adjunct soldiers in China’s legal campaign to challenge the dominant, access-oriented norms at sea, especially for military freedoms of navigation in the exclusive economic zone. This expanse of waters, known as the EEZ, stretches two hundred nautical miles from a coastal state’s shores and collectively constitutes more than a third of all ocean space. Because the EEZ is a rich resource zone and a region through which all major sea-lanes pass, its space is critical to regional political stability, national resource extraction, and global commerce. For the United States, the world’s EEZs are therefore critical regions in which naval power must be brought to bear in support of two fundamental sources of stability for the global system: deterrence of international armed conflict and suppression of nontraditional threats to commerce and other activities. For China, however, its EEZ and other jurisdictional waters are zones in which outside interference is an unwelcome intrusion into domestic security issues, a zone of competition for resources with neighboring states that claim overlapping rights, and a region in which national, not international, maritime power should dominate. … … …

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Peter A. Dutton, “Charting the Course: Sino-American Naval Cooperation to Enhance Governance and Security,” in Andrew S. Erickson, Lyle J. Goldstein, and Nan Li, eds., China, the United States, and 21st Century Sea Power: Defining a Maritime Security Partnership (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010), 197–235.

In December 2004 the president of the United States issued a National Security Presidential Directive that called upon the agencies of the federal government to enhance U.S. security and global security in the maritime domain by, among other measures, “enhancing international relationships . . . [and the] global maritime security framework to advance common security interests, [and] ensuring seamless, coordinated implementation of authorities . . . relating to the security of the Maritime Domain.” With these statements, the president called forth the substantial American law enforcement and national security capacities and directed utilization of the full measure of law enforcement and national security authorities to improve maritime security.

Similarly, in December 2008, Chinese leaders announced that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) would join the antipiracy efforts of the horn of Africa pursuant to UN Security Council resolutions authorizing the international community to enter Somali territorial waters and even its sovereign territory. This shift reflected recognition that China’s increasing interests in global affairs are threatened by nontraditional security concerns, including the piracy that caused increasing disruption to shipping traffic in the critical sea lines of communication that run through the Gulf of Aden and connect oil and commercial trade routes between Europe, the Middle east, and Asia. However, despite China’s rapid rise across all dimensions of maritime power and corresponding increased interest in security and stability on the seas, China’s unique perspectives on international law authorities, grounded in its long history and current strategic interests, make it difficult to find direct avenues for cooperative maritime security efforts with the United States.

However, despite China’s ongoing participation in counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, this continues to be especially true of international military efforts to provide security in other states’ exclusive economic zones (EEZ)—the non-sovereign maritime zones in which coastal states have sovereign rights to resources and jurisdiction to enforce resource-related laws. This difference of perspective on legal authorities has kept China from contributing to such activities as the Proliferation Security Initiative and Combined Task Force 150; indeed, Chinese officials and scholars have publicly questioned the legal rationales behind them. Conversely, China has been more supportive of direct state-to-state cooperative efforts such as its cooperation with the United States on the Container Security Initiative and antipiracy actions sanctioned by the United Nations. To see more clearly why China is willing to participate in some international efforts to enhance maritime security but not others, it is helpful first to reflect on the maritime environment to which both China and the United States are reacting, then to compare American and Chinese perspectives on the legal authorities legitimately available to achieve security at sea, and finally to reflect on the different maritime strategies from which each country’s legal perspectives take shape. … … …

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Commander Peter A. Dutton, JAGC, U.S. Navy (Ret.), “Through a Chinese Lens,” U.S. Naval InstituteProceedings 136.3 (April 2010).

With Sino-centric visions of international laws and treaties, China has essentially claimed the South China Sea as its own.

The March 2009 USNS Impeccable (T-AGOS-23) incident, like the 2001 EP-3 event before it, highlighted a flashpoint that exists between the United States and China in the South China Sea. The similarity of Chinese behavior during these two events is remarkable. The Impeccable incident occurred when a collection of Chinese government and fishing vessels maneuvered aggressively and in close quarters around the American ship, interfering with her performance of survey operations in the South China Sea more than 70 miles off China’s nearest coastline. The EP-3 incident occurred in approximately the same area when an aggressively maneuvered Chinese intercepting aircraft collided with the American patrol plane as it performed routine reconnaissance operations. The statements of the Chinese government in the aftermath of each of these events, claiming that the U.S. naval operations were illegal and threatening to China, demonstrates the sharp differences of perspective over what traditional military activities constitute legitimate uses of those waters.

Although the conflict is generally expressed by both the Americans and the Chinese in terms of international law, the friction is not fundamentally about the correct interpretation of those laws or of the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Rather the legal conflict reflects a larger clash between China’s objective of increasing its control over its “near seas” and the American geostrategic interest in maintaining the freedom of navigation on which the health and stability of the global maritime commons rely, and which are essential to support American security guarantees in East Asia. The language of international law is nonetheless important because it is the primary terrain chosen by China to directly confront American naval power. Thus, to understand China’s legal arguments is to pull back the curtain and view clearly the complex ways in which China is challenging the United States in East Asia and to observe the larger implications of these disputes. … … …

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Peter A. Dutton, “Caelum Liberam: Air Defense Identification Zones Outside Sovereign Airspace,” American Journal of International Law 103.4 (October 2009): 691–709.

With the heightened concerns of states about threats from the air since September11, 2001, and the recent resurgence of major military powers, Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZs), zones in which civil aircraft must identify themselves and may be subject to air traffic control if they intend to fly from non-sovereign airspace into sovereign airspace, have assumed a degree of prominence in national security discussions that they have not received in several decades. China, for instance, in advance of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, considered establishing an ADIZ over the East China Sea and the Strait of Taiwan to deal with potential threats to the games from the air, and Norway and the United Kingdom have repeatedly scrambled aircraft in response to Russian military flights near their national airspaces. This level of attention to threats from the air has not been seen since the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, when coastal states established many ADIZs in the airspace over the oceans to help protect themselves from unwanted intruders and to warn of potential nuclear strikes. Some Cold War ADIZs remain in place, including the North American ADIZ, created by Canada and the United States over the Arctic. At that time, however, the landscape of international law was relatively simple: airspace over sovereign territory, including a narrow 3-mile band over territorial waters, was fully sovereign. All remaining airspace reflected the status of the high seas; that is, it was a zone in which all states equally enjoyed navigation and overflight freedoms. Yet in the decades since the 1950s much has changed in the international law of the sea, raising questions as to whether these legal developments have affected the status of maritime airspace or established new authorities that allow coastal states to regulate foreign aircraft in the airspace beyond the territorial sea in derogation of the overflight freedoms of other states. … … …

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Peter Dutton, Associate Professor, China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College, Testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Hearing on Maritime Disputes and Sovereignty Issues in East Asia, 15 July 2009.

… 1. China’s South China Sea legal claims and the activities it has undertaken to enforce them pose a challenge to America’s regional and global maritime interests.

2. China sees its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea as fundamentally nonnegotiable, yet close to being within its grasp to consolidate.
3. China is a developing maritime power, but its maritime development is best characterized as a maritime enhancement to China’s continental strategic focus, rather than as a rising expeditionary maritime force.
4. The U.S. should exercise renewed maritime leadership to ensure the regional and global access necessary to our national defense and to the security of the global maritime system generally. … … …

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Peter A. Dutton, Associate Professor, U.S. Naval War College, Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Committee Hearing on The Implications of China’s Naval Modernization for the United States, 11 June 2009.

Questions presented: How does China’s unique view of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) impact regional security? Is there room for cooperation between the U.S. Navy and the PLAN on global maritime security? If so, how? …

There is some reason to hope that as Chinese naval power grows, Chinese leaders may gain insight into the benefits of the access-oriented bases of international law of the sea. China’s decision to participate in anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, though couched in terms of authorization by the United Nations Security Council and the consent of the Somali Transitional Federal Government, is an encouraging opportunity to demonstrate the power of a global maritime partnership to bring about the order and stability necessary for the well-functioning of the global system on which the economic health and political strength of all major countries relies. Such operations enable China to participate meaningfully in the provision of the ‘global goods’ that come from maritime humanitarian and constabulary operations which are meaningfully supported by reasonable interpretations of international law of the sea.

Additionally, cooperation is more likely to occur between Chinese and American naval forces the further away they operate from the East Asian coastal regions. China’s relatively recent history of invasion from the sea seems understandably to have left scars in its national psyche that make it likely that the presence of U.S. naval vessels in its EEZ will remain a source of friction. However, China’s aspirations to play a global role as a responsible major power and its willingness to undertake security operations in parallel, if not exactly in direct cooperation, with the U.S. and other maritime states in the Gulf of Aden suggests that future such opportunities will present themselves and should be welcomed. The more that China works with the U.S. and like-minded states away from its shores, the greater the chance that the essential factor of trust will begin to enter into the equation of U.S.-China relations in East Asia. Should opportunities arise for cooperation in East Asia, such as humanitarian assistance or disaster relief, China should be welcomed as a partner. China’s new hospital ship may provide opportunities in this regard.

In the meantime, the U.S. needs to reassert its leadership role as an advocate for the importance of the access-oriented bases of international law of the sea. A comprehensive strategic communications plan should be developed and coordinated across the agencies of the U.S. government. Additionally, since UNCLOS is the basis of most modern international law of the sea—either as a matter of treaty responsibilities for parties, or as a matter of customary law for non-parties–the U.S. should ratify the Convention in order to more effectively exercise leadership from within its ranks, not just from outside them.

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Peter A. Dutton, Scouting, Signaling, and Gatekeeping: Chinese Naval Operations in Japanese Waters and the International Law Implications, Naval War College China Maritime Study 2 (February 2009).

In October 2008, a month after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan stepped down and the more hawkish Taro Aso took office, a Chinese flotilla of four People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ships transited from west to east through Japan’s narrow Tsugaru Strait en route to the Pacific Ocean. The vessels were observed together in the Sea of Japan, headed east toward the strait, by a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) P-3C patrol aircraft; they were about twenty-five nautical miles west-southwest of Tappizaki, the cape at the northern tip of the Tsugaru Peninsula, where the Sea of Japan enters the Tsugaru Strait between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. The flotilla consisted of a Sovremennyy-class missile destroyer—one of four China bought from Russia between 1996 and 2002—a supply ship, and two Jiangkai frigates, one of which was a newly commissioned Jiangkai II. Apparently the Sovremennyy and one of the frigates had recently “paid a friendly visit to a naval base in the Russian Far East” before joining the other two Chinese naval vessels in the Sea of Japan and proceeding on through the strait to the Pacific Ocean…. … …

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Peter A. Dutton, Associate Professor, China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College, Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China’s Views of Sovereignty and Methods of Access Control, 27 February 2008.

The Chinese are seeking to alter the traditional balance of maritime rights between coastal states and the international community, especially in and above the Exclusive Economic Zone, as they seek to consolidate and extend sovereignty over their maritime periphery. China’s efforts to alter the balance of maritime rights are part of its overall anti-access strategy, and could have an impact on the perceived legitimacy of U.S. operations in the region, especially in times of crisis. In response, the U.S. should: promote military engagement to build trust; communicate the expectation that China must accept the burdens as well as the benefits of the international system; continue to exercise international prerogatives in offshore waters and airspace; commit to the preservation of the legal freedoms at sea that belong to the international community; and maintain its commitment to naval strength in East Asia. … … …

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Peter A. Dutton, “International Law and the November 2004 ‘Han Incident’,” in Andrew S. Erickson, Lyle J. Goldstein, William S. Murray, and Andrew R. Wilson, eds., China’s Future Nuclear Submarine Force (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007), 162–81.

A submerged Han-class nuclear-powered submarine of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) entered Japanese territorial waters during the early morning hours of November 10, 2004, and passed submerged at about one hundred meters as it “wandered” in Japanese territorial waters for about two hours before exiting into international waters. Moving from south to north, the submarine passed through the Ishigaki Strait, which separates the islands of Ishigaki and Miyako at the southwestern edge of Japan’s Sakishima island chain. The submarine was on its return to Meigezhuang Naval Base near Qingdao from its operating area in the Philippine Sea.

While the submarine was still operating well south of Japanese waters, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) was perhaps tipped to the presence of the submarine from U.S. Navy intelligence sources, and the JMSDF began passive tracking of the sub and monitoring of its activities. The Japanese continued to monitor the Han passively as it operated in international waters south of Ishigaki Island, but when the submarine turned north toward Japanese territorial waters, Japanese aircra began using active sonar—which uses echoes from an emitted signal to provide trackers with a more precise location of their target submarine, and which is accepted among submariners as a warning signal. The submarine chose to ignore the warning and kept on its northward path through the strait.

As a result of the sub’s incursion, the JMSDF was put on an unusually high-level alert by order of the defense agency director, General Yoshinori Ono, for only the second time since the end of World War II. The JMSDF maintained track of the Han as it passed through the Strait and, once the alert order was issued, began more aggressive tracking of the Han in international waters until the sub passed well beyond the Japanese coastline. During this period the JMSDF tracked the submarine for more than two days with P-3C patrol planes, AWACS aircraft, and ASW-capable destroyers and SH-60J helicopters.

The intriguing aspect of this incident is not that the Chinese chose to send a submarine through the Ishigaki Strait—for many reasons, maritime states with submarine fleets occasionally send their submarines on underwater excursions into another country’s territorial waters. Nor perhaps, in a region increasingly tense over economic rights, maritime boundaries, and political maneuvering, should Japan’s assertive response have come as much of a surprise to anyone. What makes the Han’s incursion especially interesting are the international law implications of the submarine’s submerged passage through Japanese territorial waters and the strategic insights that attend them. … … …

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Peter A. Dutton, “Carving Up the East China Sea,” Naval War College Review 60.2 (Spring 2007): 49–72.

It is a timeless and fundamental question: Must competition for scarce resources inevitably lead to conflict? Today, that age-old question is often asked in reference to the many sites in the world’s oceans in which neighboring coastal states are shouldering each other for the authority to claim the potentially vast sources of hydrocarbons embedded in the continental shelf and the fishing rights to the waters above it.

With more than a billion people to feed and a surging economy that demands ever more energy, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become one of the world’s fiercest competitors for the ocean’s resources. China’s oil consumption, already the second largest in the world after the United States, is forecast by some to grow to 590 million metric tons in 2020 (up from 220 million tons in 2000), nearly three-quarters of which will be imported by that time. By some estimates, gas and oil deposits in the central area of the East China Sea could go a long way to alleviating the energy deficit the country faces: the Chunxiao Natural Gas Development Project, an area of hydrocarbon exploitation by the Chinese, is publicly estimated to contain 65.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 12.7 million tons of oil. This development project, which involves American and European oil companies as minority stakeholders, lies in the heart of the disputed zone in the East China Sea. China has accommodated and cooperated to develop disputed areas with several other of its maritime neighbors and even to resolve some of those disputes amicably—most notably those with Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, with whom it shares overlapping claims in the South China Sea; nonetheless, the competition between China and Japan over the resources in the East China Sea remains confrontational, causing some concern that the competition for regional predominance between these two powerful nations could spark armed conflict if not carefully managed. … … …