CSIS – AMTI Brief – May 13, 2016

By comparison, China has created almost 3,000 acres of new land at the seven features it occupies in the Spratly Islands. Vietnam’s work has not only been much smaller, but far less environmentally destructive, as it has not involved large-scale dredging of the reefs on which Hanoi’s outposts sit. It has also mostly (but not always) involved expanding pre-existing islets rather than creating new land at submerged features. Nonetheless, Vietnam has ignored calls, including by U.S. officials, to halt its island-building in order to support a consensus against the practice. Read more…

Featured Analysis

What Will a Duterte Administration Mean?Richard Javad Heydarian

After months of grueling and highly polarizing election campaigning, the Philippines has finally chosen its next set of leaders. Rodrigo Duterte, the firebrand and highly controversial mayor of Davao City, appears to have won a landslide victory, beating the closest runner-up, former interior and local government secretary Mar Roxas, by a whopping five million votes. Read more… 

Submerged Deterrence: China’s Struggle to Field an SSBN Fleet

Bonnie Glaser and Matthew Funaiole

The gradual, but steady development of China’s ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) program has been closely monitored by international observers. China is the last of the Permanent Five members of the United Nations Security Council to establish an operational SSBN force. A recent report by the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) says that China’s Jin­­-class SSBN represents the country’s “first credible at-sea second-strike nuclear capability.” That goal remains a long way off, however. Although the Jin­-class is a potential step forward for China’s nuclear deterrent, its nascent SSBN program continues to face considerable challenges. Read more… 

Taipei’s Risky Agreement with Beijing on Okinotorishima

Tetsuo Kotani

Taipei recently launched a “freedom of navigation” operation in the western Pacific to challenge Japan’s claim to a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone around Okinotorishima, an atoll located 950 nautical miles south of Tokyo and 850 nautical miles east of Taiwan. Two Taiwanese government ships, possibly escorted by a warship, have been sent to the Japanese-claimed waters—where the Japan Coast Guard detained a Taiwanese fishing boat on April 25—to demonstrate Taipei’s determination to protect Taiwanese fishery rights. Read more… 

Has Taiwan Implicitly Clarified the U-Shaped Line?

Chi-Ting Tsai

The Philippines filed an arbitration case in 2013 against China before the Permanent Court of Arbitration to challenge, among other things, Beijing’s nine-dash line claim to most of the South China Sea. Although the legal character of the nine-dash line is not a new dispute between China and its neighbors, it has become a significant foreign policy and international legal headache for another South China Sea claimant: Taiwan. This is because China claims that its nine-dash line is a successor to the U-shaped line map issued by the Republic of China (ROC) in 1947. By doing so, China both asserts its sovereignty over Taiwan and diverts some international political pressure from Beijing to Taipei. Read more… 

Why Undersea Drones Will (Not Yet) Change Asia-Pacific’s Undersea Balance

Heiko Borchert

Unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs), or undersea drones, are the latest newcomers to planned U.S. force posture in the Asia-Pacific region, as Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter recently revealed. Prior to his announcement, CSIS reports on Asia-Pacific naval capabilities and Australia-Japan-U.S. maritime cooperation argued for greater bilateral cooperation on UUVs, which were also on show at the first naval exhibition in Yokohama, Japan, last year. Read more…